1. This week find the ghosts of yesterday. Find out if you’re deluding yourself. Realize you may be making an incorrect assessment. Check for realism. “More realism and therefore more honesty about ourselves are the great gains we make under the influence of Step Five.” Read the last paragraph on pg58 to pg59 in the 12×12. “As we took inventory, we began to suspect how much trouble self-delusion had been causing us.” “If all our lives we had more or less fooled ourselves, how could we now be so sure that we weren’t still self-deceived?”(12x12pg59) In Step Five we admit that “wrong thinking and action have hurt us and others,…the need to quit living by ourselves with those tormenting ghosts of yesterday gets more urgent than ever. We have to talk to somebody about them.”(12x12pg55)
2. Build a book of humility. Fill it with Omniscient moments. “That basic ingredient of all humility, a desire to seek and do God’s will…”(12x12pg72) Humility can put us back on track when we get off track. It can change just like that: One thought can get us off track; with one thought of humility, we’re back on track.
1. Corresponding application for the ‘ghosts of yesterday’:
Forming Inappropriate and Premature Emotional Attachments….
Sometimes we end up in emotional states that do not feel good. Sometimes it is because things have happened in our life that just don’t feel good. There are hard times that happen because we need to grow and it is time to walk through some emotions that we have put off or with which we have never really dealt. So, emotions are being attached to areas in our life all the time… That is the way of life… But there are times where we have attached emotions to something that is not happening the way our emotions tell us it is… What then should we or can we do? What happens when we attach emotions to something that is not really happening the way we think it is? That seems a little silly and not very intelligent.
Why would I attach emotions to areas of my life that have not been validated as being true… Or the idea I have come up with in regards to what someone has done or is doing to me… My idea of what is being done can be and is very strong and I am wrong a lot! I conclude bad ideas about people, places and situations. Then there are the worst premature inappropriate emotional attachments… I assume the worst and attach feelings to my assumptions… I attach bad feelings without checking with other people if they are seeing the same thing I am seeing. I have to wonder with self-honesty to self: How many times have I seen someone or something going what I think is the wrong way and it is my mind telling me untruth? After all is said and done I come to find out that I was wrong… None of what my mind was telling me is what was really going on… So, were these situations or people are going the wrong way? This always creates ill feelings in me. Because my ego won’t let me go back and say I was wrong and I held really bad thoughts that were not valid nor were they appropriate… I think no one really knew what I was thinking, or it would just be too embarrassing to admit, so I justify what is and always will be wrong… That is to assume the worst and then act on it… It just feels too unhealthy so I can’t bear to face it.
Or I enter into a delusional state and I get grandiose about how something is going to come about and I tell people about all these great things that are going to happen… Inside I don’t know if that is going to happen but I am on the high side of overly hopeful, only to set myself up for disappointment and the same feeling that things just don’t work out for me… Because I have attached inappropriate emotions to a premature situation. I had to learn not to say things about good possibilities until they were actually coming true then I could let others know… Plus, when something good is in the works I don’t tell people… I have learned that some people don’t like when things look good for you and not for them. They may not want to, but they can give you bad energy towards a very positive area in your life… Coupled with our good fortune may come to pass and others put a spin on our ideas that is not supposed to be there… But it creeps in because we opened the door prematurely and someone else injects his or her doubt in an area that we didn’t have… So keep the good possibilities with God and when they solidify with God others can know… Keep it with God in your heart and stay aware of your own doubt and treat that with God. We don’t need other people’s doubt or fears in our new concepts…
Today commit to being aware of how much you attach emotions to situations that have not been validated as being true…
If you have a question about somebody doing something to you that hurts you or you think is wrong… Ask them if that is what they are doing. If they say no, then until proven otherwise do not attach negative emotions to that idea that you have about them. If you think the boss is unhappy with you ask them if there is something more you should be doing… Don’t keep telling them how much you have been doing because you have concluded they were thinking you did not measure up… Just commit to holding off attaching emotions especially if the emotions are hurtful… You see, we have to learn there are areas in life where we have been hurt and that we are sensitive to and because of that, sometimes (which means most of the time) when it comes to being hurt by people or concluding that I am being hurt by people… it could be because my mind has been triggered by prior injury to think someone is hurting me today when there are not, but my fears are telling me different.
So, I go to God with these negative feelings about situations or people and wait. This I call the Emotional Hold Off… It builds emotional strength and maturity. Remember fears and emotions do feel real, but what if what causes those emotions and fears is not real? Then my emotions and fears, even though I am experiencing them and they are driving me to take actions or not take actions that are hurting my life, are nothing more then the Bogeyman… Therefore they are not real until someone else validates them as real.
So if you get ill feelings, ask a friend if they think the feelings you’re having are validated? Or are you creating them from your own false sense of perception and insecurities? And be prepared to hear the answer with God.
2. Corresponding application for the Humility Journal:
Give yourself “Love Energy” today…
To love ourselves as we are today… Is this not an act of humility? This is an important question we should all ask ourselves each day… “Have I done anything today to love myself as I am today?”
It must be part of humility to stop waiting to love myself as I am… I know that just like other things that I think are going to make me happy later in life, even though I would say I’m happy in life today, have I put loving myself off for later? If I am waiting for other things to make me happy, am I waiting to love me, also?
This is the action… We just need to look inside to answer the question HAVE I BEEN LOVING MYSELF ENOUGH LATELY? If the answer is, “I don’t know,” then that is your mission: to find ways to answer: “Yes, I have been loving to myself enough lately!”
This requires action throughout the day to find things that you love about yourself and ask your Creator to show you things that are there in your life today to love yourself about… The answer will always come… Take note of those answers. Keep them alive with thought energy… Just as we give the ones dear to us “Love Energy” even when they are not present… So we must give ourselves “Love Energy” over and over throughout the day.
If you’re reading spiritual inspiration like this today, then you have the desire to be a better person and have a better life today. Therefore you can say, “I am trying to grow in the image of my Creator today”… Is this not an act of humility?
Is that not the register for being a good person, that you actively try to live a better life each day? If the answer is, “Yes, I am trying to live a better life each day,” then the answer is also, “Yes, I can love myself as I am today.”
We must have the discipline of learning to love ourselves more and more each day… This is humility, too…
Have a moment each day that touches you. Each of us must look for these moments that touch us and makes us feel…This is also an act of humility… Look for something to touch you today to make you affirm…
“I do love me today.”
Much love,
K.C.
