Blog entry for:

in my painful past, is one of the **gifts** my ongoing active recovery process is providing. i use the term **gift,** with a bit of trepidation, as remorse certainly is a double-edged sword in recovery. when i am diligent about keeping up with what i do wrong on a daily basis, especially the corrective part of the TENTH STEP, i may feel guilty and remorseful in the here and now, but i have the ability and desire to making it right, in the here and now. the reading , of course was speaking to another sense of my past, that damage i did in active addiction as since i got clean and became a member of the fellowship that has given me this new manner of living. i have not always been the most diligent in working STEP 10, and even when i am, the rationalizations, justification and denial, at time block out any sense of needing to correct a wrong i have done. before i continue down that less than SUPREME RECOVERY track, i need to shout-out to one of my recovery brothers:

Ronald B,
my friend and sponsee brother,
a decade of doing this gig, JUST FOR TODAY!
Thank you for being a part of my journey.

moving along ↝ remorse, for has become one of the safety valves for living in the real world. when i feel it, i get the opportunity to deal with it, in the here and now. i accept that i am powerless over feelings and i also accept that the noise of denial can and often drowns out what i need to be seeing. i am “blessed” with more than a touch of OCD, and as a result, often get stuck at reexamining an event or a behavior, over and over and over and over again, night after night, especially when something feels just a little bit off. what is more than likely happening is my values are tweaking my awareness that there is something i missed. part of this last journey through the steps, has been all about paying attention to what i am feeling and learning to weigh that over what i am thinking. the result of that paradigm switch has been more than a bit chaotic. as i get used to it, however, more and more i begin to see the patterns in what i am feeling and what NEEDS to be done in the here and now. if i was a GOD kind of guy, i would say it was the voice of GOD. i am not a GOD guy, although STEP ELEVEN provides me the out, it is just me listening for and accepting the will of the POWER that fuels my recovery, whatever that POWER may be. allowing myself to sense what i am feeling, rather than interpreting what i am thinking, is a step in a direction i never believed i would be taking. actually reaching out to others because i feel i need to, instead of thinking i should, is part of this new equation and it is looking less and less like calculus and more and more like simple algebra. the variables are becoming constants and the solutions are becoming more evident, especially as i pay more attention to what is going on in my life.
anyhow, i need to pop into work for just a minute and see what did or did not happen overnight, so i will say that just for right now, i have nmo remorse over what i have done or left undone, lately.

∞ DT ∞