When In Recovery, Follow Your Bliss!
By Geoff Thompson, M.A., CCC
“The Power of Myth” is a very famous series of interviews between Bill Moyers of PBS and the famous expert on mythology, Joseph Campbell. Campbell explains his ideas on what makes people happy. Here are some excerpts:
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: If you follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. Wherever you are – if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time.
BILL MOYERS: Do you ever have the sense of… being helped by hidden hands?
JOSEPH CAMPBELL: All the time. It is miraculous. I even have a superstition that has grown on me as a result of invisible hands coming all the time – namely, that if you do follow your bliss you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don’t be afraid, and doors will open where you didn’t know they were going to be.
Recovery demands that you live the life that is suited for you, that your actions match your beliefs and values. So many people in early recovery forget that the goal of recovery is not staying away from drugs and alcohol. The real goal is to “follow your bliss.” There is no recipe for such a life; no scientific equation. It is personal to each person. Your job is to discover what makes your life worth living.
Be True to Yourself
If you are going to follow your bliss, then you have to be true to yourself. You probably know that on one side of the chips given out at AA meetings, it reads, “To thine own self be true.” Bill W. was a wise man; he understood how important this is. In active addiction, we pursued drinking and drugging, even though we did things that went against our beliefs and values. When anyone acts against his beliefs and values, the result is suffering: guilt, depression and aggression.
The idea of being true to yourself is backed up by psychology. Beginning in the 1950s, many psychologists examined healthy, happy people to understand what made these people happy. They discovered that every person has to grow and develop throughout his life and become the person he wants to become.
In other words, psychologists learned that a person’s happiness depended on his being true to himself. Any interruption to this growth led to suffering. In fact, addiction was used as an example of people who suffered horribly because they were driven by drug use, not by their values and beliefs.
Be the Author of Your Life
A key to recovery is to take control of your life. Here’s a remarkable fact: many people recover in Vancouver’s notorious, drug-infested Downtown Eastside. We don’t recommend putting yourself in such a place, but there is documented evidence that some can pull this off. The reason is that they have taken control of their lives. It doesn’t matter to them that they are offered drugs daily, witness addicts smoking or injecting, and so on, because they choose not to use.
If you don’t take control, then you are likely a victim of life. If you are reading this and in recovery, think back to your first days in treatment. Did you blame anyone or anything for your drugging and drinking: your lover, your work, your friends, your environment, physical pain? Or perhaps you were like a pinball, just rolling along until some outside event or another person knocked you into a new direction.
People who blame people or things for their suffering or who simply wander through life reacting to things are not in control of their lives.
Pay Attention to the Racehorse
My mentor, Dr. Paul Wong, told me once: “You have a racehorse, and you have a donkey. If you don’t pay attention to the racehorse, you’re stuck with the donkey.”
The racehorse represents those things and people that are meaningful to each of us, such as pursuing a cherished career, falling in love, working on a hobby. The donkey is the boring or irritating stuff of life, like doing laundry, going to the dentist, fixing the wreckage of the past, showing up for work that you find dull but which you need to pay the mortgage or rent, forcing yourself to go to 12-step meetings even if you’re tired.
What Dr. Wong is saying is that you if don’t pay attention to the things that make your life rich and satisfying, then all you have left is the dull, boring, irritating stuff. The donkey stuff becomes bigger than it really is, because you don’t have a racehorse. The racehorse puts the donkey stuff in proper perspective.
Conclusion
I would like to conclude this discussion by repeating the possibility that “hidden hands” await for those who choose to follow their bliss. If you’re waiting for proof before you embark on this journey, chances are your tomorrows are going to look a lot like your today. Perhaps the following quote says it best:
“Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation) there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would not otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforseen incidents and meetings and material assistance which no man would have dreamed would come his way.
I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets:
‘Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it! Boldness has genius, magic, and power in it.’ ”
~ W.H. Murray
from The Scottish Himalayan Expedition
About the Author
Geoff Thompson, MA, is the Program Director at Sunshine Coast Health Center, a private addiction treatment facility for adult men. His book, A Long Night’s Journey into Day, explores Eugene O’Neill’s life to uncover the truth of addiction and recovery.
Tags: addiction, Bill Moyers, bliss, follow your bliss, Goethe, Joseph Campbell, recovery, The Power of Myth, W.H. Murray
Sunshine Coast Health Center is a provincially-approved drug and alcohol rehabilitation facility licensed by VCH