JOY
MENTAL BALANCE
“Remember this—that very little is needed to make a happy life.”
Marcus Aurelius Antonius
Joy is a state of mind, and it comes in many ways. Sometimes it’s just peace and contentment, serenity, inner connection to my higher power, and knowing that I’m in the right place. It’s a smile or a laugh with friends and family. It’s gratitude, knowing I’m in recovery today. It’s the feeling I get when I finish working out or exercising. It’s the warmth inside when I’m in a recovery meeting, listening to others share. It’s a good meal, a good book, a film that moves me, a song that makes my heart sing along. But more than any of that, it’s a state of mind. It’s when my thoughts are directed at that which is fulfilling, uplifting, loving, and light in my life that joy floods in. It’s just as important that I think joy as it is to feel joy. My physical pain may be minimal on any given day, but if my thoughts are directed at the negative, the darkness, then my body will surely go where my mind is already headed.
Pain doesn’t have the power over me it once did. I’ve learned methods to cope with my pain that lessen its grip on me and my life. I use these methods to diminish my pain and increase my joy today.
GRIEF
EMOTIONAL BALANCE
“Waste not fresh tears on old griefs.”
Alexander the Great
Grief can be frustrating, sad, draining, and painful. At times it feels as though I don’t even know myself when I’m in grief. Pain recovery requires walking through all sorts of feelings, the most severe of which is grief. I grieve the loss of my medications. I grieve the loss of my pain as an excuse for my behavior. Being in recovery, and in grief, I may not even recognize my behavior as a reaction to feelings I may never have had to feel before, when they were masked with drugs.
Grief over the loss of a person may be a little easier to identify than grief over a lost behavior, place, or manner of being, but each may be equally painful. Grief may be mixed with many other feelings—anger, sadness, fear, self-pity…all of these feelings may cycle and repeat until finally, I begin to feel forgiveness, and that’s when I think I can love again.
I have learned that experiencing my feelings and accepting them has allowed me to move through them. I don’t need to waste “fresh tears on old griefs.” I feel my feelings and accept them as they are today.
PRAYER AND MEDITATION
SPIRITUAL BALANCE
“And when ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have ought against any: that your Father also which is in heaven may forgive you your trespasses.”
Jesus Christ
There are many kinds of prayer, and many kinds of meditation. Both prayer and meditation are helpful, and both are needed: The Eleventh Step says I need both, telling me to seek to improve my conscious contact with my higher power by praying and meditating. This is sometimes easier said than done. Perhaps when my prayers seem ineffective it’s because I’m not doing the things I should in order to pray with the right spirit. This doesn’t mean I have to “get good” first, and then seek contact with my higher power. But I must be in a place of love and tolerance of others for my prayers to be most effective.
I don’t approach my higher power asking for love and help if I haven’t shown the same to others in my life. Today I know that prayer offered from a place of love and tolerance in my heart is many times more effective than prayers offered from a place of anger, selfishness, or fear.
I pray for help with my recovery and for help in living with my pain. I strive to treat others with love and respect, so my prayers can rise from love, to love, with love.
KINDNESS
RELATIONSHIPS
“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profundity. Kindness in giving creates love.”
Lao-Tzu
My pain has always had an impact on the lives of others, disrupting my life and the lives of those around me. In pain recovery I’m aware of that potential for disruption, and take responsibility for my pain. I get out of myself by acknowledging the impact of my pain upon others. I make a habit of showing kindness to others by striving to reduce the impact my pain has on them.
The quality of my relationships with others is important to me. I want them to be full of loving kindness, so that they will be characterized by confidence, profundity (depth), and love. Therefore I strive to make my words and actions kind, loving, and deep, knowing that the quality of my interactions with others depends on the way I treat them. If I’m not kind to others I will be alone with my addiction and my pain. I appreciate those who share my life with me and look for ways to help them.
I work to lessen the impact my pain has on others. I reduce my outward expressions of pain and help others by showing my appreciation for having them in my life.
FORGIVENESS
PHYSICAL BALANCE
“Forgiveness is the fragrance the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
Mark Twain
The quality of my forgiveness has a direct impact on my physical balance. It is not just my forgiveness of others, but also my forgiveness of myself. The more I hold onto resentment, anger, or fear, the more it affects my own physical pain. My body holds onto things, often when I’m not even conscious of doing so. For this reason it’s important to work the Twelve Steps to uncover, discover, and recover those areas of my life that cause my pain, grief, anger, and resentment toward myself and others. Forgiveness is a process and not an event. It’s not a destination at which I arrive and all is well and forgotten. In reality, I may never forget, and in fact, remembering can and does drive me to work harder, to continue to work on my recovery. Remembering what has happened gives me wisdom. Forgiving brings me relief from my physical and emotional pain.
I understand and have forgiveness for myself and others, knowing that my level of forgiveness is related to the ability and fortitude with which I work my program of recovery; and that affects my health and level of pain.
HONESTY
MENTAL BALANCE
“Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom.”
Thomas Jefferson
Honesty means more than simply telling the truth when prompted. Honesty means the acknowledgment of my chronic pain, addiction, and character defects. Honesty was perhaps the first spiritual principle I practiced when I admitted that maybe I had a problem with addiction. I practiced honesty when I looked at the unmanageability that abusing medication and