This is my second post on Step 44 of Steps to Knowledge “I wish to know my own strength.” I’m continuing the practice of showing each sentence of the step, and offering commentary.
“How can you approach your strength when you feel weak and helpless, when you feel unworthy, if you are burdened by guilt or confusion or in anger blame others for your own apparent failures?”
There’s a certain amount of poison that has to be sucked out of a person’s soul in order for them to approach their strength. Maybe they didn’t quite catch everything in Step 24, “I am worthy of God’s love.”
“To claim your strength means to release all that holds you back.” See the previous sentence.
“You do not release your obstacles by claiming they do not exist. You release them because you value something greater.”
I have a certain investment in my obstacles. It is an investment in attention, practice, rehearsal, sharing with others, enrolling others in their obstacles, and so forth. Am I ready to sell guilt and confusion, so that I can buy strength?
“Their obstruction is merely the sign that you must pass through them.Your own strength is then cultivated.”
Am I allowed to recall that I can close my investment in some things, so that I can invest in other things? I can do that?
“You seek your strength, and you use it to find your strength.”
I have to cultivate my strength to find my strength? That seems a little self-referential, but there it is. I have to declare my strength to find my strength? I have to bring forth my strength to find my strength? I have to create my strength to find my strength? Maybe. I’m still thinking about this.
“We wish for you to know your strength and to utilize it on your own behalf.”
Could it be that the mission I have in my life to fulfill is something that requires my unadulterated strength?
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I see where you are coming from, but you are coming from a different angle than the one I came from when I did this Step, you are putting a new slant on it. Interesting.
When I reached this Step, I took it as a guide to action, as a call to stop sitting around thinking I had done all I could do, that I was unable, incompetent to do more, but to take a fresh look at things, see where I could improve on something, revamp something, make a greater contribution to something – after all, I have the strength, so the Step tells me, all I need to do is stop wallowing in self-abasement and feelings of unworthiness and reclaim what I truly have inside me, the part of me that is connected to Knowledge.
So I would say that the answer to your last question, although I understand it is rhetorical, is “Yes!!”