I should pause to emphasize that my angel voice speaks most often when I am about to execute an order from my Self. In other words, my conscience acts as my gatekeeper. It maintains balance for my thought process, ensuring that what I say or do honors Grace’s qualities.
The recipe is simple. When my Self shows up to lead me astray, that internal voice tosses out the bromide: Look before you leap. That conscientious reminder exemplifies the most basic way my inner voice helps me negotiate life’s path.
By patiently listening, the message from that voice will eventually penetrate my consciousness. But it first required I develop a culling process to ensure that what I hear is, indeed, the truth. My Self excels at impersonation. When I refuse to give it heed, it plays an especially dirty game of styling its suggestions as though the voice of truth is speaking. I must be ever watchful for such a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Based on my experience, once truth is recognized, it can only be embraced through positive action. Truth is useless until it is expressed. How? By doing as it directs. That may sound simple, but the Self will provide instant resistance. Without a determined and focused effort, detrimental behavior is extremely difficult to overcome. Until all my Self’s negative manifestations are controlled, I remain in grave danger of returning to old destructive thinking.
Changing the way I think, as well as my behavior, has without a doubt been the most treacherous part of my journey and certainly where I’ve spent the most time. Moreover, I continue the ascent knowing that rather than humanly achievable, reaching Grace’s summit is spiritually aspirational. I derive fulfillment from the climb itself. With each graceful step taken, the more breathtaking becomes my life’s views.
Rather than some illusory magic kingdom, my happy destiny flows from the relationship I enjoy with the real Me, my spirit within. By adapting to Grace’s framework, I live as an emancipated member of life’s Eskimo Village with all its attendant freedoms.
How does one create an actual relationship with one’s inner spirit? Trust me; it’s not easy. I had no idea how to turn off the noise of my Self any more than I knew how to hear the whispers of my conscience. Realizing what it takes to become an NFL player versus actually making a team’s roster illustrates the kind of demanding road I faced.
Fortunately, I’d already been baptized in how such training could be accomplished: by retaining a coaching staff. That translated into following the same guidelines I utilized to pick a qualified Twelve Step Sponsor. After looking around, I selected Eskimos who possessed those graceful assets I most needed. My job, thereafter, was to follow the footsteps that person had taken to acquire such Grace.
I faced one serious drawback. Just because I had pierced my Self’s deceitful bubble did not mean its horror show had left town. Quite the opposite. My ego-obsessed Self threw a tantrum the moment this awakening began.
Why this reaction from my Self? Because the moment I step into my spirit’s light, my Self is revealed for the empty vessel it is and always has been. I have no ego without the power I give it. So, my Self will not give up its control over Me easily. In fact, it received news of this renewed spiritual search as nothing short of a declaration of war.
One by one, its dream team of litigators lined up before Me, all prepared to forcefully argue my Self’s case. That meant Grace’s initial steps would face withering fire. The last thing my Self can afford is for Me to face up to my ugliest truth, despite the fact it was perfectly obvious to everyone else.
My positives were many. Immediately after graduate school, I found success as a screenwriter in television, a career my heart had long been set on. However, I made my mark in another show business arena, the music industry. In the Eighties, I hit any number of homeruns as a talent manager and music producer in the jazz realm. Those efforts included taking my artists to Billboard’s Top 10. My entertainment career had been one of pursuing my passion, often sacrificing my commissions or producer’s fees for the sake of the project. No longer.
Having hit my forties, my interest became making money. I succeeded thanks to my entrepreneurial efforts in the business world, helping other companies throughout the US learn how to motivate their employees to work more safely. Meanwhile, my second wife, Glenda and I developed a gorgeous lake compound nestled in the western North Carolina mountains. Simultaneously, my personal life was filled with devoted friendships. That included serving as ringmaster for my crew of boarding school chums, ensuring many years of shared fun. Few lives burned as brightly as mine.
Yet from birth, I was always the fat guy. By adulthood, my weight had climbed to well over three hundred pounds. Psychotherapy and working the Twelve Steps lifted my eyes, to be sure. I had successfully overcome other addictions, but morbid obesity remained the true tale of my recovery tape. After fifteen years, my eating compulsions remained unchecked, spelling recovery failure. One cannot conceal being a fat man nor what that speaks to. There is no pretending, no place to hide. My failure as a functional human was plain to see.
Finding Grace may have resulted in spiritual deliverance, but its search began while desperately trying to escape my Self-created torture chamber. A spiritual awakening could stay on the back burner. I was much more interested in acquiring whatever skillsets I needed to stop killing myself. My overeating issues were akin to that of a gutter drunk or dumpster-diving heroin addict, lost in the throes of committing passive suicide.
My outsides were a direct reflection of my insides: a man who remained devoid of the ability to love himself. I had lost 100-150 pounds multiple times only to gain it all back. I had worked the Twelve Steps up, down, and all around. That recovery commitment included years of psychotherapeutic counseling, not to mention thirty days of in-patient codependency treatment. Yet even after so much dedicated effort, my Self’s control over Me remained obviously unchanged. Turning in Grace’s direction was all I had left.
