Recently, I realized a new mantra that expresses the growing awareness of my alcohol addiction; rather than treating the effects of the hard-wired addictive thought processes implanted in my brain, I am healing my past with heartfelt understanding of how my mind works. Through true Self-realization, I have stayed true to the Recovery plan of growing my Self-awareness, which has kept me sober for over seven years, without relapsing. The mantra that surfaced goes as follows: For my Recovery from addiction, thinking is drinking, mentally repeating my past, but feeling is healing my past, when my mind is quiet and my heart is open to projecting Self-loving kindness. I have been sharing my truth with residents in Recovery when discussing their fears of relapsing, in hopes of generating confidence when they leave their peaceful, like-minded sober community.

I try to remind residents that our thinking is the reason we ended up in Recovery from addiction. Thinking is constantly reliving—repeating—everything I already know: my past experiences of trying to survive my dysfunctional family, outdated culture, broken education system, judgmental religion, and corrupt politics, all the memories of people, places, and things that were implanted and have conditioned my brain. Thinking constantly replays my past experiences to maintain my ego-identity—the unique, separate personality that I desperately hold onto, out of fear of losing everything I am attached to and think of as “me.” The body-mind mask that I manifest in my brain and perceive when I look in the mirror or at the world is merely a reflection of the self-image I project. A familiar conceptual façade that provides the psychological security of my ego-identity, allowing me to recognize the illusion of “who I think I am.”

After hitting bottom in my addiction, which caused me to seek help because my exhausted ego-mind could no longer project a personal image with a reliable, fearless identity that could sustain my survival.  When I let go of my addicted self-ego thought patterns that can only exist in time, the grace of my ever-present Higher Power took over. I was able to detox and quiet my mind, temporarily, long enough to pause my mental addiction and stop repeating the past; and open my heart to receive my divine spiritual awakening, to experience a glimpse of the light of true Self-awareness. Note: The inevitable truth is, after seeing the light of true Self-awareness, I can’t unsee it; I can try to ignore it, or escape from it through a relapse of addictive thinking, but the spark that fired my natural ever-present sober wiring, which underlies all the hard-wiring in my brain from the past, was the spiritual awakening of my true Self-awareness—my true, divine Nature.  

Unfortunately, many of us addicts who have paused our addiction long enough to open our heart and receive the grace of divine consciousness, when our natural sober wiring gets re-fired—for the first time in a long time—to receive a glimpse of the light of our true Self-awareness; we can get lulled into the mistake of treating the effects, the exterior symptoms of our addictions rather than looking within to heal the mental image that our brain projects. Treating the symptoms is just another thought process of using my past to try and change the way I think now to get different outcomes; that is the definition of addiction; that is insanity. Healing my past involves staying aware in the present moment, recognizing the cause of my thoughts from the past, which calms the activity of my thinking mind and brings it into a meditative state. This allows me to stop replaying what I already know, which in turn dissolves my past. The more I can stay aware of my thinking mind, the less my hard-wiring from the past and overriding addictions are triggered, and that wiring becomes dormant over time, one day at a time.

The only way to end the threat of relapsing is to stop treating the symptoms by trying to change the thought processes of my past, and start healing my past with the understanding that my hard-wiring can only be quieted with silent awareness, and loving kindness from within. Understanding how my mind works helps prevent past wiring from firing, allowing it to go dormant, much like forming a scar from an open wound; the pain is gone unless I relapse, and tear open the scar again. I can’t change my hard-wired memories of past traumas and hurtful experiences. Still, I can heal them now with a compassionate understanding of my lack of understanding then. Healing occurs when I feel the awakening of my ever-present Higher Power, pure Consciousness, which projects the constant creativity of Love through my heart to heal my past and the world around me, in the present moment. Through nonjudgmental acceptance, the suffering caused by my memories is dissolved in the Light of true Self-awareness, understanding that thinking is drinking, but feeling is healing with Self-loving kindness from within.

VAB  06-22-25

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