I cannot control the past but I can control the present through forgiveness.
Change is hard, that’s why we can’t do it alone and why it is vital that we have a foundation of hope.
What is a belief really? A thought, in your mind, that you like having. If you like having it, it must be of benefit, it either improves your life or helps you to rationalize how bad your life is. I can’t think of another reason to have a belief.
Me and the plan just need a bit more time’, I used to think, a bit more time and a bottle of wine, a bit more time and one more pipe, a bit more time and a slice of cake, a bit more time and a threesome, for luck.
When you get Richard Dawkins yapping menopausally at some poor hamstrung old archbishop, while we dismantle our environment due to the materialistic, pessimistic principles that the atheistic tyranny of the day is tacitly sponsoring, it is time to look for a new story.
Anything you don’t want discard, anything that hurts let go. None of it’s real you know, all that pain, all that regret, all that doubt, not thin enough, not a good enough mum, not a good enough son, not a good enough bum. You are enough, you’re enough. there’s nothing you can buy or try on that’s going to make you any better, because you couldn’t be any better than you are.
Behind our damaged perceptions there is usually a fear that pertains to a core belief. This core belief is a key line in the code of our personal misery: if we expose, address and alter it, we can be free.
Consumerism and materialism are creating a culture of addiction. We are all on the scale somewhere because we are kept there by the age we live in.
I couldn’t go on living like this. I had to become successful. “I want to change the world, and do something valuable and beautiful. I want people to remember me before I’m dead, and then more afterward.” And at this juncture I was finally willing to do whatever it was going to take to bring that about – up to and including giving up drugs. From that moment on, I really did take things, in the textbook rehab fashion, one day at a time. An.
If you’re chugging through life in a job you kind of dislike, a relationship that you are detached from, eating to cope, staring at Facebook, smoking and fruitlessly fantasizing, you can sit glumly on that conveyor belt of unconscious discontent until it deposits you in your grave.
The most potent tool in maintaining the status quo is our belief that change is impossible. “Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” Winston Churchill quoted this on being informed he’d been voted out of office in spite of Britain’s victory in the Second World War.
I really craved the company of animals – the wordless simplicity of it. Even now, with my cat Morrissey, I cherish the moments that I’m absolutely alone with him, and the unrecorded tenderness that no one will ever know of – the simplicity of “Oh, I’m just here, with this cat.” I don’t even feed him that much any more, ’cos Lynne, the housekeeper, does that now. But he seems to want something from me that isn’t food, and perhaps that thing is love. My.
Greatness looks like madness until it finds its context.
When I look back, it’s not those misdeeds that I regret – I’d do them again, I tells ya – but the times when I conformed. I regret that I didn’t realize that actually they’ve got no power over you at school – it’s all just a trick to indoctrinate you into being a conditioned, tame, placid citizen. Rebel, children, I urge you, fight the turgid slick of conformity with which they seek to smother your glory. As.
In a worrying template for later sexual activity, my first and second kisses occurred within seconds of each other, with different girls.
Being on that stage was the headiest intoxicant I’d yet sampled. I loved it so much that from that moment on I thought, “I’m doing this now, I’ll do whatever it takes.” I’d had my head filled with my dad’s motivation tapes: “You can do whatever you want. Focus on what your goal is, refuse to fail.” I.
The police force in America pledge to “protect and serve.” That would actually be dandy if it were happening. Bill Hicks used to joke that he’d like to hijack a typically unpunctual plane and force it to go to its scheduled destination on time.
You’ve seen their logo – it’s an apple with a bite taken out of it. That bite is the symbol of the moment mankind broke their pact with God, transgressed their own innocent nature, and chewed into consuming and consumerism. We have externalized all wonder, materialized our inherent magic.
We live in a society in which we all, as individuals and as nations, compete for resources. We are told this is nature’s way. My nature cannot long abide it. I become too lonely, locked within my skin.
This is an invitation to change. This is complicated only in that most of us are quite divided, usually part of us wants to change a negative and punishing behaviour, whereas another part wants to hold on to it. For me Recovery is a journey from a lack of awareness to awareness. Let.