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true to myself. ah yes, the oft repeated and much abused corruption of a line from the tragedy of a prince in Denmark. whether or not Polonius was speaking ironically, as in “do what ever you desire, as it is all about you;“ or giving sage advice to his son, as in “live up to your highest ideals;” the phrase: “to thine own self be true,” is part and parcel of the recovery paradigm i find myself within these days. for me, looking at this in the light of my recovery, is a very interesting exercise.
when i got to the rooms, i hardly knew who or even what i was. i fought the label “addict,” and its connotations for the longest time. in this sense i could not be true to anything but fulfilling my immediate desires and whatever the cost to myself, my peers, my family or society in general. hedonism in its purest form. living Just for today, meant living in the moment and taking whatever i could get and that is what id to the max. i lived through social interactions, material things, pretending to be what i was not and generally a big painful pimple on the butt of society and the fellowships i was hopping between. i did not want to be here and did whatever i could to prove that i did not want to be here. i was being true to myself, in a sick and twisted way and every time i heard that phrase i had to laugh because i believed the idiots did not see what it might really be saying. one might say i was a real piece of work, and one would not be far off the mark.
when i saw that i needed to change m,y course of action, my commitment to service kicked in. not because i WANTED to be of service, but because it would make me look better in the eyes of my peers. as i served the fellowship that has become my home, and worked the steps, i have come to see, that although i came at it sideways, i was always working on freeing myself from the limitations i placed upon myself, especially when i came to being honest with myself and how my motives came into play. as i grew up and came to believe that i really was an addict and more importantly, actually start taking what “those idiots” were suggesting, to heart, being true to myself and how i limited my ability to do so, finally began to take shape out of the amorphous blob of ideas that filled my head,i began to develop the desire to be something more than a sneering cynic, i began to actually want what i saw that others had, i began to free myself from what i thought i would always be and i started to live a program of recovery.
i could go through the whole progression, but i will fast forward to the start of this round of steps, where i thought i knew a bit about myself and i did and do. what i did not see, was that i was still limiting myself through a belief structure that was resistant to change. i had come to believe i could keep tacking stuff on, here and there, willy-nilly and still progress in my recovery. this set of steps, required me to destroy my belief structure, especially about who i think i am, and replace it with a much more flexible belief system and a new spiritual path. the constructive destruction and rebuilding into something entirely different, was not a path that i really wanted to be on. it was fraught with FEAR and PERIL, but in the long run, as i see myself today, i see the FEAR was one of those self-imposed limitations, that i need to transcend beyond. what does being true to myself mean today? well for me, it means living a 100% program, practicing integrity everywhere. showing my true self, as well as i can, to everyone. letting go of my expectations of others and of myself., and listening for the cues that lead me to the queue of spiritual abundance that the POWER that fuels my recovery provides. more than anything else, it means that today, i look for what i can become, instead of hiding what i think i already am, after all, that is one of the lies i tell myself and among the limitations i mplace upon myself and my spiritual growth. time to move along and pay attention to work.

∞ DT ∞