Phase 6

  Phase 6 addresses the following topics: 

• Recovery Philosophy on Impermanence 
• Hope and Faith
• Resilience

There came a point in my recovery when I had to face a hard truth: Knowledge wasn’t enough. I had been to the retreats, read the books, talked endlessly with counselors, friends, and mentors. I knew the concepts. I could talk about healing, mindfulness, and transformation with ease—but I wasn’t always truly living them. I was giving 50 percent effort, and deep down, I knew why. If I didn’t give it my all, then I had an excuse if things didn’t work out. I was protecting myself from failure. Yet again my fear of not being good enough or smart enough was showing up.

What changed everything was simple: I started walking the walk. Not perfectly, but consistently. Fake it till you make it was my motto. I didn’t fully understand how to incorporate all these new ways of being, so I faked it until I got good at it. I stopped running from my thoughts and emotions and sat with them instead. I slowly started embodying the principles I had been talking about for years. Slowly, I began to feel a shift. A quiet knowing emerged: Maybe I wasn’t damaged. Maybe I was just on my path, learning how to live differently. All the ups and downs were actually part of the journey.

One of the biggest breakthroughs came when I started seeing everything through the lens of impermanence. Cravings, emotions, relationships—even material things—they’re all impermanent. They eventually change, shift, or fade away. Learning to relate to life this way made it far easier to let go, to stop clinging so tightly. And as I began to see through the illusion of permanence, there was less suffering. More freedom. More space to evolve.

That space made room for something I hadn’t felt in a long time: hope. Regular meditation practice meant regular encounters with my subconscious. My true nature started to shine through, and my purpose on this planet came into focus. It no longer felt out of reach. With each breath of practice and each choice to honor my highest self, hope moved from an abstract idea to something real, that I could feel.

Eventually, that hope turned into faith. Not necessarily a blind faith in something outside myself—though that had its place—but more of a grounded confidence. A trust in myself and in the path I was paving. I started to believe that this way of living could actually work for me. In fact, it already was working. It was proof that I didn’t need to force myself into traditional recovery boxes that had never made sense to me. I had found something that felt aligned with how I heal—my path, not one I was trying to squeeze into.

Of course, I still fell down. I still made mistakes. But I let go of the habit of labeling myself and those momentary setbacks as failures. I began to see them as just part of the journey. There are ups and downs, period. I’d acknowledge what happened, reflect on how it happened, look for the lesson, and then move forward, skillfully and without dragging guilt or shame behind me for days or weeks. I just started right where I left off. That’s how resilience was built: by showing up again and again, no matter how many times I fell.

That’s what this sixth phase is about: showing up consistently and working with the practices and principles of MPRP—not just learning them but living them. Through that steady engagement, you start to build real confidence in your own ability to grow and heal. That confidence gives rise to hope. Hope deepens into faith. And from that faith, resilience begins to form. And when they too, begin to change—as all things do—try not to resist. Let go with ease, understanding that all things evolve and eventually change. Let the next version of you rise with grace and flexibility.