The dualism of recovering and sinking further into my addiction is a ladder, there are rungs that run up or fall down depending on what part of the ladder you are on, there will always be the up above and always also be the down there below. Dualism is in life, and since we cannot live in death, I only know life and living. But that is a dualism too: living upwards on the ladder is prolonging life and health, while living down is coming ever closer to death. But I only know of my beliefs from life and have not died, no, haven't died yet, so cannot speak for the dead, or which way is more beneficial in the end. But from the life I've lived I think it is better and more fruitful to live away up the ladder, away from the depths of embracing the addiction mind with the only purpose to live addicted. To live without being addicted to something, you must embrace the addicted mind, but the embrace is a warm hug - you admit that you are an addict, a powerless addict, and in this embrace with your shortcomings you can look up to heaven for hope forward.
I find hope in the dark that kisses the end of days, night which more often has sleep than during the day, time for allowance for the body to shut down for a few hours and rejoice in not life but not death as well. Because sleeping is lived but not the same as living. Sleep is living without the mind. It is similar to trained prayer and meditative states. You take away the mind, and the only active part of the body is the lungs, air ducts and mouth. When the mind is at peace it isn't present. Not to be confused with the fleeting momentary states of euphoria taken in when abusing substances or the rush of air felt body-wide when you jump off of the ladder. A freefall which ends abruptly by a limb being caught in a lower part of the structure causing great pain and longing. And the limbo begins. And if the will is good, then the slow regaining of ground is begun upwards on the ladder.
But alternatively, you climb upwards on the ladder, hopeward, heavensent, onwards, and you develop tunnel vision, you climb up so long, you can no longer tell if you are in fact travelling upwards, and not downwards. In a panic then, you might 'baktrak' your way down the ladder, losing a lot of spiritual progress meanwhile thinking that you are in the right and the good. The solution to this is to orientate yourself, tie yourself to where you stand on the ladder and pause a moment. Look out across the valley, maybe leave a marking and the date, showing just how far you've come now. Feel a sense of calm, a sense of being able to stop like this and knowing that you have been climbing up.
It is important not to become your higher power. You can look left and right and see suddenly that you are one of many millions of climbers on their ladder. If you stay alone too long also, you can easily lose track of your place on the ladder, thinking your in the heavens, and then you meet someone just getting back on the same level as you, and you realise you have not been ascending, but only threading water. To climb up consistently you need a fellowship of climbers (as they need you - your faith and hope feed their climb and growth) and constant, daily orientation.
Do all these things, and go forwards, upwards, and Heavenward. Amen.
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