Spiritually Sick - An Actual Illness

September 19. Hey all, it's almost midnight at my house & Sunday is winding down to a close. I had a rough weekend full of some people that were lacking Spirituality in their lives at all. When we become self absorbed, like a specific person I was forced to deal with this weekend, we lose our ability to perform spiritual actions. Spirituality by nature is fair & understanding, perhaps I even myself crossed that line when I was pushed too hard by a person who was supposed to be a professional this weekend. I can only take ownership of my side of things however. Looking back at this "argument" I was in, I did little wrong but somehow I must have because I lost my cool. I allowed someone barking orders at me like a trained animal, when I am my own boss & own my own business, to agitate me to the point that I flat out asked them "What do you have against me?" From that statement yelling & a huge attempt at making a scene ensued by the other party in this argument. It got so bad I was starting to get embarassed that other vendors were seeing me be bullied & verbally shouted down, a threat to call the police was even dropped because I had to wait for my ride to return & could not leave immediately on my own will without abandoning my merchandise. In the heat of that threat I even replied, "Would you like me to dial the number for you?". Sarcasm was not going to win this battle, and it still won't. I don't think that with the way things were going that being a smartass was going to get me any ground, but I was already told I had to leave a property in which I rent space as a vendor on a day that business was open to the public, I didn't have much to lose by chewing back into the argument. I am ashamed though that I could not take a deep breath & just walk away from the whole thing, perhaps it was an inside fear of my livelyhood & my business being threatened by someone or maybe it was my alcoholic mind reacting as it has in the past. Either way I have chalked this up as experience for the future & I hope if I am ever in such a situation that I can perform more professionally & compassionately for the other party lacking a Spiritual sense of dignity.

I don't know much about what's right or wrong, I can only do what I am now taught is right & remember what in the past I have done is wrong. Sobriety is teaching me new things each day I endure, it is at the hands & from the lives of others sharing sobriety that I learn anything at all about life today. How to live without a drug or a drink each day was hard enough to figure out, the rest can be a tricky lesson. I think though from my own personal experience, as well as the mouth's of others, that I have learned one thing about people. Some people are just Spiritually Sick. Whatever motivates them, drives them, or is draining them inside is how they live, work, and present themselves. Some people with experience can use restraint & turn this on or off like a switch, but in times of crisis their true colors show & the lack of Spirituality is evident. Signs like selfishness, snobbishness, greed, arrogance, all the way down to my past life of alcoholism & addiction can be spotted if you look hard enough. My point of talking about this is certainly not to put anyone down, I have my own heap of defects as a human that I work on steadily to become more of a Spiritual Being than a Human Being. What I am getting at however is this, people who have these problems often make them other's problem too. In the case I experienced this weekend at my own paid space at a marketplace, and with countless others, even as people experienced with me in the heat of my active addiction.. all cases of Spiritual Sickness & people not behaving as they should due to the lack of spirituality in their life. So many think this is a choice, but it is not.

To explain how it is not a choice is simple, I wanted to stop using drugs but could not. I hurt so many, I nearly died many times, I got arrested countless times as well. I did not want to be that addict yet I went to that evil well for water over & over again, because I had no spiritual strength to resist it. When an argument breaks out & someone behaves badly, or they get desperate & steal or rip someone off, the same things is occuring. They have no spiritual strenght, to further, they do not even know what they are missing. If you told me in my addiction that life could be great, having very little & nothing artificial to make you feel good, that I may never be rich or famous, never be important to the world, or may never find a wife & have children.. I would have at that point said "you can keep your spirituality". Why? Because I did not know how it felt to be in the Light of the Spirit or to live a Life of The Spirit. If you don't know how it feels, you cannot just chose to act a non-spiritual way, you just do what you have learned or feel at that time. It's only when you have experienced this Spiritual Life & the way making those choices & actions affects your life that you can begin to decide to act differently. I had to blindly hope that I life would get better, and I had to fake it until it really happened for me inside, but it did. Spirituality took over & I have a conscience today that is full of spiritual lines that I will not purposely cross with a cool head. After all this explaining of things many of us already know I will conclude with this. Spiritually Sick people are just that, they are sick. They have an illness of some sort, if its not an addiction it may be an imbalance, it may be caused from horrible past experiences, it may just be that they have no higher power & they believe they are God itself. No matter the case, these are all illnesses in a way. They are illnesses because they can be treated. With what? Kindness, understanding, and by not glorifying or enabling that non-spiritual behavior. In time they will either get better, or they will find themselves as I was... alone & cold, ready for death & resenting any power that any person, thing, or 'God' had over them. Pray for the sick, be well & lets all admit when we are not being our best. I surely fell short this weekend and felt the burn of the fire. Good Night.. Good Morning.. <3 Jimmy