Spiritual Sobriety

What happens when getting and staying sober isn't enough? What about finding joy, purpose & fulfillment along with your sobriety? In this episode, Jordan talks with Brad Chesley about his journey of overcoming addiction and then finding a greater life beyond sobriety.

Transcript

Welcome to the Unveiling podcast,

Where we open the doors for you to know thyself,

Have more joy,

And live your true purpose.

My name is Jordan Bain,

And I'm a guide and Kabbalah instructor with the Modern Mystery School.

I hope this podcast opens new doors for you.

Welcome everyone to Unveiling.

This is Jordan Bain again,

And my guest today is Brad Chesley.

He is a Second Step Ritual Master and Initiate Life Activation Practitioner in the Mystery School,

And he's been doing this work for about a year and a half,

Currently finishing up his first Kabbalah journey in Boston here.

And we're going to talk today about a lot of things related to healing and addiction,

And how addiction stops the healing process,

And what we can do about that using Mystery School tools and more.

So Brad,

Welcome on the show.

If you want to say a few words about yourself,

I'd love to welcome you,

And thanks for being here.

Thanks.

I appreciate it.

I am Brad Chesley.

I appreciate you having me on the show.

I have an extensive history with,

You know,

Things that are related to healing,

Things I've started beginning to heal through the school and everything else.

I have extensive childhood trauma,

Addiction.

I've overcome addiction.

I've been sober about four years now.

I've worked helping people recover from addiction and substance use disorder.

And I also own my own healing business through this,

Offering Modern Mystery School energy healing practices.

It's called Timeline Healing.

It's TimelineCapeCod.

Com.

Awesome.

Very cool.

Thanks for being here.

So we're going to talk today,

You know,

The first part of our show,

We were chatting before we started the recording here,

And,

You know,

We're going to talk about the addictive mindset and how that stops us,

How it stops people from really choosing healing and being their true selves.

So,

You know,

I'd love to hear a little bit about your background with what you've gone through with addiction,

Because I think that puts it in context for a lot of people.

You know,

There's,

Everything is relative in life and addiction is relative too.

And some people,

You know,

They're alcoholics for a few years and that's it.

And then they do AA or they work the 12 steps and,

Or whatever,

They get a good therapist or they get medicated and then they're done.

And then other people are in and out of detoxes and rehabs for three decades or more.

Right.

So I'd love to hear just a little bit about your background,

Whatever you feel just like sharing today,

You know,

This obviously all on you in terms of your,

Your comfort level of sharing,

Right.

You know,

What you can share about your journey with addiction,

Just the overview,

The bones of that.

Great.

I think it's,

My journey is as far as,

You know,

Oftentimes when we work with people in addiction or recovery,

People want to know,

Are you,

Are you qualified to help me?

You know,

Like how,

What's the extent of your addiction,

You know,

Where are you at addicts,

Et cetera.

I was one of those people that like,

I grew up in like a good household,

Like we were wealthy,

But I did have childhood trauma.

And like,

As soon as I started drinking at the age of 17,

I was an alcoholic,

Like right off the bat.

It was one of those situations where things I had gone through a childhood,

It was instantaneously when I used substances,

I wasn't afraid.

I didn't have fear.

So then I would use substances to access to basically overcome that.

Over the years,

I was addicted to many different substances,

Most substances.

I would bounce from one to the other because I would have situations where enough substance would become such an issue for me.

It'd be causing so many problems in my life.

Instead of trying to get sober,

I would switch to another substance or,

Or start doing more than one substance at once.

Eventually I ended up going into detox and treatment and I got sober,

But was on medications for about two years and then relapsed.

And then I literally,

For the next 10 years,

I bounced in and out of treatment facilities,

Sober living residences and detoxes,

Et cetera,

Like every two to three months for the next eight years.

To the point that my addiction actually ended up doing two years in prison because I couldn't get sober.

Yeah.

And you were different levels of functional during that time,

Right?

Like at some points you had a good paying corporate job during that time.

And then other points,

You were not doing well and not functioning,

Correct?

Right.

I mean,

My career was,

You know,

I went to school,

I graduated a degree in finance.

I went out and became a financial analyst in corporate real estate and I was successful.

And at first I was an alcoholic.

And then over time after a car accident,

I got addicted to painkillers.

Didn't even know what opiates were.

This is back in like 2008,

Got addicted and didn't realize I was addicted.

And then that escalated to other drugs later.

Yeah.

I think that's a really common story for a lot of people.

It's a very,

Very relatable thing.

So let's talk about the mindset,

Right?

Because addiction isn't just a substance,

It's a whole way of thinking about life.

And how would you characterize,

You know,

In context of what you know now as a mystery school initiate,

As a healer,

As someone who's worked on himself quite a bit and someone who's now been sober for four years,

Who's been in recovery for four years,

How would you describe the addictive mindset,

Both through your own eyes,

Your own lens,

And what you've seen with all the people you've known in addiction and recovery?

I think oftentimes the addiction is generally,

We're trying to fill a void or a wound,

Basically either from childhood or ancestral wound.

It's something that's contained within us.

And then we're using substances to try to cope with that,

Or fill that void.

That's what it was for me.

And for many years,

I tried to get sober,

And then I kept relapsing.

And I go to do therapy,

Medication,

Everything.

I go to AA,

I went to NA,

Probably went to like a 500 to 1,

000 12-step meetings.

Kept going in and out of treatment centers,

Et cetera.

But there was always this wound inside of me where I just felt like I didn't know how to move on.

I literally used to say,

And this is before I found the school,

I feel like 10 years ago,

I remember after a situation in my life,

I felt like my soul had died.

I would tell people that without realizing the impact of my words.

And not realizing when we talk about soul retrieval,

Like they're part of our soul,

A fracture or a leave.

And it was literally from that moment on,

When I started saying that without realizing that whole practice with the soul leaving and the fracturing,

That for the next eight years,

I couldn't put together more than two to three months unless I was in a structured environment.

If I left a structured environment,

I'd last like two weeks and I'd go back.

There's so much there with trauma.

Yeah.

So with that mindset,

With that understanding,

Were you aware at the time that you could heal or were you just like,

Hey man,

I'm broken.

I can't heal.

So I just have to fill the void.

I really felt like I was broken.

I couldn't fill the void.

It was simple.

I would go into treatment centers and detoxes because I just had to,

Like I had,

It was just like,

I was trying to survive.

But when I was sitting in there,

I used to sit in those rooms and look around and I'm like,

I hope these people make it.

Cause I'm not going to make it.

And I honestly thought that I was never going to get sober.

I thought I was going to end up dying from the disease of addiction.

I had so many overdoses and near death experiences that I just thought it was never going to happen.

And oftentimes I would question,

I would often question,

Why did I survive?

Like,

Why am I still here after all these ODs and everything that happened?

Yeah.

So what,

What finally caused you to decide to get sober?

Cause that was,

That was like more than two years before you found the mystery school.

The mystery school has been a part of your healing,

Part of your recovery,

Part of your journey,

But something,

Something obviously changed for you.

And four years ago you got sober.

What was that?

What was that?

I'm most curious about mindset,

Mindset shift.

The,

The major thing that I didn't tell people with this for a long time is that I had this near death experience.

And I couldn't explain what happened.

So I didn't tell people about it.

It was not a positive experience for like,

So when I snapped out of that,

I was so freaked out by what happened.

And I continue to have like these experiences after where I used to see the divine or see beyond just the 3D,

The world that I was like,

I got to stay sober because I can't risk whatever just happened happening again.

But also in addition to that,

Like I had done two years in prison and I so didn't want to go back.

It was just like,

Sometimes like people think that if like our lives are so miserable,

If I just passed,

It would be better.

Some levels of existence,

Like living in prison is worse.

I mean,

I think that existence is worse than dying because it's just like,

You're just living,

You're just stuck and you feel so trapped.

And it was,

I just wanted some quality of life,

You know,

And it was,

I was staying sober to try to basically have a normal life.

But I had fallen so deep with how many relapses.

It took me a long time of just being sober before I started to truly heal and then see like a positive future for me.

I just stayed sober because I didn't want to have,

I couldn't deal with the negative consequences.

Like I couldn't stay,

I couldn't use and not end up in trouble and not end up like in legal trouble.

So I was like,

I just got to stay sober.

So I'm so tired of the consequences.

So it was about the consequences.

Yeah.

At the root,

You were like,

These consequences aren't worth it.

This is worse than dying.

So I have to change.

Right.

Okay.

Yeah.

And then once you made that decision,

Were you able to fully get sober and not go back?

Yeah.

Or were there different waves of that?

I stayed in treatment.

I stayed in an inter-residential facility for five months.

And when I got out,

I stayed in a sober living house for another 11 months.

And like three months after I got out,

I started working with people in treatment,

Like helping others.

I worked as a resident assistant at a halfway house,

And then I went on to work as a counselor in a detox.

And that really helped me stay sober because working at the detox,

Going in there every day,

Where I used to end up,

Like I would see,

You know,

You see people come in like fresh,

Like not feeling well,

Literally detoxing.

It kept it so fresh that every day you'd walk in,

You'd be like,

All right,

You know,

It would remind you where the tape would play out to.

Like how I would be reminded of what I felt like when I was walking through those doors each time.

So it helped me stay sober.

That's cool.

So I mean,

Not cool that those people were suffering,

But it's really great that you were able to harvest those experiences to stay sober.

When I'd love to hear,

I'd love to just have you drop some wisdom about the loops that you found in your mind that kept stopping you from healing before we move on to like how Mystery School tools have helped you.

You know,

Cause I think a lot of people are stuck and a lot of people are suffering and some people maybe don't even admit to themselves,

Hey,

I have an issue or I have a problem,

Right?

There's a lot of people,

Like you were mentioning,

There was a bunch of counselors that you were working with.

I don't remember at what phase of your recovery process,

But a bunch of counselors where you said like two out of 12 counselors at some facility you're at were actually sober and the rest were still using.

And these are the counselors.

These were addiction counselors.

Or they just weren't in recovery is what I meant.

They weren't in recovery.

Okay.

They weren't in recovery.

Yeah.

They were just regular non-addicts.

So not that they were actual users,

But they were just non-addicts.

Right.

So they were using some sort of substance in their life,

But they didn't see it as a problem and they weren't,

They weren't acting as though they were in addiction.

Right.

Yeah.

So because that,

The mindset around,

Around the substance is so,

It's so pernicious and it's so,

It seeps,

I feel like it seeps into people's consciousness and just sits there and then starts to organize their whole decision-making framework.

Right.

So what are some of those traps that you see the mind falling into for people who are in addiction?

I think oftentimes the more we go into addiction,

We have these,

Let's say like abnormal thinking patterns.

Like we started to get used to a lifestyle where we're so dependent on a substance.

I feel like what our concept of normal is changes.

Like what's now,

What's like,

What are,

What our life should look like,

Like how we should,

How we feel inside.

It took me a long time,

Like until I started to find energy work for me to start to understand that like,

I did not love myself and my entire life and everyone in it was a reflection of the fact that I had no love for myself inside.

And then when I started to work on that,

Do that energy work,

Like started to do like modern mystery school practices and help to shift that internally.

That is when my entire life started to drastically change trajectories,

Like through the life activation and soul retrieval.

I did life activation,

Full spirit activation and soul retrieval.

My entire trajectory of my life shifted so fast.

Yeah.

Over the course of weeks?

Three weeks.

Three weeks.

I think it was three to four weeks.

Like my entire,

Like I had a miracle happen like three to four weeks later when someone told me,

You remember something so good happened that you literally don't even respond because you're like this,

How is this even humanly possible?

Like,

So you don't even like acknowledge it because it's like,

You can't even mentally comprehend what's happening.

You know,

It was one of those situations.

So you found out about this from a friend,

Right?

Who recommended it to you?

Yeah.

I mean,

I started to go through a spiritual awakening about a year before that.

But you know,

I was just led,

Synchronicities led me right to mystery school,

You know?

Yeah.

And what was that?

Did you have resistance at first or were you just like,

No,

I'm doing this?

Like,

Was your mind,

Was there like an inner battle before you?

Oh,

There was definitely an inner battle.

We go back and forth.

I'm like,

Yeah.

You know,

Some of my teachings,

I'd be like,

What am I doing right now?

I'm going to go spend this money on this thing.

And that's where the hangup is.

That's the main thing with people in addiction,

I feel like,

Or anybody in general is spending the money to actually go get these healings done.

Like,

We'll go buy clothes.

We'll go buy all this other stuff.

Someone says they're going to do an energy healing on you.

And people are like,

And you tell someone,

Let's say that someone's going to get life action.

I'm like,

This is going to change your life.

Like,

It'll change your trajectory of your life.

This is what it costs.

Like,

They don't want to do it because they don't believe you.

Like,

They're not like,

I mean,

That's the main reason people don't do it.

They're like,

I don't believe that it's going to change the trajectory of my life.

Because if you could walk up to someone and go,

Listen,

Your entire life is going to change.

If you do this,

You just got to- Everything will get better.

You just got to invest.

Your entire life is going to change.

And like,

Who would not do that?

I mean,

From a logical standpoint,

Who would not do that?

It's where the belief comes into place.

But I had so many things happen through synchronicities and stuff.

I was in this magical flow that I was like,

This is it.

This is where my higher self is leading me.

That's always been the test too,

For thousands of years in the mystery schools.

Can a person's intuition see beyond their mental story of their comfort zone?

And if their intuition can't penetrate that veil of their comfort zone,

Then they don't do it.

It's like a barrier.

So you can't get through this door if you don't have intuition,

If you can't listen to yourself.

Yeah.

You're getting outside of the normal world.

I mean,

I had the same thing.

My friends were like,

I went to Healers Academy and my friends were like,

What are you doing right now?

You're going to Hogwarts?

That was the joke.

Hogwarts.

And you just have to laugh it off because part of you is being like,

What am I doing right now?

And you'd be like,

Nope.

You'd have to coach yourself.

You'd be like,

I have to tell myself,

Nope,

You just got to believe.

And I followed it and my entire life changed.

Yeah.

Have you life activated any of those friends?

Yes.

Yes.

And what did they notice?

A lot of people's lives changed.

I life activated a lot of people in a sober house.

It would blow your mind.

People that couldn't get sober,

Same as me,

Could not get sober.

Or they could not find joy in life.

We life activated them.

Some of them,

Some people just didn't seem open to it at all.

And I'm like,

I don't really know.

Because you never know.

You do it and then you're like,

I'm not sure how it's going to affect this person.

The people that were kind of like the question,

I remember one kid walked up to me,

He was just like,

This is the first time in my life.

I feel like a kid.

And all this stuff changed and somebody offered me to own like 50% on a business.

There's the financial gains from doing these life activations from people.

And then there's the switches to feeling legitimate joy.

I think that's the key thing is because I remember when I joined the school,

I used to talk to my guy.

I'd be like,

I just want to know what peace and joy feel like.

Because I don't know what that feels like.

I don't know what that is.

Because I'm like,

I want to see what my life is going to look like once I actually feel that.

Right.

And you're moving pretty strongly into that now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's been a good year and a half.

My entire life is so different.

It's wild.

I've known you for most of that time and had the privilege of watching your shifts.

And it's been just a massive change in even your smile and how you hold your belief in yourself and your confidence and your joy.

It's physically visible in people when they walk this path,

How they're holding that.

I think when I met you,

You didn't really smile.

No,

Probably not.

Yeah.

And then I think maybe,

So that was like last February,

2023.

And then I think by last fall,

You were smiling,

But it would come and go.

Right.

It would come and go.

I'd see you smile and then very,

I can't make faces,

But they'd be very serious again very quickly.

And then you'd smile again,

But they'd be very serious again very quickly.

And now when I see you,

You're pretty much smiling all the time.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I don't know when that happened,

Of course,

But my trajectory has been,

I signed up for that trajectory too.

Everybody knows that.

You're going fast,

You're going fast on the path.

So it was like there was,

And a lot of shifts occurred and a lot of challenges occurred.

I think the one thing that happened for me is that I had to start to learn that it's the ability to let go.

Because it's like everything in my life before is like,

I'm letting go because it was a reflection of who I was energetically or on a vibration level at that time.

And when you start doing,

If you start on this path,

Your life will change drastically.

At the same time,

It's the only part that's painful or difficult or challenging is being able to allow,

To let go of things that I thought could come with me in my path of aggression.

And it's more of like the letting go and allowing the new to come in.

And then there's multiple layers of letting go.

Shifts will happen with each program.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's amazing how that works.

So I'd love to ask you,

What do you feel like has impacted you the most on this path?

What do you feel like,

Has there been any one thing that's like,

This thing really helped me shift?

Was it the life activation?

Was it initiation?

Was it going to Healers Academy?

Is there something you can point to where you had like your biggest aha moment?

I think the biggest shift is for me was Ritual Master 2.

Which you did pretty recently,

Right?

Right.

I did that in March.

Yeah.

So like three,

Four months ago.

Right.

Yeah.

There's a lot of energy.

There's a lot of stuff that had to shift.

Like we had talked about it.

I think we've assessed that.

I had a lot of karma or incestual karma from my past,

From my addiction and from my time in prison that like on the path,

Like the karma works its way out.

I'm working through it because I'm choosing to do so as I progress.

So that's where some of the challenges came up and accepting that.

And like some of the things that had gone on in the last year was kind of like me working through that.

I realized a lot of the things that were going on were things that I had done in the past and was kind of like coming back.

Coming back to haunt you,

So to speak.

Or just a mirror.

Like seeing how you know what it's like.

But you cleared them really fast.

Yeah.

I mean,

I owe that all to you during that time and you just,

You worked through it so quickly.

I mean,

Sometimes you feel like,

I mean,

In the past I'd get really upset.

Like,

Why is this happening to me?

Why is this happening to me?

And then I started to shift into more of a gratitude and being like,

I know this is happening for a reason.

And then just doubling down on the rituals and the gratitude.

I mean,

I remember sometimes I'd be like,

I have no idea what I'm going to do right now.

And I'd be like,

Thank you,

Thank you,

Thank you.

I joke.

I like to be sarcastic.

It's almost like saying thank you when you're crying.

The room's on fire.

Like,

This is fine.

Everything's fine.

The vibrational override.

Right.

That's what I started to shift on that was after talking to Obsessimus Dave,

Like he'd said,

Like,

You know,

Focus on your gratitude.

And I really,

I feel like that is one of the key things for me I like to do.

Yeah.

Very,

Very powerful.

Awesome.

So is there anything that you would want to say as words of wisdom and encouragement to people who are trying to get sober,

Trying to step onto that path of being in recovery,

Are interested in healing?

What would you say to encourage people who are in that state in their life?

I say for people in addiction,

Especially people,

Because I was in and out for eight years,

You know,

And I've seen the mentality,

You know,

Like of how people are like,

There's a barrier to people getting past through.

I'm going to invest money in this thing when I'm barely getting by on an energy healing.

And that's kind of like that roadblock for them.

Because it's like the belief.

I would tell them is that for someone that like,

Went to hundreds to thousands of meetings,

In and out of treatment centers is that if you invest that money,

Like you're healing something within you,

That is allowing this pattern to continue.

So if someone wants to break the pattern of addiction,

And start to feel joy in life,

Is invest in these healings.

Because it's like,

I wasn't breaking through these barriers,

Because this was energetic,

This was ancestral.

There's,

There's things in that I was not factoring into,

Because there's stuff I wasn't educated on.

And by putting myself out there,

And putting faith in these healings and investing in them,

That's when they were like,

Energetically started to break through.

And I've seen this happen with people in recovery,

Like I worked with a sober house.

We have 14 guys in that house,

We life activated most of them.

And there's a direct correlation with how long someone stays in sober living and their chances of maintaining long term sobriety.

Same with like if someone completing treatment or leaving treatment early,

Whether the reason is for like valid reasons or not.

But the longer you stay in the structured environment,

The greater your chances.

And we can only measure how long someone,

We can only track how someone was doing when they were in the sober living residence.

People that received the life activation stayed in sober living 108 days longer on average than people that did not.

So when you talk about three months,

That's huge.

And it's life activation isn't just literally- That's almost four months.

That's like three and a half months.

Yeah.

It's not just healing,

Like addiction,

Because then people,

I don't want people to be like,

Well,

I don't have an addiction problem,

So why would I need a life activation?

It's healing it's healing our ancestors,

Like seven generations before,

Seven generations forward.

It's also healing the energetic things that are keeping us stuck in these old patterns.

But it also allows people to start to move them towards their purpose and finding joy in life.

So then people that are sober,

They're newly sober.

I mean,

A lot of people use drugs because they're like,

What is the point of this life?

You know what I mean?

Like,

What do I do?

I go to work and I pay bills.

That's what I used to use.

That was my excuse for a long time.

I'm like,

What am I going to do?

Just go to work and pay bills.

I'm like,

That doesn't sound like a good time.

I'm going to go party.

That was like,

I had every excuse in the book for why I need drugs or drink.

And so then people keep using substances.

It's just like,

What is the point of this life?

We're like living in the matrix.

And then it's like,

You do these healings and it'll start to literally,

It will start to direct you to your higher purpose without you having to do anything.

I mean,

You do have to work on yourself.

I'm not saying it's like,

All right,

But like,

It literally aligns you.

Right.

It just pulls you.

And that's such a magical spot to live life.

That's what took my life from living.

Be like,

I was existing sober.

Like I would just exist.

Like I was sober and I was miserable.

Because you said the consequences of doing otherwise were too high.

Right.

You were unwilling to accept the negative consequences of being an addict anymore.

So you decided to get sober,

But that didn't mean you had found joy.

Right.

And then these healings and this path has really like moved me into a place of joy and letting go.

And just,

It's a beautiful thing.

Like I'm so grateful to this path.

So cool.

Awesome.

We're running near the end of our time here.

So thank you so much for being on the show.

Thank you for sharing,

Inspiring people.

I really hope that the people who need this message can hear this message and receive it and share this with everyone who needs to hear something like this when they're in their journey with addiction and recovery and sobriety.

So I really appreciate you taking the time and sharing your heart and sharing your experiences here so other people can benefit from that,

Brad.

All right.

Thank you.

Appreciate you having me on.

Yeah.

I'll see you sometime soon.

Okay.

Take care.

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