Living the Blessed Wisdom Life

Wisdom in this life is determined by taking responsibility for our life and allowing others to take responsibility for theirs.

In sum, this is the internal locus of control, staying within OUR control.

It is staying within our sphere of influence.  It is accepting and embracing the limitations of our control.  It is accepting that we can do what we can do, that we should do what we can.

What I think, say, and do – all of it – is MY responsibility.  Nobody else can be accountable for it.  Nobody else is responsible for that which is within only my control.

Just the same, I’m not accountable for what another person thinks, says, or does.  That’s their choice.  I cannot control what you think, say, or do, but you can.  I can affect and impact on others, but it is their choice how they act as it is mine how I act when others affect and impact me.

When we stay within our control, we master the moment, and we live our best life in the moment, and joy, hope, and peace come into view.

Does it simplify life too much to say that there is one main goal and that this is it?  I don’t think so.  If only we can accept the things WE cannot change and change what WE can, we live The Serenity Prayer.  We need serenity in our life to do these very things, just as doing these things gives us serenity.  When we have these, we have self-care.

In too many respects, we make life more complicated than it needs to be.  If we truly want to succeed in any endeavour in life, it is good to come back to this unchanging truth: 

Be responsible for what WE alone are responsible for.

The challenge is to live out of this paradigm and attest to its power.  When we stay in this paradigm, we soon find the cogency of its power.  We live it out.  When we stay in this, we find the freedom of having been freed of needing to control what we cannot change and of accepting the control we have.  This simple wisdom elixir of living this out solves many mental health maladies or significantly helps us manage them.

If we can see that this one thing leads to the successful life, we redefine for ourselves what true success looks like — as a spiritual truth.  Then we realise there’s nothing more powerful.  This simple truth sets us free, and it is the key to gratitude, hope, joy, and peace.

The healing in a sorrow entered

It’s beautiful when you experience the solemnness of sorrow by entering it.

Those who grieve know there’s no avoiding it, unless by dissociation we avoid the threat of pain.  The pain is not in the sorrow but in the ravages of loss.  The sorrow will heal us if we enter it.

And when we enter the sorrow, we connect with eternity, God.

When we plunge into the purity of our sorrow it doesn’t break us, it mends us.  By entering our truth, by allowing the overwhelm to penetrate and break through the crust of our fear for submitting to it, the truth of our situation sets us free — to be taken deep into the heart of God.

People don’t need God until they need God.  And when we need God long enough, and we habitually enter our sorrow, we learn that God is real, that God will do what nothing else will or can.

Faith in these ways gets us, even as we get it.  These words make sense to the one who gets them.

By entering the purity of pain, by honouring the truth as it is in our lives — that loss has ripped our heart out — we are ultimately healed. 

By faith we are held there in grief for long enough to learn through repetition.  We are terrified of the dread of it, mortally fearful of the pain of it, but we cannot learn this spiritual competency of entering sorrow without being held there — for months, sometimes years.  Somehow we are given a foretaste of healing that keeps us going through the hell of it, in faith.  And this is good enough for us, because we cannot change our circumstances. 

Those who need this are there and they know.  This is for them, perhaps not for you.

Think of it this way: there is something that we all ought to feel and know and touch and experience in this life, but nobody wants to go there, because it feels worse than death.

8 years ago, just three weeks before I was to enter another tremendous season of sorrow that lasted a long time, I called this the revenant blessing (<< hyperlinked).

It takes enormous faith to submit and to let go.  Yet that’s all that’s required of us to enter the eternal.  God does God’s thing, has done throughout eternity.  People have been doing this for thousands of years.  It is there for us too.

How?  When crushed, be crushed.  When overwhelmed, be overwhelmed.  When teary, be teary.

There’s no rocket science in it, which is why we make it a hard thing.  “Surely there’s more to it!”

No.  Go into the purity of your truth, and by entering truth the path to healing commences — a moment’s healing to begin with, perhaps the following day in a few seconds of gratitude.  Months and years of this practice gives us access to eternity now. 

Search it and find it.  It’s there for the partaking.

An Authentic, Enduring, Transforming Recovery

The earliest days of my recovery from binge drinking were heady.  That was 7,500-odd days ago.  

Even though I never for one moment missed alcohol, it was in fear and trembling that I counted one-day-at-a-time in my journey to sobriety — acutely aware that I was one temptation, one sip, away from a relapse.

With each day following the last, again and again and again, more confidence was built that I’d not return to what was for me the ‘demon drink’.

But recovery isn’t only about staying ‘dry’ — and AA majors on this through the Twelve Steps.  

The steps aren’t a bandaid of abstinence, they are a program of life for transformation — into an inspiring life of ‘making amends’.

There is no better protection against relapse than cauterising the need to drink at its source by living a life of power and gratitude.  This life is one of dealing with all fear, guilt, and shame.  “Life” in all its abundance.

But there are still the initial days and weeks of getting sober, and that’s the stuff of wing-and-prayer.

Authentic recovery is both enduring and transforming.  It must last and the changes we make must last.  Both dimensions — time and growth — are needed for authentic recovery.

One thing we must accept as we do the maintenance steps 10-12 is that we cannot do another person’s recovery for them; that is THEIR work much as it was our work that we did or are doing.  We cannot make it easier for anyone.  

But one day at a time it works IF we work it.