April 25

HONESTY MONTH: DAY 25: “It is not until you change your identity to match your life blueprint that you will understand why everything in the past never worked.”― Shannon L. Alder

I was living such a different life when I got here from the one that has opened up for me since that time. It has been a miraculous series of events that have created this space where I live now.

12 Steps have transformed and transmuted the person I once believed myself to be. While there is always a process of maturing and aging, (although I do not believe I was working on the first one!), there is such a difference in this belief and lifestyle process that I do not know another way to get from there to here.

Just the idea of looking deeply into my own beliefs and stories is new. So many things are going to come to pass when we are willing to discard the bullshit that Ego wants to have us believe.

Many addicts think this happens in their first year or later on when they really get into step work. It has taken me 34 years of consistent, never stopping work to get there. Maybe I am sicker than many, but it does not happen after even 10 or 20 years, as I witness this stuff.

If the work is not done all the time, and I mean the work; not just talking about it with someone or in a meeting, not thinking about it, not wishing for it, that is all still Ego.

This quote tells me why the pain was so great when I lived the life of Ego. It also tells me why there is so much pain in those with long-term abstinence who are not doing the work. I see a great deal of this around me; far more than the freedom that comes with this real working stuff.

The combination of fellowship, unity and recovery is beautiful. There is no other way to pretend that you can get this stuff. Even though I am not as active in the meetings as I was for my first 30 years, I am still very involved in fellowship with the ones I am close to. I have so many friends over these 34 years! What a gift I would have deprived myself of had I just kept this all to myself. And the people I do service work with are the ones I really resonate with. They have kept me on an even keel. No other way to get that; at least not that I have seen.