During attempts to meditate today, persistent thoughts kept creeping into my consciousness. All related to my continuing to live along spiritual lines in support of my sobriety. The 11th Step.
One of those thoughts was about my ego. We’re supposed to practice ego deflation in depth. Because in the end it’s my ego, which has been behind all my defects of character and a stumbling block on this path I walk with others in sobriety. It’s my ego, which brings up pride and my resistance at times to do the right thing. And it’s my ego, which can take me back to a drink.
No matter how often I want to strive for humility, as Bill suggests in the 12&12 in the 7th Step, my ego is right there to sabotage these efforts. It’s right there in prayer and meditation, or attempts at it, that my ego steps in and changes the direction of my thoughts. As a man, with whom I was talking yesterday said, it’s like walking down the sidewalk and falling into a hole over and over again.
I know what the psychiatrists and psychologists tell us about the ego. Drs. Carl Jung and Fritz Kunkel tell us that ego is the false self. It’s a hardened shell which keeps the real self prisoner. So knowledge of who I really am is almost impossible to know or realize. My ego, as I understand it, has been built up over the years without my knowing it. It’s who I really believe I am. But the fact that no matter how I’ve tried to achieve what I thought would make me happy, it’s always failed, until I found this program.
I came to this program, not just physically, mentally, and emotionally ill, but spiritually sick. I had what the old timers would tell us was a God hole within me. An emptiness inside, which I had been trying to fill up with all kinds of activities and people, including alcohol. It still was empty. A bottomless pit. Yet, on arriving here, I was told I couldn’t fill it from the outside. It was going to have to be filled from within. And that’s when I was introduced to the 12 Steps and the idea of a spiritual life. The idea of a higher power to help me to overcome my being powerless. The beginning of the concept of a God of my understanding.
I was thinking about this today. How I’ve been able to stay sober, with what all those old timers and my sponsor suggested as a way of life, which would enable me to stop drinking and live a happy and fulfilling way of life. Despite my selfishness and self centeredness, born of my ego, my experience has shown me a way of diminishing it’s hold on me through the practice of spiritual principles in the Steps.
For this I am truly grateful for all that has been so freely given to me.