Category Archives: Letting go

Afraid to Love?

Posted on by under Abandonment, Fear, Letting go, love

     Addicts are afraid to love… to love ourselves, to love others, to love life.

     Our attitude is, Why bother doing anything when we’re just gonna die some day, man? I mean who cares, bro, might as well just get drunk or high.

     By plying ourselves with drugs and alcohol, we ensure and perpetuate a life of emptiness and failure. By becoming addicts, we eliminate all possibility. We have effectively enslaved ourselves. When you’re an active addict, that’s all you are. There is nothing else. There is no life beyond drugs and alcohol. It’s pathetic. And now we don’t have to do anything, to create anything, to give anything, to love anything, to love anyone… because we can’t. We have let ourselves off the hook. There are no expectations for us for we have sunk to the bottom where we remain firmly rooted.

     If we are to love, we need to first become ready to love. How do we do this? We do this by working tirelessly on ourselves, by using the tools that we have been given in the Steps and in other practical sources of wisdom and knowledge to remove the emotional and spiritual sewerage within. We give everything, we surrender everything to this work. We give 100% of our hearts, minds and souls to this program, to spiritual growth, to God. We must give up everything we think we need to be okay.

     We have to let go.

     Trust me, we don’t need people, places or things to be okay. We simply have to want God more than drugs, and He will come. If you truly want to get better, if you truly want to change, the universe will conspire to make that happen.

     What are you waiting for? Start loving. Get better. Set things right. Have a family. Have children. Then you’ll see what love truly is, what miracles are, and how amazing it feels.

God, please give me the strength, courage and willingness to love…

Want To Stop But Can’t

Posted on by under Change, Desire, God, Humility, Letting go, Universe

     As I stood, emaciated and dope-sick, staring into the broken bathroom mirror of the shithole real estate office I worked for, I finally wanted to change but had reached the point of no return. When you want to stop but can’t, that’s when you know you’re screwed. No hope, no will, no energy, no power… and worst of all, no solution. I’d already tried every imaginable remedy to get better and fix myself but failed miserably every time. I tried therapy, pills, relationships, traveling, jobs, herbs, homeopathy, self-help books, AA & NA meetings, and on and on.

     I drank and used for fifteen years until I was sick, spiritless, incoherent, numb and careless. My depression was so great that it wouldn’t let me go. It was like I had fallen in wet cement and woke up one day to find myself immovable. Officially unsalvagable.
     It was only because I was financially broke that I finally dragged myself to detox. Once physically sober, I decided to go up North, but that was mainly because my wife, mother, and some bitter social worker lady wouldn’t stop bitching at me. So to shut everyone up, I went. Perhaps I knew deep inside that if I walked out of detox, I was a dead man. Or maybe it was a simple case of divine intervention.
     It wasn’t long before my entire attitude changed. After meeting a recovered addict for the first time, I not only wanted to change, but for the first time in my life, I became willing to do anything it took to accomplish that. No thought, feeling, relationship, circumstance or life event was going to stop me, regardless of how dark or horrifying.
     So my advice to addicts is: At some point it will really help your cause if you WANT to change. I believe with all my heart that if we truly want to change and are willing to go to any lengths, the universe will conspire to bring us opportunities to make that happen. God is there for us… we just need to get over ourselves and then humbly and wholeheartedly ask Him for help.
     I was reading Proof of Heaven the other night and it amazed me that the same thought came into my head as I faced death. In 1996, after being hit by a drunk driver plowing the wrong way down the highway, I regained consciousness some two days later in the ICU unit at Mass General. I couldn’t move or see. I knew something was terribly wrong. After realizing my predicament, the first thought that went through my head was, God help me. I suppose the Big Book is right when it says that God or God-consciousness is simply fundamental to our make-up as human beings.

God, please teach me to let go of Self…

New Employer

Posted on by under God's Will, Letting go, Non-Addicts, Self Will

     “When we sincerely took such a position, all sorts of remarkable things followed. We had a new Employer. Being all powerful, He provided what we needed, if we kept close to Him and performed His work well. Established on such a footing we became less and less interested in ourselves, our little plans and designs. More and more we became interested in seeing what we could contribute to life.” -Alcoholics Anonymous, p.63

     Admittedly, it is very difficult to understand something that we haven’t gone through ourselves. Someone who has never felt the paralyzing effects of severe clinical depression will never truly understand it. They might think, Oh they’re just choosing not to get out of bed because they’re f’ing lazy. At the same time, someone with major depression is not doomed, nor do they require medication to lift their depression and function properly once again.

     It’s the same with addiction. People who are non-addicts cannot truly understand what it’s like to experience having ZERO power over drugs and alcohol. At the same time, they may not know what it’s like to have undergone a profound and fundamental change. It is a common perception that sober addicts will forever be teetering on the edge of relapse, forever fending off an undying desire to drink and use drugs. I’ve even been told by some guy at an AA meeting that if I could take a magic pill and be able to drink recreationally like a normal person, then I most certainly would. That was a guy who hasn’t had a spiritual experience.

     The above quote summarizes exactly what happened to me. Once I dropped this lifelong belief that it was only me out there and that I was the only power that could fix me, everything changed. Once we drop our arrogance, our pride and our ego, we become open. Thoroughly and fearlessly taking Steps removed the poison that kept me locked in the darkness, and once it was removed, there was room to let something else come in and fill the empty space.

     I get that it is hard to intellectualize this notion of letting go of my self will to instead be ‘directed’ by God’s will. But it is real and it is possible. Once I gave my whole self to this process, I finally understood what it meant. If we get out of our own way, something much greater and wiser and more powerful than us becomes our ‘driver’, so to speak. When we stop trying to direct and control our own lives, the result is nothing short of a miracle.

     And remarkable things indeed follow.

     Though I left treatment after having a white-light experience, I came home to a war zone of broken relationships, tens of thousands in debt, no job, and a still emaciated and broken body. But I continued the Step process and fought hard to build a new foundation based on spiritual principles. And I was provided with what I needed. And it’s true that we can become less and less interested in ourselves and our selfish needs, wants and desires. In fact, my favorite thing to do still 8 years later is to help others.

     Sure I am still the most selfish idiot that I know, but the point of this ridiculous post is that this DOES work. We can recover, grow new minds, heal our spirits, and never suffer from the thought or desire to drink or use drugs ever again.

God, keep me close to You today…

What You Resist Will Persist

Posted on by under Belief Without Action, Control, Letting go, Non-Resistance, Self-Created Problems, Self-Help

     “What you resist will persist.” – Native American Proverb.

     Beautiful statement, though I fully understand its difficulty with respect to implementation.

     The same goes for, “Just let go, man…”

     That one used to piss me off quite a bit. First of all, what exactly does that mean? Second, it’s great that I now know the secret to life and all, but how the F do I let go?

     Okay Charlie, go ahead, let go… let go of all your fear and depression… let go of that annoying asshole.

     Huh?

     Have you tried to just instantly let go of something? Yup, exactly. Miserable failure. That is why all self-help books say the exact same thing, so you only need to buy one of them, and you don’t even need to buy that one. Why? Because, sure they eloquently describe all the shit that’s wrong with us, but not one of them has ever changed me or made me feel better for any length of time.

    Self-help books are short on solutions. ‘Let go, brother…’ is not gonna cut it. Can someone please tell me exactly how to do that? What is the process of letting go? How do I get there? Sure, there may be a few remedies sprinkled throughout the self-help industry, but if never applied, they’re absolutely useless. Simply reading the book won’t change me. I used to lie in bed and read some sage’s insight about how I just need to stop resisting and all my problems will instantly vanish.

     Then I woke up the next morning.

     I woke up in the same state of hopeless dread as the day before, not to mention the renewed lack of motivation. Just knowing the answer is completely useless. The book won’t save us. Just like a religious belief won’t save us. Belief or knowledge alone without action is useless. Without consistent practice of said remedy day after day, week after week, month after month and year after year, there is no recovering or changing or getting better. So letting go is most certainly a process.

     But first, what is it?

     Letting go is when I no longer care what others think of me. I no longer need the approval of my family. I no longer need approval for what I do for work, what I’m thinking, what I believe, who I’m with, etc. I no longer need to prove who I am or what I believe. I no longer need to preach because I’m okay with myself.

     When someone needs to prove or preach something to others, the sad and rather unattractive truth is that they don’t entirely believe it themselves. But if we are okay, inside and out, we don’t need to prove anything to anyone. I don’t need approval, validation, credit or recognition. The day I let go was the day I stopped caring about what other people thought about what I was doing with my life. It was the day I stopped needing for my friends in recovery to see all the stuff I was doing to help others. I didn’t need to show off, or need a pat on the back, or need smoke to be blown up my ass.

     And this is true peace – when you no longer need something outside of yourself to be okay. Except for God, of course…

     But back to non-resistance. In Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, Suzuki Roshi asserts that if you stop resisting everything, there are no problems. Why? Because other than the physical predicament of needing to feed, clothe and house oneself, just about all other wordly problems are self-created and are therefore an illusion of the mind. So Roshi suggests that we just let whatever comes, come and let whatever goes, go.

     You can see this in nature. Nature gets it! I used to observe the reeds below my parents’ house when I was high on weed (yes, potheads are addicts). When the wind blew against them, they didn’t stand up stubbornly and refuse to be blown over. They just moved in any way the wind chose to blow them. Same with the ocean when a wave meets a rock. The water simply moves around the rock to any space it can find. But it doesn’t complain or whine about having to move. It doesn’t fight against what is.

     In not trying to fight or control or change things, we find tremendous peace. We can relax. We’re okay.

 God, teach me how to let go… to let what comes, come and what goes, go…