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fear was at the core of that alienation. i believed that if i let others get to know me, they would only find out how terribly flawed i was. rejection would be only a short step away. well, i actually thought i was going to get to this much sooner than now, but it has been one of those days. you know, the type of day where nothing goes quite as planned and yet everything almost works out in the end. so much for planning.
thinking about how much FEAR ruled my life and still does, is just amazing to me. i was working with one the men who i sponsor this afternoon, and listening to him took me back to those early days and how i learned to grow my FAITH and let go. he seems to think that FAITH and letting go, are binary occurrences, you either have them or can do them or you cannot. it is hard for me to explain how the process of learning how to let go and learning how to have FAITH are colored in shades of grey. but at least i have a direction to point him in now, and i have my experience with both of those processes or is it really a single process with two sub-processes going on simultaneously? i can tell you this, for me, it was a symbiotic set of processes, as i learned to have FAITH, letting go became easier. growing my FAITH was necessary for this addict to stay clean, and i did so outside of the structure of religion. but this reading was not about that, it was about my FEAR that led to my voluntary alienation. as my FAITH grew, however, my FEAR diminished and i allowed myself to be changed into the man i am today. i still am standoffish and that is okay, since i also know this will also pass, if i allow my FAITH to continue its growth process and let go of more and more of the belief system i cam to recovery with. so off to take a short nap and then time to see what i can get done.

∞ DT ∞