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quiet voice of self-honesty can be heard from time to time when i still my mind and listen with my heart.
yesterday, i was whining about how terrible my 11TH STEP practice was, too short and not still enough, to be exact. this morning it was neither and ironically, i have the same level of serenity and certainty about my life that i had yesterday. that seems indicative that it just may be the practice, in and of itself being important, nut the qualitative judgements i place on the practice. in other words, i have no clue what the fVck is good for me. what i did hear this morning had nothing to do with how and when i “sit,” but with the topic at hand, learning how to be honest with myself.
it is quite true, that when i came to recovery and even for quite a bit of time afterwards, i was a tangled weave of rationalizations, justification and flat out lies. even though i stopped lying to others, i still carried on levels of self-deception that are just now being revealed and removed. i twisted humility into a weapon of person mass-destruction, berating myself for every failing, imagined or otherwise and went of the defense at the drop of the proverbial hat. i can certainly be of two minds, most of the time, 1) i am doing better than i think and 2) i am still just a piece of shite and a fraud, waiting to be revealed in all my glory to the world around me. when i “sit,” even if it is for 5 minutes, that battle is suspended and i get to “hear” a truth or two about me.
okay, humility requires that i temper what i said above, my battle between what might be seen as “good and evil” that wages internally, is neither as constant nor intense as it was, once upon a time. the echoes of those years of conflagration still resound within, but the skirmishes i have with my two minds, are fewer and much less intense, as i am coming to accept that both parts exist and can be merged into a cohesive whole, if i allow it to happen. no longer need to abase myself as hopelessly lost and no longer to i need to deny what it is i find disturbing within me. recovery, at least so far, had provide me a path to living in the world exactly as i happen to be today. which happens to be running a bit behind schedule and i have a hateful meeting to finish preparing for, in which i have to be cool, calm and collected when i say garbage in -- garbage out 😈, which is the last thing those guys want to hear. they expect me to fall on my sword, beat my chest and ask for forgiveness, and what they are going to get is something far different, me standing up assertively and firmly, without pointing a finger, and offering a solution.

∞ DT ∞