June 10

HUMILITY MONTH: DAY 10: “To find the balance you want, this is what you must become. You must keep your feet grounded so firmly on the earth that it’s like you have 4 legs instead of 2. That way, you can stay in the world. But you must stop looking at the world through your head. You must look through your heart, instead. That way, you will know God.” ― Elizabeth Gilbert

This is humility. To know God…or some concept of something that is greater than we are. To NOT view the world through the lens of ego, but to see with heart. To see through our broken edges instead of denying they exist. To allow our vulnerabilities and character defects to be the ground upon which we become human.

There is a root to these words that is similar…HUMAN, HUMOR, HUMILIITY. We must learn and practice Rule 62…” Don’t take yourself so damned seriously!” And humility is the result of having a great sense of our own humanity and humor.

We are weak, sometimes fragile, often vulnerable when we live from the heart. It is when my heart was broken completely open that I began to heal those things I thought I knew and experienced in life. It took a long time to trust that process. And the world kept breaking my heart. And I realized that is what a heart is for…to be broken wide OPEN! Oh…yeah…okay.

I hear people say in recovery meetings all the time that their Higher Power has a sense of humor. NO!!!! That humanizes the Creator of this vast Universe. He or she does NOT need a sense of humor. WE DO!!!

If the Power of this Universe had an ego, we would ALL be totally fucked! Then there would be anger, jealousy, rage, selfishness, fear, pain, anguish created for us; instead of BY us. Do you see the difference? It is HUGE!

We must laugh at our own pretensions of grandeur, our crazy ideas of power and might. What we believe is true is laughable. We MUST learn to go to that place. Humor is our greatest weapon against the Screaming Purple Monkey…the greatest weapon. For then we become right-sized and humble.

In that space, we are brought to the realization that without the Universal Power, we are nothing. Less than nothing. We are just a giant ego walking around acting like a bad-ass. We aren’t. We are a train wreck.

No amount of recovery is going to repair our ego. Just the opposite. Any good recovery is going to damage it beyond repair. It will continue to bounce back and lie and scream and throw tantrums, but it can be vanquished. So far, mine is not down for any long count; but it has less appeal to me every day.

The ego is what fantasizes about all of this. So, keeping our feet on the ground is another exercise in humility. We are walking on the planet and (hopefully) healing ourselves and this great Mother as we go along.

Humanity means we are all in this shit together. I hope we can all learn to hold hands and take good care of our broken hearts and share with one-another the love we can find there. And when we see a screaming purple monkey, may we know how painful it is to live with.