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stereotype, or moralize with my peers in recovery. well two out of three is not bad. that would be an awesome batting average in major league baseball. it would make me god-like as a weather forecaster.in life, however, maybe it is not bad is not good enough. i can say this, though, the word “try” brings this sort of action into the realm of reality, at least for me.
part of the human condition, no matter how much one wants to rail against it, is to look at a situation and make a judgement as to how to react to that situation. no matter how Kumbaya one wants to be. no matter how many rainbows, daisies or unicorns one wants to spout from bodily orifices, the fact is, the ability to look at a situation and make a judgement, sound or unsound, is a survival instinct of the human race as a whole and not necessarily a bad thing at all. so do i, as one of my peers is apt to say, disagree with the literature that this quote was pulled from or the reading in general? not by a long-shot! what i take away from this and the examples that are presented is that regardless of what i may judge something in this instant to be, that judgement needs to be subject to revision, at any time, even ten milliseconds after the original judgement was formed, as more information arrives. as to the stereotyping and moralizing about others, for me, that needs to be totally tossed out, as that sort of behavior will not serve me well in any sense of the future.
moving forward, last night as i was sitting in my TENTH STEP, an interesting notion occurred to me, why am i working so hard to suppress the stories i am telling myself, instead of embracing them and seeing what it is i am trying to deflect from, especially in that little exercise in self-assessment of my actions over the day. that notion, persisted this morning and i allowed myself some freedom to at least catalog the stories as the rose from the quiet space in my head, to be looked at through the course of my day. those stories, at least lately, have been about my peers and the judgements i have formed as a result of the their actions and behaviors. a few of those have been splashed across the characters of this page, ripped from the headlines of my daily life, as it were. a few more i have been resistant to writing about because i had yet to figure out what i am feeling, and this whole new ELEVENTH STEP of feeling the will of the POWER that fuels my recovery, instead of knowing that will, is a new way of doing things. today however, in light of the topic at hand, i think that sharing about my anger and what is at the root cause of it, is not a bad thing and perhaps it will get that story out of my head.
anyhow, one of my peers, who purports to have some long-term recovery, lives a program of substance and behavior based recovery. instead of seeking a one stop solution for their issues, as i have, they choose to seek a different program, for each and every behavior or class of substances. i could attribute that to sheer ignorance, but their choice of profession , means that they have an option to actually look at what they are saying and see how treating themselves as a collection of behaviors and diseases does nothing to treat the whole. it is a shame that they choose to look at themselves in such a fractured manner, but that is their choice. my ire rises when they share about how wonderful it is that they have this and that 12 Step group for this problem or that as part of an meeting of our fellowship, disrespecting who we are and what we offer. they have yet to grasp that substances have very little to do with how we recover once we enter the door, and they are, in my opinion, stuck in the lobbies of all sorts of different hotels because they lack the clarity to seek a single solution. it is as if, they formed a judgement way back when, have never let it go, namely that each and every part of themselves needs to be singled out for special attention, instead of looking at the whole.
i get that notion, as it was once how i looked at things. i was however, at that time in the wrong fellowship and what and how much i used was the CORE of that program. when i came to the program of recovery i am in today, that notion was a long time leaving and part of the vision of the man i want to become is that i am WHOLE, not a collection are amalgamation of various bits and pieces, and the program i am in, allows me to see that as a possibility that actually has a high probability of becoming reality. and on that note, i think i will wrap this up by saying. for me, letting go of judgements, especially ones i make quickly is at the core of what this reading talks about today.

∞ DT ∞