Blog entry for:

if i were to base this little exercise solely on what i read this morning, it would be a very short post, as i wholeheartedly agree. move along this is not the topic you seek.
what i heard this morning was the advice that one of my peers gave me after sharing at the meeting yesterday. he spoke of prayer as being in contact with oneself, as part of the means to figure out my relationship with my spiritual path. what i failed to make clear, in my share and when speaking with him after the meeting, was that prayer in and of itself, which does not “fit” in my spiritual path, was not the issue. the issue here is carrying practices forward without critically making a choice, whether they continue to fir or not. secondarily my FEAR of letting go of what is really just superstition for me and not actually furthering my spiritual growth. because of my nature, to repeat what works for longer than necessary, just because it once worked, i have found myself with far too many sponsees and they have become for me, a measure of my spiritual success. where once upon a time, it was service commitments that i based my value on, now it is working with others, and in the long run, neither is truly a measure of spiritual growth and there is nothing spiritual about setting up spiritual social strata. the metaphor i used in my share yesterday was that my spiritual path at the end of the last set of steps was similar to opening a can corned beef hash and dumping it out into a bowl. most of the contents end up in the bowl, but there are still bits of fat and meat clinging to the edges of the now mostly empty can.
that image fits on so many levels, as my spiritual path was a mish-mash of disparate parts that somehow worked together well. the bits that were left in the can, are the parts that i am clinging to for one reason or another. having been raised in a very Western monotheistic spiritual tradition, prayer was certainly part of what of what i am having trouble letting go of, hence the advice i received from one of my peers. what i failed to say, probably because the notion was still so new and fresh, is that although prayer is not part of the spiritual tradition i have embraced, i have difficulty letting go of it, or rather making the choice to evaluate whether or not it is a spiritual choice i desire. it is not a matter of semantics or ruthlessly following a tradition, it is a FEAR of examining that practice and seeing whether or not it is something i need or even want to continue. it is a FEAR of thinking for myself and critically evaluation what works and what does not. it is a FEAR of empowering the change that has already been manifest within my life and my recovery. for me, letting go and changing is among one of the most frightening tasks i can undertaken and when it come to my spiritual path, it is doubly so. it was easy to get off my knees, way back when, as i never believed that was necessary to approach the POWER that fuels my recovery in that particular physical form and i was praying on my knees, because that was what everyone else was doing. it was spooky to move from an overarching monotheistic way at looking at my spiritual side, but i had come to understand something entirely different and in the end, at least up until this point io am grateful that i let go mostly of that notion, although that too, is still one of those clinging bits. neither of those changes killed me, and the irrational FEAR i feel facing making conscious choice, rather than doing what i have always done, is of course what is hindering my spiritual growth.
i am in the process of dismantling all of that stuff i do automatically and learning to be present for my spiritual path, instead. perhaps, after a few steps i will see that prayer as well as meditation are my conscious means to foster my spiritual growth and i will need a semantic fix to bring it into my spiritual path. perhaps not. i will not, however, know unless i man up, face my FEAR and start working on my 1ST Step.

∞ DT ∞