WEEKLY MEDITATION
On Retreat
Among other things, our addictions brought us a personal retreat. At extremes, even when faced with the gut-wrenching reality of living hand-to-mouth homeless, we could still find moments of retreat through the powerful mechanics of our addictions. This illuminates the importance of developing the ability to find personal retreat within our recovered lives. If we have learned to become abstinent sans the ability to find emotional comfort without constant distraction, then we are not healing properly. Though it will inevitably take time, not only should we be able to be content without distraction, we should find ourselves drawn to periodic retreat from the outside world, its routines, and the bells and whistles it so happily offers us in exchange for facing the discomfort of learning to sit with ourselves. But sometimes life will insist that we retreat. And if we have taken the time to understand and listen to the parts of ourselves that resist this quiet refrain, if we learn to heal the parts of our psyches that we have committed to protecting through the mechanics of addiction and distraction, then we won’t need to fear these quieter times. We may even learn to see them as an essential part of our emotional training.
