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each action i take in this vein brings me closer to becoming the person i always was meant to be. so as i have been asked before, and as i myself have asked, how is acting **as if**, honest? well i can spin it it anyway i want to, BUT when i act as if i am not afraid by walking through my FEAR of a situation i am practicing courage, and i have yet another example of how the program works in my life. when i act calm and rational, when i am angry, i am practicing the principle of detaching my behaviors from my feelings, i can live in the here and now, instead of reacting to just a minute ago. when i cry or show emotion, when all i want to do is bottle it up inside, then isolate to let it out, i am demonstrating that i can be intimate. i could go on and on, the salient thought here, is that i am not denying or stuffing anything, what i am doing is allowing myself the freedom to choose my behaviors. i know i am powerless over what i feel and when i feel it, that is as long as i choose to abstain from mind and mood altering substances. feelings are a good thing, and as i grow more comfortable with feeling them, as i work the steps, i see that allowing my feelings to come and go like the wind, is a healthy choice and the path towards freedom. the freedom i am talking about is from my past. when i was in active addiction, i could only rarely separate my behaviors from my feelings, each feeling, such as it was, had a hard-wired reaction, early recovery did little to break those connections, as i felt more, and did not have a very large or healthy repertoire of reactions in my bag of tricks. only time and step work has allowed me to become present and become free from myself or at least the self i used to be chained to.
as i grow spiritually i can see that reacting is living in the past, and proacting is living in the future, each is a denial of what is here and now. acting **as if** there is no past and no future, is quite freeing, but unrealistic, in the real world. BUT as i break the chains of my FEAR based behavior, i can closer and closer to reaching that ideal state. once again the only limit i have to reaching that state is time and like some mathematical function, the only variable that is changing is me. so it is up to me, to allow that change to become more pronounced and have a greater influence on who and what i am. well i have lost my train of thought, a phone call from a sponsee with belly button birthday wishes derailed it. i am grateful that i have people in my life who care enough about me, to wish me all the best when those special days roll around. with that i do believe i will go hit the streets and burn a few hundred calories, after all, that is something i can do for myself today.

∞ DT ∞