WORTHY THOUGHTS

[MajestyJo]

Do I have balance? Most definitely not, at least not to other people's standards if I want to compare.

I look at my sites as a job. I do have to take 'walk abouts' and do things, which I don't do often enough lately as I have a lot of commitments. I don't have a schedule where things have to be done at a certain time or in a certain way.

My son is no longer a part of my life. My sister lives several miles away and we talk about once a week on an average. I don't have a car. She doesn't drive. I had dinner with her family at her oldest daughter's place not too long ago.

Depending on my health, I try to get to my Al-Anon meeting. I play bridge once a week. On alternating weeks, I play twice a week if I am available. This Monday, I will be going into the jail if my partner is available. I hope to hear from her later today.

I guess you could say, I balance my time when I am up. The only problem being, when I am up at night, no buses are running and nothing is open for my usual stroll on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday to the market and the library. I can't go into the laundry room after 7 p.m. or before 9 a.m. Life just is in today.

What I have learned in the program is how to just be. No matter where I am in the day, it is important to stay centered and balanced within myself. It doesn't matter what is going on or not happening around me. If I tried to balance myself to life around me, I would go crazy. It is me that needs to be balanced.

posted at Recovery Inn on September 2010

Proof that this is a one day at a time program.

[MajestyJo]

Finding Balance

The goal of recovery is balance - that precious middle ground.

Many of us have gone from one extreme to another: years of taking care of everyone but ourselves, followed by a time of refusing to focus on anyone's needs but our own.

We may have spent years refusing to identify, feel, and deal with our feelings, followed by a period of absolute obsession with every trace of emotional energy that passes through our body.

We may succumb to powerlessness, helplessness, and victimization, then we swing to the other extreme by aggressively wielding power over those around us.

We can learn to give to others while taking responsibility for ourselves. We can learn to take care of our feelings, as well as our physical, mental, and spiritual needs. We can nurture the quiet confidence of owning our power as equals in our relationships with others.

The goal of recovery is balance, but sometimes we get there by going to extremes.

Today, I will be gentle with myself, understanding that sometimes to reach the middle ground of balance, I need to explore the peaks and valleys. Sometimes, the only way I can extricate myself from a valley is to jump high enough to land on a peak, and then slowly ease myself down.

Today I am willing to let go of all my fear so that I can find out what is real in my life. I will take whatever comes without judgment. I am ready to release all my resistance and struggle so that I can find out the good and truth inside me.

From..... The Language of Letting Go

[MajestyJo]

For so many years, I was so busy in service, that I didn't know how to practice self-care. I still didn't make healthy choices for me. I had to learn balance. I can't give away what I don't have.

I had gotten away from a lot of the meditation I use to do. I stopped lighting candles. I stopped using my crysals. I still took time in the morning. I still took time during the day when I came upon a situation. As Osho says, "Even doing dishes" can be a form of meditation and a connection with God.

When I go to post, I always ask that I be guided in what I say and the choices I make. It has always been the Serenity Prayer, Third Step Prayer and the Seventh Step Prayer for me. The asking for help and the getting out of the way, so God can work through me instead of going around me.

I also had to learn to not take on what is not mine! That was a biggy. I was and still can be a perpetual sponge that just seemed to absorb other people's sh*t! I took it all personal.

Acceptance is the key to my sobriety. Accepting what is allows me to keep my emotions balanced. Without it, I can be off the charts. What I don't find acceptable, I ask to leave. I accept and love my son, I did not love and accept his behavior. His going away to treatment through my life out of balance and made me realize how much I had depended on him to do things for me. His talk of leaving for B.C. turned my life out of balance again after I got to a place of acceptance. My life doesn't depend on him being in it. It just seemed empty and void with him God because his father left when he was 2 months old and there has always been him and me, even when we never lived together. So I as a result of that void, I had to fill it up with spiritual things. I had to bring my life back into balance. Reach out and ask for help. It has been a grieving process.

The other day I met someone who said to me, "Giving rides home to people from meetings is not AA's job." What ever happened to, "Get yourself to a meeting and you will always get a ride home." I can get out in the day light hours, but have difficulties at night. With my sleeping patterns being off, I am not always awake to go to morning meetings. My recovery has been online for several years, without it, I would not be sober today. Many nights when I have been in pain, I have gone to sites and looked at old posts to find the spiritual food I needed. Have never done chat rooms except at three recovery sites. Another Empty Bottle which is no longer, Essence of Recovery, where I chair a weekly meeting, and Milkman's Circle for Recovery.

The last time I asked the doctor for help with my sleeping, he wrote a prescription for Clonazapam." I refused to take them. For one thing they are for anxiety disorder and panic attacks and I don't have either. I did prior to recovery. I haven't had them for the last 12 years. Before that in part, but there were occasions prior to that time when I was 7 years sober. I had migraines for the first 7 years of my recovery and haven't had one bad enough to put me in bed let alone in the hospital since then.

God has been very good to me. As Sam said, "We have the tools to apply to our life."

Posted on Recovery Inn in 2010

[MajestyJo]

When I come across Step Ten, which I am doing now, I always see that I never work it to it's full potential. I don't get all the Power that is available from doing it the way it is written. It always seemed like I was leaving some part out.

For the first 6 years, I did an Inventory every 2 years because I was evolving and changing. Then I did face to face work with therapists. I went a while without a sponsor because the one I had wasn't willing to go through the Steps with me. I have a new one and we hope to find some time to get together. She is a busy lady. She has been out on the golf course this summer and had visits from her family and she goes to see them in California. We hope to work on the Blueprints to Progress from Al-Anon together. I had a woman in AA with 26 years of sobriety at the time say she thought it was one of the best Step 4s to be had. I have always done it with the Big Book in early recovery.

Sam I think the key to Step 10 is to work it all day long, not morning and night. As someone says to me, "What Step are you on?" I say, "Some days all 12."

Ironically, she is heading to California again, and although we have marathon phone calls, we still haven't done the promised Step 4.

Now that I am feeling better, I hope I can find my copy and work on it while she is away for 4 months.

Being ground is so important to finding balance.

[MajestyJo]

Releasing the Past

Today I have the willingness to release myself from the past and give myself the gift of comprehending all that exists in my present.

I am tired of being mired in the past, running my every experience through the old damaged notions that seemed to have gotten stamped on every cell in my body. I am tired of using misinformation as if it was truth and recreating over and over for myself the same result. I am tired to the bone and yet when I try to escape this alone, I sense my efforts are useless.

I believe that a power greater than myself can release me from the bondage of my past. I ask this higher power to help me now find the truth of my present. It feels unfamiliar to stop the movie of my past from running in the background and encounter silence in its place. But I practice learning to sit still with the quiet. Gradually, I awaken to what is here in my present. I let myself know it is enough. I am well when I let myself be.

You are reading from the book:

Daybreak by Maureen Brady

It was important to identify, that was then, this is now. Not expecting things to be the same, happen the same with the same results, because in today, I have my Higher Power to lead and guide me.

I am not my disease. I am not someone else`s disease, unless I choose to take on their stuff and be an enabler and caretaker. It is so important to accept what is in today. It may have links and strings attached to my past, but with the help of my HP, they can be severed, divorced, and detached.

Acceptance is the key to ALL my issues in today, knowing it is subject to change, if I have the willingness and faith to trust in the process.

[MajestyJo]

Today's Reminder from Courage to Change:

My thoughts are my teachers. Are they teaching me to love and appreciate myself and others, or are they teaching me to practice isolation? Today I will choose my teachers with great care.

"Live and let live" sets us free from the compulsion to criticize, judge, condemn and retaliate...[which] can damage us far more than those against whom we use such weapons. Al-Anon helps us to learn tolerance rooted in love.

- This Is Al-Anon

This was today's reading and gave me pause for thought. My thoughts are energy and what I think, I put out to the Universe. What I put out comes back to me.

So much of it calls for good motive and intent. Do I have good intentions towards myself and others. What is my motive for saying and doing what I do (did)?

All pause for thought!

Posted on another site on February 3, 2011

Like this squirrel, I couldn't make up my mind and would could've and should've all over the place.

[MajestyJo]

When I re-read the quote, the thought that came to mind was, "Just because I had a feeling or a thought, didn't mean I had to act on it. That was something I had done wrong all of my life. I would see or hear and would immediately presume you were looking or talking about me and often in defense, I felt like I had to retaliate.

There was very little stop before I spoke. I would hear things and perceive them as derogatory and hurtful, and would either want to pay you back or would burst out in tears and role play to the hilt. All in response to "It is your fault, look at what you made me do, if you hadn't done that, I wouldn't have...."

I took everything personal. I used my thoughts to beat myself up royally and I used your words as I perceived them to be, which were never validated, to put myself down, or I would hit back and put you down to make me feel better.

An ugly world, an unkind place, and I am glad I don't have to go there any more. I don't have to buy into other people's game and I don't have to role play and be someone I am not.

I had to heal those thoughts. I had to change the thinking. I had to allow myself to heal and forgive myself. Often it was my disease acting out. Many times it was all I knew and what I heard growing up and didn't know my thoughts were outdated.

I had to learn to allow others to have their thoughts. I just had to learn not to buy into them and give them power over me. It was important to not give up my own power. Power that I didn't know I had.
This is a dis-ease from within, it was the thinking behind the drinking and drugging. That is why I have to go within to heal.

[MajestyJo]

When you consciously invoke growing, you consciously invoke the parts of yourself that are not whole to come into the foreground of your life. With each recurrence of anger, jealousy, or fear, you are given the choice to challenge it, or to give in to it. Each time you challenge it, it loses power and you gain power.

- Gary Zukav

For so many years, I gave away my personal power. I did not know I had a choice.

Each time I am faced with an old scenario, I am given the choice in recovery as to whether I am going to let it continue to play out in my life or am I going to step up to the plate and challenge it and do what I can do to heal and change things.

When I surrender, I am empowered to do what I need to do for myself. I no longer have to give those old patterns and behaviors the power to rule my life.

Just for today, I take back my power. I am worthy of a new life and a new sense of well being and peace.

Just because you are a strong woman, there is no reason to give up a part of yourself for someone else. It is okay to be you. Own your own power.

[MajestyJo]

DON'T REJECT THE EGO

"Nourishing the soul is the process of drinking at the life stream, coming back to one’s true self, embracing the whole of one's experience - good, bad, or ugly; painful or exalted; dull or boring."
-- Jon Kabat-Zinn

Spiritual teachings sometimes counsel a need to let go of the ego. In our view, though, ego and personality are essential players in our theatre of life. Personality is the vehicle for Spirit to evolve through form. Soul sparks the potential that exists within the personality.

We don't want the ego to disappear - we want it to open to divine guidance so the two may work together in alignment.

And so the path of personality aims to build a healthy, skillful ego. Ironically, only a strong, mature ego can take responsibility for carrying the consciousness of soul.

"How do we nurture the soul? By revering our own life. By treating it as supremely important. By reaching for the best within ourselves. By learning to love it all, not only the joys and the victories, but also the pain and the struggles."
-- Nathaniel Branden

Is your spiritual development important to you?

There is a positive and negative to everything. When you look at EGO as "Easing God Out," it is not good. I look at it as the Higher Self, instead of the Lower Self that lived in the darkness of addiction and couldn't see God., and only reached out during the tough times.

When we nurture the Inner Self, we connect with our God and the selfish, self-centeredness is no more, unless we choose go there.

[MajestyJo]

THERE'S HOPE!

"No matter how painful our early experiences were, our Essence cannot be harmed. Our Essence is waiting for the opportunity to reveal itself. In a very true sense, we are waiting for the opportunity to become ourselves. Our spirit is yearning to break free, to express itself ...

"And yet, ironically, we always fear and resist opening to that which is most real in us. When we trust in the process and give ourselves over to it, however, our true nature comes forth. The result is real integrity, love, authenticity, creativity, understanding, guidance, joy, power, and serenity-all of the qualities we are forever demanding that personality supply."
-- Don Richard Riso and Russ Hudson

[MajestyJo]

Discover the treasures inside

"Happiness cannot be traveled to, owned, earned, worn or consumed. Happiness is the spiritual experience of living every minute with love, grace, and gratitude."
-- Denis Waitley

Peace, joy, health and well-being can only be found inside us. They exist within us now, as our essential nature, waiting for us to call on them.

No matter what our income, body shape or situation in life, each of us holds the power to take the inner journey to find our treasures within. This is what makes the inner journey so exciting!

"When we cannot find contentment in ourselves, it is useless to seek it elsewhere."
-- Francois De La Rochefoucauld

[MajestyJo]

Befriend yourself

"Self-contempt never inspires lasting change."
-- Jane R. Hirschmann & Carol H. Munter

The journey to know ourselves ideally brings us to self-understanding and acceptance. It is NOT a quest for self-improvement.

When we open to love and accept ourselves, no matter what, we allow our innate love, power and wisdom to emerge naturally.

"Who you really are is enough."
-- Oriah Mountain Dreamer

[MajestyJo]

Capture your inspiration!

"Ideas can come from anywhere and at any time. The problem with making mental notes is that the ink fades very rapidly."
-- Rolf Smith

Insights and inspiration come to us for a reason. Don’t let them disappear on you!

When a great idea pops into your mind, write it down and capture it. Keep a mini-journal or piece of paper with you at all times.

Reflect on your insights. How might you anchor this great idea so it enhances your life?

"Everyone who has ever taken a shower has had an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off, and does something about it that makes a difference."
-- Nolan Bushnell

[MajestyJo]

Why are you here?

"You can come to understand your purpose in life by slowing down and feeling your heart's desires."
-- Marcia Wieder

What do you love to do? What gives you greatest meaning in your life? Let your answers trickle through and keep a record of the key words that come up.

Life becomes so much richer when we choose to live from our heart.

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."
-- Steve Jobs

[MajestyJo]

How aware are you?

"The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention."
-- Julie Cameron

How aware are you of:
- your senses?
- your body -- its condition, needs and wisdom?
- your fears?
- your defences - how you hide what you’re really feeling?
- your self talk?
- your beliefs and their power to create your reality?
- your passions?
- your purpose?

Go on a treasure hunt to discover your authentic self and the truth of life in and around you!

"Relative to the level of awareness that is possible for us, our ordinary state of consciousness is as far from a direct experience of reality as sleep is from waking consciousness."
-- Don Richard Riso & Russ Hudson