WEEKLY MEDITATION
Learning takes a lot of changing, don’t hold onto any one thing and think that it’s the only way.
-James Wing Woo
Recovery is a learning process. Where once we had accidentally learned to depend on our addictions to regulate the parts of us that we had not learned to regulate ourselves, in our recovery we must learn to develop new emotional skills. It is important to remember, though, that there isn’t just one way to approach this learning process. And even if we have found a way that has allowed us to successfully navigate this process, there may come a time when it no longer serves us, when we have learned all we can from a particular approach, teaching, modality, or program for it to remain useful to us. Because a tendency toward dependence lies at the heart of addiction patterns, it is easy to become dependent on the very path through which we approach this learning process. But we must remember that it is the learning that is vital, and we must allow ourselves to outgrow or upgrade an approach when necessary. There is no one way to change, no best path to growth. But so long as we dedicate a part of ourselves to learning to navigate the full spectrum of emotional experience without having to protect ourselves from the painful parts, we can learn to recover.
