Blog entry for:

freedom to live through the action of taking STEP NINE. i have often wondered why any of my peers would hesitate before getting to STEP NINE. STEP NINE is the ultimate goal of removing my ties to my past and provides me the means to start living in the here and now. STEP NINE freed me from the burden of what i did, by allowing me to put that life, those behaviors and that damage in perspective. for me and most importantly STEP NINE, disconnects me from the notion that i am bad, broken or evil. i can finally see that what i did was bad, broken or evil, but i am not necessarily any or all of those things. the catch, however, is that to get to STEP NINE, i need to do the previous eight steps, including the admission that normal human traits have been twisted into character defects and that my default behaviors to those defects are the shortcomings that come between me and the POWER that fuels my recovery. i have now seen that it is not STEPS FOUR and FIVE that take addicts out, it is STEPS SIX and SEVEN and i have come to believe that it is the FEAR of what they may become on the other side of SEVEN that leads them to the choice that maybe, just maybe it would be better to use than face who they are. armchair psychiatry aside, i am grateful that i have walked through STEPS SIX and SEVEN and had the opportunity to become willing to clean up the damage and actually took the action to do so.
okay, rainbows, daisies and rose-coloured glasses aside, when i remember looking at the daunting task of even cataloging the damage i had done in my life, i was fearful and hesitant. that trepidation only increased as i looked at the damage i had done since getting clean, because that meant that i had to admit to others, what i had difficulty admitting to myself: i was not the spiritual guru i liked to pretend i was. i had to admit that i lied, acted like a douche-bag and was a generally shit of a person. the nice part was that i was certain that any or all of that only made me human and not some sort of predatory monster lurking in the depths. STEP NINE allows me to address that “being human,” part of me and propels me into the state of desiring to be something more. more spiritual, more selfless, more humble, more whole and more transparent about who i really am. STEP NINE is the vehicle that i use to forgive myself my lapses in behavior that result in damage to myself and others. for the first time, i GET to glimpse at who i am and have a sense of who i am becoming, because i have broken the chains to my past. what i get the most out of taking the NINTH STEP however, is … lost my train of thought, so it probably was somewhere i did not need to go.
where i do need to go today, is the office, after all they do pay me to show up, and actually work for them. no longer is my employer going to end up on my EIGHTH STEP list, and that is the result of living a program. i no longer steal either time or materials and try to justify it through the myriad of rationalizations i once believed i was entitled to use. today, for the most part, what you see is what you get and when i take action i own the consequences of that action. my next action? get my butt out of this cahair and head on down to work, after all it is still a good day to be clean.

∞ DT ∞