'Real’ sponsorship, mentorship, friendship, or any interpersonal relationship—truly healthy, non-toxic, and genuine—requires sincere, intentional, determined effort and energy. This work can be uncomfortable, hard, and even scary—because the mind doesn’t know what to do when it can’t influence us into suffering. As one person shared with me, “It f’d me up when my sponsor asked, ‘How much skin do you have in the game with your recovery?’ He pulled my card on slipping back into old behaviors when I was procrastinating on my Step work.” In my experience, addiction-mind… negativity-mind… never procrastinates. It’s always ready to strike, using every opportunity to keep us stuck.
Healthy relationships in recovery require us to engage in the hard, meaningful conversations—those that challenge us to face what we’d rather avoid. Open-mindedness, willingness, and bravery are essential in waking up from the “dreaming mind” that has us sleepwalking through present-moment experiences. These qualities allow us to look addiction-mind in the eye and take consistent, healthy action against its negativity. Without this courage, we stay tangled in its self-defeating cycles and tendencies.
When I say “healthy,” “non-toxic,” or “real,” I’m talking about a presence that isn’t twisted or manipulated by ego or reactive impulses. This kind of presence resists the pull of instincts that twist or pretzel us into self-sabotaging, self-limiting, and LOVE-negating patterns—manifesting as isolation, hesitation, procrastination, restlessness, irritability, discontent, depression, anxiety, resentment, or just plain grumpiness.
When we’re genuinely doing this work, we begin to see what “getting better” actually means. And what’s better? It’s traveling lighter, free from the mind’s relentless commentary and noise, and no longer playing the “meat-puppet” to habits and urges that contradict our values. This doesn’t mean the pain of life magically goes away, but we’re no longer suffering as that pain. This is the work—living in alignment with our TRUE NATURE rather than being trapped in negativity-mind’s virtual reality that only sustains suffering. Otherwise, we end up chasing temporary reprieves and relief from the constant noise and dissatisfaction of a mind that drags us. WAKE UP!
一We Are the Practice Itself
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