Oh how I hated this one. I was complaining and blaming to my sponsor about how awful my boyfriend was behaving. She suggested I take his inventory - write down all the bad things he was doing and what character defects he exhibited. When I finished, she asked me to come to her house and tell her all about it. As soon as I finished, she said for me to sign my name at the bottom of the list. Of course, I was horrified and greatly insulted. Then she explained that it's actually impossible to see someone else's character defects unless we have some form of them ourselves. We might be going in a different direction with them than the person we're judging or we might just wish we could get away with the same behavior, but there's something we're secretly judging ourselves for that we're covering up by judging someone else. If I call someone a miser, for example, I might be feeling guilty about overspending or being "tight" myself. If I'm not judging myself, I might just see the person as thrifty.
Oh how hard this one was to swallow. On the other hand, it's an absolutely perfect way to see my own character defects that I'm blind to. Very handy. After enough personal examination, I'm not so shocked at my character defects, and my ego doesn't try so hard to defend me. None of this has a purpose of trying to make me feel bad or guilty, but just to help me see how I'm getting in my own way and keeping me unhappy. By continuing to work the steps on whatever I find, I'm able to forgive myself which helps me be a lot more accepting of other people. Unfortunately, it's a process, not an event.
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