Why do we hate principles? Or better say; why does the ego hate principles and wants to rebel against them. Well, because the ego is always at war with itself and guess who made principles in the first place? Right, the ego. Al principes, ideas and “rules” about life are mind made and when you are rebelling against something in this realm, you are sure to be caught in the mental world.

This last month I spoke to several people who had a deep wish to let go of cross addictions only to discover that the cross addiction was basically more woven trough their being than the alcohol or drug addiction ever was.

Todays bad choices are made yesterday 

If you want different, you have to choose different. The mind wil make you think that this decision starts on the outside. It will tell you, you have to change certain behaviors. But I will tell you this - no one ever made a significant fundamental change by changing there behavior. It seems that way but what happened before the behavior changed, was the deep inside job of surrender. Somewhere deep inside you, you decided that you wanted beter for yourself. Somewhere deep inside your being you choose love instead of fear and that is the effect of experiencing hope. And from that moment onwards the change happened. Everything is an inside job. Your whole world is on the inside and the outside is a perfect reflection of the inside.

When I started the journey towards freedom I knew that the story of my life and what I have been through wasn’t the problem. I knew getting freed of my story and the trauma wasn’t the end point. it was merely the beginning. After being freed of the story and the thought that something that happened in my life created the circumstances I was in, there was room to feel. In the Psychologic phase we learn, and then in spirituality the learning has to be let go and we have to be willing to experience everything instead of knowing. Everything you tell or know about a feeling will make you move away from the experience of true feeling.

I can remember how rough life felt, every second of every day. How tired I felt and how i was in a constant battle with myself. All-the-time. The restlessness of being in my own body was crawling up on me and the agitation that arose when feeling all the pressure of myself and all the people around me was unbearable. Life was painful and although I’ve always been a fighter, i was crying inside trying to make my way through the best I could.

The law of attraction tells us that what we send, we get back. If we vibrate at a high level (the higher you vibrate the more love there is), we come in contact with people of the same vibration which is wonderful and very empowering. Then there are people that vibrate on your old level. You still have a sensitivity for those vibrations because of the habit energy to go there. You are so used to be on that level of vibration that people can get you back easily to that frequency.

when turbulence happens in your life (and it will because.. well, life is life), you have to go back to the center. Taking refuge in yourself as Zen master  Thich Nhat Han would say. The usual response of human beings is to take refuge in something or someone but you will never find what you are searching for in someone else. you have to go back to your centre first, find peace and inner acceptance, before you ask someone for help or comfort. This way you take care of your own feelings first and because of that, the help of someone else will always be good enough. If you do not take care of yourself first you are expecting the the other person to take away your pain or worries and no one is able to do that. By expecting a certain result you almost always come in collision with something or someone. No one is going to behave the way you want to and nothing or no one can take your pain away. you can, how ever, share your pain and be in it together. Without wanting to fix anything or change the way things are. 

Your mind always prevents you from seeing things as they are. It creates stories and blurs out certain things so that you only see what the mind wants you to see. It does so that it can keep the story you tell about yourself (to yourself) can stay intact. This story is based on your past and future. Your mind is constantly projecting your past on to the future and that is what you perceive in the present moment. In twelve step language this is what we dismantle with step 4. We look at how you perceive things now, through the eyes of the past, in order to prevent things in the future - So you think of course but in reality the only thing you are doing is creating the things from the past again and again and again.

Hope is a four letter word that contains the whole universe. Hope is that what keeps you going. Hope is where faith lies, where trust is and where courage is born.

In recovery we learn that there is no such thing as blame. We all have parts in things and responsibilities and that's it. No blame, no shame. Just your part in something that happened. The only way we can be set free from resentment, which is the poison to our spiritual life, is taking our part in things. We always have a 50%  share in something and the art is to take our 50% out of the battlefield and the whole battlefield will disappear. It sounds easy but why is it then that this is the hardest part for humans, especially addicts, to do this? Because it's a threat to the ego.. let's dive in to it.

We all want love but are you ready to be that perfect partner yourself or are you blocking yourself from love?