And so God said:
“I want to make it easier for you to cope.
I am going to send you some help.
I know it is tough down there on earth
And I don’t know if you’ll stay, unless
I send some things to make it easier,
To smooth out the ride.
Especially for those of you on a hard journey-
Filled with trauma, and sexual abuse and unfit parents and an unlucky start.
And for those of you (well a lot of you)
Who early on felt unsupported and unloved and criticized.
Who learned to be hard on yourselves.
And oh yes, the pain,
Earth can be unbearable, I know.”
Can you imagine that God or Angels can say this, and that drugs and alcohol can really be a life-saving tool, a helper sent down from heaven? Or is this too big a stretch for brainwashed minds who have to diagnose and stay stuck in rules and ideas that ADDICTION & SHAME have to be married?
Let’s try for a divorce of concepts, because we can. Because in our free world and spiritual souls, we can think out of boxes and begin to heal – EVERYTHING! We can do the opposite, if only for a moment to feel the freedom possible and if only for the sport of it- to bust the bombs of rigid systems.
I suppose you only have to sit with people in pain for over 20 years to truly understand why people suffer. This compassion requires no schooling, no psychology, and no degree because you only have to be human with common sense and a heart to get the real of it!
After the unbearable stories, the heartache and the tears, at the bottom, at the root, down in the cave it is the twist, the turning against oneself that is at the core of suffering.
Spiritual sickness is the self-slapping, the division against oneself. A disease of the soul is when you leave yourself, and get out of divine alignment, into confusion, into doubt, and out of the knowing of who you really are in the center light. The relationship with yourself is destroyed.
It is not what others do to us that is the problem, but what we do to ourselves because of it.
This makes the key to healing very simple – restore the loss of self. End shame. Do not allow it. This is spiritual law. Shame is 100 percent anti-spiritual. The forever rule is this: never abandon yourself, no matter what.
It amazes me that when addicts tell their stories, they relate the facts of their suffering, but they do not connect the dots to the loss of their relationship with themselves. They do not put the whole story together. For example, someone might tell me that they were sexually abused as a child or that they had a harsh parent, and yet they wonder why they don’t love themselves today or that they need drugs to survive.
You cannot speak Japanese if you never learned the language. You cannot love yourself if no one taught you how.
It is time to get down with shame and really ask, “Who are you? Where did you come from? Why do you stay?”
Shame is a friend you get used to. It feels comfortable because you know it well and trust it. It is home – to not like yourself. The truth is that shame is a distraction, a way to punish yourself, to keep you from seeing the reality of what happened to you. It is easier to turn against yourself than deal with ugly reality in the light of day. You take the hit.
I ask people who suffer from shame in addiction to open up their imagination and try to take a shame break. I then ask these questions in all honesty:
- What do the drugs and alcohol do for you?
- Does it help you cope?
- Does it help you stay calm?
- Does it ease the pain?
- Does it stop the suffering?
Wow, it does all that and you wonder why you don’t want to give it up?
And here is the final question:
What would have happened if you didn’t have the drugs or alcohol?
Ponder that.
To heal, we must honor the needs that drugs/alcohol really fill. We must investigate without shame. Then we can chart the reasons and begin to solve the puzzle. Then we add the truth- there is not only one way out.
The other option is an authentic road, perhaps a spiritual one, where you retrieve the loss of your soul that was taken at a young age. The crime can be rectified. The child within- rescued.
Drugs/alcohol are a wakeup call that shows you where to begin the healing journey of your soul.
Shame cannot travel with us because it is a dirty trick to slow us down. It is time to silence the critical, pointing finger and embrace the cheerleaders and guides who love us and want to tell us how great we are.
Here is the antidote to shame:
“I love and support myself, and I am on my own team, NO MATTER WHAT.”
