[MajestyJo]

Trust

The biggest problem I had was learning to get by the old tapes and learning to trust myself.

Those old tapes are killers, they have so many mixed messages, and they came from sources as you say, which you thought were reliable and in the know.

Today I know, that is is about what is good for me. What is good for me may not be good for someone else. It is important that I trust my Higher Power to lead and guide me in t he way I need to go for myself.

It is important for me today to listen to others, taken in what I hear, then process it and see what applies to my life, what is good for me and what isn't.

My adviser use to say, you can learn to things at a meeting. HOW to work your program and how not to work it! It isn't always about the past either, I have found it also applies to long standing members in the Fellowships, and coming to realize that if that is sobriety, I don't want it. When I see people acting out in their old behaviour, not walking their talk, then I have to be grateful to them for carrying me a message.

Unfortunately some carry the message that "To drink and to drug is to die!" For me to continue in my dis-ease then I too can go back to that place of chaos and insanity.

Posted on another site in 2004

I remembered telling someone that I had been watching them trying, but what I had seen in reality was someone going through the motions. I wanted to trust this person, and I want to get along with her, but in hindsight (which is a good teacher), all she was doing was using me.

There was no motivation behind the motion. No real honest desire to change, it was about everyone else accommodating her. When they say, it takes one to know one, it sure is true. What makes me grateful is the fact that I don't act out like that anymore. I am grateful that I can trust my instincts and realize what I was hearing wasn't the truth. There were just too many things that didn't match up with the lies I had heard before.

So many times we hear what we want to hear, and although I use to think it wasn't good to read between the lines but it is sometimes a good thing to be aware. Again, it is being in touch with your Higher Self and trusting your Inner Knowing.

Only through finding recovery and working and applying the 12 Steps to my life was I able to trust my God, and then and only then, truly trust myself. I thought I was in control, and I was the great I am; yet we all know that control is an illusion. Without my God, I don't have the power to control anything. When I surrender, follow the program, I am enable to do what I need to do for myself in today to stay clean and sober. I learned to trust the program. There were many people working their program, that I also learned to trust.