WEEKLY MEDITATION
Everything flows.
-Heraclitus
Beyond the goal of simple abstinence, addiction recovery requires that we decrease the underlying need for the substances and behaviors upon which we became dependent. This process will be different for everyone, as we each have a somewhat unique personal history that led to this need for dependency. But at a very basic level, we all need to learn to flow. When we commit to learning to flow with life, we commit to learning how to accept life as it is at any given moment. We dedicate ourselves to developing the emotional tools necessary to stay present even when life moves in a direction that we don’t plan on. We learn to stop resisting. This doesn’t mean that we stop consciously directing our lives, it simply means that we don’t get emotionally derailed every time our direction is thwarted by the inevitable vicissitudes of life. For many of us, this pattern of resisting painful moments started long before we were able to access what became the addictions we are recovering from, so we may not be aware that these patterns even exist. But if we can develop the skills to accept the truth of the present moment, however painful or joyous, we further release ourselves from the need to form addictions at all.