Once you exercise fear and make it your practice, once you try resentment and make it your habit, once you employ aggression and make it routine, those actions will dominate your destiny. No matter how painfully you’ve been wronged, stand in love in the midst of a huge temptation to be vengeful, prideful or hold back. The real nature of love is that the person you think has betrayed you the most is actually an agent of the divine offering you the opportunity for grace. ~ Mary Manin Morrissey
From firsthand experience I can only concur with what Mary Manin Morrissey is saying. I’ll guarantee that by feeding and watering these “seeds of pain” they’ll grow quickly and become a part of your daily life. (If you’re an active alcoholic you can even get an extra helping of Hurt that will go along nicely with your always increasing irritability and discontent). Fertilize with plenty of Drama and just see how soul-sick you can become. Those “seeds” will develop into a very healthy, extremely strong and toxic vine and it will work slowly on strangling its host, Your Spirit. With a warped perspective, bad choices are made on a daily basis and you dig in deeper. The people, places and things that are causing your discomfort aren’t going to go away unless you let them go; sent away with love, no conditions attached.
There is a paragraph in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous that reads “If you have a resentment you want to be free of, if you will pray for the person or the thing that you resent, you will be free. If you will ask in prayer for everything you want for yourself to be given to them, you will be free. Ask for their health, their prosperity, their happiness, and you will be free. Even when you don’t really want it for them, and your prayers are only words and you don’t mean it, go ahead and do it anyway. Do it every day for two weeks and you will find you have come to mean it and to want it for them, and you will realize that where you used to feel bitterness and resentment and hatred, you now feel compassionate understanding and love.” This seemed easy enough to me and I liked the part about even if you don’t want if for them or mean it, because I didn’t. I knew I had to start somewhere so I started out praying “GOD, bless the son of a bitch”. Every day I prayed and slowly it changed. After a couple of weeks my prayer had progressed and came to me in love. It was softer, gentler and forgiving. I realized I truly meant what I was saying; that it felt good. I’d had a change. I was freed from that resentment and allowed the 180 degree turn from darkness to light. By the grace of GOD I was given a new outlook on the situation, realizing how much easier it is to approach a problem in love.
I haven’t by any means gotten this down to an exact science but I’m getting better at it. There are days when I repeat the words “tranquility and serenity” over and over in my mind to keep these feelings away. I’ve also prayed for many other “sons and daughters of bitches” since that day and I may have to pray it again. Who know where my mind will try to take me if I get on the bus with it again. I have to keep focused on the good and stay off the bad. All is well even when the boat starts to rock if I pause and think before I react.
Today I am aware of my connection to the Universe and I am more at peace with myself and others. I’ll gladly take that over living in my mind while attaching negative emotions to negative thoughts, in turn creating inner turmoil and drama. Life has taken a great turn and GOD continues to bless me beyond my wildest dreams.
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All My Minds 