ACCEPTANCE MONTH: DAY 28: “Non-judgment quiets the internal dialogue, and this opens once again the doorway to creativity.” ― Deepak Chopra
Our attempts to judge come from our need to control things. If we label life good or bad, right or wrong, hard and easy, etc., we will have placed life in cubbyholes that we can control and manage. Ego is the force that drives our need for control.
Isn’t it wonderful, then, that we are out of control, that our lives have become unmanageable? And it does not say our “drinking” or “using” had become unmanageable, but that our lives are unmanageable. The most important idea, and the reason we must jump through this hoop before all the others, is the idea that we cannot control, manage, label, or judge our lives or ourselves; and from that place anything in the world around us!
That is crazy! Most of us agree on some definitive use of those judgments I mentioned above. It doesn’t matter. Personal beliefs aside, there is no such thing! No good, no bad, no right, no wrong, no hard or easy; none of these terms apply to life.
Nothing here is painful or sad or happy or hard or fun. That is our interpretation of life and all its components. We cannot control life, we never could! The most broken of people walk through the world using ego defenses that are outdated and inappropriate. We all have them, that is why we need these steps at deeper and deeper levels as we stay around this thing and learn about who we are and what we believe in the world.
I have had more spiritual growth in the last year than I could ever have imagined! And that is solely because I laid the ground work for the first 30 years. We never let up on this spiritual development. I have opened the door to creativity in ways that astonish me and everyone who knows me. The things that I get to create and live with are amazing! But we must do this exploration of old ideas and ways of believing things in this world.
At least I must. And I would not change it for the world. When I keep quiet and stop the crazy drama going on only in my head, I am at peace. Then I can open myself to the world, without the judgment monkeys telling me I am too old or too young, too thin or too fat, too broke or too rich, too busy or too bored…blah blah blah.
The Universe operates on its own timetable, at its own pace, all is occurring in its own way at the perfect time. My thinking that there is anything wrong (or right!) with that is completely in my head. I made it up. We all do, for our own selfish and self-centered purposes.
Wrapping my head around these concepts was challenging, when I first got here and applied them to my drug and alcohol abuse. Then I worked through that resistance and got it that there might be more to it than just ME. Oh, really???!!!
And I began to see that these are Universal truths, Universal solutions to life and a great way to LIVE, long away from the substances and other patterns of addiction. (Don’t even get me started on sex or shoes, and I do NOT mean sex with shoes!)
And for the time from that revelation to this, I work every day to understand the causes and conditions of my battles with LIFE. Drugs and alcohol kept me from having to deal with life at all. Now I must, and it seldom operates according to my idea of how it should unfold.
So, I dig in and find the resistance and work through the resistance; and damned if it ain’t right back to Step 1, time after time. Okay, here we go again!
Dolphin Hug 