April 8

HONESTY MONTH: DAY 8: “The easiest way to gain someone’s trust is to deserve it. This should be pretty easy, assuming you’re just being you and being real. Minimal effort too.” ― Ashly Lorenzana

I remember seeing Step 4 in early recovery. It terrified me. I did not want to ever have to be honest enough to be “fearless and thorough.” Yikes!

And then there is the word “moral” in the step. What? I knew I was an immoral infidel. Ugh! Who wants to write about THAT?

This step, when I go back to the beginning and remember what I believed about it then and what has come to be revealed to me now is fascinating.

Those first inventories…omg!

Long histories of everything and everyone…real shit lists of those assholes…you know. That stuff. Then, of course, a long and sickening list of shame and anger and rage and on and on and on.

Most of us never get the chance to heal ANYTHING, because we are so used to the arrogance in our heads that it does not get through to us that we are STILL being in the center of the fucking Universe. Oh!

That will never create healing. We are still just pissed off and resentful at something else, or at the same person for what we feel is a different reason.

The truth is this, we don’t get it that we are expecting THEM to do something different. We are still stuck in the same thinking that created the problem to begin with. We have never gotten the fact that WE are the problem; not that person, place, thing or situation we are pissed about or at.

Remember the quote from Dr. Paul about Acceptance? Oh yeah!

And remember how people-pleasing we are? Oh yeah! So, it all boils down to this…I am trying to be someone that will please you in some way. Then you will stay.

Then I won’t have to be alone with this person I really, REALLY hate…me. And I don’t know why I hate me so much, but I don’t know how to stop manipulating and conning and lying my way through the world, doing all this shit to make you like me. Even when I don’t. And WHY don’t I like me?

Because I am a manipulative, conning, lying asshole.

And WHY am I doing that? Because I am afraid you won’t like me. And WHY is that? Because I don’t. And WHY is that? Because you don’t. OH MY GOD!!!

See how this is? See why no one is getting relief from these inventories?

The path to the heart is short and simple. But it gets all wrapped up in the stories the Ego creates and there is nowhere to go, but to chase our tails around in that circle until we die. Let go of the stories and sit still with yourself. Be your friend. It is YOU who is the asshole. Get past that and it will begin to be better. And then, there is always more work to be done. Always.