FREEDOM MONTH: DAY 25: “Those who are free of resentful thoughts surely find peace.” – Buddha
When I work through steps 4-9, I get to become free of resentments, free of the burdens of my old ideas and behaviors, and set new intentions for healing my life and my relationships.
And I heal, despite how much I may see my slips and errors, I know that I am healing, because I am no longer able to walk with the same levels of ignorance about who I am and what I am up to. I don’t need to behave perfectly to feel good about my life, but I do need to be more mindful in my practice of the spiritual principles. So far, this has proven itself to be the case.
Peace is a wonderful feeling. It is the thing that I got for a teeny nanosecond as drugs and alcohol hit the mark in my brain (I picture a brain with a target painted right over the pleasure center!) While I do not know if the pleasure center of my brain is the spot where this peace finds its home or not, I have a great deal of peace today.
I have no boogey men to keep me awake at night, ruminating for hours on the things I could have said or should have said; no continuous loop of events running ad nauseam over and over, repeating things that were done to me or by me. For me, a good nights’ sleep completely indicates peaceful living.
For most of my life, I have been very hyper and anxious about life. There was good reason at the onset, but then I kept repeating things that created more of that mindset and lifestyle. Drugs and alcohol were the solution! And they worked…and then they didn’t.
The first thing that I found when I began this recovery journey was that I could not sit still and was very hyper. This has calmed down to such a great degree that I cannot believe I am the same person! Now, mind you, it will never be that I just fall asleep spontaneously, but I can sit with myself and others for long periods of time without activity and without talking and meditate. That took quite a while! And I don’t feel tortured like I did at first; but ready for the quiet and stillness.
This is wonderful progress! I will say it took much longer than I care to admit, but it has happened and I seldom have the same anxiety and hyper-vigilance I once did. We all get to the place of peace in varying times. I am so happy to be there today.
For other addicts, depression is the response their brain has to life. Whether it is the result of their addiction or co-occurring with their addiction is not the question. The question is to comfortably learn to live with a mindset that is not optimal. To learn to accommodate the mind and live happily with what IS instead of the imagination’s world of what we think.
I love peace. I craved it all my life. Today it is here…I did not know the long and torturous road it would take to arrive at this place, but I am extremely happy and grateful to claim it as a lifestyle. What surprises me quite often is that others feel it too. How cool is that?
Dolphin Hug 