Radical Sobriety

Radical Sobriety-

The word sobriety has a meaning we attribute to not using drugs or alcohol to alter our consciousness. Sobriety can also be applied to how someone is thinking. It’s usually used when someone is thinking clearly- outside of the norm and often in radically different ways. Have you ever used the phrase “well that was sobering!”

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Everyday Intoxication-

We live in a media saturated world. Much of it designed to have us think and act in a certain way. We are invited to numb out, go blind and generally speaking stupefy, ourselves. Here’s the most fundamental truth of all;

We are Life itself– so powerful and simple.

Yet we are invited moment by moment to intoxicate ourselves away from the power of this truth.

In order to become radically sober, we can choose to see the ways in which we habitually numb ourselves out. For us the decision to be this ruthlessly honest came as a necessity, like wanting your next breath.

We continue to discover addictive patterns hiding in some of our most common everyday thoughts. The subtle and powerful intoxicating nature of these thoughts was shocking. We’re referring to the ordinary ones, the ones we hardly ever notice like:

Oh well…

If only I had……

No way….

What are yours?

How about the expressions we make which are filled with silent thoughts?

Do you ever fill in the blank when a person exhales, knowing that he or she is really saying something like:

I give up.

I’m frustrated.

Okay, that’s enough.

This pattern of thinking happens so quickly we hardly notice it’s there until we decide we want to wake up and be free. Here’s the gift with radical sobriety, it’s really hard to knock ourselves out again because we can see ourselves doing it.

Radical Sobriety is a gift from diagnosis.

When someone receives a diagnosis of something the body is doing that threatens the habitual ways they have been living, a powerful outcome can be radical sobriety and clear action.

And our world is reflecting back to us a “diagnosis” that is reflective of our thoughts and actions. Many say it’s a critical diagnosis. Our opportunity, even if we are not critically ill ourselves, is to take the gift of this critical diagnosis and use it as a catalyst for our radical sobriety and to reclaim that which we ARE, Life itself.

Photo by David C.MacKenzie

Radical sobriety is risky.

There is no putting the genie of compassionate truth back in the bottle.

Our blueprint for radical sobriety is built into Life itself. There is no going back, in fact we can never go backwards in time, we can never put a greater truth in the tiny place where we used to be.

Wisdom Prescription-

Practice noticing when you feel suddenly distracted away from feelings or thoughts you are having. The first step towards the gift of radical sobriety comes from this simple awareness.