Blog entry for:

using this wisdom to guide the decisions i will make today.
so just like i had to use every dose of every substance that i used in order to accept my seat in the fellowship, so i had to do all that i did, good bad and indifferent, in order to become prepared to become more than i have ever been. although this reading seems to be about doing a daily inventory and the little synopsis at the top points in that direction, what i find in this reading is a path to help me find a deeper acceptance of myself, exactly as i am today. there was once a day, and i know it seems hard to believe, that i was so self-centered and selfish that i had no remorse, guilt or shame over anything i did. IF i started to feel uncomfortable with the manner in which i was behaving at any moment, i knew how to quickly dismiss that feeling with a BIG FAT JUICY...
... lie to myself, then that being taken care of i could enjoy getting high.
of course dealing with the unpleasant and untimely expression of inner moral outrage did not become any easier once i stopped using. i still was the same selfish self-centered person i was when i was using and still had all of those wonderfully warped character traits that i fondly refer top as my character defects, active in my life. and the worst thing in those early days was i had nothing to chase my feats of self-deception down with. yes i could still rationalize and justify with the best of them, but i lacked the final ingredient in the suppression of my conscience -- a dose to forget!
so here i am, a bit further down the road, much older emotionally and here comes a reading about using the tenth step as a means to find self-acceptance. all of a sudden my eyes feel like they have been pried open and i have been dunked in very cold water to wake up. of course the tenth step is a path to self-acceptance, if i am honest as i approach this inventory and if i am diligent in doing it on a regular basis, i can have clues about what is going on inside of me, long before they are visible to the outside world. i can also check the ledger of my behaviors over the course of the day and see that i am neither a saint nor a demon, just a human being whose flaws and whose assets were manifest over the course of my day. i accept my shortcomings as being part of the human condition, understand that the part of me i call my disease has taken those human frailties to new depths and use the spiritual principles to discover a new manner of living, without becoming my judge, jury and executioner. those same principles allow me to balance the not so stellar with the stellar interactions with the world within and without me and i get a more honest picture of who and what i am. and who is that today? just another addict doing his best to stay clean, and live this spiritual program for the next twenty-four hours. and that my friends is more than enough!

∞ DT ∞