DISCIPLINE MONTH: DAY 16: “Peace requires a discipline more iron than war.― W.J. Turner
The concept of peace is the same, whether we think of peace within ourselves or peace in the world around us.
Peace cannot be had when we live without it in our inner self. There is nothing peaceful that can come from without us and infiltrate our hearts or minds. I can sit in the most peaceful spot in the Universe and be a train wreck if I bring Ego with me. The continual, nagging chatter of THAT will never bring peace or even allow it.
So peace must begin within me. Period. When I am peaceful and you are peaceful, we can stay in peace no matter what rages around us. That is the point. And the discipline is ours to maintain. Not someone else.
I cannot impose peace on another. We somehow believe that peace is an imposition and the job of someone “out there” who is going to make it happen. My job, and my job alone. If I am filled with peace, I can sit in the middle of a war zone and not participate.
I learned all of this from those teachers who have shown me the way it looks and taught me how they do it. I have had to change my entire belief system, which is certainly NOT a bad thing. I believe this IS the purpose of all 12 steps and the whole reason we work them. If you are here to work the steps in order to just stop drinking and drugging, you have missed the point. The biggest point and the only point.
This step process, will, over time, eliminate the reasons and possibilities of ever drinking or using again. That is my experience. Period. I am free because I no longer believe in drinking or drugging as the solution I once thought it to be. I don’t want to escape. I want to engage life fully, face to face, head on and with a big, fat smile on my face. Joyfully, happily and freely. Isn’t that the damnedest thing?
Dolphin Hug 