Blog entry for:

by helping others to stay clean, i enjoy the benefit of the spiritual wealth that i have found. plus the greatest gift of all i GET to stay clean again today. okay all of this Mary Poppins stuff is wonderful, fluffy light and oh so delicious, but what is this reading really trying to say? what came to my mind this morning was a reaction to something i was told way back when and continues to be impressed upon me in various ways, to wit, that MY RECOVERY NEEDS TO COME FIRST. sounds a bit selfish and for someone who has spent his life putting himself in the front of the line when it came to life the universe and everything, this might sound like the perfect world, i GET TO COME FIRST. well not quite, the selfish me that is part of being human and has been distorted through the process of active addiction, is tempered by the admonition that it is my recovery that comes first, then me, then the rest of the world.
when i place my recovery first, then i am stuck applying the spiritual principles that i have been taught. living by those principles makes me look like some altruistic super person, when in fact my motives are based on securing my own best interest. that is. that is, guaranteeing the miracle of choice for myself for one more day. there is no other way to spin it, i act out of concern for my life and my recovery, and helping others by sharing what i have been given is just a byproduct of doing my best to stay clean today. i know that last statement might be upsetting to some, and to those who find it disturbing, i suggest that you find someone else to share your concerns with, as i no longer live in candyland.
one of my defensive behaviors when in active addiction, was my ability to see through the bullsh!t and tell others the brutal, unvarnished truth about themselves, while living in the comfortable cocoon of denial. for much oif my recovery, that ability to see and say has been suppressed because what would the newcomer think… recently i have come to the conclusion, as is evident in what i have been writing, that it does not matter what they may think. i can sugarcoat and varnish the truth to hide the often ugly implications, and let them find out for themselves further down the line, or i can say those disturbing realizations and give them a seed of what they may need tomorrow, to stay clean. for me, one who played loosely with the truth and wielded it as a weapon, there can only be a single path, that of calling a spade a spade as it were. i do my best to live by and apply spiritual principles, because i have FAITH, that doing so will allow me to stay clean today, and yes allow me the opportunity to choose to stay clean tomorrow. and in the long run and even in the short run, that is what this recovery gig is all about for me, treating my addiction.
it is a great day to be clean, and yes i GET to give away what i have been so freely given and today i can do so with no expectations that those who are receiving what i am giving will do anything at all with those gifts. i can give without strings, and as wonderfully yippy-skippy as that may sound, that too, is a byproduct of doing whatever it takes to stay clean today. off to my next task for today, lets see how well i CAN apply these principles in all of my affairs. oh by the way… if something says eat at your own risk and you decide to eat it anyhow, YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE CONSEQUENCES, so get over your bad self.

∞ DT ∞