ACCEPTANCE MONTH: DAY 22: “You couldn’t relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole–like the world, or the person you loved.” ― Stewart O’Nan
The greatest gifts of my life have been heart-breaking or appeared to be terrible events in some light of my judgment. Only in seeing the path from that time to this do they gain beauty and do I begin to grasp even a shred of the story (real story, not ego story) of my life.
This is what recovery is. We either get it, or we don’t. Abstinence from drugs and alcohol is not recovery. I have seen the difference and am so grateful to know which one I have.
Until we can see how all the beautiful pieces of our lives fit together, we are not in the proper perspective to embrace recovery. And we cannot be until that happens. This requires many years of work to get through the old ideas and the stories ego tells about our lives.
It is miraculous to find the thread and pull it and find out we are UNTYING the knot that shows us the beauty of it all. That, my friends, is what a spiritual experience is all about. We can see the entire vista, not just our nose.
Perspective changes, we change, our being changes. That feeling of gloom and doom is lifted and we lose the victim stance we may have come into recovery with. Most addicts I know are stuck in being victims and angry as hell.
My dearly departed sponsor, Allene, used to say: “Just pull your head out of your ass and look at things with both eyes.” True dat. There are no “awful” parts of life, only things that teach. If we could get what we need any other way, it would not be necessary to do any of this.
Life is not here for our pleasure or punishment. We are here to walk the way we came here to walk, to learn what we need to learn, and the Universe has designed a life so perfect for us that it makes me cry to see its perfection and beauty.
When I pull my head out of my ass and do the work required to shift my perspective. Clancy I. says this is the disease of perspective. He is right. We get terribly sick when we sit in our shit and feel sorry for what is going on in our lives. Get over it! Get on with the living and get over yourself!
I am eternally grateful that I got abstinence to the degree I could do recovery. But that was in the first few weeks. After that, I have watched those who do this deal and those who don’t.
I honestly know only a handful of those who really work it, and their happiness shows up. They are great teachers, I am grateful for their place in my life and in my recovery.
Dolphin Hug 