January 21, 2010
“Belief Meant Reliance Not Defiance”*
It’s one of my favorite principles in Step 2 because, in application, it’s helping me to recognize how when I perceive that things don’t go my way, or things aren’t happening the way I want them to happen, all of a sudden the world that I’m living in is a world no longer being governed by any fair deity or Power-Greater-Than-Any-Human-Power… Suddenly how the world I’m living in is not a good world, and if there were a God, why would God let things like this happen… These are the fundamental roadblocks that we create to keep us from leaping off into faith and entering into reliance – total reliance – on a Power-Greater-Than-Any-Human-Power. These roadblocks end up keeping us in the same position we’ve always been in, in terms of that feeling of fear, that feeling of things going wrong, that we never get what we want so why wish for better things that don’t seem to happen anyway… We enter that realm of negative thinking vs. positive thinking…
The exertion of my will… What is it exactly that I’m supposed to do with my will? How does one get away from negative thinking and enter into positive thinking? By it being understood what the purpose of my will is for, while I’m building this new foundation for a life, building a new way of life and the way that I’m going to take a look at this life that I’m living in now… I’m completely reinventing the way that I perceive this world. The way that I’m doing that is I’m starting to enter into an awareness of how I block myself from entering this new world. One of the blocks is defiance and how the forms of defiance operate.
One of the biggest ways defiance operates is an argument for everybody and everything… That is an obvious defiant mentality. We know what defiant people are like… Every time we suggest that they do something they tell us no they don’t want to do it or they aren’t going to do it in that way… We can especially see that defiance in children. It becomes very unappealing when you turn into an adult and you still maintain that same defiance… It’s almost like you’re disconnected from everybody and everything. So the exertion of my will is for the purpose of now seeking this Power-Greater-Than-Any-Human-Power and the perception this Power would want me to have. So, for a while I’m going to learn that my initial application has to be: belief… Meaning reliance not defiance… What that means is that I’m going to rely on this Power now. I’m no longer going to question this Power that I’m trying to come to believe in… I’m going to trust in this Power… In terms of that, we’re going to see things that are going to go wrong, but we can never tell this Power that we are trying to come to believe in what this Power should be doing for our life. This is a critical mistake when we start to assume, or start to indicate or feel what a Power-Greater-Than-Any-Human-Power’s will should be for our life. This is where we enter the realm of Self and we are blinded by Pride-of-Self… Thinking that we’re envisioning a Power’s will when it has nothing to do with a Power-Greater-Than-Any-Human-Power but is actually more in line with what we want, how we want it and the way we want it.
Reliance means to allow all things to happen as they are supposed to happen… I had to make a commitment to give myself to this Power. I made this commitment for a period of time to truly trust in this Power, no matter what. Until I gave this Power a name, I had to trust it in order to see it. As I could see the presence of this Power more and more the name started to come to me, but until then my mind needed to remain open and positive, and trust that everything that was happening was for the benefit of my life… I’ve entered this new realm of trying to live in a way that I am in peace and harmony with everything around me, especially my inner being, my inner life. My inner life needs to become manageable. I need to find sanity. That soundness of mind is never going to come if I keep returning to my mind, and trying to find answers for my life from my mind and my experiences. The sanity that I’m looking for is coming from inviting this Power-Greater-Than-Any-Human-Power into my mind and it turns into reliance. This reliance becomes something that is a way of life… I rely… I no longer defy.
I must learn how I defy the ability to come to believe in a Power greater than myself. I must develop that awareness of what it is in me and how I operate when I am in that defiance… When I am raging, when I am arguing with people, when I am fighting, when I am tossing and turning, I am in defiance and therefore uncomfortable… I am unhappy and the world I’m living in is a world I don’t know how to handle.
When I enter into reliance, I don’t run anymore. I seem to be able to “accept impossible situations, seeking neither to run nor recriminate.”* In other words, I do not have to run from life… I know it’s going to be okay… I trust that God will take care of this situation… This is reliance, not defiance.
Apply this principle of relying on a Power-Greater-Than-Any-Human-Power and not telling this Power how things should be… Knowing all things that are happening are beneficial and good for our life. We must look for those ways in which we block coming to believe in this Power. We must quit arguing with everybody and everything, especially in our minds.
Much love,
K.C.
*12 Steps and 12 Traditions, Alcoholics Anonymous
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