Desperate Joy

  The Thinker (French: Le Penseur) is a bronze sculpture by Auguste Rodin.  Image by Johnnie Shannon from Pixabay. Addiction is a thinking disorder.  It is a disease that attacks our minds and distorts our thought processes.  We are not able to think clearly about what is happening and why.  There is no space between stimulus and response.  Our minds become filled with obsessive thoughts and we have no idea where they are coming from.  We feel some strong emotion, we feel upset, angry, sad, lonely or even happy and excited and nearly instantaneously we feel triggered and compelled to act out. One of the important habits I have learned in recovery is to simply be aware of what I was thinking and feeling.   To pay attention to what was going on in my heart, mind and body throughout the day.   This is a good definition of mindfulness and usually works alongside meditation.   The key difference being that with meditation, we take a portion...

  Step Ten says, "We continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it." This is what is sometimes called a maintenance Step. We practice it regularly in order to continue to maintain our sobriety and grow spiritually. We often practice this Step toward the end of each day. We carefully review the day and see where we may have made mistakes, been operating in our character defects, or offended in some way. In many Christian traditions there is a similar practice. We examine our hearts regularly to see if there were times when we felt guilty, spiritually dry, desolate and disconnected from God. And we also revisit those times when we felt gratitude, joy, peace and flourishing, and give thanks. The purpose of these exercises is to move away from those things that bring us spiritual dryness and press into those activities that lead to spiritual flourishing. We walk away from sin and into righteousness. We step out of the dark and into the l...