For Today - Accepting the Past

Nature does nothing uselessly.  - Aristotle

Today's reading is this:

What does it take for any living thing to grow straight and true to itself?  And if survival is threatened or growth interfered with, what further measures are needed? 

There is a natural force in all things that keeps pushing to make them as true to the original plan as possible.

If compulsive eating meant survival for me, it did indeed serve a useful purpose, and I am thankful it was a recourse that was open to me.  To regret what was necessary to save my life is to fail to appreciate the value of that life.

For today:  I cannot regret my past, for it allowed me to endure to the present.

I feel like a work in progress.  I am still relying on compulsive eating when my feelings overwhelm me and my survival feels threatened.  Enduring this depression through over-eating.  I had three days of freedom this week which is more than I have had since May.  The Promises in the Big Book speak this freedom and accepting our past:

We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.  We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. [p.83]

Last night one of our members shared about wanting to have more discussion in our group about what to do when the feelings are overwhelming.  She wants to know how to feel the feelings instead of resorting to maladaptive measures of compulsive over-eating.  I want to know this too so I searched the Big Book for the word "feeling" just to see what came up. 

And I just realized -- like I was hit on the head with the stupid stick -- that the answer is spiritual.  My hungry ghost of compulsive behaviour that masks my inner turmoil is fed by connection.  With other fellows and with my connection to my Higher Power.  It is giving this over, the overwhelm, the chaotic unhappiness, that I find peace.  The answer was in the chapter, We Agnostics, at p.52:

Is not our age characterized by the ease with which we discard old ideas for new, by the complete readiness with which we throw away the theory or gadget which does not work for something new that does? 

We had to ask ourselves why we shouldn't apply to our human problems this same readiness to change our point of view.  We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn't control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression, we couldn't make a living, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn't seem to be of real help to other people -- was not a basic solution to these bedevilments more important than whether we should see newsreels of lunar flight?  Of course it was. 

When we saw others solve their problems by a simple reliance upon the Spirit of the Universe, we had to stop doubting the power of God.  Our ideas did not work.  But the God idea did.

Feeling the need to escape from my feelings in order to survive is common, apparently.  It is all over the Big Book.  My understanding of my feelings is imperfect so I will work on that.  My understanding of the program of recovery is also imperfect.  But "There [is] a concrete program, designed to secure the greatest possible inner security for us long-time escapists.  The feeling of impending disaster that [has] haunted me for years [begins] to dissolve as I put into practice more and more of the twelve Steps." [Big Book, p.207, Women Suffer Too]

It is that simple.  And that hard.