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takes many different forms. while that is certainly true for myself and my peers as individuals, in my experience, as a result of each of the set of steps i have worked, each spiritual awakening was so profoundly different than the ones that preceded it, that it is hard to believe i am the same person.
okay, a program of recovery is all about “growing” into something more. that “growth” is pain fully slow and for someone like me, who DESIRES immediate gratification, it seems as if nothing is ever happening. here is where the metaphor about water and rocks comes in, for the most part, when one sees water dripping on a rock, it appears to roll off without any affect, HOWEVER keep that drop, dripping constantly, for days on days, into years, and decades and one will see where the water has created a depression in the rock. no matter how hard the rock, that drop of water, given enough time will eventually bore right through it to the other side and expand that time frame and intro centuries and millennia, and the rock may be totally gone, dissolved away by the universal solvent. sure, there are substances that can affect that change much faster, but my point is like that rock, this hard-headed, close-minded addict, has been at this recovery gig for long enough,that the effects are becoming obvious, even to me.
once upon a time, i was only concerned about how i would get through each day without using. FEAR of relapse and letting my guard down was the overarching theme of my recovery process. even though it had been many moons since the desire to use had been lifted, that FEAR was an omnipresent part of my life. do not get me wrong, not using, just for today, is still a concern to me. in fact getting the power to stay clean today, is about all i ever pray for, as the spiritual awakening of my last set of steps has moved me from being ambivalent about my spiritual path, to becoming firmly entrenched on a path that i had been noodling around with, across the course of my recovery. FEAR kept me locked in a twenty year battle with what i felt and what i thought i needed to do. as exhausting as that battle may have been, it was where i needed to go, and when i finally came to believe that i could be taken care of, if i allowed it to happen, i was given the direction i had been seeking for quite some time. the “hole” in this rock is where FEAR used to reside.
if i look at how i respond to the world today, and how i responded to the world in the past, i am amazed by the contrast. not very little setback is a personal affront to me. i still may see myself as the center of the universe, BUT, that universe does not revolve around me any longer. yes i can still be petty and vindictive, but it does not have to be the ONLY was for me to act. yes i may have a passion for my fellowship and how it is applied in real-time, but i no longer need to use the spiritual principles as a “big stick” to batter my peers into the shape i think they need to be. i am, however, far from cured. the DESIRE to act out of FEAR, still is part of who i am. the DESIRE to be “different” from my peers and to find fault in each and every one of them, has yet to be removed. my DESIRE to appear better than i am, is still prominent in my choice of behaviors. what has changed is i take responsibility for acting in any of those manners today, as it is me who is responsible for my recovery and not my peers.
where i thought was going and where i ended up, is certainly interesting in both a micro and macro scale. on the micro scale, i thought this was going to be all about gratitude for the spiritual gifts and changes that have manifest in my life. on the macro scale, i never believed i would be around ANY recovery long enough to have any sort of “real” change occur in who i was and how i saw thew world. this morning, well this morning i can be okay with where i am, and enjoy the ride, instead of trying to figure out where i may end up going, as i have been mostly wrong about that in the past.

∞ DT ∞