May 3 2012 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 5 Admit And Accept | Alcoholics Anonymous Today's AA daily reflection: "clean house…" Step four and five housekeeping and housecleaning of the mind. I think part of the quote includes trust God. There is always an inner voice inside, the inner voice is emotional and spiritual, illuminating what we feel in the moment of now… Clean house!
Every morning my inner voice is there, sometimes very loud because I may be waking up joyful, sad, fearful… Waking up can be a very noisy business if we have concerns, worries and excitement about something which may be absolutely fabulous. A full day, a slow day and sometimes a day simply to be lived in the moment of now. Whatever is going on, a few moments to remember step one, powerless over people, places and things, step two I can be restored to sanity contingent on asking the help and step three, let go and listen to good conscience, see the big picture and the serenity prayer, can do, cannot do and wisdom to know the difference…
Today I'm sitting and writing, surrounded by what seems like a mountain of paper, it has been building up because I probably did not want to face the reality, medical stuff and appointments, a wisdom tooth extraction still needed, household bills… And more, one of which is about voting for London mayor and district councillors. All manageable now I've opened everything up, better to clean house every single day or the worry will way me down…
I need to admit and accept on a daily basis that without the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and simple daily routines which work now I am able to live and practice the twelve steps, life would return to chaos and unmanageability. More than anyone, every individual in recovery knows "it works if you work it" and yet I can be so complacent sometimes, I nearly missed my dental appointment by not opening the post…
Simple routines to keep our house in order: from me it starts with step one, step two, step three and the serenity prayer. Spot check inventory so important for a type I diabetic with clinical depression and of course recovery makes this possible. Clinical depression, a mistake in medication a few weeks back, only now being restored to a place of balance where feelings fit realistically with what is going on today. Medication, balances my body chemistry and brain chemistry to feel life as it is today, emotional and spiritual where my feelings fit reality and I can take a reality check with the help and assistance of people who know me today… Knowing the problem is good, and always the solution is to live just for today…
In recovery I can tell the difference between "shit and shinola…" Spotcheck inventory, clean house and gratitude…
DonInLondon 2005-2011
Step 5 encourages humility; a clear understanding of who and what we really are and is another step toward becoming who we might be. Humility is part of our foundation for self-esteem and helps us to abandon the barriers we build to hide our true selves from other people.
Denial helps us manage the impossible truth we need face most often. Impossible truth, when we suffer loss.. And then in time, as anger subsides, sadness and depression lessens, we come to accept life on life's terms. Back and forth until in "the here and now" we can cope, be open and honest to truth as we can see it.. Expression is key to those we learn to trust and forgive...
Step by step, mind body and breath in the moment.. knowing what we can do, accepting what we cannot. Our journey amongst people, places and with hope, our needs met. Sharing a moment in fellowship, love and inclusion makes possible what we thought impossible, sober today...
May 2 - 3 2007
Serenity Is Just For Today DonInLondon 'Day In The Life'
Here in the UK it’s been a beautiful spring day, sunshine and blue skies, windy breezes and my mood is calm. So how so? With a full day or feels so. Just getting on and doing the next right thing. I have to keep the outwards focus and the inner being at one.
Something spiritual this way comes..
Indeed it is as ephemeral as can be, as the seconds tick tock. So moods and feelings are evoked as we make our way… Spiritual perfection is seeing our world exactly as it is today. The highs and the lows, feelings without filters or illusions...
The biggest trick we ever make for ourselves is perfection, that we may be one way or another. The truth is to be, be just as we are. And experience and feel as we participate in our living. Acceptance is a part of what we find as we let go, and go.. Go with the flow.
Not much more tonight as this head is quite weary. I need not be late to bed again, and hope the railways are quiet tonight. Time and patience will inform.
May 3 2007
How to Live - DonInLondon ‘Day in the Life’
Running seems to be the pace we set for living. A well run team, a well-run department, a well-run office, a well-run service. You name it we are running.
A Well Run Life?
How hard is living these days? When we are running full tilt in some direction, the rush we get as adrenalin pumps, the pleasure we get from having some stress in our lives is to the good. Its only when we run too hard and too long that distress starts, that some maintenance needs to be made.
Sleep
We sleep and dream, not only do we, but it’s obvious other animals on this planet do the same. Other animals sleep and make their existence as Nature and Providence enables. And so do we, to an extent. Yes we do. And we also are probably the most rapacious of this planets inhabitant. We consume life as if it were slipping away; we consume each other through love and sometimes less worthy feelings. For all our sophistication as we see it, we are animals all the same. Only maybe we don’t value other animals as much as we value ourselves.
Human Values
Seems to me there is still natural law happening as we feed off each other and feed on ourselves as we have chosen to utilise each other as resources and commodities. Some of our utility as seen in our economy is as a simple resource, a commodity, a number and altogether expendable as economy requires. We mirror the natural world, and it’s no wonder our values come from nature and nature can be harsh.
Equality
An issue often raised as we live. That all men and women are equal? A fiction as we realise the intent is lost in practical terms and emotional make up we develop as we learn life…
Running
A lot of us have been on the run for years. Running to stand still and to keep ourselves going... If we were able we would stand still long enough to see the beauty of this world.
Caught in dreams of the past and future and a heavy work load we find we need keep going how we slow down long enough to glimpse this world as it is.
We put off and delay our slow down to a time and a place, the end of day, the end of work, the end of a career, the start of retirement, the start of life, the start of realising we have lived and not seen much of this life.
I have been indulging and looking at other news and media around the world. China: so big and robust. Over a billion people living and having a life, and we in the West know little or nothing about this thriving country. We are learning and will learn more as sport and the Olympics will be held in China.
And what do they know of us. Most likely they like us have no time to know, to be enriched to understand.
Not knowing, and missing so much richness in our own back yard and across the world. So much more where mankind ignores the poverty, ignores the trouble and forgets that as we endure, many perish without ever having a chance to feel this world and what it may offer. We need count and know our gratitude each day as we run from here to there, always running we do miss so much around us and about us.
The present
So often it’s what we see and is recorded by the few, that we find our true size. A mere speck in the universe, and yet so rich an experience for a sentient life... If ever we feel we are so large and important, we need only turn and relish the diversity of what is around us. Better to live without prejudice, maybe adjust our outlook and find the patience to be enriched.
We are better able to understand our life and living as we conserve rather than spend a life consuming. We miss so much in the rush of life. Maybe we need slow down some of the time to appreciate the view…
“Mind, body and breath,” experienced in the moment of now. A billion Chinese most likely know this as a part of their living, and we are just learning how to slow down and see our surroundings. Life is always tough in China…
Progress and not perfection I am reminded and this is the truth of our journey, no wonder some believe we need come back to this world in another incarnation, for there is so much to learn. As we confuse religious and spiritual and the truth. As we hold to faith and less to science there is confusion. So many filters, prejudices and so many denials. We may feel we have come a long way as a species, we have hardly scratched the surface of all we can be now, let alone any other faith and beliefs we may hold to this life and beyond.
A Universe so vast it is beyond our comprehension. And no clue to the overall purpose? Our true purpose is now, our connection is to now, and best we learn to live and walk with care as we tread and change our environment, it will never be the same from one moment to the next.
Run and live well, walk with care and dream the dreams we are gifted to experience or we may find life has been one long nightmare and nothing is remembered as we rest for eternity in wonder or nothingness.
May 3 2007
Always Someone There to Remind Me - DonInLondon ‘Day in the Life’
Yes it seems so. There is always someone there to remind me. I walk outside and my neighbour is there, he goes to meetings on Thursdays, meetings of AA that is. And I get to the end of the road and there is another fellow of AA meandering down from Earls Court Tube. And another I pass on the way to the Kings Road.
And when I go into a shop I know, I see another fellow there. And to the cinema and on the way out I see another fellow of AA. I come back to where I live and look in the mirror, and it’s me, in the fellowship!
So there is always someone there to remind me. Me!
And this is all part of the fellowship programme. The more we get the practice of being sober the better life becomes, or at least manageable. Three elements for me, recovery, type 1 diabetes and clinical depression. The fellowship helps me gently with the other two, and stops me wanting to fix what only time enables.
These last two weeks are level and quite extraordinary being just myself, on my own and relatively able to be in the day.
Books and things of the fellowship, companions in my outlook, we have them for reminders when we may not find meetings. Or in the middle of the night as the train engineering keeps me awake when insomnia doesn’t.. Smiles here the sleep regime is as bad and somehow its ok today. We deal with what we have.
Its not being brave, its just having faith and courage to keep the show on the road. And with so many there to remind me, well as if I could forget?
Experience has taught me, I can make a slip up any time and need get on and let people know if I were to do just that. It would not be something I would do lightly, for a slip in my life could be more than catastrophic given everything else.
So the daily reminders are good for me. And I have not one shred of resentment right now for how my life is. I may comment on the world and still with all its imperfections, me being one of them, I can find beauty and love in this world. From a bunch of somewhat eccentric types who keep sober one day at a time.
Being single presently has made life easier for me in recovery and I mention this in the video. I do wonder if life had been different, what would the outcome be. And then the wondering stops for indeed there are so many in the fellowship who have partners, inside the fellowship, or just "normal" people as partners who are happy with sober living people. My word, the worries of singularity over the years, I know much of that singleness was not to repeat my experiences of family I realise these days.
And maybe early on my thirsty nature for everything, my wants always high, my needs always met, until drink overwhelmed depression and gave me oblivion and then a fugue state of desolation where life was never worth living. That place where nothing can fill the emptiness and compulsion for self-destruct.
So tonight as I wrote in my personal journal, I have gratitude for everything and especially for having learned how to live life, simply one day at a time…
And with a truth I cannot ever let go, that we are as forgetful of anything and everything. Listening to a man of near thirty years sober made me realise I would wish anyone well wherever they are in the path of sobriety. I get strength from newcomers, who remind me daily what hell is like, and reminders from old timers who know with every fibre of their being, we are all the same size in AA, equal to a challenge for one day with our support and fellowship simply to do the next right thing as we make our way.
-/-
AA Daily Reflection: CLEANING HOUSE... Somehow, being alone with God doesn’t seem as embarrassing as facing up to another person. Until we actually sit down and talk aloud about what we have so long hidden, our willingness to clean house is still largely theoretical. TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p 60
It wasn’t unusual for me to talk to God, and myself, about my character defects. But to sit down, face to face, and openly discuss these intimacies with another person was much more difficult. I recognized in the experience, however, a similar relief to the one I had experienced when I first admitted I was an alcoholic. I began to appreciate the spiritual significance of the program and that this Step was just an introduction to what was yet to come in the remaining seven Steps.
-/-
AA Official Site Daily Reflections ~ AA Official Big Book And Twelve And Twelve Online
-/-
"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:
-/-
May ~ Video Reading Chapter Six Into Action Link:
-/-
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.
-/-
Spiritual principles ~ Forgiveness Acceptance Surrender Faith Open-mindedness Honesty Willingness Moral-inventory Amends Humility Persistence Spiritual-growth Service
-/-
Every morning my inner voice is there, sometimes very loud because I may be waking up joyful, sad, fearful… Waking up can be a very noisy business if we have concerns, worries and excitement about something which may be absolutely fabulous. A full day, a slow day and sometimes a day simply to be lived in the moment of now. Whatever is going on, a few moments to remember step one, powerless over people, places and things, step two I can be restored to sanity contingent on asking the help and step three, let go and listen to good conscience, see the big picture and the serenity prayer, can do, cannot do and wisdom to know the difference…
Today I'm sitting and writing, surrounded by what seems like a mountain of paper, it has been building up because I probably did not want to face the reality, medical stuff and appointments, a wisdom tooth extraction still needed, household bills… And more, one of which is about voting for London mayor and district councillors. All manageable now I've opened everything up, better to clean house every single day or the worry will way me down…
I need to admit and accept on a daily basis that without the Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous and simple daily routines which work now I am able to live and practice the twelve steps, life would return to chaos and unmanageability. More than anyone, every individual in recovery knows "it works if you work it" and yet I can be so complacent sometimes, I nearly missed my dental appointment by not opening the post…
Simple routines to keep our house in order: from me it starts with step one, step two, step three and the serenity prayer. Spot check inventory so important for a type I diabetic with clinical depression and of course recovery makes this possible. Clinical depression, a mistake in medication a few weeks back, only now being restored to a place of balance where feelings fit realistically with what is going on today. Medication, balances my body chemistry and brain chemistry to feel life as it is today, emotional and spiritual where my feelings fit reality and I can take a reality check with the help and assistance of people who know me today… Knowing the problem is good, and always the solution is to live just for today…
In recovery I can tell the difference between "shit and shinola…" Spotcheck inventory, clean house and gratitude…
DonInLondon 2005-2011
Step 5 encourages humility; a clear understanding of who and what we really are and is another step toward becoming who we might be. Humility is part of our foundation for self-esteem and helps us to abandon the barriers we build to hide our true selves from other people.
Denial helps us manage the impossible truth we need face most often. Impossible truth, when we suffer loss.. And then in time, as anger subsides, sadness and depression lessens, we come to accept life on life's terms. Back and forth until in "the here and now" we can cope, be open and honest to truth as we can see it.. Expression is key to those we learn to trust and forgive...
Step by step, mind body and breath in the moment.. knowing what we can do, accepting what we cannot. Our journey amongst people, places and with hope, our needs met. Sharing a moment in fellowship, love and inclusion makes possible what we thought impossible, sober today...
May 2 - 3 2007
Serenity Is Just For Today DonInLondon 'Day In The Life'
Here in the UK it’s been a beautiful spring day, sunshine and blue skies, windy breezes and my mood is calm. So how so? With a full day or feels so. Just getting on and doing the next right thing. I have to keep the outwards focus and the inner being at one.
Something spiritual this way comes..
Indeed it is as ephemeral as can be, as the seconds tick tock. So moods and feelings are evoked as we make our way… Spiritual perfection is seeing our world exactly as it is today. The highs and the lows, feelings without filters or illusions...
The biggest trick we ever make for ourselves is perfection, that we may be one way or another. The truth is to be, be just as we are. And experience and feel as we participate in our living. Acceptance is a part of what we find as we let go, and go.. Go with the flow.
Not much more tonight as this head is quite weary. I need not be late to bed again, and hope the railways are quiet tonight. Time and patience will inform.
May 3 2007
How to Live - DonInLondon ‘Day in the Life’
Running seems to be the pace we set for living. A well run team, a well-run department, a well-run office, a well-run service. You name it we are running.
A Well Run Life?
How hard is living these days? When we are running full tilt in some direction, the rush we get as adrenalin pumps, the pleasure we get from having some stress in our lives is to the good. Its only when we run too hard and too long that distress starts, that some maintenance needs to be made.
Sleep
We sleep and dream, not only do we, but it’s obvious other animals on this planet do the same. Other animals sleep and make their existence as Nature and Providence enables. And so do we, to an extent. Yes we do. And we also are probably the most rapacious of this planets inhabitant. We consume life as if it were slipping away; we consume each other through love and sometimes less worthy feelings. For all our sophistication as we see it, we are animals all the same. Only maybe we don’t value other animals as much as we value ourselves.
Human Values
Seems to me there is still natural law happening as we feed off each other and feed on ourselves as we have chosen to utilise each other as resources and commodities. Some of our utility as seen in our economy is as a simple resource, a commodity, a number and altogether expendable as economy requires. We mirror the natural world, and it’s no wonder our values come from nature and nature can be harsh.
Equality
An issue often raised as we live. That all men and women are equal? A fiction as we realise the intent is lost in practical terms and emotional make up we develop as we learn life…
Running
A lot of us have been on the run for years. Running to stand still and to keep ourselves going... If we were able we would stand still long enough to see the beauty of this world.
Caught in dreams of the past and future and a heavy work load we find we need keep going how we slow down long enough to glimpse this world as it is.
We put off and delay our slow down to a time and a place, the end of day, the end of work, the end of a career, the start of retirement, the start of life, the start of realising we have lived and not seen much of this life.
I have been indulging and looking at other news and media around the world. China: so big and robust. Over a billion people living and having a life, and we in the West know little or nothing about this thriving country. We are learning and will learn more as sport and the Olympics will be held in China.
And what do they know of us. Most likely they like us have no time to know, to be enriched to understand.
Not knowing, and missing so much richness in our own back yard and across the world. So much more where mankind ignores the poverty, ignores the trouble and forgets that as we endure, many perish without ever having a chance to feel this world and what it may offer. We need count and know our gratitude each day as we run from here to there, always running we do miss so much around us and about us.
The present
So often it’s what we see and is recorded by the few, that we find our true size. A mere speck in the universe, and yet so rich an experience for a sentient life... If ever we feel we are so large and important, we need only turn and relish the diversity of what is around us. Better to live without prejudice, maybe adjust our outlook and find the patience to be enriched.
We are better able to understand our life and living as we conserve rather than spend a life consuming. We miss so much in the rush of life. Maybe we need slow down some of the time to appreciate the view…
“Mind, body and breath,” experienced in the moment of now. A billion Chinese most likely know this as a part of their living, and we are just learning how to slow down and see our surroundings. Life is always tough in China…
Progress and not perfection I am reminded and this is the truth of our journey, no wonder some believe we need come back to this world in another incarnation, for there is so much to learn. As we confuse religious and spiritual and the truth. As we hold to faith and less to science there is confusion. So many filters, prejudices and so many denials. We may feel we have come a long way as a species, we have hardly scratched the surface of all we can be now, let alone any other faith and beliefs we may hold to this life and beyond.
A Universe so vast it is beyond our comprehension. And no clue to the overall purpose? Our true purpose is now, our connection is to now, and best we learn to live and walk with care as we tread and change our environment, it will never be the same from one moment to the next.
Run and live well, walk with care and dream the dreams we are gifted to experience or we may find life has been one long nightmare and nothing is remembered as we rest for eternity in wonder or nothingness.
May 3 2007
Always Someone There to Remind Me - DonInLondon ‘Day in the Life’
Yes it seems so. There is always someone there to remind me. I walk outside and my neighbour is there, he goes to meetings on Thursdays, meetings of AA that is. And I get to the end of the road and there is another fellow of AA meandering down from Earls Court Tube. And another I pass on the way to the Kings Road.
And when I go into a shop I know, I see another fellow there. And to the cinema and on the way out I see another fellow of AA. I come back to where I live and look in the mirror, and it’s me, in the fellowship!
So there is always someone there to remind me. Me!
And this is all part of the fellowship programme. The more we get the practice of being sober the better life becomes, or at least manageable. Three elements for me, recovery, type 1 diabetes and clinical depression. The fellowship helps me gently with the other two, and stops me wanting to fix what only time enables.
These last two weeks are level and quite extraordinary being just myself, on my own and relatively able to be in the day.
Books and things of the fellowship, companions in my outlook, we have them for reminders when we may not find meetings. Or in the middle of the night as the train engineering keeps me awake when insomnia doesn’t.. Smiles here the sleep regime is as bad and somehow its ok today. We deal with what we have.
Its not being brave, its just having faith and courage to keep the show on the road. And with so many there to remind me, well as if I could forget?
Experience has taught me, I can make a slip up any time and need get on and let people know if I were to do just that. It would not be something I would do lightly, for a slip in my life could be more than catastrophic given everything else.
So the daily reminders are good for me. And I have not one shred of resentment right now for how my life is. I may comment on the world and still with all its imperfections, me being one of them, I can find beauty and love in this world. From a bunch of somewhat eccentric types who keep sober one day at a time.
Being single presently has made life easier for me in recovery and I mention this in the video. I do wonder if life had been different, what would the outcome be. And then the wondering stops for indeed there are so many in the fellowship who have partners, inside the fellowship, or just "normal" people as partners who are happy with sober living people. My word, the worries of singularity over the years, I know much of that singleness was not to repeat my experiences of family I realise these days.
And maybe early on my thirsty nature for everything, my wants always high, my needs always met, until drink overwhelmed depression and gave me oblivion and then a fugue state of desolation where life was never worth living. That place where nothing can fill the emptiness and compulsion for self-destruct.
So tonight as I wrote in my personal journal, I have gratitude for everything and especially for having learned how to live life, simply one day at a time…
And with a truth I cannot ever let go, that we are as forgetful of anything and everything. Listening to a man of near thirty years sober made me realise I would wish anyone well wherever they are in the path of sobriety. I get strength from newcomers, who remind me daily what hell is like, and reminders from old timers who know with every fibre of their being, we are all the same size in AA, equal to a challenge for one day with our support and fellowship simply to do the next right thing as we make our way.
-/-
AA Daily Reflection: CLEANING HOUSE... Somehow, being alone with God doesn’t seem as embarrassing as facing up to another person. Until we actually sit down and talk aloud about what we have so long hidden, our willingness to clean house is still largely theoretical. TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p 60
It wasn’t unusual for me to talk to God, and myself, about my character defects. But to sit down, face to face, and openly discuss these intimacies with another person was much more difficult. I recognized in the experience, however, a similar relief to the one I had experienced when I first admitted I was an alcoholic. I began to appreciate the spiritual significance of the program and that this Step was just an introduction to what was yet to come in the remaining seven Steps.
-/-
AA Official Site Daily Reflections ~ AA Official Big Book And Twelve And Twelve Online
-/-
"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:
-/-
May ~ Video Reading Chapter Six Into Action Link:
-/-
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.
-/-
Spiritual principles ~ Forgiveness Acceptance Surrender Faith Open-mindedness Honesty Willingness Moral-inventory Amends Humility Persistence Spiritual-growth Service
-/-
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