We are all here because we are trying to wake up and understand how we ended up here, how we lost control of our self-will, and, hopefully, find a way to stay sober. We are waking up to the truth that when our self-ego hit bottom in our addiction, when we were wallowing in shame—having finally reached the lowest level of consciousness—we had no answers for how to save ourselves. We had to admit that we needed help, and, with no idea where it would come from, we were presented with an opportunity to wake up, by the grace of our Higher Power within us, when we opened our hearts enough to recognize it. That was our first glimpse at the Light of Being which shines from within each of us, the dawning of our true Self-awareness. That is the light of our spiritual Self, our ever-present witness that constantly observes the constant chatter and sometimes chaotic contortions of our self-ego mind, which lives in isolation, trapped in our head—imprisoned atop our temporary body-mind.

For me, after 45 years of active addiction, at sixty years of age, I finally woke up to understand that the root cause of the craving for things outside my body was to escape past emotional neglect, feeling unloved, or physical trauma, and unknown inherited epigenetic experiences—constantly being triggered in my body-mind. For many of us, our life of addiction started slowly over time, or all at once, when we lost our innocence as a child, when the unconditional Love flowing through our heart was blocked and distorted by the limitations and barriers implanted in our body-mind by our environment, restricting the way we see and interact with the world. That’s when my self-ego became conscious: identifying itself as “I am Vic,” as “I am this, I am that”—naming everything around me and judging everything as good or bad to sustain my survival—based on my conditioning. After identifying my body-mind, self-ego based on the initial conditioning of my immediate family, then my social environment piled on with cultural, religious, and political authorities, to condition and imprint my brain with boundaries, traditions, rituals, and laws further restricting my flow of unconditional Love—cutting off my heartfelt feelings and intuitive natural intelligence of my true Self-awareness in the present moment (where my conditioned self-ego cannot exist).

The “I am Vic,” the result of my environment, my conditioned self-ego, is now living in conflict with the same environment…

I am living in conflict with the same environment that conditioned me—my self-ego—which is all I know. And because the society that shaped my thinking is dysfunctional, my ego feels insufficient; it is always lacking, with constant desires to be better, smarter, prettier, richer, and always more—constantly craving satisfaction that is never enough. So, the same environment that conditioned me can never satisfy the ego it created; and this conflict of always wanting more, which is never enough, leads to all the addictions that always come from outside of me.

Then, as addicts, we get ostracized for the irrational dysfunction of our addiction, no longer considered respectable, by the same society that has conditioned us in their schools, churches, and institutions. The same society that has exploited us for profits, groomed us to fight for national pursuits, and baptized us with biblical doctrines that have washed out the bridge to our natural intuition that connects us with factual, universal intelligence and cuts off the flow of unconditional Love through our hearts that unites us all.

I can blame society all I want, but the truth is society can’t fix my addiction to social dysfunction. I can only look within to reconnect with the energy source of Love flowing through me, to learn to like myself again, and regain my innocence—that never changes.

I was blessed to receive a wake-up call from my Higher Power to open my heart and reach out to others for help in a community based on unconditional Love. That’s when, through true Self-awareness, I began to understand better how my mind works and realized it was disconnected from the Love energy flowing through my heart. This like-minded community helped me to connect with the unconditional Love flowing from each of us in this place of Recovery. We are all feeding from it to gain the strength to look within, to heal our past, and reclaim our divinity as a Source of Love in the world, which, if we heal ourselves, can heal others and the human dysfunctions that cause suffering, addictions, and wars.

I don’t remember where I hijacked this mantra, but somewhere along the way I adopted it as the truth about my addiction:

I can’t think my way out of addiction, but I can feel my way through it!

Thinking is trying to change the past with what we already know—the same past—which is impossible. That is the definition of addiction: repeating a dysfunctional habit over and over—firing the same harmful wiring in our brain, and expecting a different result.

When we hit bottom in addiction, time stops, and our thinking stops when our conditioned self-ego surrenders in the present moment. That is when our heart opens, the bridge is reconnected to our Source of Love energy, and the self-ego mind—unburdened by the past—dissolves into unified true Self-awareness.

We can’t change our conditioning, but we can surrender our past!

We can’t change our addiction and make it disappear; we can’t control our environment to treat us differently. We can’t change the past, but we can surrender our past through meditation. I’m not talking just about sitting cross-legged on a rug, burning incense in a darkened room, with ambient music in the background—meditation. I’m talking about active meditation, when we wake up to stay aware as the ever-present witness, observing our thoughts and emotions with nonjudgmental loving-kindness as they arise from the past, and quieting the body-mind with intuitive intelligence and Love from within: to understand now, with loving-kindness, what we didn’t understand then. Ever-present true Self-awareness transcends time and space, reaching a unified meditative state of body and mind—that is our Higher Power. Our Higher Power shines the light of understanding and compassion on our past conditioning, healing the connection between our heart and mind, unblocking our constant flow of Love into the world again. Waking up to “Staying Aware” is how you can stay sober.

VAB 06.18.26

©2024 stillawakening.com All Rights Reserved