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People say I repeat myself; they are correct. This means they are listening to my words, but they are not hearing me. If you think someone is a “broken record,” this is because you are listening to their words without doing anything to address their concerns. I require those who are in my life to hear me, to know me and to earn me. Yet, it was less than four years ago that I would tell people to get lost if they tried to talk to me about metaphysics and beyond.
Three years ago, I took the last psychiatric drug that had been prescribed to me for the most wretched of reasons. I recognized I had been in a walking coma since puberty. I was living in Salem, Massachusetts and spiritually defenseless while bearing witness to my own world burning down, without tangible help to quell the flames.
Raw, exposed and humiliated as I was, I somehow found a reason to live. This reason was taught to me in the form of a spiritual gift I was not, at the time, able to understand. I was brand new to the universe; fresh, not corrupted or jaded. Not at all. I believed the lessons being given to me could somehow—in some fantasylandish way, if I applied them—actually work.
Guess what? They did work. I knew this was how I would be able to become a much closer version of who I may have had become without the twenty-eight-year sentence of ongoing complex traumas having been perpetually facilitated in pill form. Even better, I knew that by dedicating myself to radical self-improvement, I could fine-tune some of my strengths and improve upon and thus relieve the impact of some of my less well-developed traits and behaviors.
Here are 3 steps I took to cultivate spiritual openness and become a true believer in all possibilities.
1 – Surrounded myself with people who believe in the power of change.
There was a weekly meeting about recovery at the church across from where I was living. I would scoff about the sign out front sharing the details. “How dare they think they know anything about recovery?” A friend mine inquired about the sign and then went to a meeting. I followed suit and I was shocked that I was welcomed and embraced. I realized that for me, this was about believing in something, and it did not matter if it was not the same exact thing the others believed. What some call religion, I call spirituality. For some, they are the same and for some, they are not.
2 – Medicated with Cannabinoids prescribed by a licensed physician.
It has been hard to come to terms with the reality that the medications prescribed to me by dozens of different doctors were the cause of my symptoms. The CBD helped heal the iatrogenic damage done by decades of psychiatric medication. It was painful knowing that everything about my life—including everyone I knew—was in one way or another affected by my having been needlessly drugged for an extended period of time.
CBD has improved my neurological functioning. It has allowed me to be able to make informed decisions about my healthcare, backed up by research, resulting in amazing improvements in my health while also allowing me to transform my connection with the universe and all its creatures and truths.
3 – Cultivated relationships with unaffected people.
I knew that in order to be free and happy, I had to connect with people who were unaffected by my past. I had to accept that it was unreasonable to expect people affected by the very unhealthy me for so long to suddenly forget all the unpleasantries they experienced with me. This is a hard reality for me to accept as I am an enthusiastic clean slate welcoming and desiring radical healing with nearly anyone possible.
I have spent 178 out of the past 220 days of 2018, living and travelling in mostly non-English speaking countries. I have had the best times of my life and things are consistently getting better. I have had many powerful platonic connections, developed wonderful true friendships with all sorts of amazing people and have had some very precious love affairs and beautiful connections as well. I live in this magic nearly every day and it has taught me that believing in all possibilities is definitely the ticket to a better life.
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Photo credit: Pixabay