July 10

PATIENCE MONTH: DAY 10: “We’re in charge of our own forgiveness, and the process takes time, patience, and intention.” ― Sharon Salzberg

I am not a big fan of the term “forgive” in any of its uses. I believe we learn to “accept” things; life, people, situations, etc. Deep acceptance comes from the place where we stop fighting that there is a right or wrong, good or bad, evil or saintly, etc.

But, whichever term is applied, this quote is important. As I wrote about yesterday, the process does not happen all at once. Once in a while, we hear a new member saying how they have “forgiven” everyone in their lives and are working on “forgiving” themselves. Oh, hell no!

We cannot forgive ourselves or anyone else, in my book. We get here by the grace of a loving Power that does not judge us in the first place, so there is nothing to forgive in our lives. We just learn to accept those things we have judged.

The key to this is that the judgment was the problem, not the deed. What we believe about life is the issue. We are using faulty thinking, of course! Our views create our judgments. And the judgments are the problem! Clancy calls this the “disease of perception” and he is right on the money.

What takes time is to understand what the REAL problem is. It is NOT that we have done things that we deem wrong or right. It is that we have so much judgment of others and ourselves. It is truly killing us. We don’t drink and use drugs to deal with our behaviors as much as we do it to deal with what we BELIEVE about our behaviors.

That is why religion is so difficult for us. We are trying to “Get Good” and it will never work. NONE of us, whether we are addicts or not, is all good or all bad. We are ALL human, desperately trying to get saintly if we are religious. Ugh!

Talk about painfully working to be something that we are not! Yikes! It tears us up. So, we really, really need to learn to ACCEPT our humanity, our being less than good all the time. Okay. Now we can get on with the VERY slow process of unlearning what we have been taught and programmed to believe.

NOW, we can begin to incorporate these NEW ideas into the space where the old ideas used to live. BUT, we must first understand, again and again, how our thinking is the problem. How our beliefs that we are wrong, or right, must be shifted into a new paradigm.

This is a great quote, because it talks about how the process must begin. We set an intention and go to work. But, we must keep going with the work. This is NOT a process of just sitting and waiting for the wisdom to come.

It requires DAILY vigilance, just as the BB talks about. The source of the 12 steps teaches all about what they are, what they are not, and how to apply them to ALL the situations where we are floundering. This is not a process that takes one year, it takes about 50! And it is deepening closer and closer to the heart of the issues, to the heart of the problem, to the heart of the thinking.

I am convinced that diligent work on these things provides some wisdom as to what the old ideas are by the time we are about 20 years into recovery. The next 20 are just learning to move past the ideas, and the last 10 are enjoying the fruits of the changes this shift provides.

So, it may not happen in this lifetime. But the truth is this; it will NEVER happen if the work is not done all the time, for at least 50 years! Just sayin’…