Today's reflection
from the author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, Sogyal Rinpoche, in
Glimpse After Glimpse:
The teachings tell us what we need to
realize, but we also have to go on our own journey; in order to come to a personal
realization. That journey may take us through suffering, difficulties, and
doubts of all kinds, but they will become our greatest teachers. Through them
we learn the humility to recognize our limitations, and through them we will
discover the inner strength and fearlessness we need to emerge from our old
habits and set patterns, and surrender into the vaster vision of real freedom
offered by the spiritual teachings.
~
The
mantras; "they just didn't understand me", "I was stabbed in the
back", "the system is corrupt", "it is just a temporary
setback", "she/he left me for…" and so on, are often repeated
over a drink at the bar among those of us who reveled in the Fellowship of the Stoned.
Once
sober, most of us try to regain some of what we lost due to our drinking or
drug use along the lines of material success. It is commendable to do so but it
is imperative to understand that we are still alcoholics and addicts.
Understanding that alcoholism, and addictions of almost every sort, are diseases
of the ego and not the substances we abused. Ego is a slippery fellow and will
work its way back into control at any opening. False pride is an obvious
opening once we get back the job, the car, the family and so on… power,
property and prestige. This is true even if we achieve little more than a few
years of sobriety in AA. Unless we do something about ego, we will lord over
those with a day less than us with our time in sobriety and present ourselves
as Big Shots… spiritual giants… we are recovery magi!
"Old
habits and set patterns" put aside, the vision of freedom opened up to me.
Humility became a tool more than an asset to laud. Progress, as described through
suffering, became the plowshare of acceptance, tilling the fertile ground made
fruitful by the Heart of Compassion.
geo 4,814
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