When I was young I fell into the ways of not being quite truthful....okay I lied a lot.
I was very sick physically most of my first 10 years alive and was told to use my intelligence for I showed signs of being a bright child and also to use my imagination to while away spare or dead time. Grandparents and parents were busy making a living and did not have a lot of time for a sickly child who could not go to school always. So I learned quickly in life to fantasize and even lie to get attention or to justify things I may be doing or had done. As most of us have learned, the habits we adopt as young children have a way of following us in to adulthood, especially the bad ones.
As life moved on and I aged into pre-teen and adolescence my habits get getting worse and then I added dependency on the chemical ETOH for emotional support and problem solving. Adding fuel to an assortment of abhorrent behavior was not the smartest thing I could have or should have done. My reality world was becoming limited to my fantasy world and life of deceit and lies. Embellishment was a way of life and most around me recognized that. I refused to be honest and through denial got worse by the year.
The very first in-depth honesty of any sort I can remember as an adult, well as an older person, was when although I had not drank for over 6 months, I asked the U.S. Navy to put me in treatment for my illness in the fall of 1974. For just a moment in life I actually felt clean and pure inside, a feeling I had given up long ago as a child. I had given up a lot of child like qualities long before normal people do. I did not get old before my time, I had quit maturing long before my peers.
As I entered and subsequently became involved in my Fellowship, the word "honestly" came to my ears a lot. At first I thought; "yeah that's cool". Then I got it! They wanted me to honest "in all my affairs"......I don't think so. As it turns out, this honesty was to be the saving grace of my life, as it is even today. As with most great ideas in my life I resisted the totality of what I was expected to accomplish in recovery. All the time? With everyone? In every situation? Nope, not gonna do that. That would make me vulnerable and that was not a state of being I was ready for. They told me that honesty was a display of Spirituality. No wonder I knew nothing of it, I knew nothing of being a spiritual person.
Well you can see what was gonna happen here. I was making an effort to learn of a Power Greater than myself but not changing all my ways. Not even most of them. This provides conflict in a person which now could not be resolved using a chemical or substance. It had to be "au naturel".
An so after numerous days, weeks, months, years, decades we come to "Present Moment". I believe that I have caused myself so much agony over the last decades that at least in this present moment I am cognizant of my honesty, rigorous or otherwise, being a manifestation of the Divine within me. I can only be honest in this present moment and I can only touch my God in this present moment. so finally I have a grasp of what it takes to be honest in life. Not any type or form of honesty, just honest.
It takes a continuous day by day, breath by breath conscious contact with God as I understand IT. It takes every tool, every suggestion ever honest moment I have to bring about this natural process of being honest. For this I am truly grateful. Do I slip? Yes. do I like that? Absolutely not. Do I treat it very much like taking a drink of alcohol? Totally! Any deviation from my God is in fact in my mind a drunken spree of a short or long duration. Spiritual and emotional sobriety depend totally on me Being. Honesty absolutely depends on me totally Being. There is no other process in life, only Being One with The One. As that occurs all things great and small become manifest in my life. Honest, they do.
Love and Light,
richard
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