Blog entry for:

just a bad habit, much more. active addiction fed my sense of worthlessness and in the end, left me unprepared to deal with life on any terms. i often write about the path my spiritual life has taken, no more needs to be really said today, save that, perhaps prayer will remain a part of that path after all. i have discovered great comfort in prayer and surrendering my will and my life into the care of the POWER that fuels my recovery, even though i have no idea what that POWER may or may not be. meditation, on the other hand,m is the heart and soul of my spiritual path. as i have been learning how to “sit,” i have been finding a greater flexibility at dealing with what life sends down the path. i also find i no longer have to deal with “mysterious ways,” or “predestination.”
active addiction took a sh!tload of coping and living skills from me. better put, addiction warped many of my life-skills into things they were not. i never had to “cope” with anything because i took the ones that made me larger and not the ones that Mommy gave me. i was not chasing rabbits, but i certainly saw my fair share of them. even for the first several years of my recovery, i was clueless about what living in the moment really meant. it was only when my sponse challenged me to start paying attention and being present, that i made a conscious choice to do so. it was quite a shock, a rude awakening, if you will, and something i took great umbrage over, when i heard my sponsor ask me to learn to be present for my life. even though i left his place with a sense of self-righteous indignity, i knew he had unlocked something in me and that from that moment, my recovery and my life would take on a different meaning. of course it took several more years before that seed finally sprouted into something recognizable, as i am loath to change. what i once found insulting, was the shock my system needed to get unstuck from where i was.
i would like to say that growing a new spiritual path was painless, for me it was not. i would like to say that once i got “unstuck” life became grand, it did not. what happened was i had to look at who i thought i was and once i saw that what i believed about myself did not match up with reality, i had to allow the active recovery process to morph me into the person i had always wanted to be. there are still times that i cringe when i hear the term “sober,” being thrown around in meetings. there are times i want to duck out, when one of my peers is going on and on about how great GOD is. i know that is all on me, and when i look at the source of my discomfort it comes down to a certain disdain for who i once saw myself as, and how i used to do my best to be that round peg in a square hole. today i am, a peg that is the same shape as all of my peers, but a bit scratched up and beat up from my journey to arrive where i am. i may nor know exactly where this journey lead, but i know not one soul gets out of it alive. with taht in mind, i think i will go take a quick journey with the dawg around the neighborhood and see if i can find a bit more balance and acceptance of where i am, just for today.

∞ DT ∞