I met with my sponsor yesterday in the first of our Tradition study series, focused on applying the 12 Traditions to marriage/partnership. After a false-start with a couple of friends, this has traction, and is a way to both hone in on the area of relationship, my final frontier, and invigorate my program. The seduction of the “retrogressive groove,” the lull of “all is well” can be deadly. I don’t walk around (much) waiting for the other shoe to drop these days, and I am well aware that personal and spiritual growth don’t occur in a vacuum. I had a teacher in grade school who was always telling us, “You won’t get this by osmosis!”  Same for the principles of our program, though I do think, if I’m paying even the slightest bit of attention, some of it does rub off. I watch as you walk through challenges with integrity, I listen as you describe how you overcome dishonesty, I hear it when you talk about your desires for a better life, and it impacts how I see the world and my place in it. But, in order to make it mine, and not merely theory, I need to apply what I hear and read and observe to my life, my relationships, my situations.  As a fairly concrete thinker, that used to confuse me – what does it mean to work a program? So I asked a friend, who told me that, to her, it means thinking about what she reads, writing about how it applies to her, and then acting on the new information: pause, think, consider the consequences.

All around my house, in little nooks and crannies on bookshelves, stuck in or under various stacks of literature, sometimes in my purse, are slogans, quotes, or inspirations that I've jotted down or copied onto bits of paper. Sometimes I’ll come across one of these missives and wonder at my state of mind when I noted it, at what was either troubling me or exciting me at the time. Sometimes I take a deep breath of recognition – “Ah, thank you HP, for the reminder,” and sometimes I think, “Eh, not so much” and throw it away.  I appreciate this tangible evidence of past meetings and chance encounters, these tiny efforts to capture and integrate spiritual lessons.

 This is what I came across this week – from Kabir, a 15^th century Indian mystic:

“Be strong then, and enter into your own body;

There you have a solid place for your feet.

Think about it carefully!

Don’t go off somewhere else!

Kabir says this: just throw away all thought of imaginary things,

And stand firm in that which you are.”

"Stand firm in that which you are." Not the imaginary of what I hope to be, or what I should be, or what I used to be, but “that in which you are,” right here, right now. What I was taught early on is that right here, right now, everything is ok. I have a place to sleep tonight, and have had enough to eat today. When I can keep my brain where my butt is, I know, I know that all is well.

Are your heart and mind in the same place as your feet today? What speaks to you in Kabir's poem?