Daily Reprieve

From Courage to Change of May 19:

In the past, whenever anyone disagreed with me, I took it as a personal failure. If only I had found the right words, clothes, opinions, school, job, home, friends, or lover, I could have belonged.

And How did others appear to me? Happy and self-confident – they seemed to have all the answers. But because of the front I put on, people thought I was easygoing and happy, too. If they could be so mistaken about the way I really felt, couldn’t I have a few wrong ideas about their feelings? After all, I couldn’t be the only one who put on a good act. Wasn’t I comparing my insides to other people’s outsides?

In Al-Anon I am learning that someone can disagreee with me without either of us being wrong. When no one has to be wrong, we can all fit in, just as we are.

Today’s Reminder

If I compare, I lose. Maybe I’ll come out feeling better than somebody this time, but next time I’m bound to feel worse. The best way to stop feeling that I’m not good enough is to stop comparing altogether.

“Little by little, we come to realize at our meetings that much of our discomfort comes from our attitudes.”

~ Understanding Ourselves and Alcoholism

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Can I create a better image of myself. Or rather, can I create a better self. I know that when I would run in my past military training, I would spot distant but visible milestones to move toward. I knew that it wasn’t the end. But that milestone got me closer to my destination.

“Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” Matthew 5:48

“We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection” Alcoholics Anonymous

Is there a way to reconcil these two ideas? Is it possible to pursue progress toward perfection? Yet both of these statements seem to hold a mutually exculisive stanse against one another. It resists even a paradoxical explanation.

If I don’t look to other’s external display to compare my internal reality to, then shouldn’t I compare my internal reality in the present with my internal reality in an imagined future? No matter how I try to image myself as a perfected being, I strongly suspect that gaining a grasp on that reality is out of my reach in this limited mortal form.

Growing up in the Southeast US it was known by everyone that the only perfect person was Jesus Christ. He should be the only source of emulation. Yet would that mean that unless his followers sold their property, wandered about in heretical resistance and apocolyptic proclaimations, seeking a way of martyed existence, that they are refusing to seek the Father’s perfection as Christ did. The countering thought I have heard to such “extreme” ideas of perfection is that Christ had a different and very specific mission.

Am I stuck with the same dilema that comparing myself to anyone brings me? I am comparing my insides to Christ’s celebrity expression, his outside expression.

What if the Higher Power planted a Godshard in each and everyone of us? What if the Messiah’s perfection came from His ability to percieve His particular Godshard and live it out? What if My perfected Godshard requires Me to only compare me with me until I find Me? Maybe these are the milestones in the marathon of this earthly life. To seek perfection is to seek the Godshard. To seek progress is to look for a life that allows It to energize. Maybe progress and perfection are not mutually exclusive after all.

From Courage to Change of May 18:

Life dosen’t always go smoothly or peacefully, even though I might wish it would. In the past, when something bothered me, I’d say nothing rather than face an argument. It seemed better for me to be upset than to risk upsetting someone else. The results were ususally disastorous. I would become irritable and unreasonable as I let resentment fester.

Today I suspect that adversity has value I hadn’t previously recognized. When I face adversity and deal with my problems or express my feelings, thing have a chance to improve. Even if they don’t, I release some of the pressure I feel. I’m new at this, and I don’t do it very gracefully yet: sometimes it is scary, and sometimes my words are not exactly welcomed. Nevertheless, I feel better when I realize that I have finally begun living life on life’s terms.

Looking back, I see how much I’ve grown. I wouldn’t have chosen any of the crises in my life, but since coming to Al-Anon, I’ve learned that every problem can help me to change for the better, deepen my faith, and add to my self-esteem.

Today’s Reminder

The Chinese word for crisis is written with two characters. The first stands for danger, and the second for opportunity. I will look for the good hidden within everything I encounter.

“There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its hands”

~ Richard Bach

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When I was a young teenager, a movie was released where a favorite author, Richard Bach, and beloved musician, Neil Diamond, came together; Jonathon Livingston Seagull. The spiritual promises of this story using flight as its metaphor enthralled me. How I hungered to experience it. How many different denominations of Christianity did I explore? There were so many storefront gatherings and new ideas being proffered in my youth that never lasted.

Until I was compelled to enter the Twelve Step program to save my own life. These rooms were filled with saving heresies. The chaos storm of my post-marital apocolypse opened the door to a pragmatic morality and the closest I have ever truly felt with myself and my God. That hell caused me to let go of religous preconceptions and quit being ashamed for my humanity. What is exciting to me is that progress rather than perfection renders promise of greater connection still.

I want to live in such a way that the Universe finds it unncessary to send chaos storms into my life to free me from my own protective mind prisons.

I want to fly. . .