Some memes

in my personal journey of discovery to uncover my spiritual path, i knew that it might be a lifelong project. i am grateful that it only took a decade and a half to arrive on that path and begin the walk to a deeper and more personal connection with the spiritual side of recovery. whenever i stumble upon this topic, i instantly feel a sense of gratitude that no one in the fellowship tried to cram any sort of HIGHER POWER down my throat. in fact, they even said that if i did not find one, that was okay as well. of course, me being who i was, i had to have a spiritual path that looked like the ones my peers had and did my best to hone all those details into a perfect image that looked exactly like the ones they said they had. part of my problem in the earliest days of my clean time, was that i was cross-fellowshipping and in that other fellowship i heard the notion that my HIGHER POWER could even be a light bulb or a doorknob. i know that they were trying to be helpful and lower the bar for folks like me, but these days i find that sort of talk to be less helpful and more confusing than just saying seek a path that fits oneself.
arriving at the doorstep of the POWER that fuels my recovery was one of the greatest achievements i have found on my spiritual path. fifteen years of wandering the trackless waste of looking for something that could not be for me. it was quite a pile of shit to dump beside the road: the FEAR of being different or even worse suffering the fires of eternal damnation, kept me just sick enough to deny what i felt was my path and where i really wanted to go. i may not have taken that eternal damnation bit as literal, but the echoes of those sermons from my childhood screeched at me. the dogma of my youth may not have been part of my conscious consideration, but it was certainly roiling my surface serenity from the depths of my darkest self.
today, when i consider that the here and now s far more important than the what may be when i shuffle off this mortal coil, i am grateful that i exorcised the demons of organized religion and the dogma that infected my well-being with threats that may never come to pass. what i have come to see, that walking a spiritual path is more than bending a knee and prostrating myself before some omnipotent and all-powerful supreme being. is is all about living the best life i can live, within the confines of doing as little damage to the world around me and making the space a bit better in my passing. walking in the sunlight of the spirit, means seeking to do the next right thing and acting on that knowledge in the here and now. i can critique and contrast how my path is different from others in the world around me, to but what end? in the short an long run, i now know where my path lies, and hopefully they are as comfortable on their paths, as i am on mine. just for today i will revel in the serenity and kindness i have uncovered from within me.

∞ DT ∞