TODAY'S PRAYER: STEP 10
"Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it". AA 12 Steps
I remember Mary Lake telling us injured birds in group one day that we needed to talk honestly with God. Tell him all our thoughts and feelings not just ask for stuff.
One of my early (and sometimes still lingering) resentments to tell the God of my understanding was how pissed I was that I couldn't and can't operate in the world like I think other people can!
The desire to want to be like other people was as much a drug as the drugs themselves at times. What we discover through our work in recovery is that we are not like other people - not in the way we thought.
This is why this meme has meaning for me. Recovery helped me to recognize that drugs and alcohol and other addictive behaviors were fueled in part by the internal conflict that raged within whenever I did something or let something happen that was out of integrity or not in line with my moral center - the truth of who I really was. It was a faulty temporary solution to a deeply spiritual malady.
I learned that while I was capable of hurting others I did not and do not have the capacity to hurt others. Some people seem able to storm around the universe wreaking havoc on others at will. I tried and still try. But afterwards I am a mess - binging on Hagen Das, irritable, angry, depressed, etc. Sometimes I get it other times I have to talk to someone else to understand what's going on with me.
I also learned, through meetings and testimonies, that there were and are a lot of people just like me. People who were haunted by the ghosts of guilt and shame and uncomfortable feelings around things they did/said to others and things they allowed (willingly or unwillingly) to happen to themselves.
True there are those who go to varying places of worship because the like the vibe or the music or to be in community (all good reasons btw) and others, like myself, who are driven there because we find it hard to live with ourselves and seek relief.
For us in the recovery community we are blessed with the 10th step among other tools to help us from finding relief in all the wrong places. Through our spiritual work we learned that self love also involved not putting ourselves through those feeling when we could help it. Sometimes we catch ourselves right away and other times
I got a great example of this a couple of years ago when a friend hired me to teach them some computer things. It was an hourly rate. I really like this person and look up to their recovery so I would have gladly did it for nothing.
So we worked a couple of hours and then they gave me a wad of money. I didn't bother counting it (a way I don't take care of myself btw - but think is so spiritual) and left. A few minutes later I get a call from my friend. They think they short changed me. I pull out the wad and count it and it is short. I say it's ok no worries I was happy to spend time together. They're like - no I need to make this right come back now.
So I plodded back and they gave me extra $$ in spite of my now honest protestations. They said something like they didn't want spiritually that to be on them. So was glad to make it right. This was for them - not me. Did I learn a valuable lesson that day or what!
We generally think of hurts as fights or abusive emotions. But we can throw hurts around in short changing, cheating, lying, just acting out of personal integrity and other ways that don't involve hitting someone.
From a spiritual perspective - this is why in religion there is a narrow path. Masters like Jesus, Buddha, Muhammad and others understood the true nature of being with self and with the Divine - and the power that entails. It gets interpreted sometimes as God being angry but it is just the result of going against spiritual laws. Laws of self and others. Things we didn't know about, care about or know what to do about when we were using.
Yeah it feels, sometimes like eggshell boulevard. Too churchy. Tip toeing around like wanna be Buddha-mice. Sometimes it is, but most times it isn't.
We have tools now to help us when we step out of line, or on toes. We take an inventory at night of the day just past and if we can we make an amends right away- if not we set ready when the opportunity presents itself in the days to come.
We have sponsors and mentors and spiritual advisors and a recovery community to turn to for support taking these sometimes difficult steps.
Gratefully we know now that part of the process of learning to love ourselves means that we don't have to go around hurting ourselves and others. We can walk away. Say no thinks. Do the right thing. We have viable alternatives!
It is a revelation like it was when some of us were told we didn't have to drink today or drug or sex or binge or purge or....
So today we pray for openness, strength and willingness to honor who we truly are by taking actions that support that better version of ourselves and to know that doing so is a deep expression of self-love that can do nothing but radiate out into the hearts and minds of all those we come in contact with. And strength and wisdom to turn over what we can't handle. And to remember we are not saints, while we have a vision of what spiritual perfection looks like, we strive for spiritual progress. To do and be better day by day.
May you be blessed to be a blessing!
Amen. Aho. Ase.
Image posted by Eve Harrison on FB