Friday, July 2, 2021

July 2, 2021 - Readings in Recovery: Today's Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation

 

Friday, July 2, 2021

Today’s Gift from Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation is:

Our “small-self” ego mind is designed to create and achieve goals, a function necessary for survival and life enhancement. It is the ultimate event planner.

The ego is the metal between the hammer of life experience and the anvil of our essential nature. Because it is programmed for survival, it tenaciously holds on to self-serving behaviors and does not easily give up old patterns, even those we must shift in order to heal. We know how this aspect of ourselves—with its pride, stubbornness, and independence — contributed to our resistance to getting help, even when we were hitting bottom.

Our minds are also capable of perceiving the oneness thread that connects us to all of life. Most of us have had moments where we felt joined with everyone and everything—a temporary suspension of our ego mind along the ego-to-oneness continuum. Both are necessary; the ego keeps us rooted in our ordinary life and is important to survival, yet those instances of being one with the cosmos are transformative. When we experience this connectedness, we feel a tender opening toward all that is, filled with a depth of kindness beyond ordinary reality.

Instances when I feel at one with all of life are healing and filled with lovingkindness.

Hazelden Foundation

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