June 29

HUMILITY MONTH: DAY 29: “The biggest challenge after success is shutting up about it.” ― Criss Jami

Ego tells us we must brag about our accomplishments, and our social environment encourages this behavior. If we had a name for Western Culture, it would be: Ego-runs-the-world; or at least, believes it does.

I consider this the attitude that the rest of the world calls “ugly Americans.” We go into ancient cultures and tell them how inferior they are to us, like we have it all going on. The antiquities of the world mean nothing to us, unless we can somehow acquire them for our own use. During the 1940s and 1950s, as travel became inexpensive and easy to access, we travelled all over the world, killing all the animals that were new and different for us. Yikes!

We have always worked to impose our values and morals on other cultures, believing that being rich in money made us somehow superior. Really?

Why is it then, that our incidence of addiction; to food, gambling, drugs, technology, etc. are the worst in the world? Because our ego-driven culture believes that he who eats the most wins! OMG! And, for such a “rich” and “advanced” culture, why is it that the top 3 diseases killing us are ALL diseases of over-consumption? We are, literally, eating ourselves to death. Yeah, ain’t we awesome?

So, in recovery, we learn to abstain from overeating, gambling, over-working, and excessive consumption (I hope!) and to be satisfied with ENOUGH instead of TOO MUCH. Insecurity and inadequacy tell us “too much is never enough” and we buy into that.

Humility is being enough, just the way we are; having enough, even when we don’t believe it; and doing enough, even when others have come to expect too much from us.

We have no one to please, except our Creator. We have nothing to prove, except to those who don’t believe we CAN recover. There is no magic success that is going to propel us into another dimension. Only recovery can do that. Love and light and humility.

We allow that Universal Power to give us sustenance, instead of the greedy consumption of goods, food, money, sex, work, and diversion we seem to gravitate toward when we stop using drugs and alcohol. We relax, enjoy life each day, pay attention to the people and the world around us (REAL ATTENTION); and we give Universal Power the bulk of our day to do with as it unfolds.

We are not running around, addicted to busy, to getting more and more, to doing more and more, to having the most (or the least), to buying and acquiring, … in other words, we stop living the American dream; which is all about consumption and being busy.

We sit with ourselves and our Creator to see where we need to let go of another character defect. We humbly ask for them to be removed; and then we stop using them! This is an amazing way of life!