"Pick your Poison" and turn it over to the Holy Spirit in 2012

"Pick your poison" (person, object, body part, etc.) to turn over for the new year, and once a month we can place that ego obsession once again into another of the Twelve Steps and begin a totally new us for 2012.

January - A Course in Miracles' view of  Step One - (reprinted from 'Side by Side -- the Twelve Steps and A Course in Miracles')

 “We admitted we were powerless over (pick your own poison)—that our lives had become unmanageable.”
 

"Tolerance for pain may be high, but it is not without limit. Eventually everyone begins to recognize, however dimly, that there must be a better way.”

A Course in Miracles, Text page 22

　

All of us eventually say “Enough!” We recognize that all the pathways we followed before, all the attempts to control our lives, all the manipulation of relationships, all the anger dumped and guilt accepted hasn’t brought us any real release. Eventually all of us say, “There’s got to be a better way.”

Until this point is reached we will continue to try out methods based on pain, which promise relief. Not until the pain becomes too great to ignore, or too great to rationalize will we look for another way to lead our lives.

At this point we are willing to gamble on anything that will help. Let there be one spark of hope that the old methods will still work, let there be one shred of doubt as to the efficacy of gambling on the new, and the bottom hasn’t been reached. For each of us that bottom is uniquely our own. No one can decide for you when you have had enough pain and no particular incident will be the motivator — we each choose our own limit. But the experience will be the same: We no longer feel we are able to control any aspect of our lives without disaster and so we desperately try ANYTHING else to find release.

After all, we reason, what have we got to lose?