Expression is the key

Sometimes I feel that a stall happens when we get emotional about a happening or a relationship incidence and mull over it or ruminate. The what ifs, coulda's and shoulda's start and maybe it becomes easier to forget or bury. Maybe your traditional sharing partner or sponsor is the problem and in your head this is a big deal!

In my life I have found that emotion requires expression NOW. So to move on I must share my feelings immediately and if a particular type of amend or boundary issue needs attention it can wait till I have been able to calmly reason things out with a trusted person. The quick sharing of feelings often is all that was required. Simple but powerful! UNEXPRESSED feelings do their stuff on the inside. My sense is that every thought/feeling does its work regardless, so I prefer to have it done outside of me rather than inside where I cannot begin to trace the effects or work on the damage it might do over time. Expression represents freedom to me and the honest flow-through of experience is possible only to the degree that I am free. I am of little value to myself or anyone if I have internalized rather than expressed!! The flow of emotional experience is IMPORTANT! Don't dam any of it up-it can have a cumulative affect that will create distorted expression and the truth gets lost or warped in the process.

SO EXPRESS IT NOW AND RESOLVE IT APPROPRIATELY WITHOUT THE EMOTION!

Check out the CLAIMS of 12 steppers below. In my life step 10 keeps these happening!

scott@SharingTheBurden.ca
http://sharingtheburden.blogspot.com/
http://twitter.com/sharingburden
www.SharingTheBurden.ca

Step 10 is about currency in life and FREEDOM!

12 Steps to Spiritual Recovery!
1- We admitted we were powerless over others-that our lives had become unmanageable.
2- Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3- Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of that Power.
4- Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5- Admitted to this Power, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6- Were entirely ready to have this Power remove all these defects of character.
7- Humbly asked the Power to remove our shortcomings.
8- Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9- Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10- Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11- Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with this Power, praying only for knowledge of His/Her will for us and the power to carry that out.
12- Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
(Many 12 step programs use the word God where we have written Power)


Various Claims of Promise from 12 Steppers

1-We will find ourselves worthy of love and able to love others. We will not lose ourselves.

2-Courage and fellowship will replace fear.

3-Our lives will yield hope to share with others.

4-We will come to know the vastness of our emotions without being in slavery to them.

5-Learning to forgive, we will no longer be bound by our secrets to live in shame.

6-Serenity and peace will have meaning for us.

7-We will allow our lives and the lives of those we love to flow day by day with spiritual ease, balance and grace.

8-Attitude and outlook will be renewed.

9-Intuition will guide us to handle situations that were impossible in the past.

10-We will not regret the past recognizing its value for other sufferers.

11-Selfish interests will fall away as we gain interest in others.

12-Faith and gratitude will replace fear as we realize that a Greater Power is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.