Awakening: Buddha

Most of us enter into recovery with one goal in mind: to stop the suffering that got us here in the first place, whether that was drinking, using drugs, stealing, eating, gambling, sex, codependency, technology, or other process addictions. As newcomers, most of us would be satisfied with simple damage control. We want to stop harming ourselves or others in particular ways.

You’re reading this right now because you had enough wisdom to start seeking the end of the suffering of your addiction. You’ve already taken the first step on the path to your own awakening. Everyone who has made the wise intention to recover, wherever they are on their path, has accessed that pure, wise part of themselves that the wreckage of addiction can never touch.

So many of us have hearts that are tender and worn raw from the suffering we’ve experienced. Many of us have collected layers of trauma which often led us to seek temporary relief in our addictive behavior. But then, through our addiction, we added more layers of demoralization and shame that hardened around our hearts. On top of those layers are the ones we built for our protection: all the ways we’ve run from pain, all the ways we’ve pushed people away in fear of being vulnerable, all the ways we’ve shut parts of ourselves off in order to adapt to what often feels like a hostile world.

We started to recover when we let ourselves believe in the part of us that’s still there beneath all those layers we’ve collected and built—the pure, radiant, courageous heart where we find our potential for awakening. Who were we before the world got to us? Who are we beyond the obsession of our conditioned minds? Who are we beneath all our walls and heartbreak? Despite the trauma, addiction, fear, and shame, there is a still and centered part of us that remains whole. There is a part of us that’s not traumatized, that’s not addicted, that’s not ruled by fear or shame. This is where wisdom comes from, and it’s the foundation of our recovery.