Recovery

I started this book to understand addiction. I finished this book understanding myself (1% more).

Yep. Changed my life. Holy moly.

Yes - grain of salt - yes - but that's with anything...Could probably skip the whole anecdote in step 6...

but other than that I was really really impressed with how this managed to communicate that it's OK and it's Human to make mistakes, to give in to the monkey mind, to choose the wrong ‘program' to solve our darkest, deepest woes - it's human to suffer in this way.

But it's also human to believe in something greater within, and this is one of the many ways to find that.

Some quotes:
‘The inner condition is what we must address.
When you start to eat, drink, wank, spend, obsess, you have lost connection to the great power within you and others. The power around all things. There is something speaking to you and you don't understand it because you don't speak its language - so you try to palm it off with porn but it's your spirit and it craves connection.
Spend time alone. Write. Pray. Meditate. This is where we learn the language.'

“If we all feel we are alone then how alone are we? If we all feel worthless then who is the currency of our worth being measured against?”

“We are all here suffering together. Our job is to help and love eachother”

“I think it's part of being human. To carry a wound. A flaw. And again, paradoxically, it is only by facing it that we can progress”

++++ for Alfred the way he speaks of Meditation & solitude.

PS my favourite quote from the book, and a reminder of how much we are changed by everyone we interact with:

‘In chemistry, when two substances are introduced, if either component reacts at all then both are changed forever'