Selfishness, Dishonesty, Resentment, and Fear” -- Are We Geting Lost In "Crop" Circles?

They are always sitting on the doorstep. It’s their job! It’s part of the order of the universe. So when exactly do "these" Crop up?

Any ardent Twelve Step practitioner who has gotten intimate with his own Big Book knows that “these” are “selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear” (84:2).

Knowing that these are always ‘when’s and not ‘if’s is a familiar exercise for those of us on this path.

But what about this 'cropping up' part. What’s a “crop up”?

Often it is making the distinction between the when’s and the if’s that raises some questions and worries with protégées. Not understanding the distinction leads many men (and women) that I work with into doubt and despair, even while diligently working their program. That is partially because we often do not understanding just what “crop up” means.

Once we are working Step Eleven, our awareness begins to develop and it grows in leaps and bound.

Sometimes the very awareness of the forces that lie in wait to rip us up can have us before long saying, “What is wrong with me! This shit never goes away!” What am I doing wrong?” 

Maybe nothing.

If I were aligned with the Devil, I would want you to think you were always wrong.

The closer you got to truth, the harder I would try to convince you to stop seeing your faults and errors. I would divert your own progress on the spiritual path into thinking there was something wrong with you for recognizing that there is anything wrong in the world.

I would try to convince you that you were being judgmental and spiritually sick every time you noticed error in others -- even when you were not being malicious.

That would be tantamount to teaching you that God’s guidance and Gods will is vice. I would use trite expressions that mimic spiritual profundity, like, “Every time you point a finger at me, there a three more fingers pointing back at you” in order to deflect and hide my flaws from you. I might even resort to the puerile “I’m rubber your glue” but I would camouflage such childish principles the spiritual sounding theories of the Pantheism - like Karma and “Law(s) of Attraction” and the like.

I would denigrate your own developing humility and I would make you question it. Doubt it. I would accuse you of being lacking. I would tell you that you were egotistical and not worthy of your awareness. I would make you believe that simply seeing “selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear” as these attempts to “crop up” mean that you have already embraced theme and is indicative of your own spiritual illness.

To the extent that I succeeded, you would beat yourself up over it and you would begin to develop means for suppressing your own awareness.

And then you would be lost -- lost in a "crop" circle -- forever blaming our own intuitive gift and God inspiration for our troubles by resenting the very light that shows you truth. 

Just what constitutes a bona fide, Step Ten, Big Book Issue “Crop Up” of the order necessitating a Step Ten procedure - that four-point Step Ten course on page 84 that follows the ‘crop up’?

“When these crop” (84:2) up necessitates an understanding of a “when” actually is. If not, we might be on the phone and meeting for coffee with sponsors and ‘fellows’ and crossing little old ladies across streets like crazed Boy Scouts - around the clock. 

Don’t worry - the confusion is easy enough to see through.

Selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear - always sitting on the doorstep. It’s their job! It’s part of the order of the universe.

These temptations (toward judgment) never leave their stations. They are supposed to be there, just waiting for the opportunity to “crop up” inside our “house” (our 'selves'). Don’t ever think that the slinking, dark predator has gone away -- that you have become so spiritual that they have flown the coop. That's a lie.

Their very existence, that they always remain, is a truth that unless we realize, we may always fall for the trap of emotional reaction having been caught unaware each time they make their presence known to us. An upsetting, irritating realization is enough for them to have their way with us. It will empower them to “crop up”. Again. And again. . . . and . . . . .

A dispassionate, God aligned 'seeing' does not have this effect. Discernment that is contaminated by negativity prevents the "crop up".

That these forces are there and are never not there, obviously something cannot “crop up” if it’s already there. It is a mistake to resent knowing the truth. To fear and to resent fear and resentment is a spiritual irony and one of cruelest tricks of evil.

To struggle against them turns into a self centered “spiritual” enterprise and making excuses for being so self-absorbed is dishonest. What a mess!

“Cropping up” therefore must mean much more than merely being there. It does. It means gaining entrance inside the door. It means “sudden appearance” (1938 definition) It means cropping up inside the house. Not merely standing outside the door.

The consciousness, the seeing that these things await, is not a CROP UP. That awareness is the gift of discernment that exists prior to the “crop up”, before the “suddenly appearing” on our side of the threshold.

For example: Joe sees Frank make a right turn without signaling. Being aware, and having experience (through mediation), he notices the feeling of that ''electrical charge" of annoyance (resentment) beginning presenting itself. He just notices it. He knows what it is. He does not get 'involved' with it. His awareness and experience with objective. dispassionate vision allow this negative force of resentment to pass. He is aware but he is unscathed. It has not engulfed him in anger. In this case resentment has not cropped up. AND unless we are like Joe, we will forever be getting lost in the “crop circles” of errors.

And every time we sense what is sinister hovering outside we are still able to avoid them washing over us with waves of impatience, irritation, and annoyance – but every time we feel any of these energies we will then be compelled to exhibit these traits themselves because . . . . . BAM! . . . . . we have allowed them in . Then it is too late. 

At least we can wait for the next opportunity to get it right, finally.

We have no choice but to objectively see them with dispassionate vision. Not a suppressed vision, but unemotional, unflustered discernment -- seeing these things for the cunning, destructive and deceptive intelligent traps they are and the horror that stands right behind them. It’s the only way they stay out in the cold.

Many of us even [resent the resentment for seeing the resentment.]

It is unnecessary. It is a gift of God’s vision to see resentment – to see fear – to see all forms of temptation when it “crops up”.

So there is no need to be upset with any of these negative forces when the sit waiting to discharge their nefarious purpose. They are merely fulfilling their duties to serve their hellish existence. If we let them – in. Once we resent, fear or deny any of them, then they have succeeded.

The only defense we have from that which would otherwise "crop up" - selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear - is letting God show them to us before they do crop up and and not resent being shown. When they are exposed to us through the dispassionate, natural gift of discernment we can be nonreactive and patient with the people who deliver these terrors to us. That is love. And those ‘hateful’ traits are always overcome by such patience for others.

Failing that we will identify with those horrors and pass them onto others as they have been passed onto us. By exercising our gift of discernment, seeing the forces that wait on our door step for what they are -- forgiving them before they attempt to “crop up” -- is our protection. We will be OK.

So there. This might sound like bad news for some of us protégée addicted guru's – but it comes as good news for the awakened traveler because now you see that we must "discuss them with someone immediately" pertains only to those things that "crop up" - and crop up isn’t every single temptation that comes along.

You haven’t called your sponsor today? That’s might be OK after all – when we are spiritually balanced and objective. Being awake and aware through a Twelve Step friendly meditation will help us with that.

Peace and Love

Danny S – RLRA

Real Live Recovered Alcoholic

http://recoveredalcoholic.blogspot.com