AFGE!! Another F@$*ing Growth Expereince!!

"With the power of God that I AM, today I choose peace. 

With the power of God that I Am, today I choose love 

With the power of God that I AM, today I choose to be happy and to be be united with all life,

May all beings be happy.  May all beings be peace.   AMEN" 

 

Yesterday during my morning ritual of prayer and meditation I asked Spirit to help me learn the process of letting go.  I am tired of getting caught in the spinning cycle of holding on to my hurts and letting them fester, creating wounds beyond mending.  My prayers were answered.

One of the things I have learned through this program and through trying many other spiritual paths before coming to NA is that connection to spirit is not enough to gain complete inner healing.  Even walking through spirits lessons is not a full process.  We need to do our part in the healing, we need to do the 'work'.

In the past programs I was involved in the 'work' was learning how to pray.  Learning how to meditate.  Learning ritual, learning about props to aid in spiritual connection.  Learning through meditation how to clear problems.  All of the tools I was given were of a mental capacity.  For the mentally healthy person these are all great as that person has a foundation for which to already stand.  For an addict with a mentally unstable foundation I had to go back a bit further.

The twelve steps have taught me a very very basic fundamental tool that so easily gets overlooked by me when I get stuck in a process.   Pen to Paper.   Three simple words to release me from the bondage of suffering when I cannot let go.  I will write it again,  Pen to Paper.   How strange is it for me who loves to write and understands deeply the therapeutic value of it, to miss the simple act of picking up a blue ball point pen and a piece of loose leaf paper??

Blogging is a wonderfully creative tool for me to discover things about myself in a meeting like public fashion.  However there are layers of myself that I cannot share in this fashion as they are not meant to be exposed to the world.  The wounds to sensitive for that much air, the risk of infection to great.   Good ol' fashion pen to paper and cauldron to burn it after sharing with my sponsor.  That is how I let go.  It's how I have always learned to let go.  Why does it escape my memory when I am knee deep in my own shit again?

I have the thickest skull with the slowest rate of learning on the face of this planet I am sure.  Constant repetition and at least three major go rounds before I learn a lesson.   Well this is go round number three so this is it for hashing this shit up.  

So today on my agenda after a pretty emotionally intense day yesterday for me, is a quiet day at home working my steps and writing out a few full length hurt process's.   A good release will come from that and tonight I will reward myself with a girly sleep over with my best friend of ten years.  No matter how much I cycle, no matter how far in the pits of hell I fall or how bright my light gets, she loves me.... that will comfort me after a day of open rawness.

Learning how to book end my 'work', is what keeps me sane and enjoying the journey of recovery.  Whenever I plan to do some deep painful inner work, I always do something fun and self care like before I start and then again when I am done.  My last sponsor taught me this and it has become a valuable tool for me.  I have let my current sponsor know that I am doing some scab pulling today and she is on stand by.  

 It's not an easy path we choose to recover our true worth, but it is a rewarding one...... when you work it.

Work it cause your Worth it!!

Spiritual Grounding...A Flight Risk??

Keeping Balance.

That has been a tough concept to bare in mind these past few weeks.  I was reminded many times over those days of the movie 'Eat,Pray, Love'.  There is a scene in that movie where the guru explains to the main character that getting knocked off balance is a part of understanding balance, its an acceptable process of learning and life.

I struggled hard with that life lesson these past weeks.

I love meditation in my life.  Every night I spend 30-60 minutes in my meditation room going through a guided visual meditation.  Each night I choose a new adventure and enjoy greatly the places I journey in my mind.  I pray and play in my God box after the mediation and connect deeply with my higher self.  I love my evenings spent this way doing my tenth step.

Every morning I begin my day with 15 minutes of chakra balancing and grounding/centering.  This starts my day on a balanced note of calm and serenity.  I love my morning practice.

I have been unable to do either these past three weeks.   No excuses.  Every time I tried to go into meditation in the evening I was asleep before the first word whispered out of the speakers of my boombox.  I would shake things up and cut  out the meditation only to zone out during the readings from my God Box.  I felt as if I was insulting my Higher God so I could not proceed.  Even just reading through my tenth step questions proved daunting as by the second word in the first question I would already be asleep.  In the mornings my mind would not cease the chatter, the meditation would be long since over and my mind would still be lost deep in thought of my new jobs day in action.

My whole practice of connecting to my higher power has been a futile venture this past while and it was a bothersome situation for me.   I have grown to cherish my moments with my higher self, look forward to them and come away with such incredible feelings and insight.  I hated not having those moments.

|I could hear warnings of the program in my mind..... anything you put before your recovery you will lose.....  Everyday do something 12 step related or your addict will thrive.....   I was just too damn tired to do any step work, read any literature or even phone a single soul to connect.  No matter how hard I tried I just did not have the energy to extend in that direction.

Today as life begins to settle down again I am seeing the larger picture of my past few weeks.  They don't say hindsight is 20/20 for nothing.

 All the time before starting this job spent in deep ritualistic meditation paved the way for me to make a solid connection with my higher self.  That connection is very solid and very true.  It is a connection that cannot now be easily broken.  Three weeks of changed focus did not abandon my God.   She was holding my hand the entire way.

 I can feel her deep within me every moment now, I don't need the allotted set aside time to recognize the feelings and thoughts that are hers. I realize today I don't need to talk to her everyday to know she is there and in communication with me any more.  I don't need to spend copious amounts of time in ritual invoking her energy so I can understand and feel her love for me.  I no longer need to dive so deeply into the roots of mother earth to know I am always connected and grounded in her nurturing.   This is what all that energy focussed in meditation gave me.  Infancy grown into adolescence.

I am testing my knowledge now.  I am taking what my higher self has taught me over the past few months and I am applying it in the real world.  I am gaining understanding through experience of her teachings.  I am exactly where I need to be on my journey.... I am living life not hiding under the cloak of my God.  I am a teenager eager for experience.

My knock off balance has been nothing more then a mother bird pushing her baby out of the nest to teach them to fly.   What I was so worried about, losing my routine and stability, has actually proved to be one of the most exciting practices of losing the ground beneath my feet.  Why is it that we need something solid to stand upon to feel like we are building a foundation?  Birds are one of the oldest known creatures on the planet and they spend most of their lives in the sky.  Fish were here before anything and they swim freely with nothing beneath their feet.

I put way to much stock into my grounded foundation that I couldn't see the possibilities of flying to the heavens or swimming with the mermaids.  Staying grounded always keeps you forever the baby bird unable to leave momma's safety, always shrouded by Gods cloak... forever the infant.   I see now how I have spent the last 38 years as an infant afraid of the ocean.  Afraid to open my wings and dive off the tree into the freedom of the air.

I realize today..... it's high time I grow up.

Pray=Talk, Meditation=Listen

My Topic today is about Prayer and Meditation.


 Of all the steps, the eleventh one is by far my favourite and the one that has the most impact on my life.  If you have been reading my posts I am sure you are already highly aware of that as I rant often about meditation.

There is a reason why I spend so much time and focus on this topic, its because I have lots of experience in this area.  I have also come to understand the benefits it has in my life on a wide scale.  When ever we as humans I think get excited about something that has worked for us we naturally want to share it with others.  We are not generally a cruel race, we naturally enjoying sharing.  For me that sharing is the gift of peace a serenity found in mediation.

In active addiction I spent alot of time praying and whining to any power that would listen to me.  I begged for death, begged for life, begged for money, begged for freedom from the obsession of money, begged for my dealer to hurry up, begged for him to go away.   I have talked to the God of the passing current understanding so much that I got sick of talking.  I got tired of my own whining and pleading.  I also got tired of not being heard.  I found myself even more angry at this stupid God that seemed to be there for everyone else but me.  I was done praying.

Prior to active addiction, I didnt so much believe in prayer. I had already written God off in my life.  However I met a wonderful friend who turned me on to meditation.  Its effects in my life were instant.  The calmness that the focus of learning different forms of meditation brought to my mind helped ease the chaos in my life.   After time I learned to direct my thoughts within my meditations to create situations and opportunities in my life that were beneficial to me and my family.  The power of mediation began effecting job opportunities, relationship connections and so many other things.  My general well being increased substantially.  I didn't understand then how it worked I just knew it did and I was riding the success train into the clouds.

Then I stopped meditating.  I stopped connecting.  I slowly began to descend from the clouds until i crashed violently into the ground and into active addiction.   I lost contact with a power greater then myself that at the time I didnt even realize I had established a relationship with.  My anger at God for allowing me to be abused as a child prevented me then from praying or asking for guidance, but meditation took me there without even my awareness.  My life got better because I was listening to the guidance of a higher power that I didn't even realize I was doing that.

Today coming into the 12 steps has blown the understanding and awareness wide open to what was going on in my life then and when I fell into active addiction.  Now that I am coming out of it I see how my prayers are whining complaints to God and my meditations were patient listening for guidance.   In my childhood I felt abandoned by God as did I in my addiction.  Thats why my prayers are attacks on my higher powers abilities and qualities.   I can see that clearly today only because of what the twelve steps have given me.

The 11 step is so fundamental for my understanding because now I see how to ask properly and wait patiently for the guidance.  I am able to marry prayer and mediation to create an incredible viable, tangible relationship with my higher power.  Some days I almost feel a physical presence of my higher self sitting with me as I pray and listen.  I never feel alone any more because the awareness of that energy is always with me. The more I sit in silence with myself the more I am communicating with an energy that is for MY highest good.

I have been called flaky, hoakey and just down right weird in my life because of my spiritual beliefs and practices.  However this program has taught me how to have a healthy relationship with myself and no longer do those comments stop me from being who I am.  Its uncomfortable learning to stand in my own truth, but the more I do it the more excited I become about learning what else is locked away within me.  I could not be more in love with this program then I am right now.... lol  I just came out of mediation, can you tell??

I hope that you all find your way to your higher Power and are able to receive the wonderful gifts that they are eager to bestow on you.  My love goes out to you.