Recovery Wheel Week #1 – Basic Goodness, the Reckoning and Transformation

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This has been a crazy week. I’ve experienced a wide range of feelings for friends and family over illness as well as the pain and anger around the Ford/Kavanaugh hearing. This is the most triggered I’ve been, and I’ve been triggered a lot over my own past these past few years. You can read a little more about my week over at Soulsayer. But today I want to stick with the personal as I delve into the work I’m committed to doing based on the Recovery Wheel I created.

Basic Goodness

As I look within and examine why I am so triggered, I realize it’s just time for things to change. It may not all be personal. But what is personal is how I see people and how I respond to those who have done harmful things and to those who support them. I was not sexually assaulted, but I experienced emotional abandonment and felt dismissed. Doing the work of the Recovery Wheel is about recovering from feelings of unworthiness and recovering inner power. It involves being able to claim my own basic goodness as well as seeing it in those who have harmed. It’s the only way to begin to move forward.

This hasn’t been easy work. I often think if only my mother had been able to find her strength, things would have turned out better. But she didn’t. After the anger, I breathe and look deeper. She was doing the best she could. Within her, basic goodness was alive just covered over with her own pain and anger.

The other part of this is to realize that basic goodness lives within me. It is what I can hold onto when I’m so angry I just want to lash out. It’s what allows me to see it in her, in all those I’m seething at right now.

The Reckoning

In Brené Brown’s book RisingStrong, she talks about the reckoning, the rumble and the revolution. It’s a way to work through difficult feelings. Here’s what she says about the reckoning:

“You either walk into your story and own your truth, or you live outside of your story, hustling for your worthiness.”

It’s a process of taking a close look at where you are right now. You calculate where you’ve been and what has influenced you in getting there. Without doing this work, you can’t move forward.

I’ve included this step in the Recovery Wheel because it deepens the first step in the 12-Step Program which is to admit life is not working.

Well, my life isn’t working. I love my husband and I have a nice place to live, but I’m not fulfilling my potential. Because I haven’t stepped up, we don’t have the money we need to take care of things let alone just enjoy life. Just getting by isn’t working for me. I’m frustrated, and mostly I’m tired.

The biggest influence on my current situation has been my past. The emotional abandonment led to feeling unworthy and that has hampered everything. I’m still working through my feelings about the past. And I’m going to journal more about the story behind my feelings. Perhaps it’s also time to reach out more for help.

The Recovery Wheel begins with the season of Lammas which is August 1. It’s the first harvest of the year, a time to look back and see what has come to fruition. Reckoning fits with this. Ultimately it’s time to ask if we’re trying to go it alone. Lammas is the season of co-creation with the Divine.

Transformation

Our connection to the Divine sparks our transformation. But why is the Creations Spirituality path of Via Transformativa a part of the first section of the wheel? Because it’s important to remind ourselves that this work of transformation requires our whole heart in order to become wholehearted. It involves us completely, body, mind and soul. To feel is to feel the pain as well as the joy. To feel is to revolve through the turning of our very being. As we move through our emotions, our emotions move us ever closer to the transformation we seek.

The path of transformation contains many obstacles and struggles. There will be doubt and confusion along the way. And that’s okay. It’s as it should be. We are doing no less than unwinding our human selves to uncover our souls.

And this personal is political. To do the work of transforming ourselves is the beginning of doing the work of transforming society. The work of changing the world begins with becoming the change.

As Brené Brown says, get curious about yourself as you are now and how you got here. Keep asking yourself some hard questions. Acknowledge you want and even need change. Be ready to embrace whatever that may mean in your situation. It’s time for a new creation.

What to Keep in Mind as You Begin this Work

The first part of the wheel looks like this:

Season: Lammas

12-Step: Admit life isn’t working.

Rising Strong Process: Reckoning

8 Fold Path: Right Mindfulness

Creation Spirituality Path: Via Transformativa

Three Main Principles to focus on for Recovery Wheel work:

Oneness/All is Love

Basic Goodness

Spiritual Law

Three Main Tools:

Meditation

Journaling

Self-care

Each week I’ll focus on one or two of these principles and tools.

Week 1

Basic Goodness Practice:

During your daily spiritual practice, take a moment to focus on your own basic goodness. You can do this via mirror work or simply focus on your heart center and feel the love as much as you can. Once you do that, experiment with seeing the basic goodness in others by starting with someone you love and then an acquaintance and then with someone more difficult.

Reckoning Practice:

You really might want to get Brené Brown’s book Rising Strong and work through each part as you move through them in the Recovery Wheel work.

To reckon is to figure out where you are now in your life and how you got here. Once you admit things aren’t working for you, take some time to journal about how life is for you now and explore about how you got here. Get curious. No blame or judgement, just look and then feel the feelings that come up as you go along.

Transformation Practice:

Spend a few minutes acknowledging that this work is worth doing, but requires much from you. Transformation is possible, just know it comes with a price, letting go of your old life.

**If you'd like to learn more about the Recovery Wheel or would like some guidance in doing this work, please feel free to contact me.

When the Past Still Sneaks Up On You

By freestocks-photos on pixabay

When you decide to put the past behind you, it may still want to rule your present. It continues to tap you on the shoulder to get your attention, and it’s so easy to let it get hold of you.

I made the decision last week to let the past be the past and move forward. (I wrote about it here.) But you can’t ignore what’s following you around tapping you on the shoulder, reminding you of how you need to stay in line with the old pattern of being. Maybe trying to let it go isn’t what I need to do. I get the feeling I need to accept it and let it be a part of me. I can still learn from it. I just need to be aware enough to not let it rule my present.

Earlier this week I was experiencing some pretty severe anxiety. It seemed to be about everything in the past. The distance between me and my past felt good at first. I felt freer and could see it better. But maybe that was only the first part of a bigger process. Forgiveness is acceptance about the past, but if I don’t fully accept it, if I keep it at arm’s length, can I forgive myself and others? It doesn’t feel as though I can.

Can I fully embrace my past? Can I love and forgive myself and others? I’ve brought awareness to how the past affects my present and my behavior. But I have yet to fully embrace it. I put it behind me enough so I could acknowledge it when it tried to get ahead of me, but apparently it’s still too easy to fall into those old patterns.

Something I call the Recovery Wheel came to me about month ago. I think it may be exactly what I need to truly move forward. I just need to use it. So, that’s what I’m going to do. To keep myself accountable, I’m going to write about my experience with it here. It uses the seasons as a framework and begins with first harvest often called Lammas on August 1^st. Time to dive deep before the Fall Equinox and the second part on the eight part Recovery Wheel.

Drop by here every Friday to see how it’s going. Or you can sign up for my weekly email list where I share my writings for the week. If the work resonates with you, follow along and do your own work. I’ll write about the practical exercises I used so you can use them, too.

As the wheel turns and the seasons change, I know we can too. But the larger truth is there really is no need to change for we are already perfect. We need only reveal the truth of our being with love, trust and forgiveness. Love opens our hearts and eyes, trust keeps them open through the storms and forgiveness breaks down the barriers that keep us from feeling perfect love and perfect trust.