The Language of Letting Go: April 2nd

Facing Our Darker Side

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
  —Step Four of Al-Anon

By the time we get to the Fourth of the Twelve Steps, we are ready to face our darker side, the side that prevents us from loving others, from letting others love us, and from enjoying life and ourselves. The purpose of Step Four is not to make ourselves feel worse; our purpose is to begin to remove our blocks to joy and love.

We look for fears, anger, hurt, and shame from past events - buried feelings that may be affecting our life today. We search for subconscious beliefs about others and ourselves that may be interfering with the quality of our relationships. These beliefs say: I'm not lovable . . . I'm a burden to those around me . . . People can't be trusted . . . I can't be trusted . . . I don't deserve to be happy and successful . . . Life isn't worth living. We look at our behaviors and patterns with an eye toward discerning the self-defeating ones. With love and compassion for ourselves, we try to unearth all our guilt - earned and unearned - and expose it to the light.

We perform this examination without fear of what we shall find, because this soul searching can cleanse us and help us feel better about ourselves than we ever dreamt possible.

God, help me search out the blocks and barriers within myself. Bring what I need to know into my conscious mind, so I can be free of it. Show me what I need to know about myself. 

From The Language of Letting Go by Melody Beattie ©1990, Hazelden Foundation

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So many of us stop working the Steps when we reach 4..............we think the purpose of it is to feel badly about ourselves! We are afraid to face ourselves! We're afraid to examine our behaviors and bring them out into the light. We prefer to keep them hidden in the dark.............which doesn't mean they don't exist..........just that we are refusing to acknowledge them.

We are only as sick as the secrets we keep, even when we are keeping secrets from OURSELVES!

The purpose of Step 4 is to examine our behaviors and thought patterns,with loving truth, and to see where the twisted thinking COMES from! How can we rid ourselves of something we don't acknowledge the existence of?  We have got to learn trust.........and love.............and allow ourselves to become whole, finally, so that we can stop turning to food to fill a void within us.  That void cannot be filled with food, which is why there is no such thing as 'enough' where binges are concerned. The void gets filled when we accept and love ourselves as we are, and when we accept God/Higher Power into our lives to take over that which we cannot control.

For today, I am willing to learn more about myself, to develop my conscious mind and to expose my flaws to daylight.  I am willing to get RID of those flaws, once I discover them, so that I can live a happy, joyous & free lifestyle.