The longer I am sober the more I appreciate the darkness. It forces me to engage. It forces me to see things anew.

The very notion of darkness implies that I will need to interact in an unfamiliar manner.

The goal has always been to get out of the darkness—quickly—so I can get back in the light. Intrinsically, I have viewed the darkness as bad or wrong. I have come to see it differently.

My seemingly endless search to find peace within (sober) Earthly life has drawn me closer to appreciating *The Law of Polarity. I recognize that I’ve wanted the good and the good, the happy and the happy, the easy and the easy, the more and the more, the mine and the mine, of life.

I got this idea in my head that there was only so much to go around so I better get mine or it would all be gone and I’d be left with none. I built my world around scarcity and protection. This morphed into lack, self-hatred, and distrust.

Alcohol represented the opportunity to sink further into this delusion. With the boundaries blurred I was not required to face my perceptions. In sobriety my embedded perceptions were free to surface.

So, like many of you, I “trudge the road” in search of the ultimate me, only to find she has been here all along.

All along with all her foibles.

I’ve been so busy chasing the light that I forgot it was okay to be in the dark and actually be okay.

The dark is not only okay, it is necessary. It is a required component of Earthly living. Half of Earth lives in darkness each moment. Yet, when it is my part of Earth I am not irritated because I know Earth will continue to rotate to a new day. The light and darkness together sustain the balance of life.

So why is it so difficult to see this in self? Why do I not see this same balance in me? All lightness isn’t possible to sustain my Earthly experience. Both are required and both will continue as long as I am here. I give myself permission to stop fighting it.

When the lights go out I am confronted with using other tools to navigate my experience. The goal isn’t to keep the lights from going out. The goal isn’t to keep the darkness away. The goal is to accept that the darkness is part of the continuum. It’s coming for the rest of my life. But the new day is also arriving because it, too, is part of the continuum.

Now when I feel the darkness I no longer need to escape. I am confident in the return of light. It doesn’t matter how long the shadows linger. They are there to serve a purpose, to teach me. My job is to listen for what is truth and dismiss the rest.

I have begun the process of embedding new information into my subconscious. This new mind teaches me that lack, self-hatred, and distrust are learned perceptions. And that they exist on the same continuum as abundance, self-love, and trust.

I don’t consciously choose when the lights go out.

But it takes consciousness to get them turned back on.

 

♦♦♦

*The Law of Polarity is one of twelve Universal Laws discussed in Sober Identity: Tools for Reprogramming the Addictive Mind. The law states that there are two poles/opposites to the physical, mental, and spiritual planes. That polarity is the difference between the two extremes of one thing. That there are no absolutes, but degrees of difference. That change is a choice upon the continuum. Mastery of this law requires balance, discipline, and detachment of material distractions.