Sunday, November 4, 2012

Recovery

I feel like I need a 12-step recovery program...for all the things that came before now and no longer work in my life, no longer fit any paradigm that I was expecting to live by, all the ways I thought my life would unfold but didn't.  I'm not sorry about that, or even a little unhappy.  Just a bit gobsmacked by what doesn't work anymore that I thought was permanent and eternal and unchangeable.

From my vantage point at this very moment, It seems SUCH an illusion to be certain that any circumstance has absolute permanence.  And I think that's fine.  Because nothing does stay the same.  Not the things you like and not the things you don't, and as the drama of life unfolds you just keep doing the best you can because there's not much else to do.

I'm not so sure how to put a framework around it all the way I used to.  I had everything wrapped up neatly in little bows, tied and tucked and neatly managed, whether I was happy with it or not.  And having it all ordered was pretty important.  I wanted certainty and clarity and no doubt troubling my spirit.

But the expense of the illusion of certainty comes at a high price.  It comes at the price of being open to the richness of real connection and all the beauty that offers, of appreciating and engaging on multiple levels, of the natural give and take that exists.

To be so certain of anything and everything means that there's no openness to the magic of life and of love.  That certainty means getting locked into one way of relating, one way of being, one way of understanding, and anything that goes just one-way isn't very open.  It doesn't allow for much flexibility or very many options.

And I have seen that.  When you have only the notion of service to others in mind, you effectively cut-off every other possibility of relating, truncate every other option that could exist between you and another person.  And you do it in the name of a great spiritual principle, but the reality is that it creates a kind of selfish insulation, and kind of self-protective bubble that keeps others away in the name of the highest good.

And maybe the highest good is also part of it.  But the part that is isolating and selfish and limiting is at least as true.

I cannot imagine that this is what G*d has designed us for.  I have never allowed myself fully to be the person that I am, and I have done that in the name of the highest good.  And there certainly has been some good.  But there hasn't been great.  And I know that's possible too.


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