LOVE MONTH: DAY 19: “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” ― Jimi Hendrix
This is so true! I believe our biggest struggles come from ego-defenses that tell us we must WIN or we are going to be trampled.
When we are tiny little people, we develop these ideas to compensate for the world we are living in. If our world is deemed hostile by our little brains at young ages, we will feel that we must fight for our lives in all situations. That is what so many addicts are dealing with.
If we do not spend time in Steps 4-9 in dealing with and observing our beliefs about these things, we continue to walk through the world fighting everybody and everything in our path. We continue to believe that we will die if we don’t win. Hence the battle we wage to continue to live in old ideas and old ways of behaving.
Bill W. wrote in the BB that “We cease fighting everyone and everything.” He didn’t know why we did that, I don’t believe he had that information, but he knew it was a big problem in recovery. Resistance is most often about fighting off the changes we need to make to stay around the rooms.
And we all have watched the play of power we attempt to exert over our own lives and wills. Ugh! No one is winning there, but I’m damned if I’ll give up without getting the shit kicked out of me! Right? So, that battle for survival is real, but it will kill us and keep us stuck in the pain of active addiction. The drugs and alcohol have nothing to do with this. They are just a part of our escape from reality mechanism. There are A LOT of people still living like this and there are no drugs and alcohol around. That is NOT recovery, it is insanity. And painful as hell. The changes are not about drinking or drugging, they are about letting go of old ideas and ways of being.
It really isn’t that we love power, some do. I think addicts are just merely fighting to survive. It isn’t necessary. The story we have about life is something we made up when we were very, very little and it wasn’t even true then. We have to continually reexamine why we react to life the way we do. This is the beauty of 12-step recovery. We have these tools, but most folks don’t know how to use them.
This is about love. We MUST love those little people inside us who are running the show and grow them up and examine their ideas of what the world is all about and reframe, reframe, reframe those ideas. It is not real! We made it up! And, like so much of what we make up when we are tiny folks, it must have the light of a higher reality shone on it so we can let go of that and work with a higher reality. That is steps 4-9. And they work! And we work toward wholeness and happiness and freedom.
And then there is the love that we get to have for those tiny little folks who steal our hearts. Because they have been fighting for a long time to protect themselves and us. It is our job to grow the hell up and do life as it is, not as the way we want it. That losing battle is really a wonderful, beautiful, loving place to be when we drop the fear and just DO IT!
And the world will know peace, as it pertains to the world WE inhabit. My world is so peaceful because I don’t have those battles any longer. On the days I feel that tiny person telling me she is scared, I can hold her in my heart and take care of her…as an adult, with the tools you have shown me. I love her and she is ME! And we are peaceful and feel loved in ways that I never could have imagined! YAY!!!
Dolphin Hug 