If these thoughts to provoke/inspire you, well, you are dead inside. lol

"There are two emotions: love and fear." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"You can accept or reject the way you are treated by other people. But until you heal the wounds of your past, you are going to bleed." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"We have a tendency to always test people's love. 'I want to see how badly I have to behave before you'll leave me. Because I don't really think you want me anyhow.'" — Iyanla Vanzant 

"You are never angry for the reason you think you are. There's an older hurt under that."
— Iyanla Vanzant 

"My favorite definition [of forgiveness] is giving up the hope that the past could be any different."
— Oprah 

"Create what you want as opposed to being stuck in what you didn't have." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"The best students get the hardest lessons." — Iyanla Vanzant

"Our beliefs become the rules we live by, and then here's what happens: We make ourselves right." — Cheryl Richardson 

"Affirmation plus action equals miracles." — Cheryl Richardson 

"Every word you speak and every thought you think is an affirmation for your future."
— Cheryl Richardson 

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, and not our darkness, that frightens us."
— Marianne Williamson, quoted during the webcast by Oprah 

"The key belief—Gary Zukav said this many years ago—the key belief is whether or not you believe the universe is a compassionate and loving place. ... I would have to say, I believe that no matter what, no matter what difficulty, no matter what dark hour befalls me ... there's a rainbow in the cloud." — Oprah 

"If you want a divorce, you're already alone. Because ... you're married to a person you don't want to be with." — Martha Beck

"When you don't show up as who you are, people fall in love with who you're not. Then when they find out who you are, that's when they leave." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"Just give yourself permission to tell the truth to yourself." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"Stay in your car in your lane on your road in your world. Stay in your own lane. Don't be minding other people's spiritual business. Stay in your car. In your lane. On your road. In your world." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"That's ... what Gary Zukav says about authentic power: Authentic power [is] when the personality comes to serve the energy of your soul."—Oprah 

"Very often as adults we still behave like we can't say this. We can't do that. We can't ask for this. ... We deal with people as if we're children who don't have the right to speak up. Deal adult to adult." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"Love people enough to tell them the truth. And respect them enough to know that they can handle it." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"If you start from the place of being grateful—this is what I love when I keep a gratitude journal, trying to do at least five things in a day that I'm grateful for—it means you look at the day differently." — Oprah 

"You are the only one who gets to say what goes on in your life. And when you say something—that this is going to go on in my life—[and] then it doesn't work, you get to say something else. ... Make another choice in another moment." — Iyanla Vanzant 

"Life gives you an endless supply of do-overs." — Iyanla Vanzant

Grateful, Lucky Lucky Bastard.

Why is it that humans, specifically this human are so god damn resistant to change. Stuff that doesn't change eventually dies away so it's really a matter of accept it now on my terms or accept it later when there is no choice.

Today is my very last visit with the psych doctor who has treated me for nearly 15 years. Financially it isn't possible to continue and more than that I feel like he has opened every door for me, at least a crack for me to do the work and push them open then walk right through them. He hasn't been the only source of open  doors for me but consistently he has been the most, well, consistent. It's cool what happens when willingness meets instruction and opportunity. I have gone from a depressed bipolar mess who insisted on trying the next newest miracle pill to someone who has to fight the urge to tell depressive friends, "That new pill your excited about isn't going to do for you what you want it to".  I'm actually kind of anti-meds now. I'm especially anti-meds when I hear someone who thinks the pill alone will heal their life.  Make no bones about it, if the day comes the pill comes out that will fix all my brokenness , I will be the first in line. lol  All those meds can do is adjust the intricate chemicals and juices in the head that put me on even ground enough to have a fighting chance and making better choices and to un-knot the knots of my diseased thinking and backwards feelings.

I've got a lot of medical and spiritual tools in my bag that are traceable back to my monthly meeting DFM.  He never asked me to be anywhere but in the moment and really examine what was happening as it was happening. For people like me who are depressive and living in the past or fearful or catapulting into the future,  Momentarianism- the land of living presently with thought is the perfect to built a house of wellness.

People make entrances and exits in our lives daily, some for a reason and some for a season. The fact that I have had a consistent agent of compassion and change in my medical life and my life of spirit for a decade and a half puts me in the "Lucky Bastard" category and also in the category of "Grateful Bastard".

I knew the look in her eyes, it was fear she couldn't disguise

A few minutes before time for a meeting to start I saw a tiny slip of a woman put her hands above her eyes to peer into the meeting hall. I smiled and motioned for her to come in. She was my mother, she was my friend's mother she was every addicts mother who had came to the end of their rope and just went out searching. Searching for help, searching for a hand, searching for a voice that would tell her that there was still a possibility that her fears wouldn't be confirmed. The fear her only child would die from addiction is what brought her to 3713 today. The only information I had for her was that a Naranon meeting would take place at 6:30 at the hall she was at and that there were people who knew where she stood. There she would find understanding and a way to deal with loving an addict whether or not he ever gets clean or if he chases the rock to a brutal senseless end. I gave her the NA.org website and assured her there were thousands of parents out their with a recovery plan of their own and that if her son ever wanted to come to another meeting she could call me and I would meet him there. This is real fucking life, unfolding under my very nose and I have spent most of the day consumed in my own  psychodrama starring myself. If I prayed I would pray for her, instead I am redirecting positive energy her way. What a bold, brave woman. No man or woman opens the door to recovery without facing down a million fears.  My human bowl is fuller this moment for my interaction with her. Heartbreak in her voice, fear in her eyes and hope, (though she did not see it) that there was something inside the sad gray walls of this building that could save her son. Color me touched.

Time for change but how?

Things in my living situation are about to boil over, or i am about to boil over. I know I need to change some things but I have no clue as to how to go about it. How do you get THERE from HERE? I was sitting in the tub just now and I realized I had my face buried in the washrag for an extended time, not moving and loud thoughts banging against my temples. After 20 years of therapy , treatment and a butt load of self help books the first thoughts that came to my mind were, "your trapped, the only way out is to kill yourself". I actively told my head that was a lie and that everyday i sit in meetings with people who change their situations all the time. That was the voice of illness telling me that living a life I would enjoy filled with the freedom that should come with being a grown man would never be mine, that I was incapable of living a clean grown up life. I know there is a life out there, I know I am doing real , good work moving toward it but as far as the real steps I need to take to get there are a mystery. I can stay clean, I know how to do that but how do I get my car fixed, find work and get a place to live in order to get away from my fucked up sister and the mother who depends on me not to grow up?

Creative intention of manifestation

There is a specific creative intention behind my manifestation on this planet. Just as dogs are meant to dogs, roses are meant to be roses, I am meant to be what I am. The only way I can fulfill the creative intention behind to me is to be myself and to honor the things that make me special and unique. My life is  not mean to be filled with crap I think is necessary/bells and whistles. As long as I am true to who I am, which is a loving, gentle , funny human ,I am a success at my own intention. The rest of it is extraneous bits of ego trying to tell me "this is who you are" "you need to look like this", "you need this car" "what they think matters". The spirit must be free of the ego and it's attempts at high jacking creative intention for egoic identification to nothings.

love

love

I caught the last 5 minutes of the update "Unsolved Mysteries today. There was a jewish man who was 14 when the concentration camp was liberated. He ran into a young soldier who gave him food. Overcome the kid dropped to his Knees and held onto the young soldiers leg. The soldier stroked his shaved head and kept telling him over and over that it would be ok.

The grown up man recalls the story and broke down in tears when the soldier touched him, hugged him. He smelled, he was covered in lice but the soldier didn't care. He just had this moment with this kid. He got rations for the boy and the others and he was never seen again.

I want to be the soldier. I want to touch, to hug and to love people that think they are too dirty for such human touch. It is like a magnetic pull in the core of my chest to love like this. I don't know how it's going to happen but I feel like it is. Not only was I born this way, my life of not feeling love is my greatest teacher on what people need and how to give love to them in a way they can feel.

In '82 when I went to the dentist, it was the first time Universal Health Precautions had started and I remember feeling like I was to dirty for the dentist to touch. The rubber gloves freaked me out. I knew exactly what he meant when he was taken by surprised someone was willing to touch him. It's a struggle for me to feel worthy of touch, but I have no problem at all giving love. My problem is receiving it without becoming nauseous.

I've been thinking of two different , I guess you would called them metaphors for my recovery program. When people have heart surgery they put them on a heart and lung bypass machine that actually does the "living" for you while the repairs are being made.
 The second one is in certain businesses they have manual over-ride on certain machines in case they fail to function properly. My life failed to function and I practice a recovery program as my own version of manual over ride.

Don't really no why these to ideas have been rolling around in my head for a couple of days but they have. Between the life support the recovery program provides me while I do the work of , well, stepwork and I have a way to over ride the disease mode I seem to want to live in. 

Both metaphors are hopeful as is my life today.

Easement

I've been sort of hung up in the middle of an upgrade and I've had to stay present and work program to keep my head above water.. I had a friend keep me company for 3 hours on the phone the other night and I talked about about my longstanding issue with my dad. The next day I listened to a lady I feel like is the real deal talk for two hours about true forgiveness. When it comes to parents she said, even if they treated you horribly growing up it is important to at least honor the fact that they are responsible for the act of our creation. I've known for  a long time that I needed to get to a place of real forgiveness with my  parents and stepmother. Not saying I have to engage them in relationships now, because it wouldn't be healthy but in about 24 hours of hearing Iyanla I had a major shift in consciousness and I became lighter in spirit. That is what forgiveness feels like to me, lightness and focus. It's not safe for me to engage in any interactions with my dad and stepmom but I am choosing to forgive me dad. I had a dream 2 nights ago where my stepmom went to hug me one of her fake hugs and I backed up and said NO. I'm not going to play nice, not play like she didn't sand bag my mother in her grab for my dad. To do that fake shit DiShonors my spirit.  I actually feel like I haven't felt in months, where I can be so moved by a story or a song I feel emotion well up. That's a good feeling. I hope my upgrade, (this upgrade) is either complete or far enough along that I can start using some of the new functions and capabilities. I'm free, clean and dare I say happy. I look forward to more of the same or support if it gets ugly from my friends with similar journeys. I haven't used drugs, including alcohol and pot in 19 months and one week, give or take a day and I'm set up to live the life I want not the one I think I deserve.

Religion SUCKS