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it is wonderful that it can fall by the wayside, simply by adhering to the principle of anonymity.
this is one of those readings that hits me in a binary fashion. often the readings send many different strings for me to follow during my quiet time in the morning, when i am seeking to hear… well you all know what i am trying to hear and it is not the inner dialogue that drives self-will.
anyhow, after that small digression, what i started to say, this reading belongs in a class of readings where i only hear one of two possible strings. yes i am adhering to this, it is a wonderful thing, so i preach to the choir about all that recovery, and that the principle of selflessness has given me. no, i am not practicing that idea, and i am a piece of dung because of this and why am i wasting my time writing to an audience that more than likely does not exist?
i guess i could call this my angel demon syndrome. i guess when i feel locked into one of two responses i could open my mind to expand the possibilities. i guess a lot of things, what i KNOW is that when i step out of the binary paradigm, i am very seldom at either extreme and the binary choice presented is a tool used by the part of me i call my addict, to limit the direction in which i may be able to grow today.
of course i am not purely selfless. of course i still want recognition for what i am, what i do and my place in the world around me. of course i can be anonymous and do the next right thing when no one else is looking. of course there are times i can step out act in something other than self-will, that all goes without saying, BUT for me, right here and right now i NEED to say all of that, to break out of the binary, black and white thinking that plagued my active addiction and comes back to haunt me, even after some days clean.
the part of me, that desires a return to using, uses readings such as this as a tool to beat me up, and as evidence that this whole recovery gig is not working out. the favorite piece of self-talk i hear is: if i was getting any better i would have already figured out how to live in this manner ALL THE TIME!
the irony here, it is also the addict within that creates the second choice in this binary tree. the self talk there goes something like this: you are living this so well, it is probable that you are not really one of them after all, and after all this time, you can probably use like normal people.
is more than apparent to me, that when i detect this sort of limited debate going on inside of me that i am listening to the part of me that wants to quit recovery and return to the life without feelings. honestly, being open about how i felt is tough for me. the opportunity to do so, even though it sucked, has been quite a lesson for me, and has not been without its moments of fear, uncertainty and doubt. grieving in such a public manner, was not part of who i saw myself to be. showing what i was feeling, and doing so to so many other people and allowing them to be a part of my process was something so foreign that when i think about it now, it still makes my skin crawl.
where has all of this brought me? well, i am just another human, who is doing his level best to be more than i was yesterday. chances are i will never achieve anything close to this ideal, BUT that does not mean that i should stop attempting to do so. yes Gandhi, Siddhartha and Mother Teresa, may get there and it is not a bad thing for me to emulate that Indian trio. however to compare myself to them, will be a battle that i lose each and every time, so instead of looking at how far i NEED to go, where my focus will be today is HOW FAR I HAVE COME! and man i come a long way BABY!
so it is time to go be a part of the holiday joy and preparations, and yes even though i still feel my loss, i can celebrate what i have in my life today, it is after all a GREAT DAY TO BE CLEAN.

∞ DT ∞