On Dec 30, 5:47�pm, Bill Dukenfield nospam.net> wrote:

One should not beat oneself for not being able to live comfortably in
every environment under the sun.

If we had no limits we would not be humans...we would be gods.

We all have limits, we all come under natural law and are bound by
certain capabilities. And the successful person is one that accepts
these limits and works to live comfortably within them and does not
get confused by enslaving themselves to 'others' limits.

Learn to be true to yourself.

Ask yourself why you wish to do something. Is it for inner peace? Or
to massage your ego? Or because it feels good? Or to improve ones
karmic debt? Or improve ones health? Or to fit in? Or because others
say so? Or to hurt another? Or to try and escape the consequences of
our actions? What is your driving force?

Fear based reasons for doing something are not authentic and natural
actions. The persons actions are based on negative consequences
otherwise they would not do them.

My actions are based on inner peace and if I stray - there goes my
peace - it is my choice. Put your inner peace foremost and you will
have your answer. When you align real and authentic actions with those
that promote inner peace you have found enlightenment.

The formula for success is: Authentic Nature + Right Actions = Peace

The formula for failure is: Authentic Nature + Wrong Actions =
Destruction

There is nothing wrong with wanting to be a success and making a
decent living to provide for ourselves and our family, but it is easy
to confuse "our net worth with our self worth" and make money,
possessions, power and ego our God. When this happens we start to
neglect our real needs and instead of our actions helping, we end up
hurting ourselves and our loved ones - always seek balance.

Most of my time spent living is without the support of a recovery
group or meeting, I try to be open to recovery lessons wherever I find
myself in life. Back in 1995 I found an important one at the OJ
Simpson trial with that famous quote from the closing remarks of
defense attorney Johnny Cochran, "if the glove doesn't fit - you must
acquit."

For my use, I drop the reference to the glove, so it can be used for
any situation - whether it be people, places or things. This phrase
"if it doesn't fit - you must acquit" underscores the question I must
ask myself daily of what I can peacefully coexist with when it comes
to my various addictions. In the end, a successful recovery program is
not about what I want, but about what my addictions will comfortably
allow.

The SCA tool of abstention from people, places and things that I find
harmful to me, whether it be from placing unreasonable demands on my
time and energy or placing me in legal jeopardy or is endangering my
mental, physical or spiritual health is a very important bottom line
evaluator.

On another list I read about someone that has been going though tough
times with relocating some horses she owns and can't look after them
properly. She has posted about it a few times and I can see how these
horses are robbing her of any hopes of peace in her life.

Sometimes we get involved in something and it becomes apparent that we
have gotten in over our heads. Some of these things cannot be undone
easily or quickly. In such cases all we can do is to do our footwork
within our personal and program limits to repair the damage and learn
from our mistakes to avoid them in the future.

This experiential education is the best way to learn that all our
actions have consequences and that many of these actions are producing
consequences that rob us of inner peace.

Once we get on track with this type of peace awareness we can ask the
question of what we can comfortably have in our lives and what we
cannot comfortably have.

When I mentioned this "comfort" factor one time, a fellow on a Debtors
Anonymous list piped up to argue, "Hell, it is comfortable for me to
not pay the bills and lounge around all day." Another fellow on an AA
list laughed at me and said, "If I want to make myself comfortable
I'll just pick up a bottle."

This is not what I mean. To perpetuate more sickness by making
yourself "artificially" comfortable through drugs, alcohol, debt or
fat will ultimately make you more uncomfortable down the road. To
define this comfort quotient in clearer terms, define it as what you
can abstinently, soberly, solvently and peacefully have in your life
on a sustainable basis. The concept of "comfortable sustainability" is
very important for the addict to realize.

This is how we build real self worth by making amends, repairing the
damage and continuing to live our new life "right size" as the 12 and
12 mentions on pages 122-125 . Once we do this, we will have the
possibility to find inner peace in our lives. For me it took more than
a decade to change my life so peace could be found again.

From the position of an impartial observer I can see many peace
busters in the lives in the various stories I read online. Being
mindful of who and what destroys our peace can be a very good practice
for the addict to develop. Finding peace is very important if we ever
want to let go of our addictions. Without coming to a place of peace
with addictions, we are always in the white knuckle category and
hanging on by a thread.

Once we have this clarity of thinking we can start to evaluate
circumstances the best we can as to their peace destroying qualities
and we can then start to choose how we "spend" our peace.

The biggest effect on my addictive impulses throughout the day, as to
whether they take shape or not, is the condition of my internal peace.
If my peace and serenity becomes lost, then these impulses start to
take on more important forms. This is how I balance working 8 - 12
step programs - I put peace first.

Now, only a blissninny would claim to being peaceful 100%% of the time,
although who knows, maybe there is such a creature in the world?
Personally, I am at peace about 80%% to 90%% of the time in my life *if*
I work a good program and when I do not work a good program then my
peace declines to almost nil.

The following quote is a good reminder that as human beings we all
come under natural law and we all have limits that are personal and
fit each of us uniquely. (Quote used with permission)

"I have a brother who: is married, has 4 children, has a full-time
medical practice, and has been going half-time to law school, all at
the SAME TIME. Now, there is a guy who is high cap. I am not he, I
never will be, I may as well get used to it right now. What he can
do, has nothing to do with what I can do.

I'm a sensitive person, an artist, introverted. I cannot go from one
activity or noisy session with people, to the next, and the next,
with no downtime. I become frazzled, unhappy, and fragmented. This
is a fact.

It is at those times when, frazzled, worn down from trying to be
high cap, I spend $ or eat in order to give myself more energy to
carry
on, or to try to keep up with the high cap people, or to just soothe
my pain."

Contemplative time or meditation time or down time or relaxation time
is very important to fostering peace in our lives as this person is
starting to realize. A lot of the addicts I read about live lives of
constant doing and running with no time for such useless things as
sitting around to relax or meditate.

Workaholics usually put little time in self actualization. They may
think that workaholism provides all the financial benefits they need
to live a happy and fulfilled life, but while putting all effort in
this one area they are bankrupt with the area of their inner peace and
contemplative needs. When we are not self aware of our real needs it
is the same as not having controls in our car that tell us the
internal condition of what is going on.

Without writing a book on the benefits of relaxation or meditation let
me tell you of two immediate positive effects such a practice will
have for you when you invest some time in yourself.

First, relaxation or meditation will give your body some time to
dissipate all the stress chemicals you have been producing in over
abundance. Adrenal steroids (cortisol) secreted when a person is under
stress reach the brain and over time can affect the very structure of
the brain. We also produce cortisol from any other stressors the body
perceives, whether it is physical stress, such as a sickness, injury,
surgery, or temperature extremes as well as psychological stress that
we and the world put on us.

Each of us has produces a different amount of these chemicals and has
a different sensitivity to them and this might be the missing link as
to a part of the question as to why some of us are high capacity and
other lower capacity with how we each produce and react to these
stress chemicals differently. Second, you will have some quiet time to
not only quiet your brain but to take a personal accounting of the
direction your are going in and what needs to be changed in order for
you to get a new life.

You will finally be getting some feedback from your internal
instruments that have been out of commission for so long do to your
excessive busyness. You see, 12 steps or not, we all have to answer to
natural law. Within the boundaries of natural law is where stress
chemicals come from within us and as addicts I believe we are super
sensitized to these chemicals and we seek relief though our various
addictions.

If I ignore natural law and force my will over my comfortable
abilities, then I would not have much success with my recovery
efforts.

In my old life, peace used to be very elusive, really it was
nonexistent, but once I started changing the direction of my life I
could get a taste of how this restructuring was changing things when
it came to finding inner peace. It is a funny thing with most of us.
We find no peace or happiness and think our problem is not having
enough complexities and sickness so we lump on some more problems on
our backs and when that doesn't fix things we dig our hole even
deeper.

It never occurs to us to change directions and start removing
complexities and headaches from our lives? But, once we get a taste
for something that really works we can have faith in our recovery
efforts and then we can work calmly with the thought that someday our
efforts will pay off as we will be enjoying a new life. It all starts
by taking one step in the other direction that we have been going all
our lives.

I don't know if the lady with the horses will find a new owner of not,
but hopefully she can let them go in peace if she has to and realize
that this desire to own them does not seem compatible with fostering
peace within her - at least for now.

Ultimately, the person, place or thing itself will always be the final
judge as to what we can comfortably have or not have in our life and
our recovery program ... as long as we are open to listening to the
truth.

Always remember, what we think or anyone else thinks about an issue
means very little - but what our program thinks about it means
everything to us. Our recovery program always has the final say when
it comes to our peace. We can always have hope for the future, but for
success, we must accept how things are in the here and now.

As the famous late Buddhist lecturer Alan Watts said, "It is not what
you think, it is not what you hope ... but what IS."

Take care,

V (Male)

Agnostic Freethinker
Practical Philosopher
Futurist
Urban Homesteader
Agnostic minister of secular humanism to the mind manacled,
spiritually sick, defiance based atheist.
AA#2