Honoring the Soul in Addiction

Addiction. It can creep up on you without you having any clue. It takes a good friend or three to courageously pull you aside, in the midst of the “fix” to intervene and bring you back to reality. Over the last month I had been descending into the dark depths of addiction. I had no idea it was this bad. I was blinded to it. My logical brain was trying to get it through to me but the emotions wouldn’t have it. The emotional high felt in this addiction overpowered my logic. The emotional lows in this addiction turned off the logic all together and stripped me of my confidence and sense of self.

The soul seeks the same sort of peace that we find in feeding our addictions. From my experience with both the natural high of peace and the peace from addictions I can tell you they can mirror each other. But the fact is that the peace from feeding addictions is a poor reflection on the real thing. A few years back when I had met Dr. Hawkins and asked him the infamous ridiculous question, I was lifted into this place of ultimate peace and unconditional love. It was a high that lasted for a good month or so. Then the karmic merit expired for that experience and I was back to “normal”.

No matter what I do or how many times I see Dr. Hawkins, I cannot seem to get that back. All I can hold onto is that it is possible and someday I will feel it and experience it and live it again. This most recent addiction took me to a place that was similar, yet an inaccurate reflection, to that first Dr. Hawkins experience. And, it took me to deeper depths of torment than the gentle return to “normal” after being in the presence of Dr. Hawkins.

I could not see this until last night. I did not want to think that what I was feeling and experiencing was merely an addictive chemical reaction to my new drug of choice. But it is. It saddens me as withdrawal is never easy and usually painful. Thankfully the addiction did not affect my physical body, although I would prefer to go through the physical withdrawal symptoms. The emotional addictions, to me, seem so much more difficult. When the brain starts to think that you need this drug to survive, how hard it is to convince it is wrong.

My soul is seeking. My ego thought it would help the soul. Nice of the ego to do so but the ego has its own selfish motives. It does not want the soul to awaken to Truth. The ego is afraid of Love, which is the main food of the soul. I love my ego. It is such a cute little puppy dog that just wants to play and have fun. It really does not mean me harm. It just does not have the knowledge needed to awaken my soul or guide my soul. It was trying to help when it introduced me to this drug. But, it just led me further away from the light within me.

Thank you to my friends who love me and can pull me aside to have the tough conversations. Thank you to my friends who can talk me down from the insanity of the aftermath of the drug and bring me back to grounding. Who can bring me back to my soul. I love you guys!

Honoring the Soul with Clear Perceptions

Perception. Oh the messy business of perception. I must confess I am blind. I cannot see clearly. It is one of the most frustrating things to me. We could be together experiencing the same event and we will perceive it differently. I will perceive the experience through the various filters / lenses of my past, my beliefs, my judgments, my current emotional state, my habitual thought patterns, my ego and other things. And you will be doing the same.

These filters then help us to create the story we tell ourselves and others about the situation. The story is how we cope, how we relate, how we live through the experience. It is our safety. But there are times it can be our prison.

For a few years now, well okay most of my life, I have been telling myself a very silly story. It is based on skewed perceptions filtered through my jaded beliefs that I created based on past experiences. The story itself is not the issue. We all use stories to explain the world and our part in it. It is the attachment to the stories that are the problem and cause the pain and suffering. I discovered a fairy tale story that I have been telling myself for years.

Clear perception of Reality and Truth is my desire in this lifetime. One by one, as they are revealed to me, I disassemble the myths I have come to believe about my life and the world. This most recent one was buried so deep in my soul that it had wrapped itself tightly around my heart and hid comfortably. It was so a part of me that I assumed it was Truth. And that assumption is why it could sneak up on me and continually bite me in my behind time and time again. I let it keep biting because I assumed there was nothing I could do about it. It was a Universal TRUTH about me and my life experience.

All stories are based on some form of truth. But, that truth may only be true in a single moment in time. That truth may become untruth as we progress in our knowledge and experience in life. For example, as silly as this may be, when I was a child it was a truth that I could not pick up shards of broken glass. My mother was afraid that I would cut myself because I wouldn’t know how to do it properly. The truth that this little girl developed was that she should never touch broken glass because she was not capable of handling it without hurting herself.

I love my mother, but had she approached that moment differently, by still not letting me pick it up but also showing me how to carefully pick it up, I would have developed a different truth. A truth that said I was too young to pick it up but would learn and know how to do it safely when I was an adult.

As silly as that example is it stands out because the first time I had to pick up shards of broken glass as an adult I had to confront this little truth. I remember vividly at Bible Camp one of the girls dropped something and it broke. They were too young to pick it up and as the counselor it was my job. I froze for a moment because that childhood truth came up from within. For a second I was scared that I would hurt myself. Slowly I reached my hand out and placed my thumb and forefinger around one of the shards. I braced myself for pain and blood to come gushing out from my finger tips. Nothing. No blood, no pain, no injury. I knew how to gently pick up the glass shards and set them one by one in my other hand and safely walk them over to the garbage. In that moment I felt like I had reached adulthood.

That story and truth was true when I was a child but no longer true for me as an adult. I had to let it go as it no longer served my greater good. It actually hampered my growing into an adult. This most recent story discovered was the deepest held belief I have yet to confront. It was amazing when it was revealed to me. I could do nothing but laugh about the absurdity of this belief I had held onto and wore as a badge for years. This story had become a wall that blocked others from coming inside. Granted, I think some of those it was good that they were blocked from entrance. But, there were others that maybe should have been allowed in. I had to take a hard look at the story and realize it did not serve my greater good at all. I am not sure it ever did, but I would like to think it did protect me from making some big mistakes that would have directly impacted other people’s lives for the negative in the end.

My perceptions, my story, directly affect how I react to the world. My perceptions are the pen with which the words of my story are written. Right or wrong they are what they are until I am willing to let them go. It is my beliefs that cause me the pain. It is my attachments to those outmoded beliefs that paralyze my heart and disempower my life. It is time to let go of another story that served me for a time but now cripples me from living. It is time to see differently and be open to a new belief that brings into my life the right energy for the right time.