Many of the exercises in my book The Law of Sobriety, begin with sitting quietly for a few minutes
and just being still and breathing. Why is this so important? Because you have
to step out of your everyday life, quiet all the chatter in your head and open
yourself up to the honest, wise parts of you that whisper so softly that you
can barely hear them.

With the recent changes in my own life, as an effort to decrease and put to bed the inner chatter, I notice and acknowledge the chatter but I don’t let it take over.  I give it a label as just “chatter” and then I let it go.  Otherwise, I would be filled with anticipatory anxiety wondering will my loved one relapse again?  What if this person does relapse?  What will I do if this person relapses? etc. etc.  These thoughts just make me the recovery police which you know never works.

            Somewhere deep
within us, we all know what our truths are. We spend a lot of time and energy
denying them, and sometimes we numb ourselves with an addiction to deny them.
But our truths are never completely silenced. We need to stop using up all our
energy trying to silence them, and instead, sit quietly and listen.

            Are you afraid
of what you will hear in that stillness? Don’t be. Some of our truths are ugly,
but that’s never the whole truth. All of us have an innate wisdom–somehow,
somewhere, we know what is really going on with us and we know what to do about
it. That’s why I say in the exercises in The
Law of Sobriety that you can breathe
in the questions and breathe out the answers. In some part of you, you already
know the answers. I am discovering that even if I don’t find the answers right away, they will show up when they are ready to un-fold.  I can’t push the answers, but rather allow them to flow effortlessly without pushing them too soon.

            When you sit in
stillness, you let your breath carry your inner wisdom up from the depths and
into your consciousness. You hear that quiet whisper. And when you do, I
promise, you will be surprised to find that you’re relieved to finally hear
what it has to say.