What a revelation it has been to hit bottom in addiction, then wake up and do the work of self-knowing to stay sober and realize I was suffering from a problem that was never real but an illusion of time created in my mind. So, the burning question is, “How did I get trapped in my mind, living in an illusion until I was sixty years old before I could wake up to uncover the truth of my suffering?” The sad truth is we don’t wake up from our addiction to thinking, the illusion of psychological time until we are ready, until we are shocked by life or death, or have mentally suffered enough to surrender our mind to meditation—the silent awareness of reality, life happening in the present moment.
Many of us addicts hit bottom and experience self-awareness of our thoughts, shining the light of understanding to expose the illusion of our cravings, and we manage to stay awake for a while in the sober fortress we build to protect us from cravings until the mind opens a breezeway that snuffs out the light of awareness within because it has to move without, from one thing to another, “constantly craving” to become a different temporary illusion—in psychological time—the only dimension that can sustain addictions.
Evidently, I had suffered enough to be ready and blessed to receive universal grace and wake up so my Higher Power of Love could reveal the truth of self-awareness: I am not the mind; there is no “I am” only “eternal awareness.” By quieting the mind when it hit bottom in substance addiction, my Higher Power of Love showed how addiction to thinking in time (the root of all addictions) can be transcended and dissolve the mind’s “constant craving” to be something different than what it is right now. Now that self-awareness has yielded self-knowledge of how the mind works for meditation to happen in the present moment, as non-controlling, non-judgmental right thinking arises, the “self” disappears. All that remains is Love—flowing through me, uncorrupted by my thinking in time, into the world—NOW.
When we wake up to the truth, we can create a loving world as it happens within each of us!
VAB 07-20-24
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