Thursday, June 14, 2012

Trudge and Skip Along This Path


TWELVE STEPS
AND
TWELVE TRADITIONS
 STEP FIVE
 (From p. 60)

Somehow, being alone with God doesn't seem as embarrassing as facing up to another person. Until we actually sit down and talk aloud about what we have so long hidden, our willingness to clean house is still largely theoretical. When we are honest with another person, it confirms that we have been honest with ourselves and God.
            The second difficulty is this: what comes to us alone may be garbled by our own rationalization and wishful thinking…

~

We take this Step because, when we are truly convinced that it works, we understand that humility, forgiveness and understanding is a form of behavior that extends into all areas of our lives. I found that I was always thinking of myself foolishly and, to be honest, selfishness is still a powerful motivation for taking responsibility for how I have behaved.

But this Step infuses a certain amount of wisdom that causes me to think of others before I go off on fear-based rampages, character assassination, envy, sexual predation and so on. Once I see how much damage it caused others, and myself, I found that this kind of selfishness no longer works and that a new sort of selfishness does. As a result of precisely unloading where my life had taken such a negative turn, I was surprised that I became at peace with myself. This is so in spite of the all the normal and extraordinary challenges that have been presented to me as I trudged… or sometimes skipped… along this path I'm on. It is no longer a theory that sounds good to me but it has been spliced into how I conduct myself in relationships of every sort.



[1] geo 4,792

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