February 10 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 2 | 2012 | Today's AA daily: "I don't run the show" helps me understand that much of what I was taught is not going to keep me sober one day at a time. Standing on my own two feet: never showing weakness, putting on a brave face and relying on my ego to cover up my lack of confidence, courage and faith.
Being self-reliant; it can be a good trait and resilience and determination are all part of making good in life. Overreliance on our desire to be self-sufficient can be part of a stubborn and defiant approach to dealing with addiction. We still feel we are at fault and can judge ourselves so harshly as failures, we can drink ourselves to death…
In our alcoholism, a self-inflicted wound leads to the toughest love regime we apply to ourselves. Tough love applied, every time we fail, we do more self-harm and lose sight of the twelve steps. The twelve steps are all about progress not perfection, tolerance and love. How to be open honest and willing to change and be open to help and support in fellowship. We do not run the whole show…
"Let go and let God?" Whatever you perceive he, she or it to be, the proposition that we can let go and ask the help feels right for me. And I cannot speak for anyone else, at the same time I am happy to ask for help and have the humility to accept support, love and tolerance, try new ways to live with support and stop going it alone today…
I'm very happy to be on the world stage as a part player, not being an Oracle, not knowing the answers to even the most basic ways to live. Living with humility and openness means I can listen, and learn from others how to be sober, and especially learn how to love, be loved back without conditions and simply useful in some way today…
It can be a wonderful world again, and because we live and it is difficult some of life will be quite horrible and most often our true source of learning. Learning to be happy, learning to be sad, learning to love and understanding why sometimes we can hate what people do including ourselves…
Letter to a friend struggling with the word God: I feel the good news is that there are over 7 billion people on the planet now and each one has a definition of God inside us. And all these definitions are right for each individual, be they atheist, agnostic or believer or any combination of these over the years of living.
I too struggled with the word God. And probably still do from time to time. What makes it all work for me is understanding that there are higher powers all around me all the time.
And so the debate about God is not really an issue, just for me I don’t mind what definition anybody else has. I am happy that I can let go being self sufficient and the source of knowledge and next actions. The whole reading of the chapter on acceptance being the key and the whole world being stage and we are merely players, brings into sharp focus that there are many ways to simply letting in "the good" around us.
And of course I will have problems with the word God and what other people anticipate and expect him, she or it to be able to do for us… All the steps, acceptance and can do, can’t do and knowing the wisdom resides in life, experience and asking for help.
I don’t edge good out, I ask for good to come in, by conscience inside me and the inner voice that always talks to me, the good conscience of those around me and the collective conscience of where mankind may be headed…
I don’t know the answers, at the same time the question of god is a good one, because if we are thinking about it, we are feeling the whole impact of a new way of life and it keeps us on track.
I love the word humility and I am so pleased to be a learner each and every day. I may know a little bit more about me and life by the time I get to bed tonight. The gift of no certainty and acceptance and challenge make everything worthwhile one day at a time…
Step 2 Reading Video Link:
"Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity"
DonInLondon 2005-2011
Yesterday, a chair from an old timer celebrating 35 years sober, and several more around the same time! The theme was living reality, AA for sober, outside help for other emotional and physical. Several newcomers appreciated the “reality check,” that AA keeps us sober and we get freedom to work on everything else. Real experience, really helpful and no denials …
Needs met wants forgotten...
Stephen Covey "Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change." Insanity caused by addiction produces extremes of behaviour, what I would describe as the thin edge of experience. Extremes of feeling, unaturally sustained, always elusive and never as powerful as the first time... The deep of experience built on time...
AA Daily: I DON'T RUN THE SHOW ~ FEBRUARY 10, When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn’t. What was our choice to be? ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p.53
Today my choice is God. He is everything. For this I am truly grateful. When I think I am running the show I am blocking God from my life. I pray I can remember this when I allow myself to get caught up into self. The most important thing is that today I am willing to grow along spiritual lines, and that God is everything. When I was trying to quit drinking on my own, it never worked; with God and A.A., it is working. This seems to be a simple thought for a complicated alcoholic.
-/-
Being self-reliant; it can be a good trait and resilience and determination are all part of making good in life. Overreliance on our desire to be self-sufficient can be part of a stubborn and defiant approach to dealing with addiction. We still feel we are at fault and can judge ourselves so harshly as failures, we can drink ourselves to death…
In our alcoholism, a self-inflicted wound leads to the toughest love regime we apply to ourselves. Tough love applied, every time we fail, we do more self-harm and lose sight of the twelve steps. The twelve steps are all about progress not perfection, tolerance and love. How to be open honest and willing to change and be open to help and support in fellowship. We do not run the whole show…
"Let go and let God?" Whatever you perceive he, she or it to be, the proposition that we can let go and ask the help feels right for me. And I cannot speak for anyone else, at the same time I am happy to ask for help and have the humility to accept support, love and tolerance, try new ways to live with support and stop going it alone today…
I'm very happy to be on the world stage as a part player, not being an Oracle, not knowing the answers to even the most basic ways to live. Living with humility and openness means I can listen, and learn from others how to be sober, and especially learn how to love, be loved back without conditions and simply useful in some way today…
It can be a wonderful world again, and because we live and it is difficult some of life will be quite horrible and most often our true source of learning. Learning to be happy, learning to be sad, learning to love and understanding why sometimes we can hate what people do including ourselves…
Letter to a friend struggling with the word God: I feel the good news is that there are over 7 billion people on the planet now and each one has a definition of God inside us. And all these definitions are right for each individual, be they atheist, agnostic or believer or any combination of these over the years of living.
I too struggled with the word God. And probably still do from time to time. What makes it all work for me is understanding that there are higher powers all around me all the time.
And so the debate about God is not really an issue, just for me I don’t mind what definition anybody else has. I am happy that I can let go being self sufficient and the source of knowledge and next actions. The whole reading of the chapter on acceptance being the key and the whole world being stage and we are merely players, brings into sharp focus that there are many ways to simply letting in "the good" around us.
And of course I will have problems with the word God and what other people anticipate and expect him, she or it to be able to do for us… All the steps, acceptance and can do, can’t do and knowing the wisdom resides in life, experience and asking for help.
I don’t edge good out, I ask for good to come in, by conscience inside me and the inner voice that always talks to me, the good conscience of those around me and the collective conscience of where mankind may be headed…
I don’t know the answers, at the same time the question of god is a good one, because if we are thinking about it, we are feeling the whole impact of a new way of life and it keeps us on track.
I love the word humility and I am so pleased to be a learner each and every day. I may know a little bit more about me and life by the time I get to bed tonight. The gift of no certainty and acceptance and challenge make everything worthwhile one day at a time…
Step 2 Reading Video Link:
"Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity"
DonInLondon 2005-2011
Yesterday, a chair from an old timer celebrating 35 years sober, and several more around the same time! The theme was living reality, AA for sober, outside help for other emotional and physical. Several newcomers appreciated the “reality check,” that AA keeps us sober and we get freedom to work on everything else. Real experience, really helpful and no denials …
Needs met wants forgotten...
Stephen Covey "Every human has four endowments- self awareness, conscience, independent will and creative imagination. These give us the ultimate human freedom... The power to choose, to respond, to change." Insanity caused by addiction produces extremes of behaviour, what I would describe as the thin edge of experience. Extremes of feeling, unaturally sustained, always elusive and never as powerful as the first time... The deep of experience built on time...
AA Daily: I DON'T RUN THE SHOW ~ FEBRUARY 10, When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn’t. What was our choice to be? ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p.53
Today my choice is God. He is everything. For this I am truly grateful. When I think I am running the show I am blocking God from my life. I pray I can remember this when I allow myself to get caught up into self. The most important thing is that today I am willing to grow along spiritual lines, and that God is everything. When I was trying to quit drinking on my own, it never worked; with God and A.A., it is working. This seems to be a simple thought for a complicated alcoholic.
-/-
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