Blog entry for:

with the world around me and eschewing to acting-out in self-will is not something i often consider, even given the fact that i am an adherent of taking a daily inventory, every day. the notion of teeter-tottering between GOD*s will and self-will, just feel a bit extreme to me. i am not sure it HAS to be one or the other and as my experience has shown me, most of what i do, feel and think, is a mixture of self-will, my true will for myself and GOD*s will. when i came to actually “be” in recovery, by own choice, i viewed the world in binary terms. the pairs went on and on, such as positive and negative; good and bad; and of course clean or using. the latter is about only one i still retain today, as i have come to believe that the black and white world i once believed i inhabited has been replaced with a infinite number of “shades of grey.”
as i sat this morning, contemplating my place in the world and how it fits with how i desire to live my life, i stumbled over the binary choice, that was the topic of today's reading. the thought of having to look at my actions over the course of my day, through the lens of either i was living in GOD's will or i was living in self-will, was a bit jarring. what popped off the stack was a review of my actions yesterday and how those actions should be “classified.” letting that desire to inventory my day yesterday be dropped into the well of quiet, when i got up and started my day, i realized that as i have come to believe, most of my actions could be so neatly dropped into one “will bucket” or another. in fact, even those acts that appeared to be selfless and without gain to me, had motives behind and benefited me, by allowing myself to feel a bit better of who i am becoming. i could continue down that path and provide all sorts of instances where something that looks like acting in accordance with GOD's will, actually has more than a little bit of the taint of self-will. it is, as one of my peers shared the other night, that service to the fellowship and others, makes me feel better about myself. my esteem gets a boost when i act in accordance with the spiritual principles i have been given. basing my self-esteem on the volume of my esteemable acts, is a dangerous path for this addict to take, as i do not always behave in an esteemable manner.
what the inventory comes down to, for me anyhow, is how much harm did i cause? what destruction did i leave in my wake? did i do my utmost best to live a life in active recovery? does that fit with the topic of today's reading? maybe it really does as the first two questions might be seen as living in self-will and its consequences and the last of that trio, living in GOD'\'s will. on that note, i think i will wrap this little exercise up and move along to cleaning up the dog yard, before the next load of “white bundles of joy,” drop from the sky, as seems to be the case in my locale lately.

∞ DT ∞