Evolving Self

Moving from pain to power!

Last weekend I was feeling under the weather, whatever that really means - but I digress, and so I urged my family to go away for the weekend to visit family alone and I stayed home binging on...

BOOKS!

Now I know you were expecting me to say Red Wine and there was a fair amount of that being prescribed as well, it's an excellent medication, but the binge was primarily on books. On Friday I consumed "Tribes", "The Art of Possibility" and "Rich Dad Poor Dad". Saturday I finished up "Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway" and then moved on to "Flow". On Sunday morning I dragged all my books upstairs to my green couch and surrounded myself with them like one of the forty thieves admiring his jewels. Looking at all the books, in the midst of the addiction I somehow stepped away from myself and observed the frenzied seeker on the couch. It was a first for me and the moment I looked at the situation from this perspective the penny dropped.

There is no answer!

I'm sure all of you reading this came to this conclusion I long time ago, but for me this was quite the revelation. All the craving of the next book, the sifting through, the seeking I was doing I now realized was because I was looking for THE answer. Every book offers up at least one solution, some of them are well thought out and insightful but they never satiated the seeker. I now realized that if I wrote down all the answers that these books provided and broke them down to their core everything came back to - being present. Working with hundreds of clients and their goals, challenges and intentions I had long ago realized that it always came down to being present. If you are lacking confidence, it is because you are in your head listening to your gremlins, the answer is to be present and the same applies to almost every challenge in your life. I knew this, yet I was still looking for THE answer, or perhaps a quicker easier answer or something perhaps more tangible like eating cabbage or giving up coffee. I then saw that a much better thing to ponder is...

What the hell is the damn question!

I sat for a moment allowing this to resonate surveying the books around me. I still saw them as wonderful resource but the heroin had been extracted and now my lust had turned more into appreciation. My eye caught Gary Zukav's book "Seat of the Soul". I glanced through the index and noticed a chapter on addiction which grabbed my attention. As I read that chapter, for the first time, I saw addiction from a completely different perspective. As a highly functioning alcoholic for many years I had been carrying a lot of guilt and fear around. The more I thought about it I realized I had created a myth, that I was very attached to, that sober people were losers, didn't have fun and all they thought about was being sober. This chapter turned that assumption on it's head. Gary speaks of coming from a place of power, of choice and moving towards enlightenment when you choose to be conscious rather than unconscious. Now instead of thinking of being sober and seeing all the things I would have to give up I saw all the possibilities and the power of remaining conscious. Therefore by not drinking I wasn't depriving myself I was opening myself up, now that sounded a lot more attractive to me.

So I am evolving as you see, before your eyes. It has been 6 days since I took back my power and choose to live consciously. I feel like a butterfly slowly emerging from my cocoon, testing the water and making sure that I am in a safe place, getting ready to spread my vibrant wings and fly. Not as dramatic as my usual ejaculations but I think that is a good sign I am on the right path or to be precise forging the right path.