COURAGE MONTH: DAY 19: “If your actions don’t live up to your words, you have nothing to say.”― DaShanne Stokes
We cannot tell either ourselves or others that we are “in recovery” if we are not doing this work. Consistently, repeatedly, as needed throughout our lives. There are no hidden spaces where we can hide from the world and pretend that we do not impact others with our fearful Egoic behaviors.
Most of us would like to believe that there is a hidey hole where no one knows what we do and say and act like, but the Universe does not have any.
There is nowhere to hide out or be invisible to what we are doing and saying and thinking, all the time, day after day, ad infinitum.
And this step, Step 8, teaches us how to stay in touch with what we are up to. The harm we do others includes cutting people off in traffic when we are impatient and rude because we are not being mindful of our actions, it also includes being greedy or selfish in any way.
There are 1000 ways to practice those character defects and keep them growing if we are not consistently looking at these beliefs and how they manifest in our attitudes and behaviors. There is no loophole in spiritual practices.
And whether we talk about this stuff or not, we carry the message of how we walk in the world. Every moment matters. I love the theme of the movie “Flatliners.” They repeat several times, “Everything you do matters,” and show the cast going through times in their past where they had impacted someone with a behavior that they had not even remembered. And how it shifted the other person’s life permanently. Powerful message. We should all have that experience, which is, I am told, what happens at the time of our death.
I think we should have that opportunity during our lives. Oh yeah! We do! It is this step! Hooray! Clean up your shit people!
Dolphin Hug 