THOUGHT FOR THE MONTH
January 2017
“WHO AM I”
By: Vince DiPasquale
We are spiritual people living in a human body. Our program teaches through the steps that each day we will be engaged in the struggle of life. What a journey! Let’s take a few moments to reflect on these principles that will teach us how to work on the ultimate question of life, “WHO AM I”. Close your eyes for a moment and reflect on this meditation. Our creator holds us in his arms as we are getting ready to enter this human world and says, I’m going to give you some special gifts that you will carry with you on your journey ~ the gift and energy of love and the spirit of growth and understanding. These gifts will always be with you. God will give you also the gift of free will and allow you to make decisions.
As you walk the maze of life, you will experience your humanness. Our human world will teach us with greed, power, confusion, frustration, and fear, especially of the unknown. At first we will try to control and manipulate life. We will make mistakes and experience hurt and pain. We will search for human answers. At times we will become judgmental of others and think that we have life under control. At times we will look for answers in all the false gods, money, power and image. None of these will bring us peace ~ they create fear, anxiety and worry.
Let’s take a few moments and reflect on the word spiritual and some simple principles connected to this word. In the year 1935, God sent two teachers, to us who were broken. They had it all and yet had nothing, they were lonely sad and hurting. God brought them together in their brokenness to help each other deal with the disease of addiction. Because of the gift God gave them, they shared it with other alcoholics and a group of broken hurting people came together and with faith in each other and God, put together 12 simple principles to allow us to find our way through the maze of life.
These simple principles are gifts that allow us to embrace our humanness and realize that we are not alone.
Step 1: we are powerless over life. Our ego doesn’t work, we need to admit and accept all the situations of life as teachable moments.
Step 2: The gift of faith. We come to believe that we are not in charge, there is a spirit guiding us on the journey. Faith and trust allows us to be open to the lessons of life.
Step 3: Make a decision to release our will and turn our life over to a God of our understanding. Let go and let God. Pray for the gift and the willingness to change and grow.
These first three steps are steps of humility. They teach to try each day to be open to life’s lessons.
Step 4: Tells us to do an inventory of our life. Getting in touch with our history allows us to release all of our secrets and to become honest with ourselves. It’s a great feeling just to clean out our past ~ truly a step of honesty and humility.
Step 5: Share your story with God, self and another person. Get honest and release the past ~ truly a step of honesty and healing. No more secrets.
Steps 6 & 7: Allow us to embrace and face our defects of character. These simple steps teach us forgiveness and acceptance of our humanness. We all have our shortcomings. These steps teach us to embrace our life with healing, forgiveness and to humbly ask God to help learn and embrace our imperfections. We learn the principle progress, not perfection.
Steps 8 & 9: The healing steps. How to make amends both to ourselves and others. We have all done things that have hurt ourselves and others. To make amends to others is to forgive and love ourselves. These steps also teach us patience realizing that just because we are ready to make amends, others may not be. All we can do is pray, ask God’s forgiveness and give them to God. Always remember everything happens in Gods time, not ours.
Steps 10, 11, 12: are the gratitude steps, the daily, everyday living steps. We are taught to make time every day to reflect on ourselves, to take a little inventory to help us in life. The 11th step reminds us to pray and meditate, to fill our soul and spirit with spiritual food. Reminds us to keep life simple and try to face each day with God as our guide. The 12th step is a step of service, to share with others our experience, strength and hope.
Thank you God for my humanness, allow me to try to be open each day to God’s spiritual lessons. May we all face each day with an attitude of gratitude.
Prayers and Love!
