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but to take full advantage of **the therapeutic value of one addict helping another,** i must learn to listen actively.
why listen when i already know all the answers? at least i thought i knew all the answers, starting from about the fifteenth year of my life and extending well into my early and not so early recovery. one of my tasks in those early days of recovery was to unlearn a whole lot about what i thought i knew, and that task is still ongoing today. opening my mind was easy when i still was certain of what i was going to hear. good thing i never broke my leg jumping to a conclusion or four. a tiny mixed metaphor for the morning.
so what does this reading say to me this morning? well for one, it comes at an interesting place in my annual cycle, the final month, when i seem to dwell on who and what i was when i came to the path of recovery. it is still quite easy for me to believe that i am that man still, so here is a yardstick to help me find evidence of my growth. taking a brief inventory of my behavior over the past few weeks, especially when it comes to my activities in recovery. looking at how well i listened to the speaker on thursday evening at the meeting, i would have to same that i was exactly the same as i was. the critic and judge were running most of the time as he shared, the only difference was that through the smoke and mirrors of my internal conversation i did hear a tiny bit of what i needed to hear. if i chose to look at this single incident i would have to conclude that i am the same and the whole journey has been for naught.
BUT, recovery has also taught me to look at things in a bit larger scale. and i have been hearing, and actually listening what what has been shared in my current home group and in my future home group. although the groups vary greatly in composition and focus, both of them have provided me the material i NEED to continue to push through this particular phase in my recovery and see what will come. they give me the HOPE, that even an addict like me, can continue to recover. i have heard the feelings and attitudes of my early recovery quite plainly expressed, the struggle with coming to terms with the fact that i was and am an addict, the anger of being forced into something that smacks of being some sort of cult that was trying to wash my brain of my treasured rationality, and most of all the desperation of the fear that nothing would or could change within me. i can on a more consistent basis actually shut-off the judge and listen to what is actually happening, instead of internally complaining about the distractions and the actual language being used. i can take what i hear and actively apply it in my own life, like identifying the feelings that are happening inside of mew, when my character defects get rolling.
so am i an active listener in meetings, when working with my sponsor, or when working with newcomers or the men who choose to call me their sponsor, not yet, but i am making progress toward that ideal, and although the whole progress versus perfection argument smacks of a rationalization some days, it is the reality for this addict. progress is worth striving for, perfection is an ideal to measure that progress and see how far i have come, not how far i need to go.
time to move on and get more than a few things accomplished this hot and dry saturday.
BTW Happy 4 year anniversary Linda L!

∞ DT ∞