March 9

FAITH MONTH: DAY 9: “It is this belief in a power larger than myself and other than myself which allows me to venture into the unknown and even the unknowable.”― Maya Angelou

Everything is unknown. We are never going to have any kind of certainty about anything beyond this moment. We sometimes believe we control our destiny and know what is going to happen from one moment to the next, but that is Ego telling us we have control. We don’t.

Life is uncertain…all of it. No exceptions. We have no promise of anything. No guarantees of one more breath or one more day, so it is important that we live in faith of what is to come and gratitude for what is going on right now.

Gratitude is faith with hindsight. When I remain in gratitude for what has come so far, I get to believe that I am NOT in charge, which opens me up to further faith that I never will be. It takes all the blah, blah out of turning my will and my life over to the care of the only Power that has had it all along. This is not new, but it IS new to Ego. That is the only shift.

To stop living in my crazy head with the Screaming Purple Monkeys (SPM) and to live in accordance with the rest of the Universe, which IS powered by something greater than me and Ego. How simple is that? So terribly simple we cannot grasp it because Ego hates the whole idea. All resistance to life comes from Ego. Not from our superior intelligence or science or anything else. Just Ego.

And we like to complicate the hell out of this dynamic so we can pretend to justify and explain our resistance to me, you and everybody who will listen to our bullshit. No need. We all have an Ego to listen to (SPM)…and it will drive you crazy.

The common denominator to all relapse into active addiction is placing primary importance of our lives in the hands of                 ANYTHING other than the Universal Power. A husband or wife, sex, money, doctors, lawyers, children, careers, education, science, drugs, alcohol, ad infinitum. This is what happens. We forget that we are not in charge. We listen to the Screaming Purple Monkeys and the story they tell. We allow our lives to shift into their care and influence. And it is ON!

So I will sit in gratitude for what has come so far. And I will live in that faith that tells me it was no doing of mine that I am surrounded by miraculous intervention of that Power and work to keep stepping into the faith that the Power will carry me today. So far, so good. I am richly blessed.