Conscious Living - How Free Do You Want To Be?

All right. Hello, Cadre sphere. I mean, seriously, is it Saturday already? Like, didn't I just do this? So this is fourth Saturday, I think. And so the focus is on conscious living just in general. And so, like, when I think about freedom, the title of this one is how free do you want to be? Right? So in recovery, we ask that question a lot, right? Because there's people, they come in, they are completely slaves to their addiction. They are losing everything in their lives and they cannot stop using, they cannot stop engaging in whatever behavior that it is.

So, you know, the first conversation is about freedom. Like, do you want to be sober? Do you want to get into recovery? Do you want to find sobriety? But then, you know, you keep progressing, you keep moving forward. And then like, the question is, like, but how free do you want to be? How much work are you willing to do? Why is it that it's so common for people at 5, 10, 15 years into recovery to hit walls that are just brutal? And we don't hit these walls, you know, because, you know, things are a.

Well, obviously we don't hit these walls because things are going well. But we also, like, we don't, we don't hit these walls, right, because we're doing all that we can be doing to take care of ourselves. And we. The challenge with addiction, right, so often it overlaps with trauma and mental health and shame. And so you start dealing with the addiction, but maybe you haven't been taking care of the mental health. Maybe you've never even looked at the trauma. And maybe the shame is still so powerful that you just ignore it.

But like, how free do you want to be? How much work are you willing to do? You know, what do you want to get out of your life? There's another line in 12 step recovery where we talk about, like, being happy, joyous and free. Happy, joyous and free. And so, like, that freedom, it shows up a lot in this idea of recovery because it's just kind of like there's in many ways, like, there's no end to really thinking about what does it mean to be free? Like, when it comes to a conscious life, what does it mean to be free?

Maybe it's freedom from the power that these thoughts can have on us. Maybe it's freedom from the stories that we tell about ourselves and about each other and about the world that keep us stuck. Maybe it's freedom from worrying about what other people think. Maybe it's freedom from our emotions and our emotional reactivity. You know, there's so many aspects to this question, but how free do you want to be? To me, the opportunity is based on the idea that we can simply say, okay, you know, not by ourselves, but with others.

What else do I have to do? What other work do I have to do? What else should I do? Because I do want to be freer. Because I. I am noticing that I'm stuck in this particular way. You know, I can't hold a job, or I keep getting in trouble at my job, or I can't keep a relationship, or I keep doing things in relationships. And I don't know why, but I'm sabotaging the relationship over and over and over again. Maybe I just have so much anxiety, or maybe, you know, maybe part of it is, like, you also get to a certain point where you begin to realize there are certain things in my life that I've normalized that I might not have to live with.

I might be able to be free of these. And so as I think about July, we think about this theme of freedom. To me, that's huge, right? How free do you want to be? How much work are you willing to do to find that freedom? But how free free do you want to be? How much peace do you want? You know, because with that freedom, you know, comes so much. And, you know, I feel incredibly blessed to have the guideposts in this design for living that I've been given that kind of helps me navigate constantly this experience of freedom.

So those are my thoughts on this day, and I really hope everybody has a wonderful Saturday and great rest of your July.