Starting my New
Year with this reflection puts 2014 in order for me. To begin it this way is
the first step towards an acknowledgement of a truth I have owned through
bitter experience. To look at life through the prism of despair would seem dour
to those who have not passed through it but, to those of us who have, it is the
benchmark of a joyful and miraculous recovery. Were it not for this fact I
would have no faith at all in spiritual remedies. It was in this state… this
physical and mental state… that my ego was set aside enough to allow the Heart
of Compassion to get a foot in the door.
Tributary to this thought is one I have
held about certain spiritual paths that use our excesses as one way to “get it”.
I was mistaken, as many are, to believe that these indulgences were the path of
the “good life”. I had no understanding that my debauchery was only a tool used
break my ego down enough to attain it. This turned out to be a dangerous and a near
fatal error in my case. This life of hedonistic indulgence led to a meaningless
one where I threw up my hands and cried out in despair, “What’s the use?”
Most of us who
have passed through this stage have no regrets about it except, of course, for the
damage we have caused those we have harmed. Would it have been better for all
of us had I been able to take a more moderate course? I suppose so… but this is
how I got where I am today and I am grateful for that. It is called the
breaking point or hitting bottom in the literature of recovery… (Terms exploited
in Alcoholics Anonymous). It is echoed beautifully in the Poetry of Saint John
of the Cross: The Dark Night of the Soul. It is the place of beginning; the
starting point of a spiritual awakening.
geo 5,570
No comments:
Post a Comment