WEEKLY MEDITATION
Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake.
-Henry David Thoreau
One of the biggest differences between life before and after recovery is that breaking free from the bonds of active addiction allows us to more easily make plans and reach goals. Often, in fact, those in recovery from addiction work very hard and achieve quite a lot, often without periodically taking the time to pause, take notice, and give themselves acknowledgement for these achievements. This is an extension of a propensity toward perfection, and an important pattern to avoid. It is a very important practice, now and then, to step back and take honest stock of life, giving appropriate credit to those parts of ourselves that represent the growth that recovery potentially offers. Often, our lives are currently where we could only have dreamed they would be before we were able to shed the addictive patterns and behaviors that would derail any attempts to make or achieve goals previously. For those in recovery from serious debilitating addictions, there is almost no time that we can’t take an honest look at the foundation of our lives and realize that in some ways, in contrast to the lives we led when we were actively addicted, we truly are in our dreams awake.
