Monday 30 April 2012

April 29 2012 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 4 "Inventory" | Alcoholics Anonymous

April 29 2012 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 4 "Inventory" | Alcoholics Anonymous Today's AA daily reflection: "group autonomy…" Thank goodness the traditions are written to ensure that Fellowship groups in AA are the ultimate authority for the fellowship of AA. In other words groups are autonomous and share their views with the Fellowship via trusted servants… And everyone is a trusted servant each with an opinion and a voice as they choose…

Freedom of feeling leading to a particular way of thinking and actions which follow… Often the frustration of life and how it works around us will have thwarted our own personal liberties, how we felt about life and how we thought about life. And in the past a lot of my actions were about blotting out the truth about myself and my situation. A heartbreaking situation when we feel life just is not only difficult, it felt like it was impossible every day. Today I have more freedom than ever in recovery…

I am allowed to voice my feelings, my thoughts and take appropriate action which feels right for me. I still have an obligation when I am inside the Fellowship to speak for myself, and not for other people. This absolute truth can be undermined by me when I try to squeeze myself like a pretzel into other people's ideas and notions around personal conduct. Within the group or groups I attend I do observe and accept the group conscience at group level. And if I don't like the way the group is run, I can always find another group to belong to…

The similarities and not the differences always keep me coming back to Fellowship. I am fully aware the most important criteria for connection, inclusion and participation is a desire to be sober today. And then Re: anyone else, open honest and willing to be respectful of other peoples views be supportive and challenging if needed, but never bend people to fit my world or my will. The beauty of Fellowship, an anarchic democracy when it comes to group autonomy and personal choices. Tolerance and love is all part of how we as individuals learn to live together in Fellowship and also find our own path, our own opinion, our own belief system, sober one day at a time we just keep on learning how to live life in this amazing world of now…

On this day back in 2007, and what follows on the blog, I seem to emphasise the road to hell is paved with good intent, and as one person said on that day, "don't put my values on other people" is always a key in living in peace and harmony. It stops me judging what others do, and puts the responsibility firmly in place for me in how to live an emotional and spiritual recovery… Life is less complicated and I try keep it simple today…

Tolerance and love, forgive everyone everything in the moment of now, it is the best that they can be with what they have and what I have, because I certainly do tread on the toes of other people and need learn forgiveness every single day… And at the same time, we live the consequences of our actions each and every day…


DonInLondon 2005-2011

April 29 2007 Forgive Everybody Everything - DonInLondon ‘Day In the Life’

I am no saint I realise every day. And every day the judgment I make about so many elements of life, people, places and things. I wish it different and practice like most a form of denial and filtering to get my perceptions to square up to my feelings.

These days I need and hear wisdom from others most days on how to conduct myself on a daily basis, and really and truly I do need their wisdom and good intentions.

Good Intentions

We all have them and wonder often what we may to keep faith with ourselves. And last night taught me great dollops of forgiveness and acceptance. Forgiveness for my judging and judgments past and present, forgiveness for others and their steady progress to a spiritual path. In a judging world the path of spirituality is dogged as are we by perceptions and misgivings.

Today

Well today after a night of wondering and accepting and listening to my inner voice of judgement, a trip out to a meeting of my fellowship helped me greatly. I had been quite judgmental last night, about what is right for me and how I behave. And of course how others have their rights to judge and behave as they do..

"Don’t put my Values on Others"

The most important part of a message at the Flood Street meeting: A person with decades of recovery making a simple one liner in a chair of many elements and this was really what I needed to hear.

I do have my values, principles and ethics. My world is about transparency and not filtering and not denials of who and what I am. And in many ways it has been the best learning of last night how easy it is to assume what someone says is how they really are. And actually what they say is what they believe they are and not what they really are. The same is true of me too.

So no one is out of this fugue state in my guess at all of us who endeavour to find this spiritual path of living.

Progress indeed and not Perfection

A night like last night, a farewell event and a real event with much love and care. It was a good to be included and yet inside the inclusion I found exclusion and mishaps. Mishaps as others present themselves and mishaps in my estimation of connections and feelings.

Informed

I am better informed all ways today how love spans the decades, how changes and affiliations occur. How indeed families and friends and participants in living can easily assume and fall victim to their own codes and ethics. And of course denials of affiliation made profoundly will always dig deep into our spiritual reserves which in essence are just good for a day.

It is the harshest moment of all when we realise what is said in the spirit of honesty and care and love in its broadest sense is denied and shunned. The exclusion is complete in the intake of one breath, and the desire to be elsewhere is accepted on every level and every wish it were so. Exclusion born of denials and filters, misguided and misinformed, wreaks its gentle and pervasive toll on everything we have come to believe. And is then denied.

Filters and Denials

So deep and turgid, so transparent in a careless act of self-preservation and self-image, to project a connection which in actual fact is the essence of the truth. When such an event occurs we are best away and separate with cautious haste and disconnection. And suddenly the truth and the lie are the same, its realisation stings with a smack to our inner being, we reel and deny it and accept it all in a moment as we glimpse that insecure and elemental falsehood. And I see no need to repair of filter anymore a misguided lie to self.

So truly a spectacular path these last few weeks, as truth is burgeoning and falsehoods are slipping away.

Judge what is right for me

As do others without a moment’s hesitation and without the snap to hurt. Indeed they feel no hurt or sting. I have been blessed with truth. And being informed is the good news. I have had many dealings in recent weeks with distorted truths and falsehoods, not about me but around me. Of others trials and difficult moments: I am realising so much and so quickly and understanding the nature of vulnerable and people who fear their very own right to a life. And more that some so driven by self-obsession cannot break from the false nature and foundations of sand upon which they build their safe keep and castle walls.

Accept and Forgive and Let Go

Indeed the acceptance of the truth as we realise the false premise and deluded nature of some and how integrity shifts. There need be no blame, for we are part of the story. We need not let it continue as the fiction deprives our very being of spiritual growth. And our falseness undo’s any good done before.

We need let go and move on, be forgiving and find acceptance as our journey is made more open and half measure offer nothing but disturbance and inadequate connections. Lies beget and prevail as denial lays a trail to disquiet in our inner path. Sanctuary is complete in truth as we merely make progress to our journey in this one day.

"But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet,
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams"
-/- W.B. Yeats

AA Daily Reflection: GROUP AUTONOMY... Some may think that we have carried the principle of group autonomy to extremes. For example, in its original “long form,” Tradition Four declares: “Any two or three gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group, provided that as a group they have no other affiliation.” . . . . But this ultra-liberty is not so risky as it looks. A.A. COMES OF AGE, pp. 104-05
As an active alcoholic, I abused every liberty that life afforded. How could A.A. expect me to respect the “ultra-liberty” bestowed by Tradition Four? Learning respect has become a lifetime job. A.A. has made me fully accept the necessity of discipline and that, if I do not assert it from within, then I will pay for it. This applies to groups too. Tradition Four points me in a spiritual direction, in spite of my alcoholic inclinations.

Step 4 "Fearless Inventory" Reading Video Link:

"Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves"
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I do not speak for Alcoholics Anonymous I speak for myself. Alcoholics Anonymous is a fellowship of unique and authentic people who speak for themselves where they will to share experience, strength and hope about recovery on a daily basis. Anonymity affords sanctuary to find how to live sober and be open, honest and willing to learn life day by day. For me "truth," "love" and "wisdom" offer the best spiritual experience by living reality today. Into the fabric of recovery from alcoholism are woven the Twelve Steps and the Twelve Traditions, steps to be open, honest and willing to learn, traditions to live unity, service and recovery.
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Spiritual principles ~ Forgiveness Acceptance Surrender Faith Open-mindedness Honesty Willingness Moral-inventory Amends Humility Persistence Spiritual-growth Service
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