There was a time when I was an addict! I know, I know . What a shocker! I started off like so many of us, slowly building my addiction one day at a time until I had a formidable wall built against reality. You know, the wall that addiction creates.
But there’s an interesting thing about addiction, I think. We spend so much time convincing ourselves that our addiction is doing everything to make our lives seem normal and over time, it does look normal! Suddenly, the freedom that we lose means nothing. The life that we’ve created seems hollow and at times, we daydream. These are times when our minds accidentally wandered into a place that looks different. A place that looks kind of scary and yet there’s a light there. A thing called freedom that we have a small inkling of and yet can’t quite fathom, because we’ve spent so much time creating the current world. You know, the world of slavery, urges and triggers!
But every now and then, as we relax on a grassy spot by the bank of the river and let our minds wander, a thought pops in. A daydream that slides in as we’re relaxing, and our subconscious can speak to us. That’s how my realization of my addicted world reality happened. A daydream where I wondered what it would be like, and to be honest, most times it didn’t look to good. Addiction can do crazy things to our thoughts, our perception of the world and the actions that we perform throughout the day.
No one wants to be enslaved and yet, addicts choose this! And day by day, brick by brick we build that addiction into something that warps our very perception on reality! Something that we try to make impenetrable. And over time, we fight to protect that addiction.
But you know what? My daydream. My moment of communicating with my true self, though scary was also overwhelming! Over time, my daydream changed from me seeing myself relaxing with a cigarette to me relaxing, and free!! Suddenly I was daydreaming of something totally different!
You see, every day we create our world by our actions. Every day we determine what our future will look like by our actions. As addicts, we see the world through the lense of addiction. But when we decide to change our actions for the better, the fog of addiction begins to clear. And as we continue on seeking freedom, slowly our perceptions begin to change. Slowly our minds begin to see things differently.
And once the mind can wrap itself around our new actions, then both sides of our divided minds begin to work together creating a new harmony. Our daydream becomes a wonderful reality that was always there. We just chose to miss it!
So never believe that you cannot change your actions. Never believe that you can’t find the freedom that’s always been there. It’s simply a matter of seeing things differently and changing what our priorities in life are.
Once we can see the realities of freedom, there’s just no turning back. It happens slowly, almost imperceptibly but one day we suddenly realize that things have changed. One day we realize that those actions we changed before changed our futures forever! One day we realize that everything we were told by others in the beginning is true. It just took a little time to get there.
ONWARD TO FREEDOM!!!
Chuck
