This morning a host of thoughts were running through my mind. Finally they settled themselves into two. One was ego and the other habits. What do these have to do with my sobriety? A lot, after I took time to think about them.
How many times I find myself blinded by pride. It can so blind me that I find myself in the shadows, cut off from the sunlight of the spirit. Not depending on my Higher Power, but only myself. Left in the darkness like this for any length of time, without the grace given to me through these steps, I know I will find myself on a slippery downhill slope. It’s a habit of thinking I developed over the years before and during my alcoholic drinking.
Where do I see this pride in action? When I find myself in anger and resentment. My pride rises up and I begin that inner argument that it’s “Their” fault I’m this way. I refuse to forgive and turn my back on them, all the while investigating every fault I can find in “Them”. I build a wall around “Them” and seal them off from myself. All the while the shadows around me deepen, I find that the wall is really around me, because I find myself separated from others. Because everytime I talk about them, others not only don’t want to hear it, they begin to try to talk me out of where I am in the darkness inside of me.
What I fail to see in the darkness of my mind is that I have choices. Just like, when I came across those lines in We Agnostics and the statement “Either God is or He isn’t”. What’s it going to be? It’s a choice. I can choose to believe or not. It’s a surrender of my ego and my pride to give up doing it my way. I give up analyzing and pretending I know something I don’t.
It’s the same with forgiveness. It’s a choice. But, in order to forgive, I have to surrender my ego and my pride. I cannot do this alone. I first have to reach out to the God of my understanding and ask for forgiveness for my stubborness and then for the power and strength I lack myself. It’s the 7th step, the 10th, and the 11th steps. But it begins with the 3rd, where, if I will just open the door a crack, the light begins to come in. Just like in the beginning of the 8th and 9th step I have to remember that I promised I would do anything for victory over alcohol. Because that’s what’s behind all of this. Alcohol, like we are told, is a subtle foe.
I was thinking about this. It was a meditation on surrender and acceptance and staying sober today.