Having been raised in an alcoholic home, I created a ‘value’ system primarily designed to keep me alive. I rarely had a conscious choice in the matter of morality. I merely made up strategies as I went along.
I adapted. The television provided a package of ideas suggesting what was right and what was wrong. Each network had to comply with a ‘code of ethics’, the good guys always winning, the bad guys always losing.
I single-handedly devised a rather complicated matrix of ideas, some reality based, others not. For example: I believed that if I copied the behavior of one of the ‘good boys’ on TV, that my mother would stay home at night, that she would act like one of the ‘good mothers’. Try as I might, I rarely got the desired results and yet, I tried again and again.
I am creating an open area in my mind much like one would do if beginning to decorate an old, tired room. I am encouraged to look at as many experiences of the past as I can to determine the beliefs that emerged from those episodes.
I am reviewing these old ideas. The Fourth Step creates a space so that I can decide which values are to be maintained and which ones are to be abandoned. I awaken to a new freedom.
I am participating in my own process, a process that will determine my new thoughts and behavior going forward.
I lay the groundwork for the building of a new moral structure, my moral structure: a moral structure that I choose, consciously.
A moral structure that really works.
Brilliant!