May 15 2012 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 5 Admit And Accept | Alcoholics Anonymous

May 15 2012 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 5 Admit And Accept | Alcoholics Anonymous Today's AA daily reflection: "know God; know peace… Good conscience, peace is possible" we learn morality and have conscience, if we are fortunate we understand society and how we live within it. Truth, love and wisdom grows as we follow our personal path in recovery. Your higher power is your higher power, as long as it is not you…

I feel that I understood it was a choice always when it came to understanding God or no God. I was never able to get the necessary knowledge to define or understand the nature and construction of the universe. I do understand without doubt for me that there are many powers greater than me and I can keep on learning more from them. Gandhi said, "God is truth and God is love" and this helps me in prayer, meditation and asking for help on any given day and in the moment…

Wisdom is all around me to help you on a daily basis, and every day is a learning day. I learn more about my feelings as they are happening, and how my feelings impact on my thinking and my actions. Somebody said recently, and I now really really understand this, "when I came into the Fellowship, I had to stop thinking, really stop thinking and start to understand my feelings and what was going on right now" emotional and spiritual: "real right sized feelings in the moment of now." Serenity…

When we can look back and learn and remember, make use of everything we have understood so far in the moment of now and can have enough vision towards the next steps, and sharing and consulting about it with those involved, life takes on new meaning! Now how hard is that? It can be very difficult, because as M Scott Peck said "life is difficult and if we accept that life is difficult, it stops being an issue" and of course for me that feels okay today…

DonInLondon 2005-2011

Try not to put your sponsor on a pedestal; they are likely to fall off... Or if you are on your pedestal, judging others, beware others likely knock you of your perch. If someone is looking up to you, look them in the eye and if you are looking down on someone, best

Get on your knees and pray... we are all equal today.

Open honest and willing... Everything in this day can be day sized and manageable with help. Recovery, like Rome is and was not built in a day. We live in recovery, the balance of: "fear, brave facing and ego" And: "courage faith and confidence" is living life in the moment...

Know Truth Know Peace: The serenity prayer [or and serenity meditation] suggests if we accept what we can do, what we cannot do, we learn the wisdom to know the difference. Improving our choices, to love, be loved and useful, a daily endeavour, always a new beginning today…

AA Daily Reflections ~ "KNOW GOD; KNOW PEACE... It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. . . . But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, page 66

Know God; For me, God is Truth, Love and Wisdom

Know peace. Truth is freedom, love without conditions, wisdom learned from others

No God; Isolation, excluded and ignorant

No peace. Conflict, imprisoned, loveless and at war within ourselves

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May 15 2007

Stepping Out and About DonInLondon ‘Day In the Life’

Some days I need find enough energy to just move around gradually. Today has been somewhat painful and for those who only see the outside, the mask and maybe don’t read the words, a lot of me is hidden from view. That is a blessing for some as the totality of me… Well even I might have trouble understanding me totally. And I get a little more understanding on a daily basis.

I tend to share my physical ailments now and again not only to remind myself, but to remind you too, that all is not always rosy in my garden; indeed I don’t have a garden!

Today

So connections working well for me, and there is an issue of some importance to me and it’s about the day in the life diary, the video’s I have been making and doing other things in my fellowship. More maybe as the issues develop, but some service in the fellowship

May mean these videos and my sharing will have to change. My videos are about me and my life and my perceptions in truth. And although I am a separate entity, if I do some service posts, it might be a conflict, in fact it feels like it would be and I have not been able to conclude what to do yet. A yet!

My journal, blog or diary, whatever we might call it is about my personal journey and life and how it all impacts on me. A very one sided look at living and from my perspective.

I do include the views of others, and I am keen to know what is going on in this world. I am often reminded that where we see so much going on, we are powerless as individuals to make some things change for the good, if we are strong in our beliefs about good, we can believe in campaigns and influencing others. Actually often we are beating against a tide of change which we are all pretty powerless over. Like Canute and the waves.

I learn every day something about being the right size that is just being a human size person with a voice and feelings, and making life work as best any of us can. We all strive to do the right thing, based on our beliefs and what we learn, and how we view living. Some of us have spent years trying to make things different, be agents of change, consultants and influencers.

What often we forget is to look at our own lives and living, and you know what we do? We try fixing everything else because it feels easier than looking at our own behaviour and dealing with that because we have strong values and principles we may believe are right.

Counselling

Yes counselling people and courses of how to be a counsellor. This is a subject close to my life, simply because for a lot of years I did counsel and work with people in business and other fields of endeavour. A sort of eclectic counsellor on life and living. And the more I did it, the more I avoided looking at my own life, because whilst fixing others paths was easy. My own life had been so far distorted from where I would have preferred to be, I never really wanted to acknowledge I was probably on the wrong track.

So counselling these days is often called something like cognitive behavioural therapy. A sort of science and application of processes to help people understand themselves and think their way through a process of self-discovery.

Indeed!

I was chatting tonight with someone else who has found themselves at odds with their counselling processes and the teaching of this thing, a process called cognitive behavioural therapy. A thinking man’s process to acknowledging we have feelings and then turning those thoughts into feeling actions. Sort complicated and truly not really helpful unless you live in the world of theory and ideas and process. Anyone involved in counselling can and will understand the processes we can utilise to understand how people think, and how people can feel.

Unfortunately often when we encounter counsellors who are tutored in cognitive behavioural therapy, we encounter misunderstandings with the process and with feelings or emotions we have.

Chicken and Egg Therapy

Emotions and feelings are always ahead of our thinking. What I would call gut reaction is the alert mind responding to environment and people. We feel first and have emotions first, and then we try sorting them with thinking and thinking what we really want…

Love and more Love

Actually we need and want to be loved. And this can be from deep and one to one love with a partner, through to firm friendship and then through to love of humanity. All we need is love.

How hard is that?

As soon as we apply our thinking we get into bother and the more we think the more we make it the way we want it. We forget the simple love of each other, as we layer on our thoughts, our expectations and our preferences.

Control

We want some control and some choices and we want to be secure. Control over our own love and maybe if we are insecure how others may love us or as society and culture allow.

Inclusion

And being human we need and want to be included. Yet we are forever feeling excluded and not loved maybe as much as we want or think we should be loved.

Hard Truth

Is in counselling utilising the thinking which follows our feelings, well it is chicken and egg. Thinking and visioning the future, rather than the thin and tardy present can lead to all sorts of denials and tribulations.

Experience of life and living helps us all feel more and emote more, or the opposite as we fear and don’t feel a part of love.

So cognitive behavioural stuff tends to get us into some form of process where we try thinking ourselves more included, in control and a part of the big life we live.

Our fellowship

Well for anyone really into the fellowship process. It’s a bit awkward for processes which suggest we manufacture control, inclusion and love. Why? Because we cannot make it so... However the truth is we can live and feel it so. Life and feelings as we have them and understanding what is going on in the simple moment of now. Being simpatico and in tune with our feelings in the moment cannot be thought through and then experienced. It just does not work.

So

What do we do? Well I have felt somewhat jaded by cognitive processes which are there to design my emotions and feelings. And also have found others who apply process to me may find me a bit difficult. Simply because I share my feelings and emotions in the moment. They are neither thought through or filtered as I am feeling. The other bit, what you see, well I do adjust my internal reactions and make some responses so you can understand what is going on.

Sometimes though I, make a judgment that no amount of sharing my truth will provide any illumination or extra value and I may walk away. And I walk away most when others try to control or make me do something which is not valuable or helpful. Or worse when others might utilise my old skills and think they are free. Well they are not.

My suggestions when this happens often are an invitation to live and experience what is asked to see if there is comprehension and understanding. If not the time is not right. So what of counselling. As a fellow said to me tonight, you cannot do things the wrong way round. That is you either know and understand feelings and reactions, and learn them through doing. If you can emulate them or think them then indeed you are faking it.

Fake it to make it?

The utter bollocks which can break people and leave them high and dry, or in our fellowship at the wrong end of a relapse. Faking encourages and makes false premise acceptable. And that in my opinion is a disaster in process.

Faking means we don’t show, don’t enable others to see where we are and unable to help us as we pretend. How do I know this? I lived the lie for too long and pretended to be ok and actually if I had had a mentor, or some facility to let my feelings guide me, rather than the cognitive madman I became. Life might have turned out different, but and the but is I am happy where my life has led me and to an understanding which can only come from barking up the wrong trees for years, a useful idiom for me just now.

Well enough for today..

Counsellors and likeminded people who share their faith in process, well good luck with it, it can work just so far and then we need face reality, or end up pretending the rest of our days.

I may change my outlook tomorrow, as my feelings and emotions and love, control and inclusion reform overnight. Cor blimey what a state we all are.

And in good conscience, good we recognise it a day at a time.

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AA Official Site Daily Reflections

AA Official Online Site: Big Book And Twelve And Twelve

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"Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. Chapter 6, Into Action, Big Book From: Page 72 Thru: Page 75, the bottom of the page. 12 And 12 Step 5."

May ~ All About Step Five:" Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs"

Step 5 "Admit And Accept" Reading Video Link:

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May ~ Video Reading Chapter Six Into Action Link:

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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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