Conscious Recovery A Fresh Perspective on Addiction

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Self-Parenting
Recognizing the Shadow
Stuck in the Shadow
Integrating the Shadow
Raising Your Conscious Awareness
Activating Intentionality
Becoming the Observer
The Joy of Beingness

Chapter Six: Practicing Spiritual Principles

What is Nonresistance?
Practicing Nonresistance
What is Judgment?
Practicing Non-Judgment
Developing Your Own Understanding of Spirit
What is Mindfulness?
Practicing Mindfulness
Practicing Witness Consciousness
The Benefits of Presence
Living in the Question
Practicing the Questioning Process
Accepting Impermanence
Releasing Control

Part 3: A Return to Wholeness

Chapter Seven: Owning Your Power

The Power of Perception

Shifting Perception
The Power of Forgiveness
Deepening Forgiveness
Forgiveness and Accountability
The Power of Compassion
Feeling Your Feelings
The Power of Authenticity
Embracing Authentic Wholeness
The Power of Gratitude
Being Gratitude

Chapter Eight: The Great Remembering

Letting Go
Making U-Turns
U-Turns in Consciousness
Embracing Love
Nurturing Our Divine Nature
Inner and Outer Connection
Cultivating Supportive Community
Perceiving Reality
Spiritual Bypassing
Divine Integration

Chapter Nine: Awakened Living

Finding Purpose
Ego and Purpose
Maintaining Focus
Conscious Action
Choosing Happiness
Choosing Peace
Discovering True Freedom
Embodying the New Paradigm
Awakening into Service
Engaging an Enlightened Life
In Conclusion
 DEDICATION

With profound respect and gratitude, I dedicate this book to my friend,

mentor, and soul mate, Mary Helen Brownell. Through her selflessness, she
helped me and hundreds of other people break the cycle of their addictive
behavior. She literally helped change the world, one soul at a time. Her
legacy lives on through my writings and my work.
 We use all kinds of ways to escape - all addictions stem from this moment
when we meet our edge and we just can’t stand it. We feel we have to soften
it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that
seems to ease the pain.
― Pema Chödrön, When Things Fall Apart
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A special thanks to the spiritual teachers and addiction treatment

professionals who have, directly or indirectly, assisted me in the process of
writing this book.

I offer deep appreciation for the countless people doing great work in the
field of psychology and addiction treatment, especially those who have been
personally influential in my work, including Dr. Krista Gilbert, Roland
Williams, Dr. Brigitte Lank, and Melissa Stevenson.
Additionally, I want to honor the spiritual teachers and authors who have
had a profound impact on my life and on this work, especially John
Bradshaw, Brené Brown, Eckhart Tolle, Pema Chödrön, and Byron Katie.
Finally, I am expressing deep gratitude for my friends and family, and
heartfelt gratitude to my loving husband, Will Woodward, for his unyielding
love and support, and for helping me to open my heart to a new way of
being.
Editorial Assistance
Reflective Exercises and Journaling Processes: Co-authored by Dr. Adriana
Popescu
Developmental Editor: Dr. Adriana Popescu
 PREFACE
MY STORY

I’ve found that every spiritual advance I’ve made was preceded by some sort of fall—in
fact, it’s almost a universal law that a fall of some kind precedes a major shift. An
accident, a fire that destroys all the stuff we’ve worked so hard to accumulate, an illness,
a failed relationship, a death or injury that causes deep sorrow, an abandonment, a
serious addiction, a business failure, a bankruptcy, or the like. These low points actually
provide the energy needed to make a shift in the direction away from an ego-driven life to
one full of purpose.
― Dr. Wayne Dyer, The Shift

To begin, I am sharing my personal story, which took me from a life of

struggle and addiction into a joy-filled, meaningful existence. A movement
from loss to recovery, from darkness into light, from a sense of brokenness
to reconnecting with my wholeness—from an outer-directed life to an
inner-focused way of being and seeing. I start with my story not because it’s
unique, or even unusual, but because it is not unique. It’s possibly a lot like
your story. So, I’m starting with my story in the hope that you will find in it
things you can relate to and connect with. And from that point of
connection, we’ll follow the trajectory of our stories through the rest of this
book, looking at addiction and its roots and then at how to untangle those
roots to rediscover how to live our best lives.
“I’ve never met a happier child. You laughed all the time.” That’s what
my mother remembers about me. What I remember is lying on the ground
in the back yard, looking, for what felt like an eternity, at a butterfly, in awe
at its magic. How is all this life possible? What beautiful wings. How much
detail must be here for it to fly? How did this come to be? Look at this tiny
little body of this ant. Wow, it takes all those ants to build this pile that they
call their home. I felt like the luckiest person alive.
 I also wondered what the universe was like before life. Before animals,
before insects, before plants even—what existed before them? I suppose I
was wondering about consciousness before manifestation, the pure
consciousness that children have an innate knowledge of. I was probably
also asking why the grownups weren’t noticing life like I was, why they
seemed to be so busy and so angry. But mostly I was filled with curiosity,
presence, and awe. Looking back, I believe I was perfectly connected with
truth of who and what I was.
Then I started to lose that truth, to begin believing that I wasn’t enough,
that I was broken in some way.
In first grade, my classmates and I had to change into our tennis shoes
before recess. I didn’t know how to tie my shoes, and the teacher said, “You
need to learn how to tie your shoes by tomorrow.” She sent me home with a
pair of shoes attached to a piece of wood. I remember, like it was yesterday,
feeling “stupid” and “less than” because I had to carry this board home. So,
I tried to learn at home. I’m left-handed, and it was difficult, but by the end
of that day I thought I had it down. However, when the time came for recess
the next day, I couldn’t do it. And everyone else could. I felt like everybody
knew how to live life but me. This was one of the first times I remember
feeling different than everyone else, and somehow less capable.
I remember another poignant experience. This happened when I was
seven years old. I sat one evening with my mother and my sisters at the
dining room table. As I sat there, I began to shut down. I don’t remember
what was said or what happened in that moment, but I do remember
distinctly the sensation of being overwhelmed with fear, a sense of terrible
wrongness, and then a closing down and a walling up. Two distinct thoughts
came to me: “This is not safe” and “I have given too much.” Looking back,
I can surmise that the circumstances of my life had finally overwhelmed my
natural joy and resilience. I began to develop beliefs that I was broken or
damaged in some way and that the world was not safe. These limiting
beliefs were quietly erasing my deeper, instinctual truths. Maybe I was also
starting to notice that I wasn’t like a lot of the other boys—I was more like
many of the girls, and of course I didn’t know what to do with that.
 So, my experience at the dinner table that evening was the feeling I’d had
about the shoelaces, magnified a hundredfold: everyone knows how to “do
life” but me. In that moment, I made a decision—to close down, put a
barrier around my heart, to disconnect in some way. Of course, this was not
a conscious choice, but it happened nonetheless. At that moment, I entered a
world of toxic shame, in which I believed myself to be flawed and broken.
In the process, I lost my curiosity and my joy—I lost sight of my genuine
self.
We come into this world as beings who know and live in acceptance,
openness, connection, presence. We are those joyful little children who
know in their hearts that they are whole and perfect and that life is wonder-
full and wonder-filled. But life has a way of teaching us the opposite;
traumatic experiences teach us that we are broken, and this pushes us
further from our oneness with Source. Think about what little children are
taught about the world, especially children who experience cruelty or who
live in a threatening environment. They are taught to be mistrustful, to
devalue themselves. They are taught that “might makes right”, that strength
lies in conquering, in overpowering people and situations. They learn that
life is a struggle, it’s something to be resisted, and at best it’s a challenge—
a problem to be figured out and solved. They are taught that there is not
enough, and that people need to fight and compete to get what they think
they need.
I recently witnessed an event that brings this point to light. I saw a young
boy, probably 3 or 4 years old holding the hand of his father while watching
a parade. The boy started clapping and jumping up and down with joy as a
float approached. The father looked down at him and said, very sternly:
“Don’t cheer for this float, they are not our team. Our team’s float will
come later.” It was so shocking to me, and yet all too familiar. We often,
unconsciously, teach our children to judge, and to separate from their
inherent joy.
If we absorb these concepts and live by them as if they are true we can
get stuck in a very painful cycle. What’s worse, many of us are taught that
not only have we done wrong but that we are wrong. We are taught that we
are not worthy, and are undeserving. When we believe that there is
something essentially wrong with us, something that will never be fixed
because it’s a part of who we are—that’s an incredibly heavy and painful
burden to carry. If we hold “I am wrong” as our central self-definition, how
can we thrive? How can we nurture healthy relationships? How can we
experience the joy that is our birthright?
The tendency is to numb the very real pain that comes from this self-
identity. And, using drugs, alcohol or other addictive behaviors is an
effective way to do this, at least initially. Another tendency is to search for
external validation, to strive to show the world a different face than the one
we believe we have. “If only I can act good enough or be successful
enough, then maybe people won’t notice how awful I really am.” We try to
hide the central “truth” about our brokenness; we live a lie. And that too, is
a terrible burden to live with. It’s no wonder we find ourselves trapped in
addictive behaviors. Addiction has been called “the great ache” that we are
trying to soothe and fix from the outside in.
I discovered drugs and alcohol when I was fourteen. And, at the time, it
felt like a great and awesome discovery! When I took that drink, I relaxed
for the first time in seven years. I often hear people say that when they
started drinking or using drugs they felt better-looking, smarter, or more on
top of things. I don’t know if I felt any of that, but I do remember feeling
immense relief—a numbness—like all the things that made me feel
“wrong” just didn’t matter anymore. I felt relief from the disconnection that
I was experiencing, and some relief from that excruciating pain that was at
the core of my life’s perspective.
Drugs and alcohol were more than a relief for me; they saved my life, and
I suppose if they had continued to work for me I might have never gotten
sober. In truth, if drugs and alcohol continued to work the way they did in
the beginning, I would possibly still be using them. We all look for ways to
cope with difficult circumstances, and for many people, drugs and alcohol
are one such coping mechanism. I think it helps to look at these coping
mechanisms not so much as bad or wrong choices but as brilliant strategies.
Even though drinking and using drugs didn’t give me the lasting healing I
was longing for, they were actually a brilliant strategy, because they literally
saved my life. Without them I think I could have snapped in some way; the
core false beliefs I had picked up, such as “I’m worthless” and “The world
is a dangerous place”—were too overwhelming otherwise.
I believe, in retrospect, that this period in my life was a low-level search
for spiritual connection. In other words, I was seeking to fill the inner
emptiness by grabbing something outside of myself to gain relief. It was as
though I had my umbilical cord in my hand and was trying to find a place to
“plug in.” I felt there was something wrong with me, and I was looking
outside myself for a fix, a cure, a source of relief from the sense of spiritual
bankruptcy that I was experiencing. You see, I have come to understand that
drugs and alcohol were never the problem. They were a solution to
something that felt broken within.
Drinking and using drugs worked for me for awhile, and I drank from the
age of 14 until I was 20. But what started out as a brilliant strategy
eventually stopped working. What once helped me to feel a sense of
connection eventually led to me feeling more and more disconnected. And
so, in June of 1986, when I was just fifty-two days away from my twenty-
first birthday, I got clean and sober. That was the beginning of an incredible
spiritual journey. I’ve been blessed with continuous sobriety ever since, and
now have over thirty years clean and sober. I’m eternally grateful for that
because it has been the foundation of a new life and a new way of being.
When I first got sober, I was incredibly rigid, incredibly afraid and shut
down. I was trying everything I could to control the externals of my life
because I felt so out of control internally. Without the drugs and alcohol to
help me cope with the experience of emptiness and disconnection, I began,
once more, to experience all the fear and alienation, all the judgment that
had driven me to drink in the first place. Ever since I was a young child I
had created a life based on a set of false beliefs and perspectives. I believed
that I was broken, and I had been attracting people who seemed to be
confirming that belief. In other words, I had created my external life based
on internal, fundamental lies about myself and the world.
 Fortunately for me, two things happened to direct me on the path to
sustained recovery. Soon after I got sober, I met a remarkable woman
named Mary Helen Brownell. She was the most enlightened being I had
ever met. There was a magical quality about her that I had never
experienced before. In her gentle and loving way, Mary Helen introduced
me to a new way of being, which wasn’t about looking outside myself for
validation, but about embarking on an inward journey, looking first at what
I needed to unlearn and release.
Then, in 1988, two years into my recovery, I walked into a Unity Church,
and the trajectory of my life was changed once again. I became a spiritual
seeker. Eventually, I traveled to southern India to stay and study at the
ashram of “the hugging guru” Sri Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, known as
Amma, or Mother. I studied both Eastern and Western philosophy and
religion extensively during those early years. I developed a meditation
practice, and I continued to use metaphysical spiritual principles to wake up
to a new way of living. I deepened my recovery and felt more and more
grounded in the truth of my being.
But my journey did not follow a straight line. Around the age of 30, I
reached a point in my spiritual life that called for deeper inner clearing, but
I hesitated. Rather than stepping forward and doing the work, I pulled back.
I moved into reverse. I once again became outer-focused. Egoism snuck
into my recovery and I began to forget the importance of my spiritual
practice; I began to forget what was truly important to me, which was
maintaining a connection with Source (or love, or light, or whatever word
you use). I went back to outer seeking, but this time it wasn’t with drugs or
alcohol. This time my addiction was to success and achievement.
I had always grappled with money and longed to advance my social
status. I knew people with money and privilege, and I wanted what they
had. I believed if I just got the perfect house, the perfect car, and the perfect
partner, all would be OK, and I would be OK. And now, with ten years of
sobriety under my belt, I was ready to “manifest” what I believed was the
life of my dreams. I opened a furniture business that soon became very
successful. I moved into a two-bedroom home in San Francisco, with a big
deck on the hill overlooking the Castro. It was decorated with designer
furniture, original artwork by well-known artists, and perfect lighting. I got
the new charcoal-colored Lexus; I went to the big Gold’s gym in the Castro
and worked to perfect my body. It was as if I, once again, had my umbilical
cord in my hand trying to find something outside of myself to plug into and
fix something that felt broken within.
Interestingly enough, I took the metaphysical principles I had long been
studying and shifted them to fit my outward-looking search. I
misinterpreted these principles and truths, and heard them through my
egoistic lens rather than exploring the deeper meaning. When I heard people
saying, “Thoughts held in mind produce after their kind,” I interpreted that
to mean that if I used affirmations in the “right” way, I would amass more
material possessions. I believed if I was “spiritual enough” I could create
the life of my dreams. I started to believe that the metaphysical principles of
manifestation were only about creating the perfect life on the outside.
But as a friend of mine says, “Using affirmations without doing the
deeper inner work is like putting icing on stale bread and calling it cake.”
Sadly, but not surprisingly, I still held onto my own stories of essential
brokenness. I still felt, deep down, that I couldn’t make it, that if people
knew me they would judge me and leave me. So, I didn’t share myself, not
authentically at least. I didn’t tell anyone, not even my boyfriend, what was
going on inside; with him, as with everyone around me, everything was
“fine.” I felt like a fraud.
Instead of doing the necessary deeper inner work, I slipped into an old
pattern, now camouflaged to fit my new identity as a spiritual person. I
didn’t have the tools to deal with my external success. The more successful
I became, the more I believed I needed to acquire. I felt emptier and emptier
and lost contact with my essential nature. The trajectory of my life took me
way off course, and I found myself isolated and afraid once again.
In 2004, I first heard the calling to go into ministry. Every time I was at
Unity, I felt this inner knowing and desire to become a minister and
spiritual teacher. For a good year, I said no to that calling, because I had
created a life that seemed to be incredibly successful in the outer realm, and
I didn’t understand how I could possibly shift into ministry and let go of
what I thought was the life of my dreams. I didn’t understand that my inner
vision would lead to the true life of my dreams. Finally, I spoke my desire
to go into ministry out loud. I began my formal ministerial and spiritual
counseling training in 2005. Once I began this process, my inner life began
to open up in beautiful ways. My outer life began to crumble.
There’s a wonderful concept in metaphysical teachings called
“chemicalization,” which is when our consciousness evolves to a point
beyond our current level, and our material world crumbles as a result. What
can happen is a lot of difficulty, because the old way gets “burned off” in
order for us to step fully into this new consciousness. That was certainly my
experience. In retrospect, I can see that this happened because I had built
my life on a very shaky foundation, and saying yes to this higher vision for
my life required the old paradigm to collapse. As I continued taking classes
toward ordination, my world continued to fall apart.
My business collapsed and the debt I had incurred caught up with me. I
owed people money; the rumor mill was going nuts; friends were walking
away. It felt like a nightmare, and it was, from one perspective. I kept going
to classes, kept listening to the calling, but I still could not let go of my
outer-directed vision. I started another business, thinking, “This time it will
be different.” It was not. Same story, same outcome. I had a falling out with
my business partner, and then I lost the second business, even more
dramatically than the first.
“What we resist persists.” I had been hearing this for years, I knew it in
my head. So why was it so difficult for me to stop resisting the call to a
deeper inner life? We are taught from a very early age a specific vision of
what strength looks like and what weakness is, and what many of us learn is
pretty much the opposite of the truth. The willingness to be vulnerable, to
genuinely let others see us, to be capable of true intimacy—we are often
taught that these are weaknesses. Strength, we learn, is having all the
answers, figuring things out, and using force to get what we think we need.
Strength is hiding your brokenness in the “stuff” of external success.