June 23

HUMILITY MONTH: DAY 23: “A true genius admits that he/she knows nothing.” ― Albert Einstein

But if I consider myself a genius for knowing nothing, I am not humble…this is a problem! Like any kind of awareness, I cannot practice humility. It is a sense of knowing that I am not IT and cannot be IT, no matter what I do. I also acknowledge that I am not the Creator of IT, and that I must bow to the Creator in all manner of things for my life to unfold in perfect ways. There is a great deal of humility in working the Steps from 1 to 5, because I am letting go of all that I know the first time through this deal. I let go of my ability to pretend to control and manage my life. Then I let go of working on maintaining sanity in any form and recognize that if my life gets pulled back into its ponytail, it is not my doing. Then I let go of deciding to run my life and my will…that is a huge hurdle for almost all of us. Then I let go of my resentments, fears, and behaviors that harmed other people…or at least I let go of the secrets around them by sharing this crap with another person and some kind of Power greater than myself in Step 5. That is a big leap! And, as a friend of mine says, “we do a big disservice to newcomers when we make a big deal out of the 4^th and 5^th Step and talk about them being frightening or difficult.” I agree, they are neither of those two things. I call them the steps of freedom…that they are! And now we are sitting at Step 6 and not sure we can get ready to let go of those things that caused all the problems we saw in Steps 4 and 5. Really???? I love that the BB has Steps 6 and 7 happen right away…”returning home” from Step 5. I have always been that “Just Do It” sponsor and member. I had a big banner I got from an athletic shoe store in the 1980s that was always in my office. Because of my crazy moving around thing, it got too battered to continue to use in my home…but I have the use of the phrase, because I really do believe that is the only way to get and stay sober. Works for me, so far. I had a lot of feelings around this stuff, but they really do NOT matter. I have to let go of all of it! The first thing that had to go out the window was all that I knew…everything! Here was a new concept; actually a whole lot of new concepts, and they were making some sense. A lot of this stuff is not new and was not new to me when I got here. The one thing, the one most challenging aspect of it all was to quit drinking and drugging and then do this stuff…oh! That did not occur to me until I got to this place and met some of you folks. Many people talk about coming here to quit drinking…I did not. I never considered it actually…I never connected all the dots until I heard some of you share your process with that. So I had to let go of what I knew that day…and every day since then. I really thought that going into the place where I ended up (by accident, as I saw it!) was an act of great humility…it was quite funky and I thought that I was going to die from the food they fed us! And then I had no resources, so I had to smoke generic cigarettes, which we were lucky to get! I was very humble about all of that stuff! And we had to do chores and all kinds of terrible things! I had no idea what was to come…probably a good thing. None of us has to recover all at once. This is a great thing…it is a process that goes on for such a long time! And we get to process in steps and pieces…a little at a time, a day at a time. I am so happy with how that has unfolded in my life!