Category: Recovery

On the path to recovery, we learn to value every aspect of our lives, even the bad energies. In the words of Richard C. Schwartz, the inspirational, kind founder of Internal Family Systems Therapy, there are no bad parts.   

This can seem like a revelation, if we have the very common habit of turning against ourselves or other people. Haven’t we all been schooled to make divisions all the livelong day, between you and me, good and bad, wanted and unwanted?

When we say (through words or behavior), I like your generosity, I don’t like your anxiety, we cut a person in pieces. And of course we do this to ourselves, too. Keep being studious. Stop being jealous.   

Polarity at Play 

Of course, at the relative level, it is useful to choose, to clarify which way we want to go. There’s nothing wrong with preferences. This, not that, please. Recovery, not addiction. Health, not illness. Optimism, not pessimism. 

Polarities are part of our world. And it’s a wonderful, unavoidable part of human life to like and dislike, to resonate or not.  

In fact, polarities are always meaningless without the other end of the pole, as North has no meaning if there isn’t South to oppose it. How can we enjoy something, if we don’t know the feeling of non-enjoyment, too?

Polarities, rather than being true opposites, work together to enhance each other, as a deep dark velvet-black nighttime makes the rich blue sky of the daylight hours more beautiful, and vice versa.

Inherent Vice?

One of the most common pitfalls is when we misunderstand either end of a polarity as absolute, different in inherent value. 

This attribution of an inherent value difference creates shadow and self-division, and perpetuates enemy patterning throughout society. Our side is good. Their side is bad. 

Do we fall for appearances? Is the person we just crossed the street to avoid what they seem to be? Weren’t they once a soft innocent baby in their mother’s arms? Mightn’t we also be scattered, fractious, and filthy, but for the grace of God?

Original Forms

There’s a divinely balanced, reconnected original form of every energy that currently roams in the shadows, creating havoc and pain in our lives. 

When we are willing to look for a shadow’s original form, its higher octave, we can learn a lot and begin to soften our world back into a more human shape. 

We don’t have to throw babies out with the bathwater, as the curious saying goes. We can take a baby that seems like a bad baby, and love it, forgive it, connect with it, until it’s free at last to be good again. 

Shadow-Savvy

Yet we can’t be naive about shadow work. It takes a lot to love what’s fallen far from love, and we must understand our strengths and weaknesses, truly. We’re often not up to the challenge of transforming and transmuting the deepest of darknesses.

We have to understand our opponent and not think that we personally can restore it into goodness, if in actual fact, we cannot. There are psychological limits, like laws of spacetime, theoretically transcendable, but practically not.

Addiction, for example, is not easily vanquished. But we can still know as we stare it down, that this seven headed monster is a gross distortion of what is actually a positive life-force energy. 

Addiction is the fallen version of a part of a person that wants, in its deepest nature, to just have some relief from overwhelming pain. And that pain itself is a form of longing to be reconnected with all of life. 

Journaling: Higher Octaves

The following exercise is to take something that currently seems like a bad thing, and imagine what its higher octave could be. If each “bad” energy is a fallen angel now, what was it like before it fell, when it was happy and safe in connection with the All? 

Try it see where it leads you. 

Part 1: 

Identify troublesome energies. 

eg: 

anxiety

resentment

shame

Part 2: 

Identify or imagine a higher octave. Is there a good version of this same thing? 

The higher octave of anxiety is wisdom, caution, respect for life, valuing life, wanting to stay alive. 

The higher octave of resentment is boundaries, a feeling of no this isn’t right for me, I desire to be myself as I truly am, not be coerced into being something someone else wants but isn’t actually part of my true path.

The higher octave of shame is humility, the recognition that life is the source, not me, and in humility I can relax into reverence, love and innocent reliance on life. 

What else can you imagine the higher octave of?

The Power of Working with Thought

On the variable, exciting terrain of the recovery journey, it is often helpful to address the role of thoughts in our addiction. 

As the AA term “stinkin’ thinkin’” acknowledges, thoughts are deeply involved in why we used substances in the first place and are connected to both relapse and recovery. Thoughts are also thoroughly enmeshed with the profound psychological and existential pain that, until healed, sets us up to desperately seek relief in something outside of ourselves. 

That’s why Villa Kali Ma practitioners help recovering women integrate tools, insight and wisdom from therapeutic modalities like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. These effective therapeutic approaches are resources for addressing the way that thoughts impact us for good and for ill as we make our way along our hero’s journey. 

Do You Agree with Your Thoughts?

We have millions of pain-creating thoughts on any given day. Most of them are not originally ours. 

The reason these thoughts are echoing around our psyche’s innermost caves, creating pain and misery for us and others, is not because we ourselves forged those thoughts from insight and experience, as fresh conclusions of our own. 

Rather, they are usually inherited or learned, absorbed from the environment and programmed by culture. We are not born with a lot of negativity. We have to be taught to think bad things about ourselves and our world. 

When we realize that we have some choice in the matter, of which of all those thoughts we choose to now endorse and approve of, which ones we agree to, things can change quite a bit for us. 

We might not be able to instantly clear our heads, but we can at least say “I see you, thought, but I do not actually agree with this line of thinking.” This little bit of disagreement makes all the difference in the world.

The Falcon’s Perspective

Imagine a beautiful, benevolent, protective falcon who is your spirit friend, perched on the highest branch of a very tall tree, comfortably looking down on you in your world. Take a few minutes to picture this handsome bird in all its splendor. 

Now try on your falcon friend’s perspective, imagining all that can be seen down below. See your current self down there on the ground, in whatever your present circumstances are. 

What do you notice? What is it like to see your world from above? 

Shifting Focus

Now practice shifting back and forth from the two perspectives – first yours, on the ground, in the midst of it all, now the falcon’s. 

Falcons have magnificent eyesight, made for detecting the tiniest of movements. They can see all the sorrows and joys of life with exquisite detail. Without being involved in the scene, they can wait patiently, wings folded, simply observing.

What if you could take your falcon friend’s view of your own daily troubles and struggles more often? Could you take a more neutral, balanced, precise, kind, accurate, and discerning higher view? What if you could wait unhurriedly, absorbing all the facts and information needed to fully understand and assess, before deciding on what it all means in the bigger picture of your life?

Seeing a Bigger Picture

Journal time! To try out the friendly falcon’s perspective a bit further right now, think of a situation in your life that you are having painful thoughts and feelings about. Perhaps this situation causes you some turmoil and tumult, or is making you feel down on yourself. 

Taking your falcon friend’s view, ask yourself the following questions:

What are all the factors are contributing to this situation being in my life right now?
What hidden explanations, or wider deeper contexts could be the case, and I wouldn’t know just because of my current vantage point?
What wonderful surprises could be revealed in due time?
What is the meaning am I giving to this situation?
Do I like that interpretation?
Is that meaning a fact or more like a feeling or opinion?
What is the benefit to me of looking at the situation that way?
How might others see the same situation?
Is there another way of framing this that I like better?
What would a happy-go-lucky person make of this same situation?
How important is this situation?
How important  or will it be a few months from now?
What about a year from now? Three years? Ten years?
Is there anything I could do or focus my energy on right now, that would feel like a positive shift away from this trouble zone? 

Ego is A Bit Extra

The AA slogan Easy Does It is one of my favorites. For those of us used to the forceful, bombastic energies of life under addiction, the entire concept of ease-centered daily little actions can be utterly foreign at first.  

In essence, Easy Does It reminds us that most of the time, less is more. When it comes to the application of personal willpower to some situation we’re facing, that is almost certainly the case. 

If we’re feeling all fired up with an urgent desire to act, it’s a good idea to stop and check with Higher Power, because urgency and intensity might be a sign that it’s not God’s action we’re considering, but perhaps our ego’s. 

That’s because it’s a signature energy of ego, especially with addiction powering up the engine, to overdo things. Ego is, as the young folks say, “a bit extra”.  

Have A Lighter Hand

In normal parlance, Easy Does It means have a light hand. Don’t push, don’t shoehorn. Don’t come at your recovery with mega intense energy. Try to be light, to relax. Approach with softness and ease. 

I had to be taught not to bang loudly and obnoxiously at my recovery, and to understand that recovery and psyche need sensitivity and lightness.

I was with my toddler nephew recently, trying to show him how to touch a guitar, since his go-to instinct was to pull at the strings, tweak the pegs and thump on it. I found myself saying “Easy, honey, easy, be soft, be gentle” and trying to show him what a feathery, light touch is. 

Some of us, like me, need to learn to how to touch our recovery like it’s a delicate, precious instrument which, if treated well, will help us make beauty in our lives.

Touch Your Recovery With a Feather

The late Chogyam Trungpa is credited with saying that when sitting in meditation, you should acknowledge your thoughts with the gentleness of a feather touching a bubble. This is a lovely image of the attitude to have towards recovery, too. 

Could we be that soft, that attuned, that patient and quiet as we orient ourselves towards healing? 

Easy Does It also tells us to focus on what feels easy enough that we can actually do it right now, versus getting all tied up in emotional knots about what’s momentarily unapproachable. 

Easy Accomplishes It

There are definitely times when we have to take courageous action, but on the other hand many of us have been trained to think that what works is pushing, insisting, powering through, overriding, and paddling upstream. Almost as though, if it doesn’t drain our vital forces, it’s not worth doing. 

In her book The Artist’s Way, Julia Cameron writes about Easy Does It and says that it also means quite literally, that “Easy accomplishes it”. Easy gets it done. We would get much further by daily, small acts than coming with enormous strain and effort to get it all done in one fell swoop.

Learning Not to Strain

I was programmed to believe that if I’m not straining, it means I’m not doing it right. If I’m not pushing it beyond what’s natural and comfortable, then maybe I’m lazy, not putting the work in. 

For some people, it is very important to learn how to be active, to choose, and to do, and to initiate. There is a role for that in recovery too, as many slogans reflect. This slogan is about understanding that sometimes, not doing is far better than doing. 

Why? In the past, most of our action was hijacked by ego and addiction, so that our will and our behavior did not serve God, or even us, but rather the rapacious addiction. 

So in recovery, we learn to be ginger in our doing, allowing more room for God to show us,  in that stiller, quieter way that God tends to speak.

Easy Does It, not Ego Does It

This shift in attitude, that it is not my job to wrestle life down to the ground, and defeat it once and for all, but rather to float in its larger womby pools knowing I’ll be taken care of no matter what, was an important change for me personally and something to return to each day. 

Certainly I can say that my life offers me many opportunities to see, once again, if I needed a refresher, that the slogan is Easy Does It, not Ego Does It. 

Choose Wisely

There’s a lovely, straight-to-the-point AA saying: “You can’t save your [gluteus maximus] and your face simultaneously.” The saying uses another word for your gluteus maximus, a word that rhymes with grass, but to keep this classy-ish, I’ll say derriere. (Maybe that’s what they say in French AA meetings). 

Of course, there are many possible interpretations and layers of meaning to this slogan. But the gist is this: in any given moment, you can only serve one master, so… choose wisely. It’s like: “Everybody, this is a hold up: Your recovery or your derriere.”

What is your top priority – sobriety or your self-image? Your life itself, or what people think about you? In recovery, the plain truth is that we’re either looking out for the ego and trying to keep up appearances or prioritizing recovery. Stark, but true. 

Just the Facts, Ma’am

It’s important to remember every single day of our lives that those with the addiction pattern need to take the fact of their addiction very seriously, or else. We’re talking about life or death when we get down to it. 

We quickly forget that addiction is a parasite that kills the host sooner or later! How often did we have to prove to ourselves that our addiction always lies in wait, ready to kill us at the first chance if we don’t do the work? Do we need one more reminder, or have we shown ourselves what addiction is, who we become under its influences, beyond the shadow of a doubt?

If we feel embarrassed that we need recovery, let’s take a moment to think. How did we get into this embarrassing situation in which our bacon needs to be saved? Oh yeah, we got here because we lost all common sense and self-control and became powerless over the use of substances. Did we mean to? No. Did that happen? Yes.

We lost the ability to make reasonable decisions and behaviors in our own interest, to behave in sane and coherent ways. We became mad and foolish, someone you would shake your head in wonder at how far their behaviors veer off from their intentions. We became one of those people we didn’t think we’d ever be.

So we do need to focus on saving our derrieres first and foremost. Always and forever. That’s just the facts. 

Why Save Face?

And what is the urge to save face but to imagine that we are someone with greater morality, self-control, or abilities than what is currently the case? What does the ego give us but an imagined superiority, followed quickly by imagined inferiority, in ever-repeating cycles, ups and downs, booms and busts? Why do we try so hard to save it?

It seems to me that the desire to save face, even our false, inauthentic face, never dies completely, or maybe it lays in wait, just like our addiction, hoping we’ll return to it. 

I know, on a basic level, it is because we are all wounded in our basic human dignity. Many of us were made to feel less than others, and we’re scared to return to that place. We want to feel ok about ourselves. Admitting we have an addiction is rough on us and our idea of ourselves as being worthy. Recovery keeps reminding us, again and again, that we don’t have our stuff together. We must find ways to love ourselves even though we’re so imperfect, tragic, and heartbreaking. (In other words, we have to find Unconditional Love). 

Truth is Freedom

The desire to save face can turn a person away right at the first step, in which we are invited to admit that we’ve succumbed to the addiction pattern and need help. It could turn us from recovery again around the 4th, 5th and 9th steps, when we have to talk to people and tell them the cringeworthy truth of what we did. We might fear that our self-esteem will plummet if we admit the truth. 

But the truth, as they say, will set us free. The real effect of the twelve steps is self-compassion, self-liberation, and self-acceptance. We are loosed from the sugary attractions of fragile self-esteem based on inauthenticity and set free to explore our true nature’s real, glorious depths. 

This is kind of a red pill, blue pill situation. Recovery is the red pill. Ego is the blue pill. What do you choose?