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i had an interesting discussion with the love of my life about members of our local fellowship who have significant financial resources. two in particular came to mind, and as we spoke about how they did or did not display their wealth, i was struck by the notion of which one would i be more like, or at least wish to emulate. as interesting as that discussion may seem, this is not the place to cast aspersions on anyone's character nor to compare and contrast. what i went to my 10TH STEP with was how would i behave if i had resources on par with those we discussed. would i need to purchase toys and things beyond my needs, or would i live quietly, comfortable in what i had and without having to show the world what i had accumulated.
the thoughts of material abundance led me to considering the spiritual abundance i have in my life and the reading this morning got me thinking about how i display that abundance and offer up to others the spiritual wealth that i have accumulated across the course of my recovery journey. am i just a poser, saying he politically correct thing and acting spiritual when i am in front of my peers, or am i genuinely concerned for others and willing to give away all my spiritual gifts without any sort of conditions. i would like to think that i practice the latter more than the former, but the nice thing is that i have a program of active recovery which allows me the opportunity to check how well i may or may not be doing those polar opposites. which brings up a sort of random thought about an observation i heard in my book club the other night. in the story The Man in the High Castle, there is a “neutral zone” of sorts between the Japanese and Nazi empires. we wondered why the author chose to add that detail, as it did not seem to a reflection of what expansionist powers would choose to do. as i see that the story was about the yin and yang of the human condition, i see this morning that it might be a literary construct that emulates the TAO.just as yin and yang never intersect there is certainly a border between them, the neutral zone, could quite possibly be that place where there is both yin and yang. that place where one goes to find balance between the yin and yang and where either can be present.
that is the same sort of balance i try to strike between the part of me that is an addict and the part of me that is in recovery. it is certainly reflected in how well i balance my desire for more and more material gains versus spiritual gains. not that material and spiritual wealth are mutually exclusive as evidenced by my discussion last night with my life partner, but in how i wear that wealth.
coming back to the topic of giving it away, i see that i could give away all my material things and still not be spiritually replenished or refreshed. BUT, if i give away all my spiritual wealth, without any expectations of return, i can and will be spiritually replenished through no effort of my own. the book ended ambivalently, as if the author just gave up, but as i put it into the context of TAO and reality, i see life is just like that. there are events and sequences of events that climax in grand crescendos, but for the most part, life just goes on, ambivalently as it were, to the next phase.
for me, recovery is like that. there are slow but steady building of themes, where i am learning what i need to learn that come to exciting and loud climaxes, only to move along again to the next phase, seemingly without any direction. it is tru, i nver know what i will get out of any day, but i do know that if i pay attention, i will have something new to give away tomorrow.

∞ DT ∞