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 once we have broken free from the bondage that addiction creates we are able to make plans and reach goals. Often, in fact, those in recovery from addiction work very hard and achieve quite a lot without periodically taking the time to step back, take notice, and give themselves appreciation for these achievements. This is an extension of a propensity for perfection, and an important pattern to avoid. It is a very important practice, now and then, to take honest stock of life, giving appropriate credit to those parts of our lives that are currently where we could only have dreamed they would be before we were able to shed the addictive behaviors that inevitably derailed any attempts to make or achieve goals previously. For those in recovery from serious addiction, 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 in our addictions, we truly are in our dreams awake.
