The Cart Before the Horse...

It has taken years for me to realize that I can’t be rotting from the inside out, keeping the appearance of normality and some semblance of grace, only to find, upon further reflection that my inner core was just a fucking mess.  I feel, for years, I was kind of like an apple, that for all outward appearances, I looked fine...but take one bite, and you just find absolute mush. Nothing of value or desire on the inside...like at all.

I always wanted spiritual growth, I have always been a seeker, even while I was drinking myself to death.  Even then, I sought.  I was just so haphazard about the whole endeavor and inconsistent.  But I feel that my growth and tendency towards the spiritual is basically what kept me alive all those years.  The years before I started drinking but quite desperately needed a drink, and all those years I was lost to booze, bad men and traumatic responses.

I also wanted and craved material success.  And that seemed easier to attain for me than spiritual success so I was more committed to that cause than I was the spirit realm...

I have been trudging the road of happy destiny for some time now and I believe, I can claim some success. I still want, often, for something outside me to “fix” me, but I believe that will work less and less with every passing day and experience.  My commitment to making the outside look pretty while the inside rots is not so much a thing of the past, but it is something that I spend less and less time on as the years give way into decades.

Today, I know that no matter how lovely and materially successful I become, it is how I feel and experience life on the spiritual plane that is most important.  I have to put my spiritual life first, and trust that the powers that be will lead me where I am supposed to go.  When I focus on material success it seems an invitation to all my baser qualities to throw a free for all.  Like a grand gathering of character defects, some sort of costume ball where they all come out in their finery and just make a mess of my life, relationships and ability to walk humbly in the sunlight of the spirit.

For me, it is true, that spiritual growth must always precede material success.  I got all that I have today not by focusing on obtaining the house, the car, the money or the clout, I got them all by living rightly and doing the fucking work.  And this has been my experience, if I just show up and do my best on a daily basis to grow and stretch to increase my understanding of spiritual principles, and then do the work to correct the parts of me that aren’t naturally able to bend in that direction, I get the material things I need, and most of the time, the material things I want.

I have gotten this amazing life of mine not by focusing on my needs, wants and desires, but just showing up every day, sober, doing my best to not create chaos and confusion in my life and the lives of others, extending my hand to others who are similarly situated and doing my best to keep myself in line, accountable and humble.  Some days I kill it, and then there are those other days where anyone observing me would not believe I was even trying to live on a spiritual basis.

I can remember all the way back to my first few weeks sober, I was in my last semester of law school and I hadn’t bought the books, (I had drunk my book money), I hadn’t been to class and I was staring down the barrel of finals in mere weeks.  I was a distracted, angry, hurting mess.  I didn’t know what to do.  I couldn’t read very well because I could not sit still or pay attention.  I would just read the same line over and over again and it just would not sink into the knowledge well in my mind.  Back then, I would ask my sponsor, “what the fuck do I do now?”  And she would reply, “go to a meeting, read the book, pray for guidance...”  I would respond with quippy little things like, “hey, you are a lawyer too, and I think we are both pretty sure that I am not going to be asked about any of this literature on these exams!  How the fuck am I going to get across this finish line????”  And she would reply with, “go to a meeting, read the book, pray for guidance...”  Frustrated I would hang up the phone and pout.

But in the end, that is what I did.  I went to a meeting, I read the literature that was absolutely NOT going to be on my exams and I prayed for guidance.  I graduated.  I passed everything and that whole process was just a fucking blur.  But I put the horse before the cart and somehow I managed to find my way through.  I wasn’t easy.  I was totally stressed and self involved and didn’t really care about anyone but myself and all my problems.  But I received the guidance I sought and I am pretty sure after I got done reading the book, and going to a meeting and praying, I must have gotten the notes from someone and I read them until they sank in enough to pass the class...

31 years later I am still over here desperately wanting on some days for the cart to come before the horse, but I know, with every fiber of my being that it just never works out that way for me...that isn’t my path.  I must do the work to clear and clean up my inner landscape before the God of my understanding blesses me with any kind of cash and prizes.  Spiritual growth must always precede the material and today I am so fucking grateful that it only works for me like this...

Horse, then the cart.

And I have come to find that I enjoy the horse way more than the cart...most of the time, and if I don't, then I need to look at that because that is a giant indicator that I am off the spiritual beam...

Again, still...