It’s all starting to make sense. I am beginning to understand that the root cause of my addictions stems from my mind’s desire for permanence. During my seven years of discovery, since I got sober and became aware, I have surrendered my mind to a state of openness to the unknown, a willingness to go beyond the mind to understand how my mind works. In that meditative state, I have discovered that humanity, including my mind, which thinks it is separate from everything and everyone else, longs to know its source. In quiet, reflective moments, my mind becomes aware of itself and wonders: “Who am I,” and maybe more importantly, “Why am I here?” The good news is that the human brain has evolved, and this burning desire of the mind to understand its source and secure its existence has made our species feel responsible for the planet. The bad news is that the mind’s constant craving to ensure its self—existence is a relentless source of suffering as it tries to find permanence in the temporary world in which it exists. The evolved mind converts the universal, eternal energy flowing through everybody and everything into psychological fear for its temporary, physical survival. It will even destroy its own—if required—to keep seeking the answers it will never find with its isolated, limited powers.
When I think about my life, everything I have been taught has been based on fear. The history of human experiences of emotional anxiety has been traditionally passed on to each generation so as not to lose what it possesses, controls, or believes. Human life has been turned into an endless, competitive pursuit for power over economic possessions, personal control of the internal and political control of external experiences, or subjugating others to live by an acceptable religious morality. So, I live in constant fear of losing the permanence of what I have (the past) and not achieving what I desire (the future). It is no wonder my mind constantly craves its drug of choice to escape the fear of losing what it knows or never achieving the known it desires and the ultimate fear of death, the end of the temporary world that it has created as its limited self-ego.
In my discovery of still awakening, silently observing how my mind works, I understand that my true existence lies in the freedom of eternal awareness—my Higher Power—that transcends the limited power of my temporary thinking. The still mind, awakening of eternal awareness, is freedom from being trapped in the mind’s creation of psychological time, this world where everything is temporary. These revelations did not happen until my mind reached a level of suffering—hitting bottom, addicted to the temporary—where the limited mind could no longer overcome its fears by using its drug of choice, but only by letting go of psychological time—the illusion of finding its eternal source in a world of its temporary creations. I had to find the courage to let go, not just by staying sober to end my addiction, but by letting go of time—the duality of temporary choices—to heal my past by looking within, to find my Higher Power and dissolve the separate ego, my divided mind in choiceless eternal awareness; to be whole again by learning to Love myself again. Until the self disappears, and the only being, Love, who never changes, remains.
So, while my mind will never know its source, the source, my Higher Power is aware of my mind and understands that I am not my thinking, and I don’t have to react from fear based on the mind’s judgments, constructed from my past to life happening now—in the present moment. Also, I am here to share the Love energy flowing through me with the rest of humanity and everything that is temporarily in existence with me. Finally, I can control nothing, but I am responsible for everything because that is what Love does; when there is no self, only eternal Love that never changes, remains to be shared, free of the temporary mind.
These revelations of understanding how my mind works keep me sober today, but this awakening didn’t happen overnight without fear of relapsing. In fact, I have stayed connected to my sober community since hitting bottom in my addiction to the temporary because that is where I first found unconditional Love before I could recover an understanding of how to Love myself again.
I Love you guys!
VAB 09-14-24
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