May 14

INTEGRITY MONTH: DAY 14: “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

This quote is another challenging one to write about; because, while I value the workings of my mind in intellectual pursuits, I am afraid of that part of it that contains my addictive tendencies and ego-based thinking. SO, I am nervous to address this quote. But, again, I understand the nature of the saying and what was being expressed. What I believe about life is going to create my life. As we work through Steps 4 and 5, we get to explore our thinking and old ideas about what life is and how it is supposed to unfold. Most of us have adopted “rules” about life at an early age; and the more dysfunctional our lives were at the ages of 3-5, the more maladaptive our “rules”. If we are ‘thorough and painstaking’ about the process of working through our inventory, we get to explore and expose some of the thinking behind our behaviors that are not working to our benefit in social relationships. As we look at some of those “rules” we attempt to foist onto others, we can see that some (or most) of them do not make any sense. We formulated these beliefs as young children and never stopped to examine them for efficacy and value in practice later on in life. Others may have learned to change their beliefs, based on new information that is presented in the course of normal human development. Addicts, however, do not ever examine or change their beliefs about the basic core values and “rules” for behaving in relationship. This creates problems for everyone, because we then begin to formulate resentments when others do not behave in ways we want and expect them to. Without examining the beliefs we hold, we are not trusting our highest and best instincts in how to behave. We are “stuck on broken”, which is a phrase I really identified with when I was new to this deal. So I had to begin to examine what I believed about life. And what I have learned over these years of practicing the principle of questioning myself and my ideas about what was happening was that I had some very rigid “rules” and that they were completely immature and ridiculous in many ways. My ego told me I was right, no matter what happened, because I needed to defend myself from others. This was not true, but until I got to this 12-step life, I never even thought about how inappropriate my beliefs had been for quite a long time. I am so happy to say that I am perfectly willing to examine all of these things today and that, in doing so, I have discovered a whole world of relationship that functions beautifully when I am open to being teachable. And so I am; more so every day. And I trust and believe the integrity of those things that are intuitive for me today. That is something I could not do for so long, because I could not hear the quiet, still voice of intuition with my screaming ego blasting. Those Promises do, in fact, come true. So I can see how my quiet, intuitive mind is, in fact sacred. When I meditate and become quiet within myself, the vision of who I am is so different than the one I love to buy shoes for! Oh yeah…that self is a quiet, peaceful and loving individual and the ego one has so much fear. I am happy when I walk through the world with my spirit self, because she is sacred.