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ยฅ it will not make me a better person to judge the faults of another ยฅ

Posted: Sun, Sep 26, 2010 09:28:36 AM

such behavior, the judging that is, can provide the clues i need for the path i NEED to take today. that may sound like a BIG FAT and JUICY rationalization, and perhaps it is. the reading was speaking of the whole one finger pointing at you, three fingers pointing back at me paradigm, and while i have personally always loathed that trite cliché, i do understand the point. because i get it, and because for me, avoiding judgment is like trying to hold my breath, i can consciously only do it for so long, then BOOM i am doing it once again. so instead of flailing myself for once again judging the faults of another, i can use those judgments to look for what it is, inside of me, that makes me see their so-called flaws and less than stellar behavior. upon inspection, as the reading suggests, i find the same behaviors manifest in my life. when i judge that someone is just phoning it in, it is because i am slacking in my daily program of recovery. when i discover myself musing about the how irresponsible some else is being in taking care of what they agreed to do, it is because i am letting my commitments slip. so it goes, ad infintum…
so you see, using something that is inherent within me, as a tool for improvement, is one way i can work with what i already have. of course not every single fault and flaw i see in others, is manifest in my life, so here is where the whole one finger three finger salute thing, like all trite ideas, breaks down. that does not discount its usefulness as a tool for my own recovery, nor does it mean that it is something that i need to discard. that is what the part of me i call my addict loves to do, discard something on a single piece of evidence, ignoring the vast body of evidence that suggests that what i want to believe is not true. that part of me ran my life for quite some time, and i am just barely crossing the point where i have been in recovery half as long as i was in active addiction. so as things go, i can only be half way restores to sanity, if recovery were a true function of time. it has been my experience, that although clean time is a great indicator of the possibility of recovery in my life, it is no more than that, an indicator of a possibility. i would love to say that all the time i have spent in the rooms, since getting clean, i spent in active recovery. quite honestly, i am human, and i slip back into untreated disease often. each slip back delays my progress, and if i am less than diligent will create the sort of inertia i do not wish to enhance, the journey back into the darkness of active addiction.
as much as i would love to justify how well i am doing, by adding some more to this lengthy treatise, i know that i have run out of ideas. that means the time has come to state i am grateful for having the ability to judge the behavior of others, AND USE that judgment to guide my program of active recovery. it is off to the street i go, so my dawg and i can burn off some of the excess calories we have consumed, and so that i can help myself be that much more healthier one day at a time, oh yeah, go Broncos, maybe the stars are aligned just right, so you can overcome the Colts and get another notch in the W column.

∞ DT ∞


Another Look

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Tao Te Ching

☯ The Tao that can be spoken is not the eternal Tao ☯

The Tao Teh King, or The Tao and Its Characteristics
by Lao-Tse
Translated by James Legge

Book 2

1) The movement of the Tao
By contraries proceeds;
And weakness marks the course
Of Tao's mighty deeds.