It is....Be sure to pray and ask to have God guide you. The reason is because "we" can't. If we could, we would have cleared this stuff out years ago and lead healthy productive and happy lives. We and the ego are one in the same until God can enter. He won't enter unless invited in, or asked daily. The ego. who we feed through all the frustrations and anger and resentment and guilt has dominion over us because it has the stronghold. We have giving it power though our use and our behavior.
Little things like gratitude lists, meetings, writing sponsor, keeps the pilot light lit, but it's in now way a fire....yet. Darkness enslaves us until we start feeding the light by gaining momentum toward God and feeding sustainable sobriety. The 4th and 5th Step clears out enough wreckage and coupled with the foundation Steps 1-3, we can start to build upon a solid spiritual house. Before we we building from ego, fight or flight, drugs and alcohol, sadness and rage....nothing solid. The foundation gets set in the first 3 Steps. 4-9, house cleaning, 10-12, maintenance.
If I never took out the garbage in my home then my house would stink. Who would want to come into it? Let alone God? Nothing good can come into filth. My soul was filthy and I didn't even know until it wasn't. I guess if I never had a clean non stinky house, I would get use to it...right? So parasites like rats, ants, maggots, because of my the garbage in my home have free range. I can't get rid of them because I refuse to clean house.
Same applies to our Spiritual house in the Spiritual realm.
This work is somthing that all people, alcoholic or not, could benefit from. I heard someone say in a meeting that they should be taught in school. When we block God the way we have for as long as we have, the mind and body will start to weaken and get diseased too. God made us, yet we have convinced ourselves that we do not need him. That we can do it alone....That people and substances are more powerful than our Creator...and our society feeds this. More cars, better house, more this, more that....and nobody is happy, nobody is filled...lost...mind sick, body sick, soul sick.
We can't get filled until we purge. This time around, we fill up on good thing...God things. Trying to pile Good or God onto bad doesn't work. We must have a shift in perception by letting go of the conceptions from the past...Alcoholism is a disease of perceptions fed by the concepts we learned and used to "survive". They don't work. This way, we start to learn new conceptions and perceptions that God teaches us directly through the Holy Spirit himself. He is my real sponsor....but I had to start somewhere and with the guidance of someone else.
Love,
Hil