"If you argue with reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time." Byron Katie
I was at a meeting this morning where the topic was acceptance. And I recalled this saying by Byron Katie because reality and acceptance are really close cousins.
For example, when I was in the midst of my drug and alcohol mess I stayed in it for something like 40 years. And that's because I didn't accept the reality that I had any kind of a problem. In spite of the fact that I've been in and out of jail multiple times for drug and alcohol-related crimes, I still didn't believe I had a problem. In other words, I wasn't living in reality.
As soon as I accepted responsibility for the chaos in my life, I accepted reality. The reality is that the indiscriminate consumption of drugs and alcohol caused me to waste half of my life at least. One half I wasted locked up some kind of institution. And the other half was spent trying to rebuild my life once I got out of jail and had gotten rid of my habits.
The big book of Alcoholics Anonymous describes insanity as when we do the same thing over and over again while expecting different results. And that's another form of not accepting or dealing with reality.
While a lot of the references I make here deal with the alcoholic or addict who argues with the reality of his or her disease, ignoring reality also gets so-called "normal" people in trouble.
So how do we figure out what's reality and what's not reality? That's almost a dumb question.
All we need to do is ask ourselves this: is my life working today? And if it's mostly working, then that means we're basing our actions in reality. And if it's not working at all then our answer is, of course, that we're not based in reality. And once we accept that we are not living n reality, then we have the answer to our question.
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