There’s a story that I’ve heard in multiple therapy sessions and groups where a Native American grandfather is talking to his grandson. He tells him of two wolves that exist within each of us, a white one and a black one. The white one is the good desires we have and the black one is the negative and selfish desires we have. They are battling, he said inside of each one of us. Naturally the boy wishes to know the outcome and asks the sage, “which one wins grandfather?”
I’m not sure why I never connected the moral of this story to what I just learned this week about how to increase my good and wholesome desires, including my desire for healing and recovery. I have been learning over the past month just how important desires are and how they are at the beginning of everything we do. “If that’s the case,” I thought, “how do we get ‘em?!”
With that clear question in my head and a desire to know the answer I guess I shouldn’t have been surprised when I rad across the answer to my question in a book entitled Drawing on the Powers of Heaven by Grant Von Harrison. He said that our desires come as a direct result of our thoughts and attitudes.
“Wow! Really?” I was amazed. I knew that I could choose to think about good things, it has been happening quite naturally each morning for the last 2 weeks as I’ve woken up, thought of 10 or more things I’m grateful for and then dove into my scriptures with the goal of finding what my God wishes me to know about Honesty.
Something clicked when I read that. I saw that the things I have been counseled to do for years are actually powerful tools I already possess to mold and shape my desires. I am glad to now understand the moral to the native american tale. I now ”get” the grandfather’s reply to the boy’s curious question, ”which wolf wins?”
“The one you feed.”
. When I first jumped into 12 step addiction recovery meetings it was a difficult thing to understand what that meant, but I’m seeing that it’s a very practical thing to do throughout the day. When I began recovery I began by surrendering my addiction, admitting that I am powerless over it. As I’ve been doing that I, in essence, peeled back a layer of the onion that is my soul. Once that was pulled back I saw that I needed to surrender not only my behavior, but my urges to act out. Once that was pulled back, I noticed that there was frustration that too could be surrendered. Even deeper was what that frustration was stemming from and covering, feelings of inferiority, beliefs that I was not good enough or that I was incapable of succeeding.
