We think self-sabotage starts with the behavior. The drink. The snacks. The isolating. The working and working and working.

It doesn’t start there.

Here’s the whole reason we get into cycles of self-sabotage in the first place: we edged God out of our mind.

I was saying this to someone recently who isn’t an A Course in Miracles student. This whole belief in separation began with us saying, “you know what, this is better than that. I don’t really like that. I don’t think that’s good.”

Which is basically saying the Creator is less good over here and more good over there.

And so began the making of our opinions and judgments.

Those opinions are the blocks to love. We got so attached to them that they concretized into a conditioned view. That whole perspective, that whole perception, is what we’ve been living inside ever since.  It’s the ego thought system.

Then the cycle runs itself.

We feel the discomfort of that conditioned view. Sometimes it’s a dull dissonance in the mind. Sometimes it’s a dull ache of sadness and malaise. Sometimes it’s waking up with dread and despair.  Sometimes it’s a deep longing.

We feel helpless to interrupt these patterns – they take over.

So we start managing it. Coping with it.

That is a slippery slope.

I know every step of it. Sit on the sofa. Watch TV. Eat the snacks. Isolate. Drink the alcohol. Tune out.  Work and work and work and work obsessively.

Every one of those is a form of avoidance dressed up as a solution.

And here’s the twist that kept me stuck for years.

While I was managing and coping, I was also praying. Fix my body. Fix my life. Fix my marriage. Fix my finances.

Then I’d conclude that spirit let me down.

I thought:  “I put spirit in charge of my healing, but spirit failed me. I prayed and prayed for these results, and nothing.”

Spirit has no concept of failure. It’s not even possible.

Yet when we fail to put spirit in charge. Then it seems like spirit fails.

Chapter 5 of A Course in Miracles is called Healing and Wholeness, and Section 1 is titled The Invitation to the Holy Spirit.

The invitation.

We have to invite the Holy Spirit in.

We must invite the Holy Spirit to work with our mind, to support our healing intention, to remove the blocks to Love that we’re willing to let go of and thus assist us in breaking these cycles.

That’s the piece that was missing while I was busy coping.

Here’s what I’ve come to know about how the cycle actually breaks: it’s being willing to stop going it on our own.

That’s it. That’s the mechanism.  The willingness to join with Spirit – not just ask for a handout we don’t believe we deserve.

When we partner up, whether with another person or with the invisible, with the angelic field, with Jesus, we’re eliminating the sense of separation.

And the sense of separation is the basis of every problem we think we have.

We can do much faster healing when we’re working with another. The Holy Spirit is there in the midst of us, amplified.

It’s an inside job. No one can do it for us.

Yet people can help us.

That’s the entire design of my End My Self-Sabotage program. Six weeks of getting real with ourselves about what’s really going on – and doing it together.

If you’re noticing the pattern again, and something in you is saying I’ve got to break this cycle, come and be willing to do some work with us.

The more intense the challenge, the greater the victory over the small self.

We’re done going it alone.

Sometimes when we become overwhelmed and upset by what we think we see we find ways to drown out the intensity of our reactions.  We fall into various forms of self-medication and self-sabotage.  I know a lot about that.  And that’s why I created this program to rise up out of that pain.

End My Self-Sabotage 6-Week Program begins Sunday, July 26th. Self-sabotage is designed to slow down our spiritual growth. But what if I told you that we can dissolve that pattern? When you recognize the pattern, you can interrupt it. And when you interrupt it with Love instead of willpower, everything changes. I used to struggle with self-medication and other forms of self-sabotage, but that’s behind me now – if you can relate – let’s do it together! Click here to learn more.

LATEST PODCAST EPISODE: Learning to Trust Yourself with Author Tama Kieves  My friend Tama Kieves wrote the book on trust I wish I’d had years ago. She’s a Harvard Law honors graduate who walked away from her law career with no plan and no money, following a single voice toward the life that was actually hers. We sat down to talk about her new book, Learning to Trust Yourself, and the thing nearly every A Course in Miracles student wrestles with: how do we tell the voice of love from the voice of fear?