Blog entry for:

as i fully embrace my own personal range of emotions.
yeah, yeah, yeah, meditation is great. nothing to see here, move along!
and i will.
what i heard when i read this reading this morning, as i meditated, was that i CAN get some sort of emotional balance as a result of the 12 step process. meditation is part of that process, and there is a valid reason it comes near the end of the list rather than on the top, quite truthfully, had it been part of STEP 3, i would have never made it any further, as i was incapable of sitting still long enough at that point in my recovery to listen to what the members who were here were trying to tell, much less listen for the will of the POWER that fuels my recovery.
when i was using, i had achieved an emotional balance. the substances and behaviors that characterized active addiction for me, has the sum total effect of flatting out any emotional highs and lows. what i wanted and worked diligently to achieve was freedom from strong emotions, and for the mot part bi succeeded at that goal, on a daily basis, with very little time but great effort. man, what a shock to my system, when emotions started to hit me again, in my first 30 days clean. one would have thought, that i was in the inner circle of hell chatting it up with the traitors who cohabited that level. everyone, told me to hang on, that i would not die from an emotion and that aspect of my life would get better IF…
if i would live the steps and allow the process to take hold and change me. yes, i had to surrender, or i would never survive my emotions. surrender was not part of my vocabulary in those days, and that was almost as tough as not using, despite the jones i seemed to feel every single second of my bleak existence, back in the day.
so i surrendered, grudgingly, and started to take the steps, dipping my toe in, a bit at a time, and for those first 13 months lived in a limbo between the worlds of active addiction and active recovery. had i not discovered what i was, and what i need to do, in Greeley, that October weekend, i would have been long gone, as i had gone as far as i could go in that other fellowship.
today, i realize that i HAD to go through all of that, in order to get what i have got. i had to rebel, question, skirt the edges and resist, in order to get beat up enough to surrender. what i have received is a life of emotional balance, that includes twice daily meditation and looking for how, just for today, i can be a better person.
yes, as i was telling a perpetual newcomer the other night, no one has ever died from a feeling, what they die from is their reaction to their feelings, and recovery is teaching me how to allow myself to feel, and not judge if a feeling is good, bad or indifferent. it is teaching me, that i feel for a reason and all i have to do is surrender to that feeling, and it too will pass. so on that note, i do believe i will hop on down to my current gig and see what i can get done for them today. it is after all, a great day to be walking this path.

∞ DT ∞