The Oedipus Complex Reframed

I had Oedipus on my mind before falling asleep last night! My last coherent thought was: Freud got that all wrong!

In Greek myth Oedipus was a king of Thebes. The prophecy was that he would marry his mother and kill his father. I will copy a full version of the myth just below this article. Freud’s interpretation of this myth is that everyone harbours unconscious fantasies of ‘claiming/marrying/sleeping with’ their parent of the opposite sex.

However, last night ‘a flash of lightning’ passed through my sleepy brain: Freud got that all wrong, the real teaching of this myth is about something entirely different: the human journey in making conscious what has only been unconscious before.

To my mind C. G. Jung expressed this very well (though as far as I know he was talking in general, not about Oedipus):

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”  C. G. Jung

Recently I have had a lot of conversations with people about the following question: “Do we need to take responsibility for the things that do not originate with us?’

This applies, for instance, in ancestral healing work: in shamanic healing work I often discover that many of patterns that shape our lives and habits are ancestral in origin.

Example: if your ‘forefathers’ and “foremothers”) suffered great lack and shortage – you may have a compulsion to hoard.

If they  suffered great personal loss – you may be very controlling in relationships – and so unwittingly frighten off possible partners! And so forth…

We may not be conscious of these things. We may feel that what happened several centuries ago is “nothing to do with us”. Yet we are ‘fated’ to live these “ancestral scripts” until we make the choice to make these issues conscious and heal them.

We live in a time where our consciousness is very individual-orientated. We think we can close doors on things, walk away from the things we don’t like about our family of origin and “do it all differently (better obviously!)” and often it doesn’t work this way. I observe time after time how certain issues “catch up with us in mysterious ways”.

For me the myth about Oedipus tells us that the course of our lives will be shaped by events and patterns we are not (commonly) aware of, until we embark on a great spirit-led journey into the Unknown and use ancient sacred tools to allow these things to ‘come into awareness’.

I often say to clients and students that “anything that hurts, repeats, offends’ is really something unresolved begging for healing, floating into awareness so it can be healed”.

The moment we realize that, it becomes less personal. The moment we step away from choosing to believe that ‘we live in a bubble and have full control over all events in our life” (a belief that has often already been severely challenged by age 25, though my teenage sons still like to believe this!) we learn about surrendering to Spirit and opening up to healing. And healing generally reaches us through our wounds, the “cracks in our egoic container”.

With clients I often explain that forgiveness work needs to be done, even for acts we did not commit. This is not the very personal asking for forgiveness as we understand it in our culture (“I hurt you so now I ask you for forgiveness”) but a larger cosmic process of healing the Web of human connections, our larger “Human Family”. So we speak to issues that arise, we speak to ancestor who died with difficult lives and broken dreams, we admit that we cannot even comprehend the full scale of what happened – but we take full responsibility for healing these issues. Because we are alive today. Because we have access to the spiritual tools. Because WE CAN!!

My clients do extremely well with this. I am blown away every time again by their courage and love and open hearts. The immense gift of this work is that rather than feeling victimized (“I am the odd one out in my family, my relationships always seem to fail”) people come to realize that their soul has chosen to heal larger issues (“In my family I am the one with psychic awareness and healing gifts. This makes me a little different from others but it allows me to choose to HEAL the long-standing pattern of broken relationships in my family line!”). Very few people fail to see the beauty and Divine aspect of this.

So something that remained unconscious, during shamanic healing work becomes conscious. It is healed and no longer dominates our lives, or the lives of other in our family. Healing these things is a great act of UNCONDITIONAL LOVE as well.

Hawaiian H’oponopono has given us a powerful prayer for spiritual releasing/cleansing and transmutation. It was first used by a woman healer called Morrnah Nalamaku Simeona, Kahuna Lapa’au (now deceased) who was recognized as a Living Treasure of Hawaii in 1983.

 “Divine Creator, father, mother, son as one. If I or my family or my relatives or ancestors have offended you, your family, your relatives or ancestors in any thought, word, deed or action from the beginning of my creation to this present time, we ask your forgiveness. May this cleanse, purify and release any memories, blocks, energies and vibrations and transmute these unwanted energies into pure LIGHT. And it is done. Thank-you.”

As you can see this cleansing prayer has three main components: repentance, forgiveness and transmutation.

Contemporary Hawaiian spiritual teacher Dr. Ihaleakala Hew Len also  teaches another an abbreviated version and tool for spiritual cleansing.  It is called The Four Phrases and it goes like this:

I’m sorry.
Please forgive me.
Thank you.
I love you.

 So…. if you ask me…. the myth of Oedipus teaches us that to ‘claim our Divine Birthright’ (meaning living our lives to the highest potential and healing larger patterns through healing ourselves), represented (in my mind) by Oedipus being a ‘king’ we cannot live our life “unconsciously” (because then patterns/stories/issues we are not even aware of will “seek expression through us” and we will experience this as a ‘tough fate”) so we must embark on a great mystical “hero quest” of ‘facing the dragons’ as it were, of using our own consciousness and spiritual tools as a container for healing.

So sorry Mr Sigmund Freud, I don’t buy your theory of the Oedipus Complex! I am a mother of three sons – no thanks!!

I am with Carl Jung on this one and I will repeat what he said:

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”  C. G. Jung

And  just below this article you will find some background information for the material discussed here, including a summary of the Oedipus Myth!

 Imelda Almqvist

Life Force TV Interview about shamanism with Imelda Almqvist

www.imelda-almqvist-art.com

www.shaman-healer-painter.co.uk

Imelda Almqvist is a Dutch shamanic practitioner, teacher and painter based in London, UK

1. Oedipus complex, in psychoanalytic theory, a desire for sexual involvement with the parent of the opposite sex and a concomitant sense of rivalry with the parent of the same sex; a crucial stage in the normal developmental process. Sigmund Freud introduced the concept in his Interpretation of Dreams (1899).2 Nov 2014

1. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/425451/Oedipus–complex

Oedipus

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

 Oedipus (US /ˈɛdɨpəs/ or UK /ˈiːdɨpəs/; Ancient Greek: Οἰδίπους Oidípous meaning “swollen foot”) was a mythical Greek king of Thebes, the son and killer of Laius, son and consort of Jocasta, and father and sibling of Polynices, Eteocles, Antigone, and Ismene. A tragic hero in Greek mythology, Oedipus accidentally fulfilled the prophecy, despite his efforts not to, that he would end up killing his father and marrying his mother, thereby bringing disaster to his city and family. When the truth was discovered, his wife-mother hanged herself, and Oedipus gouged out his own eyes. They had four children together. The story of Oedipus is the subject of Sophocles‘s tragedy Oedipus the King, which was followed by Oedipus at Colonus and then Antigone. Together, these plays make up Sophocles’s three Theban plays. Oedipus represents two enduring themes of Greek myth and drama: the flawed nature of humanity and an individual’s role in the course of destiny in a harsh universe.

In the most well-known version of the myth of what happened after Oedipus was born to King Laius and Queen Jocasta, Laius wished to thwart a prophecy. Thus, he fastened the infant’s feet together with a large pin and left him to die on a mountainside. The baby was found on Kithairon by shepherds and raised by King Polybus and Queen Merope in the city of Corinth. Oedipus learned from the oracle at Delphi of the prophecy, but believing he was fated to murder Polybus and marry Merope, he left Corinth. Heading to Thebes, Oedipus met an older man in a chariot coming the other way on a narrow road. The two quarreled over who should give way, which resulted in Oedipus killing the stranger and continuing on to Thebes. He found that the king of the city (Laius) had been recently killed and that the city was at the mercy of the Sphinx. Oedipus answered the monster’s riddle correctly, defeating it and winning the throne of the dead king and the hand in marriage of the king’s widow, his mother, Jocasta.

Oedipus and Jocasta had two sons (Eteocles and Polynices) and two daughters (Antigone and Ismene). In his search to determine who killed Laius (and thus end a plague on Thebes), Oedipus discovered it was he who had killed the late king (his father). Jocasta, upon realizing that she had married her own son and Laius’s murderer, hanged herself. Oedipus then seized two pins from her dress and blinded himself with them. Oedipus was driven into exile, accompanied by Antigone and Ismene. After years of wandering, he arrived in Athens, where he found refuge in a grove of trees called Colonus. By this time, warring factions in Thebes wished him to return to that city, believing that his body would bring it luck. However, Oedipus died at Colonus, and the presence of his grave there was said to bring good fortune to Athens.

The legend of Oedipus has been retold in many versions, and was used by Sigmund Freud to name and give mythic precedent to the Oedipus complex.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oedipus

THE WEIGHING OF THE HEART CEREMONY

Have you ever taken a moment to contemplate the difference between the words innocence and ignorance? Maybe take a few minutes now  to meditate on this and feel the change in energy?

Jewish people will observe Yom Kippur soon.

Yom Kippur (Hebrew: יוֹם כִּפּוּר, IPA: [ˈjom kiˈpuʁ], or יום הכיפורים), also known as Day of Atonement, is the holiest day of the year for the Jewish people.^[1] Its central themes areatonement and repentance. Jewish people traditionally observe this holy day with an approximate 25-hour period of fasting and intensive prayer, often spending most of the day in synagogue service  (from Wikipedia)

The reason that I find myself writing about this subject today is because I have been getting into discussions with friends recently about the question: “Can you do wrong, even harm others, without having any awareness you are doing something wrong?” To find the answer to that we only need to go back to World War II, I guess. Much has been written about people claiming “they had no idea what was being done to the Jews” (I have even heard – read – people claim that concentration camps never happened).

A  dear friend (Vicki Semo Scharfman) recently put it like this: “If you are not part of the solution, you are part of the problem!”  That is a great quote and it says a lot with few words! Another dear friend (Sony Baron) was telling (and teaching) me about Yom Kippur recently.

To me there is an even more ‘insidious issue’ lurking in the jungle’ here.  Earlier this summer I wrote a blog titled FORGIVENESS. It sparked off some very interesting discussions on Facebook (I occasionally think it is a shame that what people write on FB does not make it into the comments section on either Facebook or Youtube, or wherever material is officially shared – this means that many people do not get to benefit from the follow up discussion. But that as an ‘aside’!)

I think that we all like to think that on a great cosmic level, things balance out somehow. Evils are righted, forgiveness is obtained, negative energy is transmuted and so forth. But to forgive, or transmute something, the person responsible needs to realise they did something wrong in the first place.

Have you ever been in a situation where you felt terribly hurt by something someone did, yet they seem blissfully unaware of this and not  remotely awake to any shift in energy between you? I guess that this is part of the human condition! I can’t interview all people alive today but I guess a large number would recognise what I am talking about.

So how does forgiveness (or repentence, atonement) relate to things we are not aware we have done – or failed to do?

The word innocence refers to a pure and almost childish quality. It implies a “not knowing” but also a “maybe growing into knowing” by getting older or more mature. Children are often called innocent.

The word ignorance implies a “lack of knowing” but in a sense of “should have known. Should have made the effort. Should drop their blinkers” and take some responsibility…

And so I have found myself wondering what  happens on a spiritual level when we are ignorant, or when a childish innocence turns into a more regrettable adult ignorance.

Ignorance can incense! It can arouse extreme anger and indignation!

From doing ancestral healing work I know that whatever the ancestors haven’t resolved is passed on to future generations. Energetically speaking there is a debt, a challenge, something that seeks to come alight, something that “floats up for healing” (depending on how judgmental you want to be!)

I also know that as my life progresses, I sometimes find myself thinking of people I knew (or even met briefly) years ago. Because something has just happened to me and and in retrograde I wish to send them understanding and empathy: NOW I know why you said this, or acted that way twenty years ago…

(An example of this is a man I was thinking of earlier today. I do not know his name or where he is today. Over 20 years ago he told me that he had spent his whole live caring for children and stepchildren and felt he had lost out big time on ‘freedom and space for his own interests’. The day I met him he had just heard that his son was expecting his first baby and expecting ‘granddad’ to provide childcare to he and his wife could continue to work. This man said he loved children dearly but he had had enough of the day-to-day care and grind, after DECADES of it…. He actually burst into tears as he said it. At that time I did NOT have children and it seemed a little….. exaggerated? Aren’t kids great? Is this what we want to hear when we tell Granddad the happy tidings?! However, today, writing as someone who has done a lot single parenting over 15 years, I understand EXACTLY what this man was saying. And today the solution seems pretty obvious: tell your son you are thrilled become a granddad and of course you will be there for them in emergencies, but you cannot provide the day-to-day childcare because you have some dreams to live yourself…. Tough love….)

So today, outside time, I sent a message to this man (a T Mail – a telepathic message!) “I understand completely now. I hope you did indeed take time and space for yourself!” Does it make a difference? \Is he even alive today?  I can’t say for sure. But I hope that some loving encouragement somehow reached him outside space and time.

So how can we avoid ignorance? Can we avoid ignorance?

For me it all goes back to “shadow work” (as it is called in both shamanism and psychology). Don’t just monitor your own thoughts and actions – but also monitor what drives you mad in other people. Those things are likely to be pointers to things, aspects, you hide from yourself. Reclaim them and own them!

If you are really and truly very brave: ask others how you drive them mad! And don’t punish them for the priceless information they produce!

(If you are married you probably get the “goods” free of charge, without even trying…. )

As I said at the beginning: Yom Kippur is soon, the Day of Atonement. If others forgive us – are we free of the need to atone and repent? I would say not. I think that in hurting others, we hurt ourselves at the same time. And even if we receive forgiveness for every thoughtless or unkind (or even malicious) deed – we are not automatically in harmony with ourselves. Not deep down. I am not Jewish but I think having a Day of Atonement is a good practice. Having a designated, and dedicated!, day, also means that many people are doing this tough internal work all at the same time. And that creates a large cloud of energy shifting, of doors opening and healing possibilities occurring. Personally, inter-personally and generationally (back to the ancestral healing work I mentioned earlier).

And what about innocence then: innocence implied a ‘lack of guilt’. Found “not guilty”. The word is often used too in the context of crimes or war zones: innocent people lost their lives.

“Innocent until proven guilty by a Court of Law”…. but ” there is no smoke without fire” are everyday idioms that touch upon this issue.

As a young  teenager cycling home from school I was once attacked by two girls who truly believed I had racially abused them the week before (I had not but I discovered I had a lookalike in the area). They put a knife on my wrist and said they cut my wrist unless I apologised. At that point a man happened to be passing on the cycling path and he intervened – allowing me to escape from the situation.

Was I innocent? Yes, I had definitely not shouted racial abuse at these girls the week before.

Was I ignorant? Yes, because at age I lived in a predominantly white city in The Netherlands where my understanding of racism was lacking and far from what (I hope!) it is today.

And though I pray my own teenage sons will never be held at knife point (I shudder to think of it!) I admit that these teenage girls too have stayed on my mind over the years. They will be middle aged women today, like me. What they did was undoubtedly wrong, but today I realise that being black in a predominantly white city and culture must have been extremely challenging for these teenage girls. I think they truly believed they had captured their tormentor. So today I would like to send them a T mail saying that I understand much better now why they acted the way they did. Today I do shadow work. I root around in the fertile soil that “everything I don’t like about myself” (rich soil indeed and there is plenty of it!) This is not the same as saying teenagers can pull knives on the people that annoy them!!

So my suggestion is that most people could benefit from a Day of Atonement. If all of us do it together – maybe we can shift some of our ‘cultural shadow’ (i.e. the things that all of us together choose to stay ignorant about)? And it would be very interesting to observe such shifts “with our eyes closed” – in the invisible world, the other world, the spirit world.

I am dedicating this blog to my dear friends Sony Baron and Vicki Semo Scharfman – who both got me thinking about this issue very seriously. Thank you ladies!

Imelda Almqvist

www.imelda-almqvist-art.com

www.shaman-healer-painter.co.uk

 

The title of the painting above is THE WEIGHING OF THE HEART CEREMONY (but my understanding is that it is the Jackal God Anubis weighing the heart, not Osiris!)

From wikipedia http://www.egyptian-scarabs.co.uk/weighing_of_the_heart.htm:

 

Weighing of the Heart

Scarab Beetles in Ancient EgyptThe Heart Scarab The Egyptian God Khepri Weighing of the Heart Links

The Weighing of the Heart Ceremony The ancient Egyptians believed that, when they died, they would be judged on their behaviour during their lifetime before they could be granted a place in the Afterlife. This judgement ceremony was called “Weighing of the Heart” and was recorded in Chapter 125 of the funerar text known as the “Book of the Dead“. The ceremony was believed to have taken place before Osiris, the chief god of the dead and Afterlife, and a tribunal of 43 dieties. Standing before the tribunal the deceased was asked to name each of the divine judges and swear that he or she had not committed any offences, ranging from raising the voice to stealing. This was the “negative confession“. If found innocent, the deceased was declared “true of voice” and allowed to proceed into the Afterlife. The proceedings were recorded by Thoth, the scribe of the gods, and the deity of wisdom. Thoth was often dipicted as a human with an ibis head, writing on a scroll of papyrus. His other animal form, the baboon, was often depicted sitting on the pivot of the scales of justice. The symbolic ritual that accompanied this ritual was the weighing of the heart of the deceased on a pair of enormous scales. It was weighed against the principle of truth and justice ( known as maat ) represented by a feather, the symbol of the goddess of truth, order and justice, Maat. If the heart balanced against the feather then the deceased would be granted a place in the Fields of Hetep and Iaru. If it was heavy with the weight of wrongdoings, the balance would sink and the heart would be grabbed and devoured by a terrifying beast that sat ready and waiting by the scales. This beast was Ammit, “the gobbler“, a composite animal with the head of a crocodile, the front legs and body of lion or leopard, and the back legs of a hippopotamus. The ancient Egyptians considered the heart to be the centre of thought, memory and emotion. It was thus associated with interlect and personality and was considered the most important organ in the body. It was deemed to be essential for rebirth into the Afterlife. Unlike the other internal organs, it was never removed and embalmed separately, because its presence in the body was crucial. If the deceased was found to have done wrong and the heart weighed down the scales, he or she was not though to enter a place of tourment like hell, but to cease to exist at all. This idea would have terrified the ancient Egyptians. However, for those who could afford to include Chapter 125 of the Book of the Dead in their tombs, it was almost guaranteed that they would pass successfully into the Afterlife. This is because the Egyptians believed in the magical qualities of the actual writings and illustrations in funerary texts. By depicting the heart balancing in the scales against the feather of Maat they ensured that would be the favourable outcome. The entire ceremony was, after all, symbolic. Following the Weighing of the Heart, the organ was returned to its owner. To make quite sure that this did happen, Chapters 26-29 of the Book of the Dead were spells to ensure that the heart was returned and this it could never be removed again.

 

 

m

FORGIVENESS

The unconscious mind observes anniversaries even if our waking mind does not.

Recently I woke up to the fact that I have now lived abroad for longer than I lived in my country of birth (The Netherlands). I was 23 when I left and I turned 47 recently. I gave this no conscious thought but I started having dreams about Holland, where I was trying to cycle to the city where I grew up (Den Helder) but there is always a canal I cannot cross. I never arrive at destination.

After I had this same dream several times over a period of months it dawned on me that I had crossed a fault line somewhere, a fault line in the tectonic plates of the human heart. I have left The Netherlands, in more ways than one and I cannot (and will not) go back. (And the Holland I knew does not exist any more, Holland too has moved on, just as I have!)

Then that got me thinking about something else that I had done, more consciously but not in a very organised way. I realised that over a period of two years I had contacted people in The Netherlands with whom I felt there was some unfinished business. In particular people I was friends with as teenager and in my early 20s but then lost touch with.

I reached out to one person after I heard about the sudden death of her father. I reached out to another when I stumbled across her website with recent paintings. I just said that I liked her work and that it was good to see she is still painting. There was a third person I wrote some letters to, spaced out over a period of years.

I had hoped for a very mild form of reconciliation. Not friendship or commitment, but maybe a ‘I wish you well, I too have moved on and I am enjoying life’. In reality I did not hear back from any of these people.

That then brought on a bout of introspection. I turned the tables: is there anyone I do not want to hear from? In truth yes, I had a stalker once and hope to never hear from this person again.

But there were people I used to be close to.  If they had chosen to contact me, they would have received a warm reply from me and some appreciation for their courage in reaching out.

Of course I cannot speak for others, in particular for people I have not met for decades, but I had a sensation of being ‘frozen in time’, of not being allowed to grow and evolve (at least in the mental image some people have of me). I think most young people make mistakes or speak words they later regret. I know I did. I still do at times. I am very far from perfect but I now know I will be ‘a work in progress’ until the day I die.

Yet, by now, compared to twenty-something years ago, a whole lifetime has passed under the ‘metaphorical bridge’ I could not locate in the dream. More time again than the age we were then.

Clearly I had not been ‘forgiven’. I first started seriously wrestling with the concept ‘forgiveness’ around age 25. By then I was living in London and following a Twelve Step Program – Co-dependents Anonymous, to be precise- . Anyone who grew up in a family where addictions existed can benefit from this, I recommend it highly and in stark contrast to psychotherapy  it is free, run by volunteers asking only for a small donation toward the hire of a room and for some commitment for you in turn to help others as you start to recover and change the script of your life and relationships).

I had an almighty struggle with steps 8 and 9 (you will find all twelve steps listed below my text). I lost sleep over it. I cried over it. Unpeeling the matter slowly I came to realise over time that on some level I thought ‘forgiving’ also meant  ‘forgetting’ and that I’d have to give up a large chunk of my past and identity.  The other block I encountered was thinking that  ‘forgiving’ equaled  ‘allowing more of the same to happen’. And one night I went to bed and screamed at God/A Higher Power (as I understood Divinity at that point in time): “I cannot forgive, all I can do is BECOME WILLING TO FORGIVE…”

The next morning I woke up with an incredible sense of serenity and well being. As if a rock had been lifted off my chest. I had learned that “if I do my very best, God/Goddess/Sacred Mystery does the rest.

For me this was nothing less than one of the great revelations of my life. I have often talked to clients about this in shamanic healing sessions, observing their struggle with the same “monsters'”.

What I observed in their response was how ‘not forgiving’ is akin to ‘keeping someone hostage’, continuing to exert some power over them. But who are we really keeping hostage when we do not forgive? Today my response is unequivocal: OURSELVES most of all!!

Forgiving someone cuts an energetic cord that ties us. We are not coming back for more abuse or harm, we erect healthy boundaries around ourselves – but we have learned a lesson, we are more aware.

Today (over 20 years later) I have also developed the awareness that we all have a ‘shadow’ (a personal ‘black hole’ where we hide from ourselves those things we cannot stand in ourselves). An important part of any spiritual journey is acknowledging in ourselves what we cannot stand in others. So today I know that it is all within me: selfishness, rudeness, arrogance, meanness, ugliness…. you name it, it’s in me somewhere!!

And I suspect that for some people “not forgiving” is about not looking too closely at themselves – preferring to see others as ‘the bad one’ so they can be ‘the good one’. (And here I am not talking about rape and murder, I am talking about everyday human tussles and struggles). Once you open Pandora’s Box – what might be unleashed?!

My own personal experience is that the word forGIVEness contains the word ‘GIVE’, because we always set ourselves free, we unburden both our soul and our mind, if we manage to forgive. Of course, along this spiritual path we set others free too! That is the beauty and blessing of this process.

And you never know: forgiveness might be contagious… If more people learn and actively practice the art of forgiveness (and the art of dancing with our own shadow, not running from darkness and self reflection), more of us will feel lighter and then we will quite literally radiate more light, Divine Light, the the love and light animates us. And far more compassion and joy too, I’d guess.

And I may remain ‘unforgiven’  by some, for various reasons and transgressions, but I can choose to forgive myself, to make amends, to create a big bubble of loving thoughts for these people to receive, on a spiritual level, the day they are ready. Suspended somewhere in the ether until then.

Below I will post the Twelve Steps as used by AA. The phrasing is slightly different for different anonymous groups (overeaters, codependency, al anon, shopaholics etc.) but the underlying principles are of course the same. And they work!!

 Imelda Almqvist

 

Twelve Steps

These are the original twelve steps as published by Alcoholics Anonymous:^[10]

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.