My Self View
Some where in the back of
my mind lingers a story I once heard about a Monk. He spent many years in solitude and
learning. When he got out someone asked
him, “What was the most important thing that you learned during all those
years?” The Monk answered something to
the effect of, “That I am just the same as those murders and sinners that
overcrowd the jail cells.” Of course the
man asking the question didn’t understand and asked, “What do you mean?” The Monk said something like, “At any given
moment if I were to choose a different choice I would be where they are. I am no better than they. I have just made different choices.”
I have been thinking a lot
lately about our human tendency to view ourselves, and how that is often
incongruent with truth or the way others actually see us. As I begin this journey to share the journey
with you, I invite you to see me (in the words of Richard and Linda Eyre) as I
see myself: One in the struggle. This is
something I continually am reminded of through life’s experiences. I am not superior, nor am I inferior, to
other people who walk on two feet. I am
equal to each of them, placed in the same environment for the same
purposes. I am not righteous because of
a self-elevated perspective that my choices make me better than anyone
else. I learned from Chauncey C. Riddle
that righteousness is doing good to others.
There is no room for self-elevation in the responsibility to serve them.
Through my journey in the
12 Step process, I have recognized fully and completely that I am held up from
day to day by God’s sustaining hand.
Some days that support is removed so I can learn to be humble; and some
days I feel Him carry me so I can be patient with my children to give them the
love they need. I can take no credit for
who I am because He has made me all that I am, all that I know, all that
I feel, think, and do: He gives me power to do.
The only thing I can take credit, and not even completely on that point,
is the grit that I exhibit when I choose to get up every day at 5:00 am to study my scriptures- and even there I know He
gives me the motivation to do that. I
know that on any given day, if I were to choose to be disobedient and sleep in
that I would lose it, literally. Without
my determination to be obedient I am a raging selfish depressed woman, and that
makes me a horrible mother. I know that
if I were aimed just two degrees to the right or the left that I too would be
in that jail cell. I am who I am because
of God’s power, not mine. I am no better
than that person in the jail cell, I simply have made different choices and the
rug could be ripped out from under my feet if I were to make a different choice
on any given day.
I am impressed with your dedication. Thanks for your example.
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