Category: Living Spiritually After Healing

  • I wrote this today because I woke up this morning thinking about some people I knew in the past. People who never made it out of bitterness, anger, even hatred. Some never made it out of addiction too. You don’t have to be young to start over. You can begin again, reinvent yourself, and grow…

  • It can be hard to do anything when you’re sick. Depending on how sick you are, formal meditation can feel impossible. Sometimes just laying in bed is all you can manage. Two nights ago I didn’t meditate at all for the first time in months. That got me thinking about Dogen, the founder of Soto…

  • Some people may think a thought is just a thought, just a passing thing in the mind with no real weight or consequences to it. But I can tell you from experience that thoughts can carry an insane amount of power over the body, especially the gut. A single thought can change how the body…

  • One of the most profoundly life changing changes in how I think and view the world since getting clean has been in regard to “other power” vs “self power.” This change in my thinking has brought me a kind of peace I didn’t even know was possible before. It hasn’t taken away every single struggle,…

  • I have an all-time favorite movie. It’s not flashy and the pace is slow. It’s a Japanese movie called Twilight Samurai. I’ve seen it many times over the years, and these days it moves me to tears every time I watch it. Now that I’m sober and clean I understand its message more deeply than…

  • Whatever you look for, you can usually find. My wife reminded me of this yesterday evening. If you look for goodness in people and in life, you can usually find it, and more happiness comes with it as a result. On the other hand, if you only look for what is bad, you’ll almost always…

  • Something I’ve seen quite a bit is a lot of people don’t realize addiction can happen with legally prescribed medications. Because a doctor wrote the prescription and kept sending refills, they assume it must be safe and couldn’t possibly be an addiction. But a lot of addiction cases come from legally prescribed substances. It’s not…

  • While I try to write about uplifting or encouraging things, or at least end my posts that way, I have to admit something. I still struggle. There are days that are really hard to get through. It bothers me that sometimes, not often, but sometimes, even here at 16 months out, a thought crosses my…

  • “Words are energy and they cast spells, that’s why it’s called spelling.” – Bruce Lee “Of course words are magic. That’s why they call it spelling.” – Brian Holguin There’s a lot of power in words. They can hurt a person down to the soul, and they can heal too. I’m old enough to remember a…

  • My heart woke me up early this morning doing its disturbing “dance” that benzo withdrawal caused. It doesn’t happen as often these days, thankfully, but when it does there is no ignoring it, and no going back to sleep when it happens in the middle of the night. It’s one of the prices I paid…