Beyond Addiction: Living in Peace, Love & Meaning
For many of us, the holidays can be a time of happiness and joy, but can also be a time of deep sadness and despair. The remembrance of happier times … before you became addicted, before a sibling, spouse or child became addicted, before the divorce, before the loss of a job, before the news of illness, before the death of a loved one. Before. You look through family photo albums and wonder how on earth life came to this deep place of loneliness and despair. Will the ache of unhappiness and sadness ever become less? This isn’t the life that you wanted. This isn’t the life that you had planned. Will you always been doomed to feeling this ache in your heart?
At times you may just want to quit this life. You wonder what happened and may even find your present situation overwhelming. Your thoughts turn to sadness with negative emotions. You may even drink or use drugs to escape the pain. What else will go wrong? What else can possibly happen to bring about more suffering? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel? Will things ever get better or is this what life is?
Please know that you are not alone. Many of us feel the way that you feel today. There is a way to move beyond addiction and pain. I want to share with you that there is hope. I have been there. I share your pain. Now is not the time to give up and accept that your life will never be as fulfilling as you thought. Through your thoughts, beliefs, and emotions, you can create a new life. I have done it and so can you. It is modern science that offers the key to unlocking your destiny. The key is in your consciousness.
Moving Beyond Addiction with Conscious and Unconscious Thoughts
The studies of quantum physics, neuroplasticity, and epigenetics have all validated what indigenous wisdom keepers have known for millennia. With each and every thought you consciously and unconsciously affirm and reaffirm your life. Each thought strengthens neuropathways, which become the patterns that dictate your life conditions.
“Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny.” Lao Tzu
From infancy to the age of 7 your brain is in the delta and alpha state, taking in and recording information faster than it will at any time in your life. The brain is efficiently being programmed with the necessary information and skills to ensure survival. The new human brain comes into the world much like a computer purchased at the store. You need to load programs on the computer before you can use it. You must load programs into the brain for it to function. To ensure survival of the species, nature does this in the fastest possible way.
From the time you are in the womb to age seven, your brain is much like a tape recorder, in record mode. The brain takes in everything. During this phase of development, there is no filter to prevent the brain from recording false information. The unedited information then forms the underlying beliefs that will determine the course of a person’s entire life. For example; a child who feels safe, and is constantly exposed to positive reinforcement will develop a completely different set of values and beliefs than a child who is constantly exposed to fear and criticism. These two children will have markedly different world views which will translate into how they feel about themselves and their environment. The underpinning of all of our perception and beliefs get stored in the limbic brain, which is unconscious or said another way outside of our awareness. We accept these governing parameters as the way things are and react accordingly. Because 95% of the brain’s functioning is at the subconscious level, most of our behavior is a reflexive conditioned response. That leaves only 5% of the brain that is functioning at the conscious level. Unfortunately, with all the distractions the average person faces, most of us are using our conscious minds to live in the past or fear the future. It is not hard to see why we react to situations instinctively and often negatively.
Why it is that you cannot stick to your promises to stop using or start your journey towards recovery? Why do you fall back into destructive patterns? Why is it so hard to change? In a nutshell, you are using your past to create your future. You are using your wounds, your pain, and your suffering as a baseline to create your new future.
To impact change in our lives, most of us use our past experiences – the same conscious thoughts, patterns, and subconscious beliefs that got us here in the first place. We stay in the same routine, the same familiar conditions and relive our emotional memories of the past while attempting to think and talk our way into a different life. Is it any wonder that our life keeps turning out the same? It makes it more difficult to move beyond addiction and break old habits. For example, if we continuously are sending thoughts and emotions out to the universe that continuously says “I am suffering”, the universe will orchestrate our life to receive more suffering. Yes, our thoughts are that powerful.
In addition, our body becomes a co-conspirator to keep us trapped in our existing patterns. “Neurologically and chemically, you encode environmental information into your brain and your body. Thus you can remember experiences better because you recall how they felt at the time they happened – feelings and emotions are a chemical record of past experiences”. 1 On a daily basis, your body chemically reacts to your feelings and emotions by re-experiencing and reliving the similar experiences of the past. If found in a familiar situation, your body will chemically react even when your mind is trying to create a different reality. This is often seen in within relationships. You may find yourself having a conversation with your partner that reminds you of something that wounded you in a past relationship. Your body reacts, your pulse races, your awareness becomes heightened. Your body and mind quickly unite in a familiar way to predict an outcome and foresee the future before the conversation has even had a chance to evolve. “If you can predict the feeling of every experience in your life, there is no room for anything new to occur because you are viewing your life from the past instead of the future”1 So while you may think you are living in the present, your deep rooted beliefs, your subconscious mind, and even the chemical reactions within your body keep you living in the past, making difficult to move beyond addiction.
How Can You Move Beyond Addiction & Break Free to Create Your Destiny?
The cycle of addiction and insanity will continue to repeat itself until you retrain your brain and bring your body, conscious and subconscious mind, soul, spirit into alignment. “When the mind and body are in opposition, change will never happen”1 So how do you reprogram your Self to behave, think, and feel differently to create the life that we want? How do you bring both your thoughts and your feelings into alignment? You must learn where to place your attention and intention.
To create something different from what you already know, will require you to change the way you routinely think and feel every single day. Just as you have learned and have been conditioned throughout your entire life to behave, believe, and think in a certain way, you can learn to re-condition your body, mind, soul and spirit to behave, believe, and think in positive meaningful ways. When you align the body, mind, spirit, and soul in a positive way, they will no longer work in opposition. By influencing where you place your attention and intention, you can move beyond addiction by growing new circuits in your brain and ultimately changing your entire life and your self.
Each and every one of us at The Sanctuary at Sedona, Arizona have done this. So can you. Our Transformation Program was founded to help those who are suffering to transcend beyond addiction and create a new life filled with meaning and purpose. Through our Radical Transformation Program you will learn strategies to unlearn and unwind old thinking patterns and rewire the brain with new thinking based upon your future self. You will learn knowledge, receive hands-on instruction, and learn tools to repeat positive patterns that will influence your brain back to health. You will learn tools to help you believe in your future self and therefore align your conscious and unconscious thoughts to create your destiny.
Your brain is not hardwired as scientists previously believed. Your brain can be influenced and neurologically changed by your conscious and unconscious thoughts. “We can in one lifetime, learn new things, break old habits, change our beliefs and our perceptions, overcome difficult circumstances, master skills, and mysteriously, become different beings”2. Radical Transformation invites you move beyond addiction and align your conscious and subconscious beliefs to become who you really are. Come and create what you really desire in your life. We invite you to discover how truly powerful you and your thoughts can be. Are you ready to create a new you?
References
1. Dispenza, D. J. (2012). Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself. Carlsbad, CA, USA: Hay House, Inc.
2. Dispenza, D. J. (2007). Evolve Your Brain. Deerfield Beach, FL, USA: Health Communications, Inc.