November 16 | AA 12 Steps In Action |

November 16 | AA 12 Steps In Action |











If it walks like a duck and quacks, and tells you its all a load of effing crap, group therapy nonsense, it is nonsense to them, part of the experience of fellowship. It makes no sense and it is the truth as they see it right now. Effing brilliant! Behind anger is fear, and anger and fear are true for the person experiencing anger and fear. Real feelings, and hurt people hurt other people. I need respect the outlook even when my outlook is happy joyous and free. That is reality today...

Education, education and education. To broaden and deepen the meaning of life we learn as we may. Experience the best teacher? Yes and no. It depends on expectations and what we think we deserve as a result. "Pop culture:" Raises expectations of fame and fortune and reality sucks for so many today. As some spectate on those living the dream, resentments deepen, rage and anger manifest in real day to day failure. A wake up call to society, the dream works for a few and cannot be lived by everyone. New survival skills required, I am lucky to live sober with 12 steps guiding me to my needs met and wants forgotten...

Emotional education and thinking education: We feel we deserve, we think we deserve, this outlook will keep us dormant as the world still turns. Spectator skills abound, useless if we do not learn how to survive as humans putting in the right action when reality cannot deliver "the dream." Are recovery skills needed in all living for all people? All life experience, we need all of it to make sense of what is possible and not possible today...

DonInLondon 2005-2010

November 16 2010 ~ living reality contingent on my spiritual condition: How do I know what my spiritual condition is today? I apply myself to living, action is always better than living in the past or watching life and judging it. If I live in what might be, I am waiting. Open, honest and willing I take part in what is going on with freedom to choose today...

November 16 2010 ~ when I know I am right, can control and manage, do the things to hold on to my way of life as I see fit, hold on to what should be happening... Lock me up or suggest I get to a meeting. To make sense of reality today, I need perspective, to let go and be open to new choices, be free of the past and live in the present moment today...

Cunning Baffling Powerful – The ‘Orrible Devil In Me!

As the song title suggests, “I did it my way,” and Frank Sinatra sang it beautifully, at the same time I really liked the way Sid Vicious sang it too, MY WAY! I learned to live life my way and was under the influence of my father during my formative years when he was around. And fortunately my mother too, her way was better and involved learning life as she went along. My Dad was more influenced by drink, fear and shame and guilt a lot of the time, but none of us knew it when we were kids, and only know now, decades later do I see how much like him I am. He died early from drink, and I nearly did too on numerous occasions.

Drink for most people is not cunning baffling or powerful, because they are not alcoholics, but for me the fascination with drink and its ability to change me, or help me find oblivion was always in me and growing. Until drink ruled me, it was cunning baffling and powerful and I could not stop. Today, I do have a reprieve from the insanity of drink on a daily basis contingent on my spiritual condition.

In some ways and in my case, I feel drink or drugs can catch us faster than the previous generation. We see it around us in our growing up years and we imitate. Just a feeling I have. My Dad was a robust individual and drank all his adult life, died at 65 from everything associated with a hard drinking life style. I am 54, have had my grazes with the grim reaper “alcohol” over the years and wonder just how much time I have taken off my life because of drink. At the same time, the years sober have been wonderful in living both the joys and horror life offers daily.

Life can be a bed of roses, and at the same time roses grow best when fertilised with horse’s droppings. Without the horses droppings we could not enjoy the smell roses so we need the droppings and the light to smell the roses? We take the rough and the smooth and learn from both. A bit like my Mum and Dad and their influences and their life experiences and what they learned? Indeed life is like that too, good and bad.

Today sober, I have many influences, I cannot change the past, I can live in the day. And keep learning life; be active in what is going on, without the fear of the ‘orrible devil in me, just for today…

-/-

AA Daily Reflections ~ "A DAILY REPRIEVE" What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 85

Maintaining my spiritual condition is like working out every day, planning for the marathon, swimming laps, jogging. It’s staying in good shape spiritually, and that requires prayer and meditation. The single most important way for me to improve my conscious contact with a Higher Power is to pray and meditate. I am as powerless over alcohol as I am to turn back the waves of the sea; no human force had the power to overcome my alcoholism. Now I am able to breathe the air of joy, happiness and wisdom. I have the power to love and react to events around me with the eyes of a faith in things that are not readily apparent. My daily reprieve means that, no matter how difficult or painful things appear today, I can draw on the power of the program to stay liberated from my cunning, baffling and powerful illness."

-/-