Working on the Self needs humor, kindness, and compassion

Inventory

Practices I recommend to everyone once they are at a certain level of Spiritual Development are inventory and amends.  The first time you do an inventory it is like spring cleaning. You go through your house and look at everything, look into every box. Memories and feelings will come up. You will have to consider what to keep for now, what to throw out, and typically make decisions regarding better lifestyle choices based on your self-examination. The first go round is a big job.  Once done, now your house is cleaner, with a ton more space! More space for Spirit to come in as well. You breathe easier and hopefully you will decide to never let this kind of clutter  build up for so long, ever again.  Now you begin to clean up your space daily, in small doses, like brushing your teeth. You don’t wait years, too much damage occurs, some irreversible.

• What are inventory and amends? It is a staple of every 12-Step program, though few actually work the steps and many go to meetings for fellowship, comradery. These two practices are also a mainstay of many Spiritual practices.  Practice being the key word. These are not concepts or theories, they are actions and actions take time, and movement.  Inventory is a look at your actions and your thoughts, both good and not so good. Why look at this? Don’t you check your refrigerator to see what you have, don’t have, or what you would like to add in, or notice it is time to throw something out?  Why wouldn’t you do this with how you are living your life?  There is a balance to be had with this process. Some people say, don’t look back, keep moving forward and others say keep learning from your past, your history (history repeats itself). Which is correct?  Both are correct.  As always, balance is the key and balance is constant movement, constant adjustment, it is not a static state.  Look at your life and learn. Leave the past when appropriate and move on. Will you make mistakes with this? Of course you will. All learning is mistakes. In fact, one of the ways you can be assured you are learning is noticing that you are making mistakes!  That is a sure sign you are learning. So lighten up if you are trying to be perfect.

How do you take inventory? I suggest you work with someone if it is your first time, a Teacher, therapist, healer, or 12 Step sponsor, but choose carefully and choose someone with training and experience. Once you have done a first inventory, which is challenging, you can continue with daily inventory work. Daily inventory, or weekly inventory, choose what you can schedule without it becoming a burden but do ask yourself how long you can go without brushing your teeth. It is important to understand that you cannot simultaneously live your life and take inventory!  Do not start looking over your own shoulder trying to monitor every action hoping to not make mistakes or trying to determine if you are making mistakes. You will make yourself crazy ~!!  Live your life.  Make mistakes. Excel and enjoy. You will not know if your deeds are mistakes at the time. Hindsight is the only way you can start to see patterns in your life. What may look like a mistake at the time may turn out to be the only path you could have or should have traveled at that time given your skills and your Guidance at that time. If you try to monitor your life while living it, that is you trying to play God to yourself.  Taking inventory is separate from living life. Live, laugh, excel, screw up. Then spend a bit of time reflecting. Athletes train, then perform, then review their performance so they can both enjoy their progress as well as improve. Athletes are not self-evaluating while competing. They simply participate in the event enjoying the journey of all their work, talent, and skills. You do the same. Life is your “event”. Do it fully. Participate. Enjoy it, all of it. After all, you are lucky enough to have a life to participate in, to learn, to experience.  Then, as a separate activity, do inventory in a light hearted enjoyable fashion, as a way to both notice and celebrate all the progress you have made as well as noticing what you want to add to the refrigerator of your life. Remember, inventory also includes all the good you have done, progress you have made, leaps forward, joy you have spread. Relish those as well as looking at what you would like to improve or shift.

With every inventory taken, you give your inventory to your Higher Power, to Source, to Spirit, whatever language suits you and ask for your shortcomings to be removed if it is in your Highest Good. If your shortcomings remain, do not despair, it simply means your class in that subject matter is not yet complete, but you are getting close since you are now more self-aware.  I suggest that with every inventory taken you say this prayer, and then burn your inventory.

Amends

When taking inventory you will notice situations where you caused harm to yourself and/or others.  Sometimes the harm was a conscious reactive choice, and many times the harm caused was simply a horrible side effect of bad judgement, lack of information or skills, or as a result of stress.  Amends are the second part of taking inventory.  One makes amends to both the Self and to others to help you move forward from hurts.  Taking inventory tells Spirit you are willing to look at what is being presented to you in your life.  This tells Spirit you are accepting Guidance and your lessons. Looking at hurts, or saying you are sorry is many times simply not enough, sometimes you will be Guided to take action, change behaviors, pay it back or pay it forward. Amends, like inventory need to be Spirit driven and again like taking a first inventory, the first time (or even times) tackling amends should never be done without Guidance as well as human help from a Teacher, 12-Step sponsor, therapist, or qualified, educated, experienced healer. Amends are a learned skill and there are some pitfalls to be careful of. There are direct amends, and indirect amends.  Indirect might be taking on volunteer work at a senior center because you were irresponsible towards your elderly parents, or it might be writing a letter to someone and burning it.  Amends first and foremost do not cause harm to either your Self or others and it takes some skill to learn those boundaries. Direct amends might mean deliberately spending more time with your elderly parents, but not if they were, or are abusive!  Making amends needs more skill and Guidance than inventory. This article is too short to address it and I am afraid that sometimes people read a short article then run off with too little information to tackle something complex.

You can read up on this process on the web. You can look for a 12-Step program and sponsor or a therapist trained in this area.

 If you are interested in doing this work with a Spirit based Healer with a PhD in Health Psychology, you can always enroll in Monthly Work with Dr. Marie and be guided through Inventory and Amends both learning how to do them as well as actually doing them with the support of a qualified and Gifted human and with your Guides in full participation (something that some mainstream therapists are not comfortable with).

Journey On