Remembrance

Having been there myself and having met so many others who are there as well, the one message that really needs to be sent out to those who are battling with addictions is: You are not bad; you are a spiritual being choosing a human experience called addiction.  And guess what?  You can choose again, right here, right now. You can decide to be a person who in the past struggled with addiction.

There is a viral letter going around Facebook right now that is finding its way into many people’s lives, and I would like to share that message with you here in this column today because I find it to be a very important piece of knowledge for people suffering through the hardship of addiction.

The following  was written by a woman named Courtney A. Walsh.

“Dear Human:  You’ve got it all wrong.  You didn’t come here to master unconditional love.  That is where you came from and where you’ll return. You came here to learn personal love.  Universal love.  Messy love.  Sweaty love.  Crazy love. Broken love.  Whole love.  Infused with divinity. Lived through the grace of stumbling. Demonstrated through the beauty of… messing up —- often.  You didn’t come here to be perfect.  You already are.  You came here to be gorgeously human. Flawed and fabulous.  And then to rise again into remembering. But unconditional love? Stop telling that story.  Love, in truth, doesn’t need ANY other adjectives.  It doesn’t require modifiers.  It doesn’t require the condition of perfection.  It only asks that you show up. And do your best. That you stay present and feel fully. That you shine and fly and laugh and cry and hurt and heal and fall and get back up and play and work and live and die as YOU.  It’s enough.  It’s plenty.”

There are two specific parts to this letter that I find to be powerful and healing.  The first is that our love can be demonstrated through “messing up.”   In the writing of CWG, God makes it clear in his message:

“Taken to ultimate logic, you cannot experience yourself as what you are until you’ve encountered what you are not. This is the purpose of the theory of relativity, and all physical life. It is by that which you are not that you yourself are defined.”

It is pretty clear that active addiction is not ultimately who we really are.  For most of us, our behavior impacted others negatively, criminally, selfishly, and even ruthlessly.  All of these things we have done out of the distorted view of love we have.  Some feel the bar of morality is set to high for them to achieve, others do not feel worthy of love.  The one thing I am more sure of now than ever is that we are all worthy of love, regardless of our past.

When in the depths of addictive behavior, we are always one decision away from freedom.  We can “rise again into remembering,” as Courtney points out in her letter, “You didn’t come here to be perfect, you already are.”  You did come here to experience life and realize your wholeness. We tend to forget this or simply haven’t awakened to this yet.  Maybe the message hasn’t been delivered in just the right way for you to hear it. It is my hope that this column can send that message.

The second part of this “Dear Human” letter that strikes a chord within me is this: “It (love) doesn’t require the condition of perfection.  It only asks that you show up.”  In fact you are showing up.  You can’t not show up for life. You can, however, check out of life.  And active addiction is just that, checking out. Making a decision to give life a chance without your addiction gives you the opportunity to “show up” as a more complete version of who you really are.

In CWG Book 1, God calls what we are doing here Re-membering.  And it is we who choose this remembering.  And choosing to remember who we really are is a pure act of creation.  So why not put to rest the current story you are telling about who you are and awaken to the next grandest version of you?  Have you not experienced the darkness of addiction enough?  Are you aware that enough is enough when you say it is?  You are not powerless, you are not a victim, you are God living a human experience.

Your awakening will not be without reward. Life after addiction is filled with many gratifying experiences.  The beauty of the light after living in the darkness has been experienced by millions of people who are living long-term recovery.  The journey of many recovering people has included joining together to support one another and ultimately share their gifts with other like-minded people.

“Your job on Earth, therefore, is not to learn (because you already know), but to remember Who You Are. And to re-member who everyone else is. That is why a big part of your job is to remind others (that is, to re-mind them), so that they can remember also. All the wonderful spiritual teachers have been doing just that. It is your sole purpose. That is to say, your soul purpose.” CWG Book 1.

*Courtney A. Walsh can be found easily through Google by searching for “Dear Human.” The original intent from Courtney was for this to be “the seed of an empowerment movement for suicide prevention and bullying awareness.”

(Kevin McCormack, C.A.d ,is a certified addictions professional and auriculotherapist.  He is a recovering addict with 26 years of sobriety. Kevin is a practicing auriculotherapist, recovery coach, and interventionist specializing in individual and family recovery.  Kevin has a passion for holistic living, personal awareness training, and physical meditation. You can visit his website Life After Addicton for more information. To connect with Kevin, please email him at Kevin@TheGlobalConversation.com)