Chapter Five of Alcoholism's Antidote: Self-Discovery, Insights from an Alcohol Survivor, 24 Years Free!
This is the penultimate post in an eight-part serialization of Alcoholism’s Antidote:Self-Discovery, Insights from an Alcohol Survivor, 24 Years Free!, Chapter Five, Finding Out Who You Really Are,. It may be the most important chapter of my book. You are hopelessly lost if you don’t really know who you are.
CHAPTER V
FINDING OUT WHO YOU REALLY ARE
As you work through this book again keep rolling the following questions over in your mind and make note of the answers that come to you. The wisest ruminators of the ages have wrestled with these puzzles, and no one has yet come up with answers we can all accept. See what comes to you after you’ve pondered them again and again, after they’ve penetrated deeply into your consciousness. What answers will satisfy you?
Who am I? (If you ask only one question, ask this one.)
Where am I?
Why am I here?
Where did I come from?
Will I return to where I came from when I die?
Who are these others and what are they doing here?
You may say that, “If the best minds haven’t come up with answers that satisfy most people, why should I even bother looking?” Because you don’t have to answer these questions for most people, just for yourself.
Asking these questions starts a process within you that leads to discovering more of who you really are. Beginning to discover who you really are gives you the strength to maintain sobriety and begin creating the life you want. You don’t have to have all of the answers to gain positive results. You just have to start asking the questions.
Become Who You Are, Not Who You Have Been Told To Be
You may have to leave a job, or a marriage, or maybe even a religion to get on track, but upon taking your leave, you’ll stop making others miserable too. This place of decision is the loneliest place. It’s just you and your maker, if you’ve made contact. Otherwise, it’s just you and your impulse to throw off your dis-ease, but that’s still enough momentum in your favor to succeed.
When your frustration at not knowing what you are to do gets to the point that you have to shout, “What the hell do you have me here for?” Be sure to listen for an answer; but don’t expect words. You are not going to get a directive or a memo. If you are like most of us, you will not hear the voice of the Omnipotent. Focus your attention on feeling an answer.
Though you may not have been aware of it, your answer has been with you from the beginning, right within your heart. It makes itself known to your conscious mind in impulses leading you to create something unique to your self, your natural talents and curiosities. Until you want to know why you are here, you will continue to be subject to the winds of indecision and misdirection.
If You Don’t Know How You Feel, You Don’t Know Who You Are
You cannot transform your anger, frustration, despair or any other toxic emotion unless you first recognize it within yourself. We are taught in our culture to suppress our feelings, so, though we may well know what we think about any number of topics, we are often hard-pressed to understand how we feel. To make any progress in knowing who you are and why you drank, you have to learn just what you feel. If you don’t know what you feel, you don’t know who you are.
Say what you feel to discover who you are. Are you angry and don’t know why? Are you frustrated because of continually bumping into dead ends? Can you say, “I feel good about what I do for a living”? If not, why not? If so, is alcohol endangering your job? Do you despair because you feel that you can never make up for your sins? What feelings have been numbed within you by alcohol? Only after you have begun to answer these questions will the energy you’ve tied up in suppressing your self be free to be used for creation instead of the destruction of your potential. Answer them. Once you begin the never-ending process of knowing who you are, you will be able to begin becoming who you were born to be.
Alcoholism as a Misstep on a Spiritual Quest
Whether you’ve noticed it or not, your cessation of drinking is a spiritual quest. Your drinking is a search for something more, too. Alcohol has failed to answer your needs and questions because it was limited to the physical world and could only provide intoxication and hangover.
Excessive drinking is an individual’s reaction to the inconsistent and challenging conditions of this world when they lack sufficient spiritual perspective and insight to deal with them. Seeking relief, we tried alcohol, and for any of various reasons—genetic predisposition, child abuse, religious repression, low tolerance for addictive substances—we got hooked.
So, drinking hasn’t worked for you. But the itch for something more hasn’t reduced either, in fact it has intensified, or you wouldn’t be leaving alcohol behind. Congratulations!
How are you going to quit? Get back on your original path of seeking more substance than this world seems to offer. Alcohol was one wrong turn that led to a dead(ly) end. You need to follow the path that leads to your actualization, your flowering, your contribution to the whole.
There are all too many distractions and wrong turns on the quest for reconnection to our Source. We feel disconnected so we look outside of ourselves and to others for direction. Look inside instead. As I wrote in my first book, Have What You Will. Start Here. Start Now!:
"The most practical thing you could possibly do is to follow the inner guidance that comes along with the rest of what composes you."
What do you love to do? Make another list, this time, of things you love to do. What makes your adrenaline flow and your heart beat faster when you think about becoming involved with it? Don’t stop with only three or four things. Add to your list any new ideas that come to you over time.
Doing What Fulfills You
Omnipotence created beings that also have the ability to create. What from your heart have you contributed to the beauty and harmony of this world? Despite as much as you may value them, your children don’t count in this context. What innate talent pulses within you?
Learn to get paid for doing what you love to do. It’s not as hard as people make it out to be if you put your personal resources to the task. You are factory-wired to contribute what you imagine. Learn what it takes to create it. That’s half the fun. Be willing to go through what it takes to manifest your dream, so that you can add your creative contribution to this amazingly diverse universe. You can’t fail if you don’t give up. Don’t give up!
Your Contribution to The Universe
Every flower contributes its uniqueness to the garden. Each one reflects a different color of sunlight. Each fills the air with a different perfume. Even among the same species there are enough variations to tell the difference between any two individuals. If any bud cannot or refuses to open, the beauty of its flowering is left unexpressed and the garden is less for its absence. All human beings have the potential to contribute their uniqueness to the world. Each one of us has a flowering: a talent, skill or knack attempting to distinctively express itself through our actions.
The critical part of you may be thinking, “Other people do what I love to do, and are even better at it than I am. How am I unique?” The answer is in the way only you can do what you do. No matter how many other people excel at what you love, you still bring your distinctive perspective and talents to it. If your potential is not released like the fragrance from a flower, the world lacks your contribution to its overall balance and harmony and is not the world it could be with your contribution. Influence the world around you positively.
Has your flowering, your true fulfillment, been suppressed? If you are not sure, one way to find out is to answer the following question, “Do I feel good about what I do for a living?” Due to parental pressure, apparent economic necessity, or religious indoctrination, few people follow their natural inclinations, instead, they become overwhelmed by careers lethal to themselves and their families.
Occasionally, some people wake up to realize that they have been in the wrong profession, that their occupation does not allow them to express who they really are. They have been putting on a costume and playing a role for which they are not comfortably suited. Among the awakened ones, a few recognize that they need to do something to free themselves. As difficult and painful as it may be to make the needed changes, these individuals are the lucky ones. They have a chance to break out, unlike those who have awakened to their discontent, but still get up every morning knowing that they are in the wrong job and slog on anyway. Others can’t think about it anymore, so hopeless is their apparent chance of escape. They are the ones who Thoreau in, On Walden Pond claims, “lead lives of quiet desperation.”
Are you ready to start opening the bud that is your potential? Are you willing to release your contribution to the universe like a flower releases its fragrance to the rest of the garden? You have no idea how many other people can benefit from you pursuing your own dreams.
Thank you for reading this far. I hope at least one of these ideas sparkles in your consciousness.
Check this space next Friday, November 12th, 2021 for the final installment in the 8-part serialization of my book, Alcoholism’s Antidote: Self-Discovery, Insights from an Alcohol Survivor, 24 Years Free!, it includes The Afterword, In Closing, and The Appendix, Evolution to Sobriety.