January 11: Day 11

STEP TWO CONTINUED
 
Come to believe that The Divine has no religion, is greater than religion, and can heal us from our hurts.
 
Instruction: Accept healing.

Giving mental assent to the belief that The Divine can heal us from our hurts is easy. Allowing that healing to take place can prove to be more challenging. Once we separate spirituality and religion, we can come to recognize that what we were taught about the character of The Divine might not be accurate. Once we realize that fact, we can also recognize that the hurts we received were not inflicted by The Divine but by religious beliefs about The Divine. In other words, it was not The Divine who hurt us, but either a man-made set of rules or a religious person who was probably overly zealous in his or her beliefs and felt it necessary to enforce and inflict them onto others. Another possibility is that an individual who hurt us could have been nothing more than a charlatan that knew all along what they were doing and why. The motivation of charlatans is generally selfish, self-centered, and ego-based.

Now we can understand that God is not our enemy and was not to blame for the abuse that was done to us. Often it was not our behavior that was wrong but was some zealous religious society or religious fanatic that misinterpreted what we did and our motivations for doing it that is at fault for our hurts and abuses. It is important in this Step to understand that The Divine was not to blame, but The Divine can heal us from our hurts.

Today’s Assignment is to accept the healing that The Divine offers. If you feel a need to forgive yourself, to forgive someone else, or seek forgiveness from someone else before you can accept healing, then move forward in that direction.