The Soul's Companion

Behavior Patterns

"When I become aware of destructive behavior patterns, they can serve a wonderful purpose: I can use them as indicators of where my inner work lies. Any situation to which I have a constant over-reaction is telling me something about myself that I need to listen to. My first task is to realize the reaction is not fitting the circumstance, then to sit with that realization, and see through association where it takes me. No one knows my history better than I do, if I allow myself to know it.

When I make the decision to come into conscious awareness, to find meaning in my life experience, I begin to experience life as an adventure - my adventure. When I raise the source of the unwanted pattern to consciousness to better understand where my pain or reaction stems from, I can begin to see it for what it is and let it go. Then I am no longer repeating history, I am making it. " Tian Dayton, Ph.D.

I've been sitting through the aftermath of some bad decision making on my part this week and at times my body has felt like that picture above (taken at Yellowstone). It feels like some alchemical fire is burning out all my. . . karma, for lack of a better word. Instead of continually berating myself for making some bad decisions in the first place, I am moving forward, trying hard to not get stuck in the negative emotions and to remember that in 5 minutes everything will be ok. Time to make some history.

Alcoholism, Astrology, Archetypes, and Sex?

My four primary healing modalities in moving away from alcoholism are astrology, archetypes, writing and sex. That may seem like a strange combination to some people, but they're perfect for me. If you're attempting to leave an alcohol or drug problem behind, your three or five or four processes may be quite different from mine. Yours could be golf and religion, or Reiki, Gestalt therapy and getting in touch with your inner child, or maybe AA, creating art and volunteering in your community. Whatever they turn out to be the important thing is to discover them for yourself and intentionally begin applying them to create a life that will be much too passionate, fulfilled and large to have time for an addiction problem.

Now, I didn't sit down one day and say, "Ok, these are going to be my healing venues." It's taken years of exploring different things that came into view and caught my enthusiasm and interest. I studied a lot of different pagan religions and went to a few circles, but that didn't turn out to be one of my key processes, even though I thought it would be. I explored every alternative recovery program I could find, but none of them are a main ingredient in my alchemical pot. The important thing is that I never stopped searching. I was stuck in the "abstinence is the only way" mode for so long it probably took me a little longer than it needed to. One of my hopes for writing all of this out here is that others for whom abstinence may not be the answer will save themselves some time.

I began an in-depth exploration into astrology a few years ago. I'd always been interested in it, but now I really dove in and did a lot of reading and research. I also retained a personal astrologer, Anita Doyle, with whom I meet about once a year. My work with Anita has proven more helpful to me than all the many years of therapy I did. Astrology was my initial foray into reframing my experiences on a cosmic scale. I don't approach astrology on a predictive basis but as a language of the psyche, a poetry for the human soul and a magical way to explore what has made me who I am today. You might even say, if you wanted, that the planets, stars and myths of astrology became my higher power because it's freaky how accurate they are. I discovered that my heart much preferred to view my addiction problem as a manifestation of Neptune conjunct my Sun and realize that there is a higher side of that aspect I can move into. Framing it that way is much more palatable to me than determining that I have a life-long sentence that I can never overcome and that will either kill me, send me to jail or land me in an institution. For all its "out there" reputation, astrology has proven to be one of the most practical tools in my arsenal.

More later on archetypes, writing and sex. Have I got your attention?