What I’m about to share with you is as simple as it is powerful. The truth is we can overcome any addiction when we implement this principle, the principle of honesty.
Firstly, a word to set the context from the tried and tested Alcoholics Anonymous:
“Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves.”
The above quote is something those acquainted know off by heart. It’s part of what’s recited at the start of each AA meeting. It comes from a chapter in the AA Big Book titled, “How It Works”.
The principle of honesty is the cornerstone of recovery work.
An identity of integrity is the practice of the honest life.
The absolute pivot point of our purpose is honesty.
Honesty will deliver a spiritual freedom nothing else can.
Think about how many people there are who cannot or do not ever overcome their addiction. They cannot or will not be honest with themselves. They insist on looking away from themselves, from God, from their reality and their responsibilities in their turning to their addiction.
It may be that it’s trauma that got them addicted, but unless they face their trauma, they cannot escape the tyrannical bond of addiction that threatens to ever hold them apart from the purpose of their lives.
An identity of integrity is simply being honest with ourselves. It’s about no longer looking away from ourselves when we choose to dissociate, where we enter the cycle of addiction for the umpteenth time.
It’s about facing the pain of loss in understanding that the addictive cycle must cease; it must be severed and cauterised; the realisation that the addiction serves folly, and its destruction of lives renders to despair every hope of a good and peaceful life.
Let’s assume for a moment that it’s trauma that has taught us to dissociate, and the need to dissociate came about due to the pain we couldn’t bear.
An identity of integrity that comes through honesty can change all that, and it comes through the simple and doable facing of our pain.
We’ll never be at peace until we face what pains us. Until we look those traumas as they are, and perhaps go gently on a journey with loving guides (which requires us to trust people), we’ll never achieve what we’re so destined to overcome.
We all have this journey to undertake, it’s not just the out-of-control addict. So many of us have baggage consisting of hurts and hang-ups and habits, and the cosmic irony is it’s only the honest among us—those of us who admit our weakness—who will find our way to freedom.
Life itself invites us on the journey toward an identity of integrity, which is a life where guilt and shame are dealt with and relegated as relics if only we’ll face each moment with raw honesty knowing that guilt and shame are lies; they aren’t the truth.
I know this is not the most pleasant of reading, but this is about our lives and our destiny.
Creating an identity of integrity is so profoundly simple, and all it costs us is that it must be prized above all else.
The essence of this wisdom is, “We might as well throw away what we cannot keep, because it’s the only way we can gain what we cannot lose.”
We stand at the precipice for the umpteenth time. Will we NOW make that long series of choices, one choice at a time? We must be willing to give up the scant pleasure for a state of learning, of becoming resilient to our pain, so we can become free.
Honesty will take us all the way there and keep us in that cherished of spots.
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