Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
It took me longer than I would have liked to figure out that humility is much different than humiliation. Humiliation was the shame I felt from the degradation of my life circumstances that led me to the recognition of my need to do something about my life. Eventually, in the face of so much humiliation, it was extremely difficult not to admit my powerlessness.
Humility is different, and is defined by the wisdom of honest experience, and the acceptance of this experience. The big book calls it being ‘right-sized;’ I think of it in terms of seeing things as what they really are, not as I wish them to be and not as I fear them to be. Humility is the experiential truth of my daily reality.
Before I can ask God to remove my shortcomings in Step Seven, I have to admit to them, and to admit to them I must be able to recognize them. This recognition of my own character defects demands the ability to see my inventory unadorned; it demands humility.
I have learned that it is possible for me to trick myself into thinking I am humble when I am anything but. For instance, I used to feel I was filled with anger; I admitted freely to my anger, and shared openly about this character defect. I was probably on the right track at times, but at other times I had fear about how others perceived me, and I would deny this fear, even to myself, because I also have guilt about caring so much about what other people think. That’s how things get really screwy, because then I ended up sharing ‘honestly’ about my anger, falsely claiming the humility to do so, when really what I was doing was bragging about being a tough guy with a short fuse.
Then there was a shift. As I did more work on the steps and spent more time breathing sober air, I saw the frequent connections between my anger and something else. What was it? I looked and I looked and eventually figured out a way to make myself feel it: FEAR.
I’d made a great discovery: fear is at the heart of my anger! A selfish, brooding, shame-based brand of fear. I ran to my sponsor with the news, explaining that I’d figured something out that would be of great benefit not only to AA but to humanity. My time had finally come. I had always known my brilliance would one day erupt and pour forth upon the miserable masses.
My sponsor laughed and had me read page 62 of the Big Book: “Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate.”
I was deflated at first. My great discovery was written in a book that was printed decades ago. But my mood brightened when I realized that I had discovered this truth. It didn’t matter how many times it had been discovered before, or how many times I’d already read that paragraph without registering its true meaning. I now had experiential knowledge of it, which is true knowledge.
This was the beginning of my sojourn into real humility, a journey which is ongoing. But still I didn’t have the whole truth, because I immediately began pronouncing that all my anger was fear masquerading as something else. For years I considered that I had pierced the nature of my own denial when I was actively living in it. It turns out that anger can be rooted in a sense of injustice as well as fear. It can be rooted in passion. It can be rooted in old rage and hatred that my psyche and my body so desperately need to move and release, but which I denied for years, decades, perhaps lifetimes as I have been taught that anger and rage and hatred is evil. I now know this to be rubbish. Acting on anger or hatred or rage in a way that is harmful to myself or others isn’t going to help anybody, but acknowledging that these emotions are natural, and that they have been denied, and demand release—often vocally, with sound. I personally like to scream from hilltops or play the drums and shout until I am hoarse. Rage and Terror are encompassed within spirituality: knowing this is a necessary step towards real cleansing and genuine humility. With authentic humility I understand that all feelings are appropriate and valid.
Ignorance of my true feelings’ ties to guilt and denial is at the root of the inappropriate and harmful behaviours I exhibit. Fundamentally, the denial of my feelings and the need to express them safely is part of the original cause which led to my addiction.
It’s impossible to ask for my character defects to be lifted from me until I know their essential nature. Knowing them is seeing them as they truly are, i.e. seeing them with humility.
We need to acknowledge the Source from which we come. We need to acknowledge who and what we truly are. To negate the darker feelings that are in us through denying them, only makes them stronger and come out sideways; to suppress them or ignore them or shun them in any way, particularly in the name of recovery, is only setting us up for potentially catastrophic outcomes in future reflections of this denial.
There is no avoiding what we are carrying. We might as well get real with it sooner rather than later.
I am building a home for myself in recovery, as such, I need to be centered in my body, and it is my awareness that determines the quality of my foundation. I can either be thorough about the true nature of my habit patterns and their impact on me and others, or I can pretend to do the work, merely rearranging the surface of the problem while claiming humility and yet continually denying my heart, and my guts, their say in this left-brain driven maniacal world.
Step Seven, for me, is about getting creative, getting intuitive, and realizing that Love is what’s left when I let go of everything I don’t need. In this state I am independent of my shortcomings, and can put them outside of myself at least long enough to see them objectively and ask that they be removed. And yet I can cultivate at the very same time an abiding compassion for myself in the form of unconditional self-acceptance. Herein lies my need that I copped to already in the very first step: lack of Power. I must draw on source and find gratitude for having the willingness to do so, while still seeing that there may be some niggling doubt, objection, fear, or rage about this incessant dependence.
In the bud of awareness of this dependence blooms the reality of my newly functional state of interdependence: life, including recovery, is done neither by myself alone nor done without my active involvement.
Denial and guilt can double-team me if I am not connected to Source. Together they weave the blanket of obfuscation that prevents me from seeing the genesis of my suffering.
I believe that this is how so many people who claim to be in recovery are beset by other behavioural (porn, sex, gambling, internet, TV, playing the victim) or chemical (nicotine, caffeine, sugar, fatty foods, pills, anti-depressants) addictions in an effort to quell the discomfort and pain that denial causes.
The blanket weaved by denial and guilt is reinforced with the thread of resistance. When I attempt to probe my own mind through meditation, I can often be filled with doubt—doubt about my own abilities, the technique of meditation I am using, meditation in general, AA or recovery as a whole. Sometimes I can skip doubt altogether and move right into unconsciousness. There are periods where every attempt at meditation seems to instantly bring torpor. When trying to find humility, my habit patterns react and make me, literally, go back to sleep. Other times I become hyperactive: one moment I am sitting on my meditation cushion watching my breath, and suddenly—what happened?—I am updating facebook or wiping my kitchen countertop. How did I get here? This is resistance, a desperate kick from within to keep me stagnant in the rut of my familiar patterns.
Humility is different, and is defined by the wisdom of honest experience, and the acceptance of this experience. The big book calls it being ‘right-sized;’ I think of it in terms of seeing things as what they really are, not as I wish them to be and not as I fear them to be. Humility is the experiential truth of my daily reality.
Before I can ask God to remove my shortcomings in Step Seven, I have to admit to them, and to admit to them I must be able to recognize them. This recognition of my own character defects demands the ability to see my inventory unadorned; it demands humility.
I have learned that it is possible for me to trick myself into thinking I am humble when I am anything but. For instance, I used to feel I was filled with anger; I admitted freely to my anger, and shared openly about this character defect. I was probably on the right track at times, but at other times I had fear about how others perceived me, and I would deny this fear, even to myself, because I also have guilt about caring so much about what other people think. That’s how things get really screwy, because then I ended up sharing ‘honestly’ about my anger, falsely claiming the humility to do so, when really what I was doing was bragging about being a tough guy with a short fuse.
Then there was a shift. As I did more work on the steps and spent more time breathing sober air, I saw the frequent connections between my anger and something else. What was it? I looked and I looked and eventually figured out a way to make myself feel it: FEAR.
I’d made a great discovery: fear is at the heart of my anger! A selfish, brooding, shame-based brand of fear. I ran to my sponsor with the news, explaining that I’d figured something out that would be of great benefit not only to AA but to humanity. My time had finally come. I had always known my brilliance would one day erupt and pour forth upon the miserable masses.
My sponsor laughed and had me read page 62 of the Big Book: “Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate.”
I was deflated at first. My great discovery was written in a book that was printed decades ago. But my mood brightened when I realized that I had discovered this truth. It didn’t matter how many times it had been discovered before, or how many times I’d already read that paragraph without registering its true meaning. I now had experiential knowledge of it, which is true knowledge.
This was the beginning of my sojourn into real humility, a journey which is ongoing. But still I didn’t have the whole truth, because I immediately began pronouncing that all my anger was fear masquerading as something else. For years I considered that I had pierced the nature of my own denial when I was actively living in it. It turns out that anger can be rooted in a sense of injustice as well as fear. It can be rooted in passion. It can be rooted in old rage and hatred that my psyche and my body so desperately need to move and release, but which I denied for years, decades, perhaps lifetimes as I have been taught that anger and rage and hatred is evil. I now know this to be rubbish. Acting on anger or hatred or rage in a way that is harmful to myself or others isn’t going to help anybody, but acknowledging that these emotions are natural, and that they have been denied, and demand release—often vocally, with sound. I personally like to scream from hilltops or play the drums and shout until I am hoarse. Rage and Terror are encompassed within spirituality: knowing this is a necessary step towards real cleansing and genuine humility. With authentic humility I understand that all feelings are appropriate and valid.
Ignorance of my true feelings’ ties to guilt and denial is at the root of the inappropriate and harmful behaviours I exhibit. Fundamentally, the denial of my feelings and the need to express them safely is part of the original cause which led to my addiction.
It’s impossible to ask for my character defects to be lifted from me until I know their essential nature. Knowing them is seeing them as they truly are, i.e. seeing them with humility.
We need to acknowledge the Source from which we come. We need to acknowledge who and what we truly are. To negate the darker feelings that are in us through denying them, only makes them stronger and come out sideways; to suppress them or ignore them or shun them in any way, particularly in the name of recovery, is only setting us up for potentially catastrophic outcomes in future reflections of this denial.
There is no avoiding what we are carrying. We might as well get real with it sooner rather than later.
I am building a home for myself in recovery, as such, I need to be centered in my body, and it is my awareness that determines the quality of my foundation. I can either be thorough about the true nature of my habit patterns and their impact on me and others, or I can pretend to do the work, merely rearranging the surface of the problem while claiming humility and yet continually denying my heart, and my guts, their say in this left-brain driven maniacal world.
Step Seven, for me, is about getting creative, getting intuitive, and realizing that Love is what’s left when I let go of everything I don’t need. In this state I am independent of my shortcomings, and can put them outside of myself at least long enough to see them objectively and ask that they be removed. And yet I can cultivate at the very same time an abiding compassion for myself in the form of unconditional self-acceptance. Herein lies my need that I copped to already in the very first step: lack of Power. I must draw on source and find gratitude for having the willingness to do so, while still seeing that there may be some niggling doubt, objection, fear, or rage about this incessant dependence.
In the bud of awareness of this dependence blooms the reality of my newly functional state of interdependence: life, including recovery, is done neither by myself alone nor done without my active involvement.
Denial and guilt can double-team me if I am not connected to Source. Together they weave the blanket of obfuscation that prevents me from seeing the genesis of my suffering.
I believe that this is how so many people who claim to be in recovery are beset by other behavioural (porn, sex, gambling, internet, TV, playing the victim) or chemical (nicotine, caffeine, sugar, fatty foods, pills, anti-depressants) addictions in an effort to quell the discomfort and pain that denial causes.
The blanket weaved by denial and guilt is reinforced with the thread of resistance. When I attempt to probe my own mind through meditation, I can often be filled with doubt—doubt about my own abilities, the technique of meditation I am using, meditation in general, AA or recovery as a whole. Sometimes I can skip doubt altogether and move right into unconsciousness. There are periods where every attempt at meditation seems to instantly bring torpor. When trying to find humility, my habit patterns react and make me, literally, go back to sleep. Other times I become hyperactive: one moment I am sitting on my meditation cushion watching my breath, and suddenly—what happened?—I am updating facebook or wiping my kitchen countertop. How did I get here? This is resistance, a desperate kick from within to keep me stagnant in the rut of my familiar patterns.
Most times it is difficult to rationally understand what is fear and what is anger, and where guilt, shame, denial, aversion and craving fit in. It’s not a rational process. It is a feeling process. We cannot think our way through to humility.
When I am hungry, I should eat, and eat food that is high in vibration. When I am tired, I should take rest. Similarly, when my Will wants to move and release old stuff, I should allow Her to do this without judgement of what it looks like. Sometimes it gets a bit messy in recovery before things start looking cleaner. The Will has been beaten into submission by our systems of education, economy, and politics. Even in AA, we often hear that our own will is garbage and needs to be shunned.
Bollocks. The Will needs to be felt, acknowledged, and released in order to align with Divine Will. In fact, the two are one and the same.
One part is just lost.
