HONESTY MONTH: DAY 13: “Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to the fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.” ― Franz Kafka
Truth is something that is individual. I must recognize my truth, even when it conflicts with your truth. This is not an unusual circumstance. We all have our personal ways of seeing the world and what our part in the world is, along with the events of the world around us and what we believe about them.
That is an important thing for us to remember. An open mind gives us the benefit of learning more about what we consider to be true.
Our hearts are the barometer, not our minds. Education, of any kind, is an interesting thing; because we tend to believe what we are taught as children and on into later years. We believe our parents, who may be found out later to have been horribly misinformed or just prejudiced. We believe our teachers and what their books have to say, until we discover that their slant on life is nothing short of brainwashing.
We have been given that heart center, where we are able to determine, for ourselves, what resonates as truth for us.
When we live from our souls, we are living with what is, for us, deeper truth than anyone else has access to. Most often, these truths are going to be more spiritually (NOT religiously) based. The way I know if I am listening to my heart, versus my head, is when I feel at peace, rather than all stirred up.
Fear is the message from my head. Love is the message from my heart. When I am working with Step 4, I am able to find the loving and kindness that live in my heart. When I am thinking about Step 4, all I can feel is fear. Fear of the truth kept me living in pain for many years.
That old adage, that “the truth shall set you free” is truer than most of us really know. There is absolute freedom in the truth. Especially for ME, because I lie mostly to myself. I see things the way that my feeble brain is setting up the story.
I must let go of the “story” of who I am and what I do and how I see the world, because it is all based on the fear I live with when I am not practicing living in my heart.
So, my truths have changed radically since coming to this thing. Radically! And Step 4 is where that transition came about.
First, I had to admit that I was in trouble. That I needed help. Then I made a decision that I would ask for AND ACCEPT that help. These are 1, 2, and 3.
THEN, and only then, was I ready to lay it all out there. All the crazy thinking and all the fears that I carried with me for all the years of my life. Not just my drinking and drugging life, but forever! And what I believed was all based on SELF and FEAR and none of it was really true or any good.
And I got to shift my perspective and see it all differently. I probably did not agree with that first assessment of the story. I am a writer, and it was as if a cosmic Editor came down and red penciled my life and told me to rewrite the “story.” What????
But, I did it; a bit at a time, over the years. Today it is all a totally different story. What happens, as I rewrite, I get to see that it is all perfect and the way it all should be. I just have to let go of my version. It is a beautiful story; one I love to tell now. One that has power and love and wonder and Divine guidance and inspiration in it.
And it is not always pretty, but there is such tremendous benefit in it that I am in awe…every day…all the time…and I love being me and being my life. That was not how it started, but Step 4 is how it happened.
Dolphin Hug 