{"id":18462,"date":"2019-12-12T09:35:02","date_gmt":"2019-12-12T14:35:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18462"},"modified":"2019-12-12T10:01:09","modified_gmt":"2019-12-12T15:01:09","slug":"the-twelve-steps-as-shadow-work","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18462","title":{"rendered":"The Twelve Steps as Shadow Work"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong><br><\/strong>Thursday, December 12, 2019<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<figure><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/qX5HP0aYo98\" allowfullscreen=\"\"><\/iframe><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Step Four: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.<\/em>&nbsp;[1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Jesus said, \u201cThe truth will set you free,\u201d (John 8:32) and I always feel compelled to add, \u201cBut first it will make you miserable.\u201d There is no other way to describe the humiliation and grief that comes from seeing your own failures and weaknesses clearly, perhaps for the first time. Only in the presence of Great Love do any of us have the courage to attempt that kind of inventory.&nbsp;<\/em><em>Today, Ron H., a beloved staff member here at the Center for Action and Contemplation, shares from his own experience how humility and honesty are needed throughout the Twelve Steps.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>About five years into my recovery journey, I got to know a man in Los Angeles named Pepe. Like so many we get to meet in the rooms, he was a compelling character. His stories were spellbinding and masterfully delivered, his wisdom was simple and always rang of truth, and his heart was out there where you could see it, humble, genuine. When he told of how he took his wheelchair-bound teenage son Tony, dying of Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy, to the river to go fishing, the entire room would hang on every word (no matter how many times we had heard the story). Completely bereft as he watched Tony painfully work to get his line in the water, Pepe began to cry. \u201cDad,\u201d Tony said, \u201cWhy are you crying? There\u2019s nothing wrong with me. It\u2019s just my Earth suit that is having trouble. Nothing is wrong with me.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As you meditate for a moment on what must have been the seat of Tony\u2019s identity, as the whole room would do each time Pepe drove home this line, notice the shift in your own heart and body. Pepe would look down for a moment and then bring it humbly and powerfully:&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThis program is a program of truth-telling,\u201d Pepe would sometimes say and then pause to let it sink in. \u201cBecause it\u2019s the truth that will set you free. The truth sets us free. The first step? We\u2019ve been lying, distorting, denying, hiding from the truth. The first step is a truth-telling step. We admit who we are. The fourth and fifth steps are a huge exercise in finally telling the whole truth. [2] The tenth step? Learning to tell the truth on the fly, and to call ourselves out and correct it when we didn\u2019t. [3] This program is a truth-telling program. That\u2019s how it turns us into free people.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>That simple and profound description came to me years later when I heard Richard and others talk about Carl Jung\u2019s concept of persona and shadow. Where my \u201cpersona\u201d is the me that is presented for the world to see, my \u201cshadow\u201d is the undiscovered or undisclosed me (often unseen even by me). Shadow is a concept much like \u201cdenial\u201d in the recovery context. It\u2019s not even necessarily that I see it and deny seeing it, it\u2019s that my mechanisms for protecting myself from seeing certain aspects of myself are so effective that I\u2019m blind to them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Thursday, December 12, 2019 Step Four: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.&nbsp;[1] Jesus said, \u201cThe truth will set you free,\u201d (John 8:32) and I always feel compelled to add, \u201cBut first it will make you miserable.\u201d There is no other way to describe the humiliation and grief that comes from seeing your [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18462"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18462"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18464,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18462\/revisions\/18464"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}