A Turning Point

 Seeking for humility, says Bill W., as something desired, can be our turning point.

I wasn’t quite a black hole, with such a strong gravitational pull that I sucked the light out of everyone I met, but I was pretty needy. I’m not a shining star, but I am now in a better space to offer warmth and light. There was a turning point where I learned to be much more ‘give’ than ‘take’.

The development of humility is freeing. It is finding that I don’t have to wear the masks of whatever I’d like to project, whatever I want others to think of me. It’s the discovery that the real person who has been hiding behind the bottle is worthy as herself. I have been given the gift of seeing myself more honestly, good traits and those which are not-so-good. I am encouraged to build on my strengths by seeing them without the lens of ego. Likewise, I’m not crushed by the reality of those shortcomings I previously worked so hard to deny.

I humiliated myself often, and was many times humiliated by others or by situations. This is what I thought of when I first heard about having the humility to be honest. No, thank you very much. Ugh. But I was open to hearing the difference, and that has been life-changing. Humiliation happened when ego was challenged, but when I understood that the choice was to be either Ego-driven, or to develop a God-consciousness, I found the freedom to be my true self.

Ego is a hard foe - it’ll pop up like a whack-a-mole. I can whack and whack, or I can stop playing the game. Our Third Step Prayer asks our Higher Power, our God-Consciousness, to “relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will”. What is the ‘bondage of self’ other than ego? 

That turning point, the willingness and the desire to have that Power greater than ourselves remove the uncovered shortcomings in my character, is to receive the grace that is offered by humility.