What Is Enlightened Recovery

What is “enlightened recovery?”

The last thing this world needs is another term, or category, or kind of recovery. You live in a world in which the human mind has divided life into billions of categories, terms, phrases, names, programs, disciplines, religions, belief systems, philosophies, methods, paths and other things. The mind is insanely fragmented.

And that is the problem. The mind can only see its fragmented dream. This is a dream of self-centeredness. It cannot see the whole. So enlightened recovery is directed at seeing the whole of life, which means seeing reality for what it is.

Enlightened recovery is not another term or method to be added onto this long list of fragments. The term “enlightened recovery” is pointing to something much, much less than anything you have ever known through belief or thought. It is the absence of the notion that you must add anything to who you already are. It is presence itself. It is the waking up from the dream of thought, from the dream that you are a person separate from the rest of life who must add something to yourself, in order to be more fully yourself. This truth is so radical that it changes you completely. You realize yourself as freedom, love, peace, joy, and beingness. You do not find these things. The addict mind believes it must "find" what it is looking for, because it is under the grand illusion that it is separate from that which it seeks. This illusion keeps the seeking in place. This is the problem. This is the dream. So enlightened recovery is directed at helping you see who you truly are, beyond this dream.

According to Douglas Harper’s Online Etymology Dictionary, the etymology of the word addict is:

Addict: 1529, adj., "delivered, devoted," from L. addictus, pp. of addicere "deliver, yield, devote," from ad- "to" + dicere "say, declare" (see diction), but also "adjudge, allot." Modern sense is really self-addicted "to give over or award (oneself) to someone or some practice" (1607).

Essentially, addiction means to be lost in or devoted to judgment (thought). Stated another way, it is to be identified with a thought-based self which constantly seeks more to add to itself. More future, which means more thought.

An addicted person adds more and more to himself, in a futile attempt to escape the reality of what is in this moment. He is constantly seeking more money, drugs, alcohol, clothes, cookies, sex, work or whatever his vice is. And when (and if) he gets clean, unless he realizes his true nature in this moment, recovery itself becomes an attempt to add more to himself---to achieve a more spiritual self. There is no such thing as being more spiritual than another. That is ego. There is only one spirit. Whether it is a drug, or a more spiritual self, seeking is seeking. Ego is ego. I sometimes call "ego" the dream self. It is lost in a dream of becoming, having, attaining "more."

In that sense, everyone is an addict, some are addicted to heroin, some to work, and others just to thought itself. Narcotics Anonymous has a brilliant saying that, for an addict, “one is too many, and a thousand never enough.” But this motto does not apply simply to drugs. It applies to the human mind. After all, the only “thing” which would think that something needs to be added to the self is thought itself. More accurately, the motto could read “one thought is too many, and a thousand never enough.”

Humans are addicted to thought. Period. They are addicted to the constant movement towards future that thought provides. The content is different from one addict to the next. The content of the thought may be "I need more beer," or "I need more money," or "I need the latest, greatest I-Phone." Although the content is interchangeable and is different from one addict to the next, this underlying seeking movement towards future is the same.

The dream self's very fuel is more, and so long as it perceives that it must gain and attain more (which is always the case), there will be a fear of incompletion or a sense of "not enough" experienced in this moment. More pointedly, the sense of "not enough" is inextricably tied to the "need for more." They are flipsides of the same coin. As long as you are looking to thoughts of future for a more complete self, the sense of "not enough" is here, and as long as the sense of "not enough" is here, you will look for a more complete self in thoughts of future. This is a disturbingly self-centered loop, which continues repeating and perpetuating itself until you step out of it, and come into the present moment fully.

The dream self is a mind-made story of a time-based linear process which the mind knows as "me" and which, by its very nature, is unfulfilled and unfulfillable. It always looks to the future for fulfillment. And so it is only ever looking to thought, because the future only exists as a mental projection.

The dream self cannot reach the future. It never will. The future is only ever a presently-arising thought. So its attachment to future is just an attachment to thought itself, and so the addict is no different than a rat on a wheel, or a dog chasing his own tail. He never “gets there.” This, in turn, feeds the obsession and compulsion to “get there.” It is the insidiously cruel joke behind the human addiction to thought.

So “enlightened recovery” is not the addition of yet another belief system, thought process, method or program. That would simply keep the rat spinning around the wheel–the dog chasing his tail. It is, in fact, the negation of all seeking, all grasping, all spinning, and all chasing.

Enlightened recovery is not a new path. It will not take you farther down “your path.” It is a realization that there is no path. There is no “your path,” or “my path.” It is seeing reality for what it truly is, and seeing beyond the dream self, which is just a self-centered interpretation of reality. It is the realization that the path is just another drug to which the self has attached. It is seeing the time-based "me" as a dream of thought, and realizing there is only life, which is always now, and that you are that life.

This moment is where life is, so any movement away from it through thought is an escape mechanism. It is also plainly impossible to escape from this moment. No one has ever achieved it. You can dress up your attempt to escape this moment as a spiritual search, but it is still an attempt to escape life. To the conceptual, mind-identified person, what I’ve just said can be very scary. The ego does not want peace. It wants to keep moving, to keep the illusory sense of being a separate self alive. It knows that when this truth is realized, the mind quiets. This is the end of you as a separate self, which may be your greatest fear, if you are identified with thought. But the only reason you fear it is because you do not understand it. If you saw clearly what I'm referring to, you would realize that the end of you is literally stepping into paradise. All the love you ever searched for is right here, in this realization. Thought will never show you this because it is in the business of escaping this.

Enlightened recovery is the realization that you are already free, and that the only thing obscuring this truth is the constantly moving mind, trying so hard to escape this moment. Whereas the ego believes through thought that it must keep working towards some future event (a high, a fix, a promotion, financial security, a lottery jackpot, even spiritual enlightenment), enlightenment allows you to see that you are already whole in this moment. This is why enlightenment is negation. It is about negation of all the false beliefs in your head which have led to a life of suffering and, if you have identified yourself as an “addict,” to a life of painful addiction.

Enlightenment, then, is waking up out of the dream that you are thought, or that thought can in any way tell you who you are, or give you what you ultimately want. What is seen from this awakening is that all of life is One, and that any separation whatsoever--between you and me, between this path and that path, or between you and your path, you and your happiness, or you and your recovery---is illusory and created completely by thought.

You don't necessarily stop thinking in this realization (albeit your mind may quiet tremendously). You simply no longer attach to thought as it arises. A far deeper wisdom is realized then.

I am not referring to the belief that all of life is One. No. That is not wisdom at all. That is belief, which is knowledge (memory). That is conditioning or "who you think you are." Shallow and superficial. That won’t help you at all. That will just create more mind movement. More identification with thought. This truth is beyond belief. Literally. This is a knowing beyond the mind that all this is, is One life, appearing in a variety of forms. This is realized only through waking up from the dream of thought, into the present moment.

In this realization, you realize that your mind-made self is 100% illusion. So the idea that you are a separate self who can find fulfillment by adding anything to yourself through future (whether it be a drug or a “more spiritual self”) is 100% illusion.

And so recovery, if it is just keeping your mind busy, on some self-created mind-made path, is like a drug. With drugs, you seek escape. And through the time-based spiritual search, you are seeking escape.

If a relationship with a higher power is instrumental to your recovery, by all means continue to strengthen that relationship. Ultimately, what is being pointed to here is "no self" in which you become an empty vessel. Life is lived through you. No ego is blocking that from happening. It is this realization which allows an unnameable higher power to work through you. So, continue your prayer, make God the center of your practice each moment if that is what works for you, but if you do not become aware of the ways in which you are seeking, judging, blaming, resisting, and escaping the moment into past, future, and resistance to now, you are unconsciously blocking this power from working clearly through you. Presence is in no way incompatible with a relationship with God. In fact, it deepens it. It takes it out of the conceptual realm so that God becomes a living reality in the now.

In the space of now, there is an intimacy and connection with God's manifest and unmanifest realms which simply is not accessible through thought.

Meister Eckhart, a deeply Christian man, once wrote: "Thou canst understand nought about God, for He is above all understanding. A master saith: If I had a God whom I could understand, I would never hold Him to be God." So if you are "thinking" a lot about God, ask yourself if you are escaping into the conceptualized version of God in your head, instead of being here, in this moment, in the living, breathing timeless reality of God, as he manifests in every life form before you. You are an instrument of the divine, but you will never truly see this with your own eyes until you wake up to the kingdom of heaven which is "in the midst of you."

Escape is escape, no matter how you try to dress it up.

12 step programs have been instrumental in saving the lives of thousands of addicts and alcoholics. They have been a huge part of the awakening on earth. But, if they are treated as merely mechanisms to give you more time to "find yourself," more future, and therefore more of a thought-based self, they are being used in service of the ego. If you are in a 12 step program, realize what it is ultimately pointing to---a deeper realization of who you truly are in this moment. Let it transform you in this way. It can used as a vehicle for enlightened recovery, or as a fairy tale, depending on who is using it, and what they are seeking from it. Ultimately, if your program is not showing you the end of seeking, it is not helping you at all. And the end of seeking can only be found now.

Be in communion with others. Associate with others in the truth, and in a spiritual community or group. That is healthy. But do not become dependent on that group or association. Dependency of any kind creates attachment. That includes dependency on a drug, on money, on a partner, or on a spiritual program or belief system. It's all the same. All dependency obscures spirit.

In recovery, call yourself an "addict" if that helps you to not use or relapse. But do not for one minute believe that an "addict" is who you are at the deepest level. No words, or labels, or concepts can touch who you truly are in the depth of this moment. The label "addict" can become an obstacle to this deeper presence if your mind gets stuck in the label.

If you become deeply programmed to believe that you are an "addict with a disease," that belief will become engrained in your conditioning and memory. It will become your egoic identity, and so it will project itself forward into future through thought. You will look for people and situations which reinforce this identity. You then become dependent on these people and situations, which strengthen who you think you are, and keep the conceptual, egoic identity in place. Plainly stated, you stay locked in past, in your head. It is no different than someone who sees himself as a "victim" and then looks for people and situations who will confirm his victimhood. All conceptual identities have the tendency to keep you locked in the past.

And so, if it isn't held lightly, the identity of "addict" is a method of escaping from this moment into thoughts about yourself. You continue to see yourself as "sick" and remain dependent on rituals, programs, methods, and paths designed to reinforce your identity as a "sick" person. Spiritual practices can very easily become methods of escape, if they are not designed to help you become more present. Ultimately, once you are here, in this moment, where life is, all methods and practices die on their own.

To remain dependent on anything is simply a substitution from one drug to another. Escape is escape, and dependency is dependency---no matter how you dress something up.

Notice the mind's tendency to depend, escape, and constantly identify with thought.

You do not need the conceptual identity of "addict" to stay clean. As NA says, "don't use no matter what." That is just simple, good practical sense, in the way a child knows not to touch a hot stove. The child does not need to believe that he is a "fingerburner" and then separate himself conceptually from all others who he determines not to be "fingerburners." Labels such as this separate people from one another, and keep them dependent on conceptual identities for a sense of self. Deriving your entire sense of self from thought is a wholesale denial of spirit, and therefore of life.

True spiritual awakening happens when it is realized that there is no “you” separate from life and so “you” cannot escape life, despite all your efforts. Life is always now, here, in this moment. Through presence, you become at one with the space of now. There is nothing to be dependent on because nothing is separate from you--separate from this space of now. Awakening involves the realization that you are not a concept or label or thought. All dependency, escaping, and identification with concepts are barriers to true spiritual awakening. The good news is that these barriers cannot survive in the light of your presence.

Only a quiet mind can see the truth to which I’m pointing with the term “enlightened recovery.” Thought will never see this. The busy mind is too busy naming, resisting, grasping, becoming, seeking, and searching. "Enlightened recovery" just means presence. I just dressed it up in another term to get the attention of those of you who identify yourselves as addicts. Presence means consciousness without thought. This does not mean thought no longer arises. Thought is used for practical purposes. But the whole movement of thought-based self-centeredness quiets. The mind quiets. That quietness becomes aware of the whole movement of naming, resisting, grasping, becoming, seeking, searching, and suffering as self-centeredness. And that seeing frees the mind from the grip of that self-centeredness. In presence, there may be periods of pure presence, without much mental commentary at all. In other moments, thought arises but it is no longer identified with. You are no longer seeking a more complete self in time, which means in thought.

You are here, at one with life, because you realize you are life. You cannot "add" anything to a life which is already here, and already full. In presence, you are fully at one with whatever is arising. If frustration, anger, or fear arises, you are present with that fully. The only thing which would make any of that into a problem is resistance which is thought-based. Once you no longer identify with thought, those movements are no longer problems, and they simply arise less or not at all.

Presence is being fully here, in the now. Each step, each thought, each emotion, each movement, each breath, each word, each person, each situation, each craving, each obsession arises within this space of now. Presence means realizing on a level much deeper than thought that you are not any of these things which arise. You are the opening or space in which they arise.

This liberation devours all questions, all seeking, all searching, all dependency, and all suffering.
You realize that who you are is much simpler, much more loving, joyous, and free than anything your mind can conjure up or chase after. Through presence, you realize that the love, peace, and joy you were searching for in your addiction is already here. It was always here, because it is your natural state. It was simply being obscured by all your questioning, seeking, searching, and dependency.

So enlightened recovery ultimately points to the quiet mind which is liberated from suffering, including the suffering of addiction in all its manifestations.