HOPE MONTH: DAY 25: “Nothing happens to any man that he is not formed by nature to bear.” –Marcus Aurelius Antoninus
This quote tells me that we have survived all that we have survived because it was all a part of the path we came here to walk.
If I believe that my parents, who were raging alkies, were not there to protect me or to nurture me well, it is a story I have learned to talk about. It might be true, but who says that is what our relationship was all about anyway?
I have long since recognized that it was not their job to meet my needs. That has never been the job of any human on this planet. Which is important, because who knows what my needs were anyway? I have an idea as a daughter, a different idea as a therapist, and an even quite different idea as a spiritual woman.
Practicing spiritual principles means I must learn to walk without knowledge. I need to be open to new ways of seeing myself and my path so I can clean up the misconceptions I hold about what it all means and what it all is and what it is all about today.
When I reframe my life through this lens, I get to see that my strength was forged on the fires of what I thought was hell. And it was, and they were. So, there is nothing for me to dread about my living or dying process, because I can expand my awareness to embrace that hell is not a place I may go if I don’t follow the rules; it is all about the place I have been when I could not learn to accept that hell is a way of seeing life.
Okay. I get that. I remember reading Chuck C.’s comparison to being in his favorite chair in the best place to sit in his home. He talked about sitting in the same place that was hell for an interval of his drinking life; and that it became heaven in his spiritual/recovery life. The same chair, in the same house, looking out the same window. Heaven and hell live inside our minds. Ego creates one and our spirit creates the other.
I spent a great number of years believing I was going to hell, because I was taught that I was born in sin and would live in sin and die in sin. My little attitude at that point in time thought, wtf? Why bother with all this catechism crap and going to church and following the rules? No point I can see.
Now, if you are an addict like I am an addict, you don’t want to waste time going to hell in a quiet and slow process. The restraints were off! Let’s not only make this a great trip, with lots of violations of lots of rules, but let’s do it bigger and better than everyone else! (Always the grandiose one, that’s me!)
Well, you know how this ends. Thank God, someone took me to a place where I got introduces to recovery and grabbed hold of it with both hands and said that same thing. I am gonna do this thing better than anyone has ever done it and people will bow and scrape when I walk into a meeting and say, “Wow! Look at that program!” hahaha…has NOT happened yet, thank God!
But we are here to do the things that we have done, just as is everyone around us. We need to HOPE for the knowledge that we can and do walk through all of it, learning how to do so without shame, without blame, without resentment and anger and fighting for it to be any other way. This is being restored to sanity! Seeing the perfection in every single moment of our experience and sitting with the things we came here to learn and be and do.
And thanking those teachers who come into our lives and give us what we need to do what we are here to learn and be and do. We probably don’t like a lot of the stuff, I know that one. But it is only our resistance that makes pain happen during growing periods. When we learn to flow with life, it is beautiful and amazing…heaven, instead of hell. I love this shit!
Dolphin Hug 