August 7

COURAGE MONTH: DAY 7: “All happiness depends on courage and work.” ― Honoré de Balzac

My life has been very happy for the last few years. I have let go of so much and it has created deep anger and sadness for a while, then deep happiness.

This is really hard to explain. We are so often discontent, and it is so challenging to just let happiness be. We tend to find things to be unhappy about, even when it makes us miserable.

So, we must work to confront the Screaming Purple Monkeys of ego and change the way we see things. This is what all 12 steps are designed to do. This is what all great Masters and Teachers have come to say. I have deep fondness for this process, because it is the one that has brought me, after all these many years, to a deep and abiding sense of OKAY-ness.

No matter what is going on, I remain okay with myself and the world. There are some things that come up that would have once thrown me for a loop, but I see them for what they are now. And very little can come to upset my apple cart today.

That is due, in whole, to the practice of working, every day, to do these things I write about. It was not always my first choice. There were certainly bumps and bruises and denial and resistance along the way, but nothing that I could not overcome with time and courage to keep going, even when I knew it would not work this time.

Nothing in the world or in this life is permanent. I have recognized the short-term-ness of everything as I have grown older. Wisdom, for me, is in knowing deeply that This Too Shall Pass.

It does, and it does, and it does.

The rooms of recovery are full of relationships that are ebbing and flowing all the time. They come and they go. One marriage will end and 3 new ones begin. Babies are born and grow up and people die and we get jobs and lose them. We get educated and move around and come and go. We get involved in recovery and step away and many of us get loaded or stick around.

Life is not for sissies. We are not built to deal with the day-to-dayness of this gig. So, we must find those things that make it do-able and which give us a sense of okay-ness when it totally makes no sense. We are not here to analyze or understand life. We are here to live it, and live it as fully and richly and deeply as is possible, given our SPM egos.

We can look at all of it as a rich adventure or a dismal failure. Life doesn’t care. The Universal Power will keep hitting foul balls for us to chase OR will give us adequate exercise while we chase those balls and laugh at the adventure. No matter to Universal Power. We are the ones who make up the story and its meaning. And we seldom have any real clue what the REAL story is anyway.

Remember the story of “Footprints” and how we misinterpret the whole thing? That is what SPM does. It tells the story from the center of our very small Universe and it is NEVER right. When we sit up on the cloud with the angels and see the bigger picture, it is NOT about us anyway. Oh! I really love that! And we are the ones who must have the courage to take those foul balls and turn them into happiness. That is the only reason we are here…to learn this…over and over and over and over and over….get it?