Lorelei: the siren's song
Are my ears plugged?
Am I sitting on my laurels?
My roots should grasp a new soil, a new soul, a sole soul, a sole soil.
I thought I could get by with only so much growth as would allow me to have a good life, according to my understanding of a good life: one that satisfies me.
Under the shroud of complacency, darkness grew.
Behaviour formed and became entrenched.
I cut the weeds off at the stem but not the root.
A change happened.
I became willing to do anything to serve God and only God, to cut away anything that did not accord with this design.
The _Twelve and Twelve_ talks about looking at smaller defects once the grosser ones are dealt with.
Use a microscope and I’ll see how clean my skin really is.
Become aware and I’ll see how, amongst the thousands of thoughts a day, there are hundreds that betray ego, self, separation.
How free do I want to be?
Am I willing to drown my own identity, and watch all animation leave my face as I hold it under the water?
Am I willing to believe that the face I see is not my own but one I built in the place of my own?
Am I curious as to who I really am?
What is going to happen when the flood comes?
Is my ark built?
Am I two-stepping or twelve-stepping?
How will I swallow and digest the lumps that are in the pipeline?
Do I have the God-resources to handle these?
Do I love a few, hate a few, and feel indifferent or smugly superior to the rest?
Does every thought glow with love?
When I am idling, the groove is not static but retrogressive.
Am I amongst the most active people I know, in inventory (Step Ten), the spiritual life (Step Eleven), and service (Step Twelve)?
When I react, do I know why?
Do I know what lies beneath the reaction?
And beneath that?
And beneath that?
Have I got down to the causes and conditions?
Some drink or go mad or separate themselves.
Why?
Did they see it coming?
If they did, by the time it did, could they do anything about it?
Why them and not me?
Where did it start?
A slip ends with a drink.
So where does it start?
The ego covers its tracks.
All went well for a while.
Or did it?
All was well for a while.
Or was it?
All that appears well is not necessarily so.
Just because it can be done does not mean it should.
Just because the house stands in summer does not mean it will in winter.
The wolf of the universe has not gone; he is asleep.
What will happen when he huffs and he puffs to blow my house down?
Do I know the difference between straw and stone?
Would I even recognise the wolf?
Dressed as a sheep?
Dressed as grandmother?
The drowning grab life-preservers.
But if the drowning man does not realise he is drowning?
From his point of view, not drowning but waving.
From others’: not waving but drowning.
In The Squid Game I have to survive every round to win.
To get to the final bed sober, I have to get to each intermediary bed sober.
Each bed is different.
Each journey is different.
What worked yesterday might work today or might not.
And tomorrow?
And the day after?
What if it stops working?
When will it stop working?
And then?
God is everything.
Which means that everything that is not God is nothing: its appearance is illusory; reliance on it, unwise.
Where are appearances deceiving me?
Where is God if not in the toys piled up around me?
What is standing between me and God?
Am I willing to get rid of everything and every relationship that stands in the way of God’s will being done?
If I am for me, what kind of person does that make me?
If I am not for me, who will be?
If not now, when?