April 6 2012 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 4 "Inventory" | Alcoholics Anonymous Today's AA daily reflection: "a lifetime process…" The good news, we get sober just for a day. Even better news, we can make progress just for a day. This is our timescale in recovery, as a fellowship and as individuals and sometimes progress can be one step forward and two steps back and still we make progress just for today…
An acquaintance gets in touch after a few years, having chosen a path awash with alcohol. I wonder what to do, and try work out what best to do. Impatience gets the better of the person I know and then many complaints levelled at me and people in fellowship. An honest reply, about taking responsibility as an individual and not blaming. And also admitting the limitations of what I can and cannot do today and what I cannot do today, there are others available when a person asks for help…
When I hear people complaining about the fellowship, there are usually two components which shine through to frustrate newcomers. Newcomers do not connect or understand the AA preamble. And that we are people and very human, in recovery today. Which means the fellowship is what you see is what you get, as good as the people you meet today. A newcomer can only judge an old-timers sobriety as they behave and act today. Whether an old timer behaves badly or even tempered, as long as it is obvious why, then experience strength and hope is shared and the truth is, that some days sobriety is brutal in the moment of now…
I prefer what I saw at my first meeting. Some people happy and impossibly gleeful. Some people shivering denizens! Some people who didn't give a damn. And some people who did take an interest and tried to help. Just like any community it was real and not pretend. The difference was a level of honesty I had not seen in a long while, truth and the ups and downs of life, experience strength and hope shared as each person could, and just for a day…
Attraction and not promotion. Attraction for me is WYSIWYG, what you see is what you get and life is messy and revealed in meetings. I feel good when bleeding deacons share their pet theories, because I too can be a bleeding deacon and there are no guarantees in our society. What we do have is the opportunity to keep on learning what works for us as individuals and how the steps offer a lifetime process of learning by doing. What seems right for me, can be catastrophic for you on any given day…
No other society and I have not found one myself offers greater opportunity for each of us to find our own particular path in life. At the same time as each of us is finding our path, with a desire to stop drinking, in unity and service and recovery we make the best of what is possible each and every day…
DonInLondon 2005-2011
Happy, joyous and free! Or unhappy, sad and imprisoned? Romance and finance... How am I feeling, why and what can I do? No romance presently, still learning to be me, and I'm free. Finance, needs met and not wanting. Happily open to romance and not yearning, no need to fear, no need to put on a brave face. I can learn and endeavour today...
Living in the moment, feeling life as it is, rather than willing it different, knowing what we can do, knowing what we cannot, we see our choices and know what changes we can make. Connected to reality, with choices, dreams become possibilities in the moment of now. We share, gain wisdom, change as we may, needs met wants forgotten, and can strive for the achievable just for today...
We are all spiritual, everything is spiritual? ~ "It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come. We learn the art of the possible, the probable and reality, the truth of now" inspired by the Dalai Lama...
-/-
AA Daily Reflection: A LIFETIME PROCESS We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn’t control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression, we couldn’t make a living, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn’t seem to be of real help to other people. . . . ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 52
These words remind me that I have more problems than alcohol, that alcohol is only a symptom of a more pervasive disease. When I stopped drinking I began a lifetime process of recovery from unruly emotions, painful relationships, and unmanageable situations. This process is too much for most of us without help from a Higher Power and our friends in the Fellowship. When I began working the Steps of the A.A. program, many of these tangled threads unraveled but, little by little, the most broken places of my life straightened out. One day at a time, almost imperceptibly, I healed. Like a thermostat being turned down, my fears diminished. I began to experience moments of contentment. My emotions became less volatile. I am now once again a part of the human family.
-/-
As Bill Sees It ~ Material Achievement No member of A.A. wants to deprecate material achievment. Nor do we enter into debate with the many who cling to the belief that no satisfy our basic natural desires is the main object of life. But we are sure that no class of people in the world ever made a worse mess of trying to live by this formula than alcoholics.
We demanded more than our share of security, prestige, and romance. When we seemed to be succeeding, we drank to dream still greater dreams. When we were frustrated, even in part, we drank for oblivion. In all these strivings, so many of them well-intentioned, our crippling handicap was our lack of humility. We lacked the perspective to see that character-building and spiritual values had to come first, and that material satisfaction were simply by-products and not the chief aims of life.
-/-
Step 4 "Fearless Inventory" Reading Video Link:
"Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves"
-/-
An acquaintance gets in touch after a few years, having chosen a path awash with alcohol. I wonder what to do, and try work out what best to do. Impatience gets the better of the person I know and then many complaints levelled at me and people in fellowship. An honest reply, about taking responsibility as an individual and not blaming. And also admitting the limitations of what I can and cannot do today and what I cannot do today, there are others available when a person asks for help…
When I hear people complaining about the fellowship, there are usually two components which shine through to frustrate newcomers. Newcomers do not connect or understand the AA preamble. And that we are people and very human, in recovery today. Which means the fellowship is what you see is what you get, as good as the people you meet today. A newcomer can only judge an old-timers sobriety as they behave and act today. Whether an old timer behaves badly or even tempered, as long as it is obvious why, then experience strength and hope is shared and the truth is, that some days sobriety is brutal in the moment of now…
I prefer what I saw at my first meeting. Some people happy and impossibly gleeful. Some people shivering denizens! Some people who didn't give a damn. And some people who did take an interest and tried to help. Just like any community it was real and not pretend. The difference was a level of honesty I had not seen in a long while, truth and the ups and downs of life, experience strength and hope shared as each person could, and just for a day…
Attraction and not promotion. Attraction for me is WYSIWYG, what you see is what you get and life is messy and revealed in meetings. I feel good when bleeding deacons share their pet theories, because I too can be a bleeding deacon and there are no guarantees in our society. What we do have is the opportunity to keep on learning what works for us as individuals and how the steps offer a lifetime process of learning by doing. What seems right for me, can be catastrophic for you on any given day…
No other society and I have not found one myself offers greater opportunity for each of us to find our own particular path in life. At the same time as each of us is finding our path, with a desire to stop drinking, in unity and service and recovery we make the best of what is possible each and every day…
DonInLondon 2005-2011
Happy, joyous and free! Or unhappy, sad and imprisoned? Romance and finance... How am I feeling, why and what can I do? No romance presently, still learning to be me, and I'm free. Finance, needs met and not wanting. Happily open to romance and not yearning, no need to fear, no need to put on a brave face. I can learn and endeavour today...
Living in the moment, feeling life as it is, rather than willing it different, knowing what we can do, knowing what we cannot, we see our choices and know what changes we can make. Connected to reality, with choices, dreams become possibilities in the moment of now. We share, gain wisdom, change as we may, needs met wants forgotten, and can strive for the achievable just for today...
We are all spiritual, everything is spiritual? ~ "It is very important to generate a good attitude, a good heart, as much as possible. From this, happiness in both the short term and the long term for both yourself and others will come. We learn the art of the possible, the probable and reality, the truth of now" inspired by the Dalai Lama...
-/-
AA Daily Reflection: A LIFETIME PROCESS We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn’t control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression, we couldn’t make a living, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn’t seem to be of real help to other people. . . . ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 52
These words remind me that I have more problems than alcohol, that alcohol is only a symptom of a more pervasive disease. When I stopped drinking I began a lifetime process of recovery from unruly emotions, painful relationships, and unmanageable situations. This process is too much for most of us without help from a Higher Power and our friends in the Fellowship. When I began working the Steps of the A.A. program, many of these tangled threads unraveled but, little by little, the most broken places of my life straightened out. One day at a time, almost imperceptibly, I healed. Like a thermostat being turned down, my fears diminished. I began to experience moments of contentment. My emotions became less volatile. I am now once again a part of the human family.
-/-
As Bill Sees It ~ Material Achievement No member of A.A. wants to deprecate material achievment. Nor do we enter into debate with the many who cling to the belief that no satisfy our basic natural desires is the main object of life. But we are sure that no class of people in the world ever made a worse mess of trying to live by this formula than alcoholics.
We demanded more than our share of security, prestige, and romance. When we seemed to be succeeding, we drank to dream still greater dreams. When we were frustrated, even in part, we drank for oblivion. In all these strivings, so many of them well-intentioned, our crippling handicap was our lack of humility. We lacked the perspective to see that character-building and spiritual values had to come first, and that material satisfaction were simply by-products and not the chief aims of life.
-/-
Step 4 "Fearless Inventory" Reading Video Link:
"Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves"
-/-
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