Refuge Recovery Quotes

The guarantee of safety in a battering relationship can never be based upon a promise from the perpetrator, no matter how heartfelt. Rather, it must be based upon the self-protective capability of the victim. Until the victim has developed a detailed and realistic contingency plan and has demonstrated her ability to carry it out, she remains in danger of repeated abuse.

While we are in recovery we need to be able to strike a balance between not allowing our ego to do all the talking and not letting our low self-esteem to only present what is wrong with us.

Being gentle with ourselves in an organic way allows us to find refuge and access serenity. Gentleness helps us to learn from our mistakes without being hard on ourselves. We can learn from making a mistake without attacking ourselves.

We must do away with any shred of denial, minimization, justification, or rationalization. To recover, we must completely and totally understand and accept the truth that addiction creates suffering.

The cause of our suffering has always been our reaction to the thoughts, feelings, cravings, and circumstances of our lives. The cause of our addictions has always been the indulgence in the behaviors or substances.

Like most people who decide to get sober, I was brought to Alcoholics Anonymous. While AA certainly works for others, its core propositions felt irreconcilable with my own experiences. I couldn't, for example, rectify the assertion that "alcoholism is a disease" with the facts of my own life. The idea that by simply attending an AA meeting, without any consultation, one is expected to take on a blanket diagnosis of "diseased addict" was to me, at best, patronizing. At worst, irresponsible. Irresponsible because it doesn't encourage people to turn toward and heal the actual underlying causes of their abuse of substances. I drank for thirteen years for REALLY good reasons. Among them were unprocessed grief, parental abandonment, isolation, violent trauma, anxiety and panic, social oppression, a general lack of safety, deep existential discord, and a tremendous diet and lifestyle imbalance. None of which constitute a disease, and all of which manifest as profound internal, mental, emotional and physical discomfort, which I sought to escape by taking external substances. It is only through one's own efforts to turn toward life on its own terms and to develop a wiser relationship to what's there through mindfulness and compassion that make freedom from addictive patterns possible. My sobriety has been sustained by facing life, processing grief, healing family relationships, accepting radically the fact of social oppression, working with my abandonment conditioning, coming into community, renegotiating trauma, making drastic diet and lifestyle changes, forgiving, and practicing mindfulness, to name just a few. Through these things, I began to relieve the very real pressure that compulsive behaviors are an attempt to resolve.

We would all say that deep down, all we want is to be happy. Yet we don’t have a realistic understanding of what happiness really is. Happiness is closer to the experience of acceptance and contentment than it is to pleasure.

Active addiction is a kind of hell. It is like being a hungry ghost, wandering through life in constant craving and suffering. Refuge Recovery, the Buddhist-inspired approach to treating addiction, offers a plan to end the suffering of addiction.

We could search the whole world and never find another being more worthy of our love than ourselves.

Difficult personalities are a mirror for the places where we get stuck in judgment, fear, and confusion.

Recovery is also the ability to inhabit the conditions of the present reality, whether pleasant or unpleasant.

To recover we must understand and accept impermanence. We must replace the reactive survival instinct of clinging, grasping, and attachment with the wise response of nonclinging, nonattachment, and compassion. In a world where everything is constantly being pulled beyond our grasp, clinging and grasping always result in the rope burns and unnecessary suffering that accompanies it.

When we really keep in the forefront of our thoughts that our intention in this life is to recover and be free, then being of service, practicing meditation, and doing what we need to do to get free becomes the only rational decision. This takes discipline, effort, and a deep commitment. It takes a form of rebellion, both inwardly and outwardly, because we not only subvert our own conditioning, we also walk a path that is totally countercultural. The status quo in our world is to be attached to pleasure and to avoid all unpleasant experiences. Our path leads upstream, against the normal human confusions and sufferings.

our survival instinct, which influences the body and mind, is really just the unrealistic expectation that life is always pleasurable and never painful. Our bodies naturally crave pleasure, which we think equals happiness, safety, and survival. We hate pain, which we think equals unhappiness and death.

We commit to the daily disciplined practices of meditation, yoga, exercise, wise actions, kindness, forgiveness, generosity, compassion, appreciation, and moment-to-moment mindfulness of feelings, emotions, thoughts, and sensations. We are developing the skillful means of knowing how to apply the appropriate meditation or action to the given circumstance.

It is not a lack of morality or any deep character flaw that creates addiction; it is almost always just a lot of pain and a lack of tolerance or compassion for this pain that get us stuck in the repetitive and habitual patterns of drinking, drugging, overeating, or whatever actions our addictions take. In some cases the underlying causes are not as clear, but the suffering that addiction creates is always obvious and undeniable.

The truth is, the experience of forgiveness is a momentary release. We don’t and can’t forgive forever. Instead, we forgive only for the present moment. This is both good news and bad. The good part is that you can stop judging yourself for your inability to completely and absolutely let go of resentments once and for all. We forgive in one moment and get resentful again in the next. It is not a failure to forgive; it is just a failure to understand impermanence.

The process of recovery will slowly transform us, stirring up all our impurities, bringing all the muck to the surface, where it can finally be healed. This is a path that heals the heart and transforms the mind, leaving us with an “awakened heart and mind.” We have always had good hearts. They were just so badly covered and obscured they were lost to us. By returning to this lost aspect of ourselves, we recover. Many would call this a spiritual awakening, enlightenment, or liberation. Although it may be all these things, it is also just a simple psychologically based process of seeing clearly what is true and, then, learning how to respond appropriately. The appropriate response ends suffering. The appropriate response allows us to recover our freedom.

To start the process of healing and recovery from addiction, the first thing we must do is accept how our addictions cause suffering in us and in the ones we love. We begin by understanding that addiction always creates suffering. Suffering is greed, hatred, and delusion. For the addict it may manifest as: Suffering is the stress created by craving for more. Suffering is never having enough to feel satisfied. Suffering is stealing to support your addiction. Suffering is lying to hide your addiction. Suffering is feeling ashamed of one’s actions. Suffering is feeling unworthy. Suffering is living in fear of the consequences of one’s actions. Suffering is the feelings of anger and resentment. Suffering is hurting other people. Suffering is hurting yourself. Suffering is the feeling of being isolated and alone. Suffering is the feeling of hatred toward oneself or others. Suffering is jealousy and envy. Suffering is feeling less than, inferior, or beneath others. Suffering is feeling superior, better than, or above others. Suffering is greedy, needy, and selfish. Suffering is the thought that I cannot be happy until I get. . . . Suffering is the anguish and misery of being addicted. All these feelings are unnecessary suffering caused by an imbalance between our instinctual drive for happiness and our instinctual need for survival. It is also very important to remember that the end of suffering does not mean the end of pain or difficulties, just the end of creating unnecessary suffering in our lives.

What we must recognize is that the self-centeredness of the addict is just an extreme example of a universal human condition. Everyone is self-centered; we are born that way. Our minds and bodies have evolved over thousands of years with a built-in survival instinct that is both inwardly and outwardly focused.

Renunciation is a commitment to let go of the things that create suffering. It is founded on the intention to stop hurting ourselves and others.

Eventually, we will look back on our previous life of indulgence as adults look back on the ignorance of their youth, without judgment or condemnation but with a healthy sense of regret and compassion for the previous delusions.

As we walk the path of Refuge Recovery, we gradually uncover a loving heart.

Everything is impermanent—every pleasure, every pain, every body. But the survival instincts crave permanence and control. The body wants pleasure to stay forever and pain to go away forever.

It’s amazing what people will believe based on their desire for it to be true. You find what you look for.

Present-time awareness is the experience of knowing what is happening as it happens. Our recovery depends on us being present in mind as well as in body. That is the only way to heal the wounds that led to our addictions and to change our relationship to craving and the repetitive habituations. Mindfulness is defined as nonjudgmental, investigative, kind, and responsive awareness. This sort of awareness takes intentional training of the mind. Our attention is naturally scattered, the mind constantly swinging from present, to future, to past, to fantasy.

We cannot find freedom by thinking about it with an untrained mind.

It used to be a place of refuge,' he said. 'Now, it's become a place of nightmares. But it can only stay that way if you let it.' 'If I let it? How do I change the fact that Rylan died out there?' 'You don't.' I stared up at him. 'I'm not following where you're going with this.' He stepped closer, dipping his chin. 'You can't change what happened in there. Just like you can't change the fact that the courtyard ued to give you peace. You just replace your last memory- a bad one- with a new one- a good one- and you keep doing that until the initial one no longer outweighs the replacement.' I opened my mouth, but then I really thought about what he'd said. My gaze travelled to the darkness beyond the door. What he's said actually made sense. 'You make it sound so easy.' 'It's not. It's hard and uncomfortable, but it works.' He extended his bare hand, and I looked down, staring at it as if a dangerous animal rested in his palm- a fluffy, cute one that I wanted to pet. 'And you won't be alone. I'll be there with you, and not just watching over you.

The medal had been moved from her shirt to her hospital gown. It had seemed so important to her parents that I mentioned it in passing to the cardiac surgery resident as we sat writing chart notes in the nursing station on the evening before the surgery. He gave me a cynical smile. “Well, to each his own,” he said. “I put my faith in Dr. X,” he said, mentioning the name of the highly respected cardiac surgeon who would be heading Immy’s surgical team in the morning. “I doubt he needs much help from Lourdes.” I made a note to myself to be sure to take the medal off Immy’s gown before she went to surgery in the morning so it wouldn’t get lost in the OR or the recovery room. But I spent that morning in the emergency room, as part of

Immy spent the next day or two undergoing tests, and I saw her several more times. The medal had been moved from her shirt to her hospital gown. It had seemed so important to her parents that I mentioned it in passing to the cardiac surgery resident as we sat writing chart notes in the nursing station on the evening before the surgery. He gave me a cynical smile. “Well, to each his own,” he said. “I put my faith in Dr. X,” he said, mentioning the name of the highly respected cardiac surgeon who would be heading Immy’s surgical team in the morning. “I doubt he needs much help from Lourdes.” I made a note to myself to be sure to take the medal off Immy’s gown before she went to surgery in the morning so it wouldn’t get lost in the OR or the recovery room. But I spent that morning in the emergency room, as part of

All these feelings are unnecessary suffering caused by an imbalance between our instinctual drive for happiness and our instinctual need for survival. It is also very important to remember that the end of suffering does not mean the end of pain or difficulties, just the end of creating unnecessary suffering in our lives.

We will eventually come to realize that acting out our hatred only causes more hatred. Picking up the burning ember of ill will to throw at our enemy burns us before it burns them. Likewise, when we pick up the substance or behavior that allows us to temporarily avoid the pain, we play with fire. It may feel warm and fuzzy at first, but it will inevitably burn us to the core.

Mindfulness is defined as nonjudgmental, investigative, kind, and responsive awareness. This sort of awareness takes intentional training of the mind.