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Personal recovery is possible only in reaching beyond
the self.
Each Religion can give us a Code of Ethics by which to
live.
It is our very essence, spirituality, which helps us Live
Life fully!
Indeed, growing evidence suggests that physical health
and spirituality are linked.
Distorted perceptions of pseudo-religiosity and sectarianism
are detrimental to human development and spiritual evolution.
Ultimately, there is only one G-d and one religion. That
religion is of Love, something we naturally experience.
Expression of love includes service to and nurture of,
in all forms of worship. The outer form of religion itself
is not the issue; rather, the important aspects are the
tenets and conditions one has agreed to accept in order
to render service or love of G-d and other human beings.
This is spirituality.
Spirituality is constant G-d awareness, of where we are
directing our thoughts at each moment. Being spiritual
is asking yourself: ‘Do I live my life in full awareness
of the world as an expression of Higher Love? Am I engaged
in positive actions for enhancing others, myself and the
world?’
Sages from all faiths have similar criteria as taken from
the Old Testament by Judaism: ‘The world is based
on three things – Torah, Avodah, and Gemilut hasadim’.
Torah is about having moral and ethical values. Avodah
refers to service to G-d, and having meaning and purpose
in life. Gemilut hasadim are deeds of loving kindness,
the way we relate to humankind and the world around us.
There is an old saying ‘G-d helps those that help
themselves’. Simply handing ourselves over is enough
to start the process of transformation. Though we do have
to actively participate with our mind to achieve inner
peace! When we shift our consciousness we gain clarity.
Spirituality transcends this mortal coil of pleasure seeking
flesh, trapped and turbulent thoughts; it is ultimate
expression of belief and faith, the missing component
for true recovery.
Becoming aware, of our self and the world around us, enables
everyone to live fully; not only those recovering from
all types of addiction, but all lost souls suffering with
depression, nervous disorders, panic attacks etc, etc.
Modern-day infrastructure is not particularly conducive
to peace - ask any doctor! Five million people in the
UK believe they’re stressed and more than ten million
working days are lost to stress each year.
We need to change the way we think. Spirituality simply
stops stressed mind-meddling mania! |
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| PERCEPTION IS REALITY |
Our senses may limit and shape our perceptual reality,
but the very act of perceiving can alter that reality.
What is observed is affected by being observed, as has
been demonstrated in quantum physics. Reality is simply
a manifestation of alterations in the patterns of activity
within the electromagnetic or energy particles of matter
sensed and processed by our brain.
Many believe that matter is spirit. Scientists argue life
was created bio chemically. But where do chemicals come
from; and why can’t they create life in a laboratory?
Whichever way we try to theorise, the fact remains: there
has to be a ‘source’, a starting point, an
original form or spirit soul. Only life begets life. Our
senses may gather information to explain creation, yet
the ‘source’ remains unknowable by direct
perception.
Before medical researchers began to accept otherwise,
it was thought the brains’ capacity for intelligence
was unique. The fact is every cell in your body is intelligent,
each agrees to work for the welfare of the whole. The
daily existence at the level of your cells is a Spiritual
pact. The cerebral function is to assemble raw data from
continuous signals into even more complex arrangements
of electrical and chemical blips. This electrochemical
activity gives us our subjective sense of an outside world,
our perception of reality.
Yet, think of this. If our brain cells merely sort out
what is actually a random tangle of spidery nerves shooting
bursts of chemical charges to and from, all around, our
other cells, there is only our perception of feelings
which creates our reality. This undermines the entire
basis of materialism.
Self-perception can change in an instant when we consider
we are not in this world; the world is in us. As many
spiritual teachers have told us for centuries: ‘The
Kingdom of G-d is within’.
Jesus said: ‘Recognise what is before your eyes
and what is hidden will be revealed’ (Gospel of
Thomas).
By changing our perception we change our reality –
just like changing the channel on the radio or television!
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| WE HAVE A CHOICE |
The mind is caught up in choices, in our perception
of reality.
Our version of the world and our self is projection of
a point of view that comes to life. However, ‘No
man is an Island’. Therefore we are continually
bombarded constructed from conclusions of others’
reality. How many times do we say ‘You made me feel
this way’?
Yet the truth is: We are 100% responsible for our own
thoughts and actions. |
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| BEING AWARE AND ACCOUNTABLE |
We have often learnt to accept ourselves as limited
beings. This is especially true for someone with addiction
problems. The very word is a stigma, often an addict is
considered to be lacking self-will or self-control. Society
has limited understanding and little patience to inquire
and gain knowledge of the suffering for all those affected.
Yet nearly every family-tree has someone with a problem
of some kind. Because human nature likes to solve things
with labels, having the disease of addiction can become
a convenient absolution or admonishment for those unaware:
‘Oh they/ I can’t help it, it’s a disease’
takes no account of the root cause – a disease of
the spirit – and may actually make people feel worse!
A sense of helplessness can be created. Rather, investigate
the root of the problem, and then approach the solution
with optimism, enthusiasm and hope, to achieve a state
of being without a need for alcohol or drugs.
Addicts are possibly more in tune with ‘alternate
reality’ than most. We are naturally less satisfied
with the norm, going to extremes in search for that high;
frustratingly questioning, critically examining ourselves
and our different realities, desperately trying to make
sense of it all.
Some of the most illuminated minds that were looking for
the definition of existence have been partial to substance
influence. Indeed, Shakespeare and Freud were no exception.
To be aware and accountable we must connect our inner
self to heightened perception. We do not have to take
anything; only use what we are already programmed for.
When we ‘plug in’ to a different source of
energy we see – or as the Bible puts it so simply:
‘And there was Light’. |
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| WAKING UP TO SPIRITUAL LIGHT |
Plato believed that one could achieve enlightenment
by liberating the mind and allowing it to be enveloped
by the divine light. ‘Open my eyes that I may see’
(113th Psalm).
Inner and outer visions are not separate, simply different
levels of light. When light is visible and organised into
concrete objects reality is material. When light contains
feeling, thought, and intelligence, reality is quantum.
When light is completely absent, with no qualities anyone
can measure, reality is virtual.
Our brains are quantum machines that create thought by
manipulating energy into intricate patterns. At this level
light dawns as awareness of something, rather than simply
being awareness in its pure state. This is the place where
Einstein looked for religious insight.
Throughout the universe, the photon is the most basic
unit of electromagnetic energy. Every single thing you
can perceive is actually a swirling cloud of energy. Buried
somewhere under the skin of every object or event the
primordial light burns.
A granite cliff is solid, hard, flint-like light; an impulse
of love is sweet, emotional light. Yet as dissimilar as
they appear, when broken down to their most basic components,
all things derive from the same life-force.
Phew!!! As Neils Bohr, a great Danish physicist stated:
quantum physics is not only stranger than we think; it
is stranger than we can think! |
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| OVERLAP OF LEVELS – AWAKENING
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Awakening may be when the material level of the world
is still visible, but something finer penetrates and permeates
it. This comes from the virtual level, which can’t
be registered by the five senses.
Our brains are designed to assign a time and place to
everything; invisible levels get merged into visible,
an example of such can be dreams. During sleep the right
hemisphere may analyze sensory information which is observed
by the left, but may forget upon waking.
Separate parts of our brain perceive different stimuli
to give us different perspectives; the right, subjective,
the left objective. Anyone who’s taken mind-altering
substances, been in extreme pain, fasted or been isolated
for a great length of time, or in a trance, and deep meditation
– will confirm that alternate realities are possible.
Spiritual awakening can be confusing, our brains have
to make sense of new impulses and adapt to an uncanny
feeling of pure awareness. A close example might be that
feeling the first minute when we wake, when clean and
sober that is! Those precious moments when you are simply
present in your self, seconds before thoughts flood in!
Many spiritual experiences are retold with this feeling
of awareness for everything around us.
Noticing a beautiful cobweb woven into a fragrant collection
of honeysuckle may be hard to imagine when you’re
‘wrapped up in troubles, in a world of your own
whizzy head’. Though if we try, to pull ourselves
together by reaching outside ourselves, even by stopping
to look for a moment we connect with the spirit of Life.
A simple walk will achieve this, or listening to a favourite
piece of music, or reading a treasured book - the list
is endless.
Any emotion can alter our state of consciousness.
Emotions are not just psychological, they are biochemical.
Just as Heroin, or Alcohol, codeine, and many other drugs
legal or illegal use the same receptor mechanisms on the
cells that our emotional chemicals use, we can be addicted
to any neuropeptide, any emotion! Ask any co-dependent
who wails why do I always pick the wrong type?
So… If we know emotions release the same chemicals
in our brain as certain drugs and that Addiction is often
the result of misplaced or un-mindful emotion And that
Spiritual experience gives us the same message or feeling
in our brain… Then Surely it’s obvious. Our
natural source of pleasure comes from being aware: |
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| Spiritually Aware |
By being aware of
our thoughts and creating new patterns of behaviour by
intention, seeing in the light of a different perspective
we change our perception of reality.
We ultimately change our lives.
The influence of our past and our addictions can scatter
in the breeze of a warm sunny day… floating to the
Heavens with a resounding Thank You!... to evaporate into
the Universe…
Awake your spirit and soul to make you whole. |
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