Blog entry for:

...to practice in all my affairs. and i have begun to care enough about other addicts to freely share with them the experience i have had. okay this is my second attempt to get started on this. for some reason, what i started with before felt unnatural and forced. what is a person to do, when they have the desire but not the muse? well for one, noodle around with a different direction instead of facing the issue, as i have just done. it worked i have an opening into the well of my amazing magnifying mind.
so what came to me, is not how i can tell whether or not i have had a spiritual awakening or many, rather what i wish to do with them. i often find, that in my step work, i avoid answering the question, i misdirect, obfuscate and generally speak about the issue rather that to the issue. sort of like, i know that there are things that have more power than me, for instance the weather, they say we are in for another storm tomorrow. my sponsees wonder how i catch them when they wander off track and try to divert themselves from the answers, what they fail to realize, is that there sponsor, is a master of those techniques himself. so part of the spiritual awakening i have had, is the ability to see myself in others. while sometimes their behavior pisses me off to no end, especially when it not only parallels mine, but is an exact duplicate, in the long run i understand where they are coming from, and what direction to give them, based on my experience with, if not the same exact thing, something so close as to be imperceptibly different. which goes to the second test mentioned above, the desire to share my experience with others.
the first **values to live by**, well that is a bit more tricky. there are days when i am all spiritual, tolerant, accepting, and this is a slam dunk. everything i do, seems to follow these principles and i walk through life feeling like some sort of saint. there are other days, however, where nothing is right in my life, and instead of feeling saintlike, i feel devilish, and seem to try and make the world as miserable as i am. this dichotomy of living in the real world is something that may seem to be hard to fit into the framework of a twelfth step much less living a program of active recovery. just because i struggle, does not mean i lack the desire. of course these are the extremes, and as an addict i seem to focus on the outliers, rather than the norms. quite honestly, when i am out on the long tail, either way, i find my life so out of balance, that my desire is to be reigned in and return to more common ground, which by the way, is where i find myself most commonly. it is here where practicing a 12th step is the most evident, because in this place i can make choices and am not subject to the whims of my feelings and the default behaviors they may get started.
i could go on, but the streets are beckoning, and sitting here thinking rather than doing is starting to grind on me a bit DAMMIT I NEED TO GO DO SOMETHING and i think i will. so long and thanks for all the fish.

∞ DT ∞