I always read the lead up to the passage shared by our weekly share as an opportunity to meditate and tune into what is being expressed and how I relate to it; I then I get to expand on the concept with my experience with what was shared. What a cool process!
Anyway, the story leading up to chosen quote is about the guy who smokes and drinks too much coffee after getting sober and his wife up his ___ about it-she reminds me so much of me when I'm on a controlling spree because I am in fear about something. And of course my husband is the receiver of most of it.
A controlling or obsession spree always stems from fear. My insistence upon people doing things my way, even if I'm ''right'', is still a misuse of self will because I am imposing my will onto them. This is robbing them or him of their dignity because he did not give me his consent to micromanage or obsess on him, nor is he trying to quit or overcome whatever it is I am fearing him doing or not doing.
Essentially it's violating his boundaries-but, because he or most people never set any boundaries, of course I'm gonna trespass over onto his side of the street! It's very natural, especially for women, to be compelled to intercede when they see discourse and unmanageability happening because we are wired to raise children and that act keeps them alive.
If my husband is acting like a child and harming himself with too much food, tv, sugar or whatever, my natural instinct is to jump in and try to control his erratic and unhealthy behavior. Then if there is any sort of fear attached to the outcome of his unhealthy behavior the natural instinct to ''correct the child'' is magnified and sent into misuse territory. Fear is the root in which normal God given natural basic instincts are misused and woven into ego identity or fight or flight.
I don't want to lose him before his time because this would cause me great pain. So now my body tells me to fight or run because I am ''danger'' of feeling pain. The two options for the unrealized being: run-leave or resent and fight him on everything. The option we use as realized and awakened souls....Live and Let live, Easy does it, First things First. Knowing God will get me through ANYthing painful was the catalyze that started the rewiring process and opening of the heart to receive new information.
First things First: Let me properly ascertain the facts.
Am I in physical and impending danger-no. That my body interprets that to be because I lived a life of living in fight or flight and my body registered it incorrectly because at the time I didn't know the difference between life or death danger vs. embarrassment danger which caused the initial distortion.
Then, nobody taught me to process the event through my body so my body holds onto that and actually stores the information in the area in which the perceived assault took place. I wasn't able to see the reality of what really happened through my perception as a child and onward, until I got here and got a sponsor to help me sift through all of it.
So this logical self-talk will calm my central nervous system down and start to reprogram my responses while proactively asking God and my body to release and remove the false information. But, like anything, I can't just do it once and think it's gonna work. It's an actual practice of reprogramming just like all of this is!
Easy Does It: Now that I am calm and I can sanely respond to a situation.
Here is what our book suggests:
''Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code.''
- Ask God to remove them
- Discuss them with someone
- Make amends quickly if we have caused harm
- Turn our thoughts to someone we can help
In this logical calm and collected state I have something to ''DO'' as opposed to spinning out and being consumed by fear. I can properly use my natural God given instincts in service to someone who might actually want to hear what I have to give in the right-side up where my energies are being used properly where both parties are getting spiritually fed. When in the inverted realm of misuse of natural instincts I am drained and depleted because the person I am fighting with to see things my way doesn't want the information. Unless they willingly want to change, you just sound like a nag and become annoying.
Live and Let Live
''That's all well and good but how do you expect me to be ok with any of this?! My husband, son, daughter, dad, friend...they are killing themselves right in front of me-the world is falling apart and you want to throw slogans at me!!''
I am not, nor ever, minimizing what the experiencer is experiencing, we are just suggesting to try a different course of action that will not add more discourse to an already volatile situation. What I have found is that the more I back off the addict, the mentally or spiritually unfit-or just with whatever or whoever I am insisting upon that they or it change, the better we all are.
I don't have to cut them off or support the behavior, I can choose a different response using the formula our book has laid out to deal with these sorts of things. I have alanon and other resources to address all the root causes of my bodily responses to old programs.
One of the worst examples I have heard, and have actually thought to be true myself, is that the more I fear for someone and the more I externalize that concern as a display of an over top emotional reaction to what is happening, means that I love them. That is so very wrong-and it sucks that that was some of our introduction and interpretation to love.
In other words, if I told my mom about an event at school in which I was bullied, her going to the school and freaking out or over it or going to the parents house and getting in a fight with them meant that she loved me more than say a parent that didn't do that.
That was a huge huge wake up call for me in this new paradigm as to how to give and properly receive love. Love would have been her teaching me how to properly process what happened and introduce me to God.
Of course she couldn't transmit something she didn't have-but, we learn to know better in here and then teach our fellows how to properly process through these sorts of life things so that it doesn't get stuck in the body, passed down and continue to create more confusion and discourse. What a blessing!!
It is not my business what God's plan is for the big picture for you, for my husband, for this country or for this entire 3-D construct...my job is to get up in the morning, do the next right thing and keep myself as clean as possible. And when I fall short, clean it up, get back up, learn from it, ask someone how they are doing, smile-be the light in the darkness....or go down with the darkness.
I fundamentally have no control over anything outside of me. So once I accept that as truth and trust God with the outcome I can get busy doing something else besides focusing and giving all my attention to it. I can start to actually live and create for myself what I would like to see in the world. Or again, marinate in fear. Just for today, I choose God over Fear!!
Chop Wood, Carry Water