Clarity: the gift that keeps on giving

I have just gone over the one year mark of no mind-altering substances. Someone asked me if that included coffee and sugar.

HELL no. I’ve had a LOT of those.

Reflecting back, that decision was never really about the drugs themselves, but the commitment to be in this reality. The one I spent so long trying to escape from.

I made a commitment to myself to be present to all the feelings, all the experiences that were happening, no matter how uncomfortable they were.

And BOY has there been some discomfort.

After Tom died, marijuana became a way of numbing it all a little. It wasn’t necessarily to numb the grief, because I weirdly came to love that feeling… deep riptides of pain overcoming me, that always led to a release. It always felt better after feeling that kind of feeling.

The numbing was a response to everything else. Everything that was so bloody hard. Every single bit of it. Home, visa, money, friends, family, awakening to spirit, heartbreak after heartbreak. Just the usual kind of living.

It’s really hard at times. ‘Being a human is hard’ became a borrowed tagline.

The numbing became a way to ease the pressure a little. To help me make sense of things.

Except, what I came to realise, is that ‘making sense of things’, wasn’t really sense. It was a borrowed idea of sense. A story I created about whatever situation was at hand. Heartache over boys tended to be the heavyweight in the mind ring.

The stories helped me make sense of things. But they weren’t real. And the truth is that we all create stories. About other people, about certain situations, and we are all so unconsciously aware of them.

We create stories to survive. Whatever our upbringing was, it gave us the blueprint for how we live our lives. For all the unconscious behaviours and habits and patterns. The shit we don’t know we’re doing, but my God are we all doing it.

A childhood without the kind of connection I needed as a kid, forced me to create a false reality in my head. I wasn’t getting it in real life, but I could falsify the good chemicals my body needed by living in fantasy land.

I read a LOT of adventure, fantasy type books growing up. The ones I could really get lost in. That was one of the tools I used back then.

Escape. Escape this reality.

Because it is so much easier to do so. And we are all doing it.

ALL. THE. TIME.

Netflix. Drinks at the pub. Food bingeing. Sugar. That was a biggie. Shopping online. Casual sex. Obsessing over others, over drama, over chaos. SCROLLING ON ALL THE PLATFORMS. Keep ourselves busy no matter what. Gratify our monkey minds. These subtle things that make up our day, are really mostly functioning as mechanisms to numb out what’s really happening within us.

Whatever uncomfortable feelings we would rather not be feeling. And you know what the fun part is, NONE OF THIS IS OUR FAULT.

Our society, and by that I mean Western culture, has conditioned us to escape the pain. Always. Without fail. We are looking to escape the pain.

There’s physical pain in your body? Here’s a pill to numb it. You’re feeling emotions that are painful? Here’s a way to escape it.

This learning has been one of the impactful things on my own journey the last few years. I want to get free MANNN. That’s the goal for me. Free of all the suffering.

And slowly but surely, that has been the case. These big bags of living have become lighter to hold, or maybe I’ve got stronger. No matter, the struggle that seemed so unbearable, has certainly become less so.

I know I’m going in the right direction at the very least. And that, for me, is enough.?

I was led along a path that forced me to make a choice. To keep repeating the same numbing patterns and behaviours, or to choose different.

I was tired of living in the fantasy. I was tired of pining after unrequited love and unfulfilled dreams. I wasn’t getting to all the places I wanted to be going, in music, in money, in success. I was dreaming it, and seeing it, but I wanted it to be real.

I realised that in order to do so, I needed to commit to what was real. To what was here. What was now. What was tangible. What had truth.

The commitment to stop getting high was never about the drugs, it was about the unwavering commitment to this reality, no matter what was showing up. I chose to be present with ALL that I was experiencing, no matter how uncomfortable it felt.

I expanded my toolbox with more refined tools. I learnt new ways of doing, new ways of being, the 12 step programme had a huge impact.

“Everyone needs a programme!” we joke. But we know there’s no joke here. My God what a world that would be.

These past 12 months, I have grown a fuck load. New levels within myself that I never dreamed were possible. A capacity to hold so, SO much more than all my worldly desires.

And the truth of it, is that it’s real. It’s tangible.

I am making moves in all the directions I desire, and I am receiving SO much. In the form of people, and experiences, and places to live, with money, and music, and the men who are no longer boys.

I am bearing witness to the magic that lives inside of me. I cast my wand, lo and behold my dreams are becoming manifest.

The worlds of Rowling and Tolkien that I devoured growing up have now translated into a world that I could hardly dare to dream.

I spent so long escaping this reality, that I never knew how magical it truly was. I had to earn that right. I had to be brave enough to see it. Through devotion to what was real.?

One of the biggest words for me in this process - clarity.

The biggest shift in my finances came when I started finding clarity in the numbers.

How much was I spending every month? What was I spending it on? What are my assets? What numbers are in all of my accounts? What have I got coming in?

It sounds so simple, and yet the vast majority of us have never been taught how to manage our finances in a healthy way.

I have a disease of vagueness and that has played out in ALL areas of my life. Once I started seeing what my problem was in one area, it was much easier to connect the dots in other aspects.

Vagueness. Another way of not being in this reality. Not being real. Not being truthful.

In every area I have been seeking clarity. And I have found it to be the solution to pretty much any challenge I have navigated.

In conflict or tension with others, be it in business or personal, the pressure point more often than not, comes down to a lack of clarity. A miscommunication. A misunderstanding.

We are always seeing the world through our own foggy lenses. And when one pair of foggy lens meets another pair of foggy lens, there may be a disagreement in what the thing in front of them both actually looks like.

We navigate this ALL with clarity. By wiping clean our personal viewfinder and clearing out the smog. Getting granular.

Over communication. Over communication. Over communication.?

The same process that happens within ourselves. Unpacking these unconscious behaviours and habits and patterns, through radical honesty with ourselves.

I have had to get brutally honest. Chalkboard screeching, heart piercing, hairline raising kinda honest.

If I want the freedom I say I want, if I choose this reality no matter what… then that involves being able to see through any clouds of illusion I have wrapped myself in.

And we are the most guilty of all when it comes to ourselves. Blind to what we can’t see. Blind to all the ways we live our lives that are not serving us. Because that blissful ignorance means we don’t have to face up to what is true.

It is so much easier to stay in that unconscious awareness. As soon as we start lifting that lid, we know there’s no going back. There is so much to see within us, and yet it is so hard to look at.

It’s really hard to acknowledge all the ways I was seeking connection in all the wrong places. It’s really hard to hold the reasons why.

It’s sad. It’s sickeningly uncomfortable. And yet I choose to keep following this path of clarity, in the service of my own freedom. In the service of everything I choose to create and build in this life.?

I spent so long trying to escape the truth of reality. I then staked my flag in it, and said OK. I’m choosing this one.

I learnt how to live in it. I learnt how to be here. How to feel my feelings. What my body, mind and soul all need.

I spent a year grounding myself into the flesh, into the real, into the now.

And now? Now I want so much more than that.

Now I want to build in this reality. I want to grow, and thrive, and touch the moon. And those big dreams, that are still with me. Now I get to really know them.

Because I have learnt the discernment of what is real. And I have learnt the skills of how to make the intangible, real. It truly is a magical process. But it is a process.

There is a path to follow. And right now, I am following the one of discernment, of structure and clarity. I am laying the foundations in a very real, tangible way, for the very real, tangible reality that I am creating all around me.

I am here to play the game.

How big can I dream it? I want to know how big I can build it.