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still and enjoy the life this recovery program has provided for me. sound like an interesting plan, except for this one fatal flaw,: when i stop doing what i have been taught to do i start to spin back into the darkness from which i emerged. part of living this life, is truly being of service, regardless of my motives, which of course is a topic for yet another day.
the reading speaks of carrying my service efforts outside of the fellowship and this in certainly in line with the step i am sitting at the end of. even though i am looking for the “focus” of my next set of steps, i have decided to put myself on the edge of the TWELFTH STEP, in service to me.. yes semantically being between STEPS TWELVE and ONE, is not that much different than saying oi am finishing my TWELFTH STEP, but it helps me refocus on what is important, which is not STEP ZERO, as i am quite certain that i am an addict, and NEED a program of recovery to rise above the darkness of my life in active addiction. unless i am of service to myself, ii feel that it is quite impossible to be of service to others, even if that service is a strong suggestion to shut their pie-hole long enough to allow what is happening around them to get in.
ah, but i digress and as i showered away the detritus of the past twenty-four hours, i was struck with the notion that i was stuck in the past, what is past, is just that past and cannot be changed, unless i learn how to time-travel, which appealing as that may be, is probably not going to happen any time soon. being of service to myself, really needs to come first. serving others without that i place, i soon become a martyr and a doormat. i have been there before and what that leads to, in my case anyhow, is repressed anger, resentment and revenge. which of course leads to all sorts of repercussions that i am not willing to face today. the problem, at least in my head, is how do i find that balance between serving myself so i can be of service and just being a selfish, self-centered, over-entitled whiny baby? my spiritual pendulum swings between those extremes and rarely seems to come to rest in between. one might say, that if i took an average of the angular momentum of that spiritual pendulum, i would be doing better than i want to admit, as the extremes seem to cancel each other out. in a very theoretical sense that would be true, in a real sense not so much. it is not that different than telling the officer who clocks me going 80 in a 55 MPH zone, that over 80% of the time i am driving, i am not speeding. that public servant really does not care if i am a perfect driver “most of the time,” what they see is my transgressions in the here and now, that need to be addressed. just as some of my peers want to claim their previous “recovery” experience, after coming back from a relapse, the honest truth is that they are starting all over again, and need to forget what they “think” learned in their last stint in recovery, after all, if it was working so well, why did they use?
the same is true of myself. staying clean, working steps, calling an addict each and every day, going to meetings and maintaining a connection between myself and the POWER that fuels my recovery allows me to be of service to my fellowship, my society, my friends, my family and my peers in recovery. stating in plain language and in real-time what i NEED and WANT and yes of course there is a difference, allows me to serve myself, serve others and live the principles of recovery in my life.the time, however, has come to get moving on down the road. today i get to be a part of the recovery lives of my peers and for this addict, that is certainly a good thing.

∞ DT ∞