Soul Searching

Soul Searching

No more plastic world

No more cement walls

No more fake breasts

Eyelashes or makeup

Only purity

Leaves crunching under my feet

Rocks

Dirt

Twigs

Spirit is here

God is here

He loves me

Thank heavens

No more pretending to feel okay

No more lies

About how I feel

Just me my kid and God

Just me my kid and God

No more plastic world

Dear God I give you my life

~ No More Plastic World, by Juliet A. Wright,

copyright 2013, all rights reserved

Now I’ll confront my fears head on

Speak my truth, sing my song,

And if you choose to walk away,

After you’ve heard what I have to say, at least I believed in me.

~ All These Fears, from Fearless Moral Inventory,

by Juliet A. Wright, copyright 2011, all rights reserved

The spiritual principle of soul searching lies underneath Step 4, which is about doing a fearless moral inventory. As I stated in my first book, when I take a fearless moral inventory “I am taking a sincere look at my positive and negative behaviors and belief systems (also defined as ‘defects of character’) as they have manifested themselves in my life.”

Wright, Juliet. Everything Is My Fault (Pownal, VT: Hidden Angel Publishing, 2012), p. 19.

My first book is my fearless moral inventory. This book is Part Two, and it is mostly about Soul Searching.

To me, soul searching means that I look deep within my true, spiritual self, to see the reality of what is there so that I can deal with it, fix it, enhance it or change it as is necessary to please God.

Soul searching is the spiritual principle behind Co-Dependents Anonymous Step 4:

4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.[1]

I have done many inventories. Every time I do a fearless moral inventory, I search my soul. I look under every rock, every piece of dirty carpet, under the moths in the window sill, under the front seat of the car and dig out all of the dirt. As painful as this process is, I look at the dirt for what it is, and I examine it. I am fearless. I know I have to deal with what is. I must face the truth.

In searching my soul, I look for the positive things too. I must always remember to do this. Inventories are not just about negative things. I tend to always dwell on the negative things about myself. I must acknowledge the good as well as the “needs improvement.”

When I do my soul searching, I look deep within myself to see what makes me tick. What do I believe in? What do I not believe in? What do I think? How do I feel? It’s taken me ten years just to figure this out and I’m still cracking the code that is me. I am just now learning what I think about things and how I feel at any given moment. I didn’t know anything about any of that until I started going through this program at 41 years old.

In searching my soul, I discover a Christian Quaker who has put God first in her life. I see someone who struggles with passivity, vanity, rage, selfishness, complaining, compulsiveness, and especially over-responsibility and caretaking. I see someone who wants to do what God wants her to do, but she also wants what she wants too. I will get over it, with God’s help.

Soul Searching is a precursor to acceptance. We must find the problem before we can accept it.

In searching my soul, I see a Juliet who must learn to set boundaries on what is and isn’t hers to fix. The 18 months that elapsed between my brother-in-law’s illness and death were too difficult and full of despair with me trying to cure cancer, fix my family, and still live my life. Of course, Pastor Jeremiah says in his What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do bible study that trials come along to make us stronger people. Satan brings them around to torture us, but God uses them to make us stronger. He is making us into the people he wants us to be.

Jeremiah, David. What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do (San Diego, CA: Turning Point for God, Inc., 2009, 2014), Audio CD 1.

In searching my soul, I see a Juliet who is starting to rely more and more on playing her violin. I need to play my violin to heal myself, to be disciplined, to be sane. I need to play my Wohlfahrt Etudes every day. I need to listen to and play Bach’s Partitas on a regular basis. I need this in my life. And you know what? My hard work is paying off. I’m getting better at it. This is me taking care of myself. It is me taking responsibility for the only person I can change and fix: me. And actually I can’t even do that. Only God can do that. I can be willing.

Soul searching is the opposite of spitting out some standard answer that sounds good just to get it over with, so I can go eat chocolate until my pain goes away. (I like to eat chocolate when I’m stressed, by the way. It does help, if only for a moment. Dark chocolate only, please.)

Soul searching is digging down deep for the truth until I find it, without fear. This means digging out all of the rocks of my denial, avoidance, and procrastination, throwing them aside, and continuing with my pick axe and shovel until I reach the truth of what is there and how I feel.

I think soul searching is an ongoing process, requiring much repetition and refinement, as silver (refined seven times). This means many inventories. How many? As many as is required to continue to peel off the layers of the onion that are hindering the true flavor of who I am and who God wants me to be. This is especially true of my over-responsibility and caretaking. Overcoming those defects is taking me a long time. I still want to fix everything for everyone I love. I still let thoughts of this take over my mind and soul in an unhealthy way. Little by little, however, I am getting better. The steps are tiny, but I am walking the path. It doesn’t matter if I have to redirect my thoughts from my family of origin or the sad demise of my friendship with Doris back to God every five seconds. As long as I do it, I am working my program, working on recovery.

Juliet’s Mantras that Help:

• You are doing God’s work
• Observe, don’t react. The Observer is who you really are.
• Hold the outcome in the Light of God.
• Relax and watch.
• Treat it like the front page of the paper.

Positive Affirmation:

• I can look at the truth about myself and love myself anyway.
• I can make mistakes everyday.
• I am lovable.
• I recognize good things about myself.
• I love myself for who I am.

I am continuing to seek God and have Him shine the light on those dark parts of my cave where all the bugs and millipedes and creepy crawly things, bats, and icky muck live so I can get rid of them. I will keep doing this until I am the person God intended me to be. I’m doing the best I can.

Additional practices I engage in when working the principle of soul searching:

• More journaling: I journal as much as I need to in order to get the issues out of me.
• Documentation: I record my thoughts and revelations about my soul searching into a tape recorder and notate them later.
• Worship: Through prayer and meditation I search my soul for what is there before God. He helps me see it clearly.
• Exercise: working out on my punching bag, swimming, walking on my treadmill and lifting weights all help me to calm down and sort out how I’m feeling about things.
• Readiness: I pray for the willingness and courage to be very honest and get the truth out of me.
• Other Inventory Formats: I research other inventory formats that might help me work on my defects of character and make choices about working on them. This gives me yet another lense through which to view myself.
• Attend Meetings: through sharing and listening at CoDA meetings God speaks to me and reveals more of the truth about myself.
• Program Literature: I read the Codependents Anonymous Basic Text, the Codependents Anonymous Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions Workbook (often called the 12 and 12) and other literature. God speaks to me in this way too.
• Forgiveness: I forgive myself. This gives me the freedom to be really honest in my soul searching without fear of blame and shame. I realize that I’m doing the best I can and give myself credit for that.
• Release: I release my resentment. Resentment is a block to my healing.
• More Mantras: Mantras help me to focus on listening for God’s guidance throughout my day and helps me to hear and see the truth about myself. Two mantras that work well for me are “I open all before thee” and “Here I am, Lord.”
• Slogans: I repeat my favorite slogans, such as “Easy Does It,” “This Too Shall Pass,” “Act As If,” “Let Go and Let God” and “Turn it Over.” Repeating the slogans really helps me relax.

[1] Ibid., p. iv.