I have a friend up here, who says that we should never go into our heads without adult surpervision. So often good advice. We think too much and analyze anything and everything. Too often, as Bill W. reminds us, we wander morbidly around in the past. I was watching a mystery the other night and one of the characters, a very simple old man, was asked by a detective, where he had been the night before. He responded by saying that yesterday was another country he didn’t plan on visiting again.
This business we get into of poking around an rummaging in the trash in our attic seems to be a sport we so often indulge in. I know that there was a time, when I lacked the discipline to let go of it, and spent a lot of sleepless hours just wandering all over the place with regrets and sometimes dragging up old resentments. But fear and guilt were the predominate features.
At the meeting today, the subject was staying in the day. Yesterday, I spent the afternoon with a good friend and we talked about much of this. How spiritual writers and those, who practiced a spiritual life, would honor the present moment and consider it as sacred. Some used to call it “the holy now”.
When I came into the program, this thought was emphasized over and over again. One day at a time. It was considered part of the solution. The problem, as my sponsor pointed out to me, was finding out how to stay there.
One of the primary tools I found out was the inventory steps; 4 and 8. Getting rid of the garbage I had dragged in with me and then finding the forgiveness for all that stuff through others and the God of my understanding. Learning how to forget the past, but, as they said, not wishing to close the door on it. There are good reasons for holding it available, when others need to hear about our past. When it can help them heal their own wounds.
I used the word discipline, because I need to learn how to do this. It takes practice, practice, practice. There is no magic or secret in what we do. I had to hear that over and over, until it finally sunk in. I had to make conscious choices.
It was my sponsor again, who told me that what the BB said about letting go of the old ideas absolutely, which began to get me on track. I had so many old ideas (have) that it would take me a lifetime of learning how to let go of them.
Fear and guilt were the main culprits I had to deal with. But thanks to sponsorship and good counseling, I finally began to get a handle on what it was that I needed to do and practice. I had to unlearn all that I thought were the rules in life and start over. Risky business I thought. And that was the hurdle. I had to take risks. Fred, the man in More About Alcoholism, talks about this, when he was finally able to listen to what Bill and the rest of them told him was the answer. I sometimes go back and read what he said. It’s so valuable to me.
Anyway, I’m always looking for that grownup to accompany me into this place on top of my neck. It can be a chamber of horrors or a place in paradise. Oh, that’s right, I’m the one who’s supposed to grow up.
Just thinking.
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