For An Addict: A Blessing

I share this beautiful and profound blessing by John O'Donohue for all those who actively struggle with addiction. Most of us know, and are even close with, someone who is being pulled under by the force of their attachment to something outside themselves. On some level, and to one degree or another, this can also be true for most of us. Years ago I read a book called When Society Becomes An Addict and was deeply struck with how our culture subtly but actively supports addiction in all its forms. It became clear that most of us fall somewhere on the continuum of being more or less addicted and more or less awake. Addiction wears many faces and can be defined as any consistent pattern of behavior and thinking that obstructs our healing, wholeness, presence, and being more fully who we truly are. These many faces can take the form of addiction to countless distractions, some more obvious and harmful than others: alcohol and drugs, shopping and accumulating stuff, starving or overeating, caretaking and codependency, religion and rigidity, racism and bigotry, projection and blame, exercise and work, sex and affairs, anger and abuse, judging and thinking, greed and all forms of violence, etc., etc. Today, not only am I 30 years into my recovery from substance addiction, I am also rooted into a lifelong journey of increasingly awakening to all that which distracts and disconnects me from myself, from you, from all beings, from this precious moment and this precious life I have been gifted. My continued prayer for us all is for deepening mindfulness, presence, compassion, connection. While addiction separates, the intention and commitment to awaken brings remembrance of what we have forgotten. May we all remember the beauty of our true nature, may we be healed, may our hearts remain open, may we know peace. 

Many blessings ~ Molly

 

For An Addict

A Blessing

On its way through the innocent night,

The moth is ambushed by the light,

Becomes glued to a window

Where a candle buns; its whole self,

Its dreams of flight and all desire

Trapped in one glazed gaze;

Now nothing else ca satisfy

But the deadly beauty of flame.

When you lose the feel

For all other belonging

And what is truly near

Becomes distant and ghostly,

And you are visited

And claimed by a simplicity

Sinister in its singularity,

No longer yourself, your mind

And will owned and steered

From elsewhere now,

You would sacrifice anything

To dance once more to the haunted

Music with your fatal beloved

Who owns the eyes of your heart.

These words of blessing cannot

Reach, even as echoes,

To the shore of where you are,

Yet may they work without you

To soften some slight line through

To the white cave where

Your soul is captive.

May some glimmer

Of outside light reach your eyes

To help you recognize how

You have fallen for a vampire.

May you crash hard and soon

Onto real ground again

Where this fundamentalist

Shell might start to crack

For you to hear

Again your own echo.

That your lost lonesome heart

Might learn to cry out

For the true intimacy

Of love that waits

To take you home

To where you are known

And seen and where

Your life is treasured

Beyond every frontier

Of despair you have crossed.

- John O’Donohue

To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings