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Post by BW on Sept 21, 2010 9:25:28 GMT -5
Silver Linings
I search for silver linings, for the deeper meaning of the events in my life. Life is my teacher if I can learn to read the subtle messages that are laced into the circumstances that I co-create around me. I will look for the lesson. When life offers up its inevitable challenges, I will try to understand what I am meant to see that I am not seeing, what I am meant to hear that I am not hearing, what I am meant to know that I am not knowing. There is always a silver lining if I look for it. Even if I don't see it readily, I trust that it is there and that it will reveal itself to me over time. Life isn't simple. One of the ways that I can grow from life's adversities, is to see what is positive about a difficult situation, to look for the silver lining. I can grow in joy and in pain. It doesn't need to be one or the other because pain can transform into joy. It can be the fire that clears the field for new and tender growth.
- Tian Dayton PhD
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Post by caressa on Sept 21, 2010 9:30:37 GMT -5
Like this! I am a firm believer, there is good to be found in everything. Even if I am glad it is not me or I am no longer in that space, lessons are there. The body language, the words left unsaid, the message between the lines, all tell a story.
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Post by BW on Sept 23, 2010 13:11:03 GMT -5
Endless Opportunities
I can start over each day. I can start over each hour of each day. The universe is impersonal in that sense. It's always waiting for me to tell it what I want. Like attracts like. I tell the world what I want more of, by what I am thinking and feeling right now, right this minute. Today, every hour on the hour, I will allow myself to see something positive about my day. I'll let myself send out an order by my pleasant thoughts and feelings for more of the same. When I catch myself heading down a negative path I'll stop and consciously observe what is going through my mind. Life is full of chances and so is my day. I can start it over any time I want to.
- Tian Dayton PhD
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Post by BW on Sept 24, 2010 8:49:12 GMT -5
Hope
Hope is on my horizon. I feel it in my bones, I sense it in my being, I know it to be part of who I am. I will never give up hope. Hope for a better world, a better life, a better me. Hope is that feeling that led explores to cross dangerous oceans in search of a new world. Hope is what keeps people who are imprisoned from giving up. Hope is what allows those who have all they hold dear taken from them to begin again. Hope is natural. It is a gift that I will allow myself to have.
- Tian Dayton PhD
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Post by SunnyGirl on Sept 24, 2010 14:36:31 GMT -5
Hope
Hope is on my horizon. I feel it in my bones, I sense it in my being, I know it to be part of who I am. I will never give up hope. Hope for a better world, a better life, a better me. Hope is that feeling that led explores to cross dangerous oceans in search of a new world. Hope is what keeps people who are imprisoned from giving up. Hope is what allows those who have all they hold dear taken from them to begin again. Hope is natural. It is a gift that I will allow myself to have. - Tian Dayton PhD Today's reading really lifted me..... It also went along with the post in the chipping away section... Hopeful/Despondent Thank you for sharing ((((Fluttering)))) Peace on the journey, SunnyGirl |
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Post by BW on Sept 25, 2010 8:07:49 GMT -5
Being More of Me
Today, I realize that if I am to stand centered and strong within my life and self, I will need to plant a garden within my own soul. A garden for me to nurture and to nurture me. A haven of beauty. I will find my own voice and sing my song because if I don't sing it, it will not be sung. It is all I have and it is enough. I do not need to prove anything to anyone anymore. I have come home -- to me. The truth is, I was here all along, only I forgot to look for myself. Instead, I searched for me in other people's meaning and became lost in their stories. I am not lost today. I know that there is nowhere to look for me but within myself, and no one to lead me there but me.
- Tian Dayton PhD
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Post by BW on Sept 26, 2010 10:11:33 GMT -5
Giving Back
Today I give something to the community of people in which I find myself. I look around me and wonder what I might add to the world, to someone else's day and I do it. I recognize that giving and receiving are one channel, that when I open my heart to give, I simultaneously open it to receive as well.
- Tian Dayton PhD
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Post by BW on Sept 27, 2010 9:52:34 GMT -5
Help is Not Always Help
I watched those I love sink further and further into a disease and it was extremely painful to witness. I watched those I love steep in denial, coming up with a new set of rationalizations for each manifestation of the disease and I felt deep frustration and sometimes despair at their unwillingness to see the reality that was growing like yeast before their eyes. It hurt to hear them use rationalizations to let themselves off the hook. But those rationalizations, that denial was their disease. It was infuriating to watch them go about their day seemingly free of the kinds of anxieties and worries that I was experiencing because their denial was working so well for them. It was enraging. It left me feeling completely helpless, frustrated and alone. It made me want to scream at everyone. But I fixed instead to make the feeling go away. When I fix to make my own pain go away, it doesn't work. The 'help' I give is too loaded down with my own pain and the messages get muffled.
- Tian Dayton PhD
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Post by caressa on Sept 27, 2010 10:29:45 GMT -5
Like this one. I got woke up by a telephone call from my sister. I was talking to her and all of a sudden I felt this horrible head ache, which shouldn't have been mine. I just asked for the energy to change and asked it go out to where it could help others, it wasn't mine to take on.
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Post by BW on Sept 28, 2010 11:09:58 GMT -5
Distorted Reasoning
This disease distorted the reasoning of all around me. Because we were trying so hard to hide the pain of watching those we love become mired in the disease and losing our grip on our own happiness, we used our thinking to twist and bend the truth into a more palatable shape. We rationalized, denied what was right in front of us, made excuses and sometimes lied because it made us feel better than to admit the truth. The alcoholic lied to hide their uses and abuses, the family members lied to hide their fear, pain and confusion. We chose stinking thinking over the truth, lying to the world and to ourselves. Pretty soon, our thinking became so filled with denial and rationalization that we started to live by it. Eventually our sense of reality became distorted. Today, I am willing to live life on life's terms, not mine. I am able to tolerate the truth because I know that I have a program, I have accepted the things I cannot change and changed the things I can.
- Tian Dayton PhD
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Post by BW on Sept 29, 2010 11:25:34 GMT -5
Hypervigilance
Living with this disease has been traumatic for me and for those I love. All of the symptoms of trauma have become a part of who we are. That's why we need to do so much work to recover. We're not just recovering from the disease of addiction, we're recovering from the symptoms of emotional and psychological trauma. My fear apparatus got very much overused in my family. I was constantly geared up for fight or flight. And when I couldn't do either of those I froze in my tracks, I went numb inside, I shut down. But all of that pain that I shut down stayed inside of me. It show up in my life as a delayed reaction, even though I am not still living under the same kind of stress as I did surrounded by active addiction, my body and mind carry the imprint of that trauma and over react. I live as if the stressor is still present. My old pain and anger are surfacing after the fact in a post traumatic stress reaction.
- Tian Dayton PhD
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Post by caressa on Sept 29, 2010 17:18:20 GMT -5
My friend suggested that I go for therapy. She said, "Quit comparing yourself to me. Don't discount what happened to you, what happened to you was traumatic to you, and you need to address it." When I compared, I thought I was being a whoose and cry baby to go for something as little as four rapes and the abuse of being put through a wall and finger prints on my neck from where he tried to chock me. That was nothing compared to the horror stories I heard in the rooms and when I heard what happened to her, who was I to complain.
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Post by BW on Sept 30, 2010 12:30:08 GMT -5
Healing Society
Today, I will light one candle and that candle is myself. I will keep my own flame burning. I turn my sight to light and love and goodness. For today, there is no need to be discouraged. So what if I see and identify all the ills of society and diagnose it as sick -- what good will that do me or anyone else? I heal society by healing myself. Just as life is lived one day at a time, the world will heal one person at a time. Each time I think a positive, loving thought, it goes into the ether and vibrates. This is nothing particularly mystical; I have but to sit near someone and look at her face to feel how her thoughts affect me. I take ownership of my own inner workings and their effect on myself and others. Today I am the gift.
- Tian Dayton PhD
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Post by BW on Oct 1, 2010 10:58:36 GMT -5
My Family Illness
My family has a disease and it's not me. My family drinks poison and serves poison up to each other, but I don't have to. My family chooses to deny the impact of addiction and the trauma that follows it but I don't have to. My family defends their right to stay sick but I want to get well. My family, for whatever reason, is determined to not identify the family illness that has made us all sick. But the illness stands out to me in Technicolor. I see it and I trust my own eyes.
- Tian Dayton PhD
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Post by BW on Oct 2, 2010 8:55:46 GMT -5
A Reservoir of Peace Within Me
I have a reservoir of peace within me into which I can retreat for safety. There is peace in the heart of God. Today I rest in the awareness that God's presence is in my heart and that is where I can go for shelter. I will bring all of my consciousness into my heart and become one with God consciousness. I can feel safe from whatever is happening around me if I do this. I can feel protected when I go here. I can tolerate what I previously thought was intolerable if I know where to go to find shelter, to find peace, to find love.
- Tian Dayton PhD
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Post by BW on Oct 3, 2010 14:00:31 GMT -5
My Family Illness
My family has a disease and it's not me. My family drinks poison and serves poison up to each other, but I don't have to. My family chooses to deny the impact of addiction and the trauma that follows it but I don't have to. My family defends their right to stay sick but I want to get well. My family, for whatever reason, is determined to not identify the family illness that has made us all sick. But the illness stands out to me in Technicolor. I see it and I trust my own eyes.
- Tian Dayton PhD
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Post by BW on Oct 4, 2010 11:56:37 GMT -5
Guilt
I will tolerate the pain of watching. When I see someone I care about locked in this disease, I want to run and help. I want to tell them what to do to get better. But time and again, this hasn't worked. In fact, it usually blows up in my face. My only job is to stay on my own path. I cannot help anyone who doesn't want my help. If someone wants what I have they will also want to find it in their own way. I cannot really teach anyone anything I think. I cannot really save anyone. Especially those close to me. My feelings of disgust at their blindness and frustration with their seeming unwillingness to get with the program color my message. And so often, I help because I feel so much survivor's guilt. What I really want to do is run the other way but I feel too guilty to do that. What I really want is the family I lost to this disease or the family I never had but that is gone. Today, I will allow myself to have what I have, to live well, to follow my own path of recovery.
- Tian Dayton PhD
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Post by BW on Oct 5, 2010 10:14:03 GMT -5
The Mystery
Today, I accept that part of myself that will never be satisfied, and I comfort and tame it. There is a place in me that knows it will never necessarily solve the eternal questions of life: Who am I and where do I come from, and where do I go when I die? Part of me wants to know the answers to these questions. But I am beginning to feel that the answer is to live fully in the question, to open to the mystery. Perhaps meaning is not knowing and understanding, but an acceptance of mystery, an embracing of the unknown. After all, it is this evanescent sense of mystery that gives even the most ordinary circumstance an eternal sort of glow � a sense of depth, a feeling that there is more.
- Tian Dayton PhD
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Post by BW on Oct 6, 2010 10:14:29 GMT -5
My Reservoir of Peace
There is nothing in my day that is more important than my serenity. It is my responsibility to maintain and attend to it. Whatever I do in the world, my serenity comes first. I owe it to no one. I will pay attention today to the myriad of ways in which I am thrown off balance and I will take a moment to center myself, to breathe, to remember that when I can calm my body, mind and spirit, I interact differently the people, places and things of my day. I will work daily to build my serenity muscles so that I stay strong and flexible. Serenity isn't something that I can just grab and have. I need to nourish it through quiet and reflection and come back to it what I lose it. My serenity is mine to look after. I give myself the gift of my own serenity today and every day.
- Tian Dayton PhD
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Post by BW on Oct 7, 2010 10:28:20 GMT -5
Putting in the Elbow Grease
I will be willing to do the daily work that is required to have the life I want to have. A good life is brought forth through many doors. The door of visualization, the door or seeing and the door of work. As I progress along my path I will learn how to 'work smarter'. How to use my energies more efficiently and waste less time needlessly. I'll learn how to get out of my own way and let my energies flow more freely. I'll learn how to listen to others and make my own decisions, how to have boundaries that are porous and flexible rather than either rigid or weak. I will find my sense of self and be able to sustain it even in the presence of others. I'll develop strength, wisdom, patience and compassion. I will develop my own unique gifts and strengths.
- Tian Dayton PhD
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. I will be back looking for Lin and others.