Blog entry for:

my illusion of control and surrendering to the what is, is certainly a good reminder of where i am today. i am currently **working** a 3rd STEP and more and more i find that what i think is real, especially when it comes to what i may be able to control, is in fact an illusion i have created to **soothe** my ego. as i prepare to spend a whole lot of time and energy driving today, there is a bit of trepidation and a feeling of maybe something has to give. off goes the message to defer one of the the tasks oi has set for myself today and in time i will know if this is the case of not. these days, i have found that trusting my intuition is better that looking good, and although i really find “looking good” to be pleasurable, i know that i have to let go of that illusion as well.
once upon a time, today would have been one full of regrets and burying those regrets in a frenzy of material gain. last night as i sat and reviewed my day, i was quite pleased about what i uncovered. although i used the dawg as an excuse to get out of the family gathering, it was not a bad thing for me to do. i went through the day, without an argument with my brother and left the family gathering with a sense of gratitude for what i still have and that nothing got torched to the ground by my unwillingness to be “right.” fulfilling what “feels” like my toughest service commitment last night, i was struck by a sense of equality and empathy for those in attendance, for the first time since i accepted that commitment. i may never have been where they are, but i certainly know what it feels like to have a desire for something different and not knowing whether or not i have the ability to see it through. i know that when i was struggling to stay clean, in order to comply with “orders from headquarters,” all i wanted was relief from the onerous conditions that were placed on my life. of course, what i uncovered many days later, it was not the external forces that i wanted relief from, on the contrary, what i wanted was relief from the overwhelming desire to use and burn the rest of my life to the ground. those external forces were real, my rebellion towards them, not so much. that was a web of lies i spun to enhance the illusion of control that i so strongly believed that i might actually possess.
the illusion that was shattered yesterday was that i am “different” from those i serve. it is true, that i have never been in their situation, but that does not mean i will never be. all of that lacks any relevance and just as i let go of my illusions about my family and my relationships to them yesterday, so i let go of being “different” and left that commitment with a sense of gratitude and that perhaps i allowed those who were present to see a bit of HOPE in learning a new way to live. so it is off to get some exercise before i lose this day to driving there and back again. perhaps things are not as bleak for me, as i want to make them and that the FAITH i feel in the program that has brought me this far, is enough to counter the dark and cynical streak that often colors my world, just for today.

∞ DT ∞