Joe ~ May 23

 

Swimming Down The Nile

 

Years ago attending a 12 step program I learned that in order to recover you had to have a spiritual awakening and practice absolute honesty. They, and many more, were good rules to live by. It was a simple way of life. Simple, but not easy. I learned an acronym back then….F-E-A-R…there were two interpretations of these letters…well, maybe three…There is the word itself. Pretty much right there in your face. FEAR, an emotional state of mind that usually is based on boogeymen and those things that hide under beds, but in some cases have some definite roots in reality. So, we take fear and look at the first interpretation…..FUCK EVERYTHING AND RUN….I’ve practiced this philosophy throughout my existence and found that the first part is untrue and the second part just goes on and on and on….I have only so much energy for that kind of running and it seems that I’m just constantly goin around in circles anyway while my brain keeps denying the honesty of the situation. Ergo, denial ain’t just a river in Egypt. Cute, drives home the point, and inspirational most of the time. Now, we move on to the second interpretation of the F-E-A-R acronym….FACE EVERYTHING AND RECOVER…I have found this to be much more difficult to practice…thus the need for the spiritual awakening. My consciousness pendulum is constantly swinging back and forth and that ingrained need to not be honest and deny is like a mighty beastly bully hovering nearby waiting for me to weaken and deny what’s really going on. But if faced up to with a clear understanding that this malicious monster is nothing but a fig newton of my imagination….I love that, fig newton…to me it works just as well….the beast will show it’s true cowardly self and I can look myself in the mirror and realize my face is backwards and so is my thinking. God is good. That’s what I would like to believe. To recover a sense of my true self,  can get pretty painful, embarrassing and outright shameful. I’ve run away and denied I was afflicted. Time is an illusion too often used as an excuse. Each decision I make, no matter how insignificant it may appear to be is of the utmost importance because it’s my life….that moment….all I’ve got…not to be put off…The river is flowing on and on…putting off or denying my sense of well-being is fruitless and malevolent. The good stuff starts right now, in this moment. My spirit and guidance from the divine will allow me to claim more victories than defeats and provide some serious honesty and happiness that was denied all to frequently in my life.