June 21

HUMILITY MONTH: DAY 21: “It stands to reason that anyone who learns to live well will die well. The skills are the same: being present in the moment, and humble, and brave, and keeping a sense of humor.” ― Victoria Moran

All of my lessons on a spiritual journey have been about these 4 concepts. I practice living in the moment, only this moment as much as I can at this time in my life. Probably the greatest challenge for me is to be humble and to keep a sense of humor. Each helps to create the other. Being brave is a practice of remembering that there is someone else in charge of all of this thing…that there is nothing I can do that cannot be cleaned up or learned from; letting go of the idea of “mistakes”, because I do not believe I can ever make a mistake. I have been wrong a great number of times in this life and am okay with the idea that I will be again and again as I roll around on this big marble. But I do not believe in the concept of mistakes, so it keeps me from being afraid to do crazy things…or at least those things that other people see as crazy. I have jumped off some pretty high cliffs and had some interesting adventures; but I do not think anything I have ever done was a mistake. I love that Dr. Paul O. writes about “nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in God’s world by mistake…”, because that is how I feel about some of the impulsive choices I have made in my life. They all taught me things I could not have otherwise learned. I have absolutely no regrets for my life. I have done things that were hurtful to both myself and some others, but that is all part of the process we call life. I can honestly say that I have been able to learn from and heal those acts with the 12-steps and processing through the world as a human with faults and bumps and errors in my skill levels. The love that I have for Step 6 is great! All I have to do is get ready…and by Step 6, I am always entirely ready. What happens, at least for me, is that I get to navigate through this process over and over. I have honestly believed at times, that I am dealing with different defects when they are just being applied to my life in different ways. I was quite astonished my first time through these that defects were still there after I did 6 and 7! I kind of expected a giant vacuum to come down and zap all of my character defects and remove them. What I have experienced, instead, is that the ones that are most damaging to my recovery are removed, even when I am quite unaware that they are even there! This is a great process, because I have nothing to say about how it happens and how it works and when and how things are removed. I just become aware and quit doing those things that I know are wrong. And I keep asking for everything that is in the way to get taken from me; as I mindfully do my best to let it go. It is kind of like Step 3, though…if I don’t let go of those character defects (or my life and my will), they are never taken from me and I am still practicing them! Yikes! So I just have to practice letting go, letting go, letting go. Okay!