Hi Family, Been a while since I started a topic, so how about this one?
I am an addict. I jokingly say sometimes that I'm dual-diagnosed because I suffer from a second deadly disease, "figure-it-out-ism." I seem to have this obsessive need to know...EVERYTHING! I spend hours poring over the literature as if it contains the secret of eternal youth, or some other such treasure. When I share I sometimes tend to dissect a passage, relate it to another passage, and another, and "break it down" for the group. Simple ego. Just another manifestation of approval seeking and attention seeking behavior. In short, I'm living in my character defects.
In all honesty, I do have a decent understanding of the disease, the Program, and the recovery process and it grows and changes as long as I stay "plugged in." But that isn't my recovery. That's just some knowledge. My recovery lies in the application of what I've learned and how I use it to stay clean, one day at a time. In other words, my experience. Someone once said that, "Giving good advice is the ability one acheives after a lifetime of setting a bad example." True dat!!
Anyway, just wondering if there were any other "Big Brains" out there that struggle to "dumb down" enough to get this thing. A turning point in my recovery was when I got clean the last time. Someone suggested that I stop trying to figure everything out and just start right where I was and apply what I did know. What a concept!
"Finally knowing "why?" is the booby-prize of life."
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"With a sweet tongue of kindness, you can drag an elephant by a hair." ~Persian Proverb
My first and greatest sponsor said "our primary purpose is to stay sober, but it's not our only purpose". When I ask what that criptic message meant, he said "your HP also wants you to Work!"
John Bradshaw tells this joke- "when codependents die they find themselves in an area outside of Heaven and there are two lines. One line to get into Heaven and the other is for the lecture on Heaven. All the Codependents get in the line for the lecture, so they can figure it out before they get there."
My take is that if we are up in our head trying to figure it all out, we can't be living in the present with our feelings and our HP. I boil it down to this simple equation
Gratitude = Happiness You can not have one without the other. So go forth and be grateful and seek more of what you're grateful for TODAY!
i feel im making more progress now in recovery since ive allowed myself to have my feelings and just sit and let it be with out distracting myself....grief for example, i identified and named when i was feeling it . knowledge is useless when matters of the heart are involved, knowledge lives in the head...matters of the heart are not logical and if i want human connection i need to live in my heart. i need to feel, to suffer to apply the principals of recovery to every situation that arises and painstakingly make my way through. spiritual healing from this disease of mind body and soul takes place on so many levels..i dont know what i need, my higher power does..my intellect is just a tool, it isnt "me"..its a flashlight god gave me cause i live in the dark. i will always love "information" and "learning" ..its fun for me..its heartfelt connections with my fellow recovery people that teach me the most, the pain the joy laughter and tears....thats my 2 cents worth!
awesome share galeon, just awesome. as far as intellect goes, it's more important to know what we don't know. Like I know that I don't know how to perform Brain Surgery. It's the not knowing what we don't know, or thinking that we know what we don't know that causes us the most trouble. So I try to stay on a "need to know basis" and most things I simply don't need to know, Like what other people think.
Wow, Thanks Dean, thanks Cindy. Great responses- just what I needed to hear. When I first got clean I asked my sponsor why we had to do everything HIS way, "What's so special about YOUR way, any how?" I asked. "Nothing, really," he said. "The most important thing about my way is that it's not YOUR way." I really needed to receive that. My BEST thinking got me homeless, jobless, penniless, and a seat in NA. Time to try listening to someone else.
Thanks for sharing, both of you!!
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"With a sweet tongue of kindness, you can drag an elephant by a hair." ~Persian Proverb
