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April 8 - Facing Myself Honestly · The Daily Ripples Podcast

• 0:01
  All right, everybody, it is April 8th, and this is the Daily Ripple, and we got co-hosts,
• 0:08
  and so I'm hosting right now, Michael, and we got him on here too.
• 0:13
  He's lucky to be here.
• 0:15
  I am, yes, absolutely, as your co-host.
• 0:19
  Facing myself honestly, the stone, desire of self is not the problem.
• 0:24
  It is when desire bends inward, twisted by ego, fear, control, that it begins to harm.
• 0:30
  If I refuse to look within, I remain shaped by what I will examine.
• 0:37
  Ripple 1 practical.
• 0:38
  Today I'll take an honest look at my motives.
• 0:41
  Where have my ambitions, affection, or even good intentions become disordered?
• 0:46
  I will not condemn myself, but I will not hide either.
• 0:49
  Clarity is the beginning of freedom.
• 0:52
  Ripple 2 spiritual.
• 0:53
  When I open my inner life before the Father, the Holy Spirit reveals both truth and grace.
• 1:00
  As I follow Christ's example of humility and obedience, warped desires begin to straighten.
• 1:06
  Over time, I become less driven by impulse and more guided by purpose.
• 1:12
  Yeah, that's a lot, isn't it?
• 1:14
  We're talking about, because it is, I'm twisted by ego, fear, control.
• 1:21
  And we were just talking right before this and how everything in the program of recovery is kind of hindsighted, right?
• 1:32
  So after I do the fourth step, I understand the third step.
• 1:36
  After I do the fifth step, I really understand the fourth step.
• 1:39
  Everything I could see previously, but not in real time.
• 1:42
  But that was my problem, too.
• 1:44
  I wanted it.
• 1:45
  We were talking about this not too long ago.
• 1:47
  I want it now.
• 1:49
  Oh, yeah, that impatience thing, that character defect.
• 1:52
  Exactly.
• 1:54
  But I'm like the actor, right?
• 1:56
  Because it says right here on page 61 of the big book, it says,
• 2:00
  life would be wonderful.
• 2:01
  I'm trying to make these arrangements.
• 2:02
  Our actor may sometimes be quite virtuous.
• 2:06
  So I might have a great idea sometimes.
• 2:08
  But y'all need to follow along with me if I am.
• 2:11
  So I might be kind, considerate, patient, generous, even modest, and self-sacrificing.
• 2:15
  On the other hand, if you're really not doing what I want you to, I may be mean, egotistical, selfish, and dishonest.
• 2:24
  But as with most humans, he is more likely to have very traits.
• 2:28
  And I got, in my big book, it says manipulative.
• 2:31
  And that was me, right?
• 2:32
  I was manipulative my whole life, and I was proud of it, too.
• 2:37
  I could get people to act accordingly.
• 2:40
  And I thought the show was just turning out just perfect, but it never was, right?
• 2:44
  It was always just crumbling, and I could never see it because my ego wouldn't even let me see the show.
• 2:51
  So then it goes on to say, he decides to exert himself more.
• 2:55
  He becomes on the next occasion still more demanding or more gracious.
• 3:00
  As the case may be, still the play doesn't suit him.
• 3:03
  And so when I look at this and I look at how the way I try to live my life, it was disordered, just like you put, or even good intentions become disordered.
• 3:13
  So maybe my good intentions are really selfish.
• 3:18
  Maybe I'm doing this thing over here so I'll look cool over here.
• 3:22
  Or maybe I'm doing this over here, making it look like I'm doing it for the goodness of my heart, but I'm making money from it over here.
• 3:30
  And it's just my ego out there.
• 3:33
  And when I look at the 12 steps and all that, it's this ripping apart of the ego, right?
• 3:43
  and all these different stage characters of who I am and who I thought I was trying to be.
• 3:48
  And I'm trying to fit myself to be more of a maximum service to God and the people about me,
• 3:52
  like we've said before. So when I'm doing that, I'm ripping down these stage characters of this
• 3:57
  mean egotistical Cory, this even virtuous Cory over here. And I'm trying to be on the same level
• 4:02
  as trying to love the person on the side of the road, just like I love my mother.
• 4:07
  And I think that's what we're doing, right?
• 4:09
  We're just ripping that ego apart to be loving human beings.
• 4:13
  And I think you're, I'm not here, but I think the Bible, there's some scriptures that align just perfectly with that.
• 4:21
  I can't quote them, but I know that I think they align like that pretty good.
• 4:24
  What do you think?
• 4:25
  Yeah, well, I mean, one of the things that Jesus said clearly in the Gospels is that no one who is unwilling to hate his mother, father, brother, sister, cousin, them, that, and the other,
• 4:37
  to follow him, and again, obviously, that's the Pastor Michael Bridge version.
• 4:41
  That's not the technical version that is unfit to enter the kingdom of heaven.
• 4:45
  So, in other words, it's exactly what you're saying, is that we're called to love everyone.
• 4:50
  And, you know, there were several things that you were, you know, saying there that kind of
• 4:56
  reminded me of some of our previous conversations over the course of this past week, you know,
• 5:01
  that, you know, we talked about not performing our works of righteousness in public so that
• 5:08
  others could see our deeds, you know, that our motivation behind it matters. And, you know,
• 5:15
  I was really thinking about as you were sharing this idea of who or what would be the perfect
• 5:22
  human being. You know, by my way of thinking, there's only ever been one perfect human being,
• 5:28
  And that was because he was not just fully human, but he was also fully God.
• 5:33
  And that was Jesus, right?
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  Who made no mistakes and did not try to manipulate anyone out of a selfish desire, but did everything
• 5:40
  by emptying himself out, out of love for the sake of all of us.
• 5:45
  But you, the other day, said that, you know, the only perfect people are babies or infants,
• 5:52
  right?
• 5:52
  I remember you mentioned that and I see you chuckling and you've got a new infant at home.
• 5:57
  So I thought then, and you brought it kind of back through some of what you're sharing in the introductory stuff here about, is that really true?
• 6:07
  Or even a baby can have their desire bend inward.
• 6:13
  Even a baby can have a desire that is selfish.
• 6:17
  So what I mean by that is I agree with you that when a baby comes out the womb for, I don't know how long, because I don't know the exact, you know, psychological development of babies or what have you.
• 6:30
  But for that first, you know, couple of weeks or month or two, yeah, they're pretty near perfect, you know, because they're so new, they're so fresh.
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  But as soon as we, as infants, start to learn, as soon as we realize, oh, hey, if I cry,
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  mama's going to come running, or oh, hey, if I cry loud enough and throw a fit, daddy's
• 6:55
  going to give me a bottle.
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  We learn to be manipulators even before we learn to walk, talk, speak, anything like that.
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  We learn to manipulate others for our own desires.
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  Now, sometimes it's for our needs, but sometimes it's for desires.
• 7:11
  But I know you had to have had an experience with your new infant where she was crying just
• 7:17
  for no reason that you could figure out.
• 7:19
  That she was crying, you give her the bottle, nope, that wasn't it.
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  She's crying, you change her diaper, no, that wasn't it.
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  She's crying, you pick her up, no, that wasn't it.
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  Just crying to get attention.
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  Or maybe it's at night and she's crying just because she wants to be picked up and doesn't
• 7:32
  want to go to sleep.
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  I'm sure you've experienced some infantile, some infant manipulation so far.
• 7:39
  And kind of taking it back to that, for some of us who suffer with either addictions or
• 7:47
  alcoholism or what have you, even into adolescence, even into adulthood, because we're pouring
• 7:53
  all those substances into our system, we're still acting like babies.
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  You know, we're still manipulating others.
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  We're still screaming when nothing's wrong just because we want somebody else in the room.
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  is everything is very self-centered.
• 8:06
  We have to, hopefully, over the course of our lives,
• 8:09
  learn to love outward and not just inward.
• 8:12
  I don't know, that was my first thought.
• 8:14
  Well, I got a lot of thoughts,
• 8:15
  and I was thinking about, I don't know where to start,
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  because the reason I say that is because today in my life,
• 8:30
  I would say that, you know, I know we have problems and we have desires and we have thoughts,
• 8:37
  but like when I'm sitting here with you or I'm sitting helping somebody, and this kind
• 8:44
  of aligns with the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous and Bill's story, but, you know, it's almost
• 8:51
  like it's perfect because, right, because it says, on page 16, it says, most of us feel
• 8:57
  we need look no further for utopia.
• 9:00
  And actually, they took the word heaven out of the big book,
• 9:03
  of here, so it would kind of go across any, you know,
• 9:07
  religious denomination or no denomination at all, right?
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  So let's just, we can take utopia and put heaven in here.
• 9:14
  So most of us feel we need look no further for heaven.
• 9:19
  We have it right with us right here and now.
• 9:22
  Each day, my friend's simple talk in our kitchen
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  multiplies itself in a widening circle of peace on earth and goodwill to men.
• 9:31
  And I know you said something earlier about like, you know,
• 9:35
  we have these choices and, you know, I think we might.
• 9:39
  I think you might be right, but I think I might be right.
• 9:42
  Who knows?
• 9:44
  I'll say I understand your perspective on it.
• 9:46
  I'll admit that much, yeah.
• 9:48
  Right.
• 9:49
  And like, you know, I'm kind of the by design kind of guy, right?
• 9:52
  Yeah.
• 9:52
  And, you know, because I could never have explained my life in a way that it is today without it being.
• 10:00
  It's just like these little pieces just fell right here, right here, right here, and it just laid down right there, right?
• 10:08
  And on page 25 in the big book, it says this.
• 10:12
  And this is what made me kind of, this was in my show notes, if you will.
• 10:16
  Yeah.
• 10:16
  And right before it talks about the fourth dimension, what you were talking about.
• 10:20
  Yeah.
• 10:20
  Not too long ago, it says, we have found much of heaven, and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence.
• 10:29
  And I'm going to make a little side note of this.
• 10:32
  And the fourth dimension of existence, for people that might know, is, so we had, for the people that are in this recovery thing, that had this powerless nip to whatever it is, it's a body and mind.
• 10:45
  So my body and my mind, and also I have a spiritual malady.
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  So it's a three-part deal, right?
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  So when those are working in harmony, that's the fourth dimension.
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  That's how I was explained.
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  But anyways, it says the great fact is just this and nothing less,
• 11:03
  that we have had a deep and effective spiritual experiences
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  which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life,
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  toward our fellows, and toward God's universe.
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  The central factor of our lives today is the absolute certainty
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  that our Creator has entered into our hearts
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  and lies in a way which is indeed miraculous.
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  He has commenced to accomplish those things
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  for which we can never do by ourselves.
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  And how true that is for me today.
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  I could never have done any of this, any of it.
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  This is not who I am, right?
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  You're not talking to who I used to be.
• 11:38
  That's right.
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  My life is, you know, it's that my whole attitude
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  towards life has changed.
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  And towards my fellows, I'm not trying to take anything from anybody.
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  And so when I'm, my twisted, my twisted ego is still there, but, you know, it's definitely on a lower degree.
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  I still got fears that's a lower degree.
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  And I'm not, you know, I still try to control, but I know, man, it just doesn't work.
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  But, you know, so I have clarity today, right?
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  I have a sense of peace that goes through me.
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  And you do too, right?
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  Because that's why we connect and we talk about these things in this way that I think is very interesting to me.
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  And we can get in depth in this, but to think I'm better than anybody else, that's where my ego goes.
• 12:24
  Because now I've got this relationship with God, and that's where my ego will go with it, too.
• 12:30
  I don't know if you've ever gone down that rabbit hole yourself.
• 12:33
  I haven't, just because in terms of the spirituality leading to ego, that was the part of the Christian faith, especially when I was growing up, that turned me off to it.
• 12:45
  Right.
• 12:45
  You know, you talk about a lot of your experiences, you know, with alcohol and substances and jail time and SWAT teams and, you know, whatever the case may be, you know, that you've mentioned over the course of, you know, our conversations on this podcast.
• 13:00
  And I've talked a little bit about mine, but, you know, I think I sometimes have a tendency to diminish it just as a way of not talking about myself so much kind of thing.
• 13:11
  But I mean, it's very real that for 16, 17 years of my adult life, as I was leaving my adolescent home as a teenager and going into college and then into working and professional life and marriage and raising kids and all that, that first 17, 18 years of adulthood for me, I was atheist.
• 13:31
  You know, I did not have a relationship with God, and I said and proclaimed and chose to be atheist during that time because I did not like the egotistical Christians who, you know, harp on Sunday but then go drinking Saturday night and the hypocrisy and all those things.
• 13:51
  But what I found is that I had to stop playing that, as we've talked about here many, many times, I had to stop playing that comparison game.
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  And I ran life on my own will.
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  And it was only through, and I'll pause to back up, and this kind of ties back into our Daily Ripple for today.
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  I only know these things because I took the time to face myself honestly.
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  And I faced myself honestly working with another person in the program, doing a fourth and a fifth step.
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  And that's how I know these things about myself.
• 14:24
  But I only turned outside of myself and my own intellect, ego, whatever you want to call it, when my way, my design for living, you mentioned that, a design for living, when my design for living stopped working.
• 14:39
  Right.
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  My design for living led me to a place of, what does the book call it?
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  Pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization and all those big words.
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  In other words, life got bad.
• 14:51
  And, you know, but it didn't, but my life of faith didn't just become foxhole prayers either, as we call it.
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  You know, I was taught how to rebuild my life into more of a structure and to follow a design that actually worked.
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  And that design required something of me.
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  It required me to set aside my own self, my own reservations, and dive headlong and learn and meet and grow with, as the program calls it, a God of my understanding.
• 15:24
  And for me, it was that same God, the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that I met in church as a youth that I learned to actually know and have a relationship with once I became sober for my own alcoholism.
• 15:38
  You know, I was talking more about the ego of this.
• 15:41
  and you've heard this before, you've been around for quite a while,
• 15:46
  of people that are like, man, you know,
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  if those people out there could have this recovery program too,
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  how good their life would be.
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  And, you know, when I hear that, you know, I've destroyed people's lives.
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  I've messed people's lives up.
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  You know, I've hurt people.
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  And for that to ever come out of my mouth, to be like, yeah, you know,
• 16:08
  all these people should have to do this.
• 16:11
  But, you know, because, you know, just a lot of bringing up, well, I bring up my dad.
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  You know, my dad had a relationship with God.
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  He was big in the church and, you know, he was big in the Bible.
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  He actually wanted to be a pastor at one point of his life.
• 16:30
  But, you know, so when I think about people that didn't have to go through hell to get to God, right?
• 16:36
  They just had that connection all the way through.
• 16:40
  And then for some reason, me in this position today, I've found myself that sometimes been on the same page of some of these other people.
• 16:47
  You know, like, well, they should, you know, they should go through this program when they already have that connection.
• 16:54
  Or they could have went through something, right?
• 16:56
  They could have had a hard time at school, you know, and they had to let them into prayer and let them into the Bible, hard time at work.
• 17:03
  But I had to go through this completely incomprehensible demoralization of my life and everybody that my life touched to come to this and to think that I have any greater connection than anybody else.
• 17:15
  It's crazy.
• 17:16
  And I've come to that place before.
• 17:18
  I'm like, you know, I got this.
• 17:20
  Well, they got it too.
• 17:21
  Well, and that's, I mean, you hit on it.
• 17:23
  I mean, ego is a part of the human condition, right?
• 17:27
  It shows up in recovery rooms of, man, if only everybody had what we had.
• 17:31
  It shows up in churches.
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  Man, if only everybody had what we had.
• 17:35
  If they would just listen, you know, then this world would be perfect.
• 17:39
  And the danger is that I think, and it's like I've got my T-shirt on today that my buddy,
• 17:46
  brother Larry, made for me that, you know, says clearly on the front, you know, God is
• 17:50
  God and I am not.
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  And if I take that attitude of, man, if only everybody could work this, that is me trying
• 17:56
  to take on the role of the Savior.
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  And there's only one Savior in my life, and it's not me.
• 18:01
  Yeah.
• 18:01
  Yeah. I think that's a good place to end, buddy.
• 18:04
  Absolutely. Well, let's close out with the prayer.
• 18:08
  Father, search my heart and show me what needs correction.
• 18:11
  Through your Spirit, give me courage to face myself honestly
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  and shape me into the person you created me to be.
• 18:18
  Amen.
• 18:19
  Amen.