A good lamp made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
I am sixty-one today. July 29th marks the anniversary of my exit from my mother’s womb and my arrival as a human on the planet. My relationship with my birthday is as complex as most of my relationships are. I love it, I hate it, I am indifferent.
It is a day to reflect.
All anniversaries are a day to reflect. They mark something. A finite measure of an event. A true moniker of the physically defined human existence. The counting of the steps we have taken, a thousand tiny ones for any given experience.
Today I share Step Four.
Like all of the steps, I have been pleasantly surprised at how positive the work actually is. Each one seems daunting at first glance, and this one does not disappoint. I feel like all I do is take moral inventories. They tend to be negative and self-critical.
Who knew that a moral inventory is not just a negative look in the mirror? Not me that’s for sure!
“Yes, the truth will set you free. But first it tends to make you miserable” (Breathing Under Water)
The first task in the journal is not to analyze what you see as your wins or failures; it is to ask yourself what you might be afraid of seeing if you were totally honest with yourself. What is in your life, your past, your experiences that creates conflict and why?
We spend our lives attempting to reconcile what has happened to us and what we have “happened” upon others. Homeostasis is a human “must do”. The body does it and so too our souls. For me this search for balance is often fraught with chaos and panic, like sand pouring through a sieve, it is impossible to manage.
We are then asked to contemplate a time where we used a weakness or a failure as an excuse or reason for not moving forward. My response to this question?
All.The.Time.
I do not always do this consciously, but in retrospect I have, on more than one occasion just not followed through on something. I don’t even notice sometimes it until months go by and some sort of anniversary or event shows up and I realize, “Oh, I never did that thing I was going to do” Then then the excuses and reasons spill out, all of which focus on all of the reasons (too busy, not enough support, blah blah blah) that I was prevented from succeeding at what I set out to do.
It’s me, hi, I’m the problem it’s me. -Taylor Swift Anti-Hero
Our next task does not yet ask us for accountability or retribution. It reminds us that struggle, failure, loss, inner conflicts etc. are a necessary piece of growth and enlightenment. Religions call these things sin and moral failure, AA calls them necessary parts of life. We are asked to contemplate what it would feel like to stop attempting perfection and “sin avoidance” and instead find the wisdom in the struggle. To open our hearts to the belief that a greater love exists to help us if we just let it.
Time to shadowbox now.
When I see this word, I visualize my friend Marti. She told me once that before big races she would stand in front of her mirror and “shadow box” with her opponents. She would “punch away her weaknesses while simultaneously punching away the strengths of her competitors.
This fascinated me.
I was much more fluffy and feel good before races. I would wish everyone on the starting line good luck. I would ask God to give me the strength to handle both a victory and a defeat. It never once dawned on me that I could demand that victory for myself. That perhaps I deserved it.
Step Four has us shadowbox that thinking!
We are asked to examine how we react to criticism. How it makes us feel at the time. Then we are asked to look at our piece in whatever we are being criticized about. I have an example I have used frequently in my musings, of being called selfish by a friend of mine. It angered me. It has also clearly made me think.
I have some thoughts.
One, I use my busy self-sacrificing life to feel good about helping others while at the same time holding off challenges and conflicts. A veritable hamster wheel of arm’s length behaviors and calls for love. Two, in my never-ending desire to earn love from people I am willing to put up with unhealthy behavior from those with whom I connect. When it all blows up and I am a panic-stricken mess I finally realize this in the chaos;
“oops I did it again” -Britney Spears
This has been a big piece of my moral inventory search. Patterns I seem to repeat, being called out on them, or perhaps feeling called out. Was I actually selfish as my friend stated all those years ago? No, not really, be he felt I was. I am in a bit of a repeat situation currently with someone in my life. The circumstances are different but the sentiment the same, you only call me when you need me, not when you want to spend time with me.
(There is another lesson here about mixing friendship with business bit that is for another post)
It is hard to look at a situation that is/was painful and see your part in it through the pain of what has happened to you. But it is important. My biggest lesson on my current situation has nothing to do with the actual back and forth of the situation and everything to do with the relationships I seek.
I often repeat self-preservation behaviors and justify them by falling back on unresolved trauma as some sort of internal justification. Newsflash! This is what unresolved trauma does! We need these conflicts in our lives, they act as a mirror to show us our “shadow selves” Those parts of us we do not life to look at. This is where we learn and grow.
Once we can see ourselves clearly, much of the evil we associate with our shadow selves will disappear. This is because evil lurks in our subconscious. Most people do not consciously set out to hurt people, yet hurt happens to all of us, all the time. It disguises itself as good or necessary. I think here of my need to have an “escape plan” in every relationship I have ever had. I wasn’t setting out to hurt anyone but my actions were hurtful.
Step Four questions wrap up with being asked to recall a time a small action from someone else “saved” us. I could make a list here as I have had so many small actions save me since Molly died.
I will include two from when I finally shared with my mother that I was being molested.
My great aunt pulling me into her lap to remind me that none of this was my fault, that the brokenness of my father and his actions toward me had nothing to do with me. Another was my friend Suzanne jumping out of her bed and into mine to comfort me when I told her what had happened to me.
These small intimate gestures, from non-intimate type people are fresh in my memory 48 years after they occurred.
Not surprisingly the Breathing Lessons that accompany this step involve meditation, stillness, contemplation and prayer. Also, a little bit of “in the mirror shadow boxing”. I did my shadow boking on the rower, it was better that way!
I am many things, most of them good, some of them troubled, and none of them bad. I deserve the love of the universe (we all do you know) and will endeavor to receive it.
That is my Step Four.