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our secrets, is not quite a complete thought, it needs one more word to make it complete. when i see this statement free-floating as it were, i have the desire to add one of two words to the start of it, namely either **as** or **only,** depending on the point i want to make, and how i see the world at this time.
if i preface this seed with only, as in “i am ONLY as sick as my secrets,” it makes me seem a whole lot better than i may be. of course using the statement: “i am AS sick as my secrets,” implies that i might just be one sick puppy. interesting that this morning i choose to focus on secrets and their relationship to my spiritual health, when what i heard, as i sat this morning, was about allowing myself to be trusted and trusting someone, anyone to carry my garbage to where it belongs. once again i have identified a dichotomy in my thought processes, probably to divert myself from getting down to the core of what i really heard this morning.
so lets start at the top, pop each of the ideas off the stack and see where we end up. i am only as sick as my secrets, implies that if i have trusted someone, divulged all that i was going to carry to my grave, and all the little naughty parts of me that cause me shame, i should be doing fairly well, at least on a spiritual level. confession, no matter where it comes form, is good for relieving the burden one may be carrying. in this half-full view of how well i am based on the secrets i am carrying i can carry my head high, because i have a certain someone, or a group of certain someones that i can trust with my sh!t. back in my early recovery days, before i was member, that group of certain someones, was spread out, so no single someone could use everything i was or was not against me. the defense mechanism there was to minimize any damage to me, by not allowing anyone to have all the bullets. i stayed clean, i had the appearance of being intimate and trusting and my recovery finally reached a place where i became a member. i was far from healthy and THE secret that i was carrying and doing my best to keep on the down low, was that i did not want to be there, and in less than a year i would be history. for once in my life, my desire to look good, kept me going through the motions long enough to start to have the desire to get healthier. yes a character defect caused me to behave my way into better thing, savor that delicious irony this morning! my spiritual self was limited only by the secret i was carrying with me and no amount of this recovery mumbo-jumbo was going to change that.
take out the word “only” and the statement becomes a tool for spiritual self-abuse, at least for me. “it is my secretes that are keeping me form being better, all i NEED to do is dump them, and all will be well.” the cause becomes the condition and the limiting factor in my recovery. the more i look at what i am withholding, the sicker i appear to myself, and the less i want to be with anyone, so i withdraw, isolate and become a spiritual hermit, to protect myself form what i am sure others are seeing, the accumulation of what i am carrying on the inside, oozing out into the world around me. in this path, i am forced to hide and keep my interactions with the very people that can help me to a minimum, and yes it is still is all about looking good, and yes, this time it does not lead to a healthier place in any sense, ironical pr otherwise. the time i have been here, have been some of the darkest times in my life and my only path out of them was do as suggested by the reading, TRUST SOMEONE!
when i used a group of people to be my trust locker as it were, i minimized the damage as i noted above. since no one of them, knew all the secrets i had, it reduced the damage to a spiritual flesh wound from which i could sporing back and take my revenge, after all, i would know who i told what, hence the source and escalated pay back is a wonderful thing. yes it took another FOURTH STEP to realize where that would lead me, infinite unmet expectations and resentments, hence, i learned to trust ONE person, my sponsor with ALL of my secrets and for that i am better and yes healthier person today. that has ended up being two men, as since i became a member i have had two sponsors from this fellowship, but even that notion, no longer gives me the willies! i have at least one person in my life who knows everything about me, and hardly needs to connect any of the dots, as i have drawn a fairly explicit picture.
what it has come down to, in the end as it wre, is that for me, letting go of my secret self, at least to one other person has led me on a more spiritual journey, than i ever imagined and juyst for today, i think i will continue to become the man i have always wanted to be.

∞ DT ∞