Daily Reprieve

I have taken the counsel of others in the recovery network and have pulled back from this intimate dance with my core.  It is threatening my co-consciousness and I am about to leave for a 3 week annual training for my Army Reserve unit.  I can ill afford to be suffering problems with the demands of unexpected transitions.  I have also received a suggestion from the guide and others to seek a professional to help me through this.  I will probably do that before continuing with this particular 4th step.  Things have calmed down within since I have pulled back.  But if I retreat entirely, then I have to face the return of active alcoholism.  I have much work today when I get back. 

This morning, I had a message left by the Rogue Elf in the Book of Faces.  She had apparently taken the central statement of my co-dependancy and worn it as her own garment, “To love another I must hate myself.”  She had her own issues to apply this to, so she wore this mantra to see how it fits.  She ended up discarding it, and sending me the missive recording her own insight.  I capture it here, because I think it has potency to it, and because it moves me inside.  I don’t want to lose these words in the midst of my personal struggles:

To love another I must love myself and reach deep inside for all the treasures that reside there.

 

To love another takes courage, takes endurance, takes persistence.

 

To love another I must accept my lack of power, my lack of control…my humanity with its beautiful strength and weakness.

 

To love another is being open to experience the full range of human emotion, including fear and pain, but also joy.

 

To love another means to have eyes wide open, versus selective vision.

 

To love another requires trust in a Higher, unseen power and a belief in a plan Grander than a human being can imagine.

 

To love another means accepting not knowing how the story ends, but showing up anyway, knowing that no matter how it all plays out… I am safe, my beloved is safe; and I have given the universe an opportunity to heal souls and to express itself.

 

To love another is to experience and observe my filthiest ugliness and my highest beauty and an opportunity to embrace both!

 

To love another is the highest calling I can respond to and if I can continue to love no matter what it brings out in myself…if I can rise up from my wounds, both externally derived and self-inflicted, then, rather than being diminished as I used to believe, my worth, my value, my joy is increased! 

 

This entry was posted on May 4, 2011 at 2:27 pm and is filed under Uncategorized with tags Addiction, Alcoholism, Journal, Life, Personal, Recovery, Spirituality. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.