A Daily Reprieve

I've just been given a piece of good news from my diabetes specialist - she says I am officially no longer diabetic!

Having kept to a very strict diet for the last five years, I've managed to get my blood sugar levels down to those of a normal, non-diabetic person, and have kept them there for the last four. So I'm now merely suffering from "impaired glucose tolerance". I'll still continue to be monitored regularly for blood sugars, kidney and liver function, cholesterol and so on, but it does seem as though my current regime has effected a cure.

It is not, however, a complete, everlasting cure. If I don't keep to my diet, if I don't constantly monitor my food intake, if I put on weight, then I will at some point become diabetic again.

 To me, this is just like my alcoholism - I don't have a permanent cure, because there isn't one. I do have what the AA Big Book calls "a daily reprieve", and my continuing good physical health is dependent on my maintaining a "fit spiritual condition".

Our spiritual health, of course, depends on our relationship with God, with our Higher Power; on receiving help from Conscious Humanity.

The Work talks of Real I, and Buried Conscience. These are the means by which we may contact God in our daily lives, whatever name we choose to give this wholly beneficent and loving higher power.
We're told, moreover, that God will also speak to us through our Higher Centres, whether in images (as in dreams) or in thoughts, but the problem is that our minds are filled with so much low-level chatter for so much of the time that we simply can't hear what those centres are saying to us.

Marian Davison, my Work Teacher, explained it thus: We don't have to create or develop our Higher Emotional or Higher Intellectual Centres. They are already there within us. They constantly try to communicate with us, but we fail to listen, or mistake the voices of various I's in our lower centres for those coming from a higher level.

This is an easy mistake to make. On a minor level, we may all be tempted to think that giving in to this or that petty I is the "Will of God". On a major level, such errors bring about terrible destruction. Think of the "holy" war now being waged by radical Islamists in the Middle East and increasingly in the West. The homicidal bomber thinks he is doing the will of his god, as though any good, loving God would will the destruction of human beings, his precious creatures.

For an historical example, we may look at the dreadful, tyrannical way in which Henry VIII forced his will on his subjects, destroying churches and monasteries, putting innocent people to death and forcing the kingdom to break away from the Catholic church in the mistaken belief that his lust for a particular woman was a manifestation of the will of God.

Such mistakes can easily happen to us. If we don't make the Work our priority every day, we will soon lose the ability to hear our Higher Centres. This is why we must always begin the day with the Morning Exercise.

 No matter how busy our schedule may be, no matter what exciting - or boring! - events we may be planning, the Morning Exercise will ensure that we start out in our right mind. Then, during the day, we have a touchstone to which we may return, an experience of self-remembering that will remind of us of the state in which we ought to live each day.

It was explained to me early on in the Work that we are given a certain amount of higher hydrogens overnight, in sleep. By remembering ourselves at the very start of the day, and by returning to moments of greater consciousness during the daily round, we build on and increase this store so that we can - if we are diligent - end the day in a state of peace and equanimity. Gradually, this process enables us to create our Higher Being Bodies, which we must have if we are to progress further after this limited Earthly life.

It takes a long time before we are able to do this. And one of the main problems we all face is that we leak energy so easily! Someone says something which offends us, a motorist cuts in in front of us, we drop a favourite plate and break it - any small incident can lead to the loss of the entire day's store of higher hydrogens, and leave us depleted, with no energy at all.

Unless we learn to observe ourselves continually throughout the day we cannot avoid losing force in this way. But, after perhaps years of patient observation, we gradually come to know ourselves better and learn what takes energy from us, and how to avoid such situations; if, nevertheless, they do occur, we learn how to disidentify with the negative thoughts and emotions they elicit, stand back, and refuse to let our force be stolen by those I's.

It is, just like addiction and like diabetes, a daily reprieve. We are not "cured" of being negative, or of having various harmful I's. We always need to be on our guard against letting them take over. But eventually, just like the alcoholic or addict who makes each day an occasion for recovery, the new way of life can become a reality which brings about a deep change within us.

It takes many years. But it is, just like an addiction, a matter of living "one day at a time". We cannot have tomorrow's energy today; we have just enough help, just enough higher hydrogens, for this day. And living this day well, we are more likely to do so tomorrow, and tomorrow, and the day after that.