May 31 2012 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 5 Admit And Accept | Alcoholics Anonymous Today's AA daily reflection: "readiness to serve others…" Ready to help? Yes I am. Service is not being servile, and certainly not servile to one other person, especially not to a sponsor. A sponsor is a sounding board, someone who understands the twelve steps and does not try to impose their view of life on me. A sponsor encourages me to live life with freedom of choice in all respects today…
There will be over seven billion emotional and spiritual experiences today. Emotional, understanding and expressing our true feelings in the moment of now, or not as the case may be. I am truly grateful that I'm closer to knowing how I feel about life right now and how it affects my thinking and my actions today. Progress not perfect is true, most of the time my feelings fit with reality when life is tough and when life is difficult and when life is simply joyful…
Without the experience strength and hope shared every day, from wise people and from confused people how on earth would I get to know the difference in my own life? What is important me is to continue to understand life as it is and not how I would wish it, I can influence outcomes and negotiate activities, I can be realistic about what can happen and what cannot happen and keep on learning the wisdom to know the difference day by day…
I do read and listen to the experience, strength and hope of many people in our society and in the broader society. Then with the senses I have, including common sense and intuition I have the right and responsibility to be myself and follow what works and put into practice what I keep on learning. Sometimes I learn things just don't work out and sometimes everything works just fine, emotional and spiritual, feeling okay in the moment of now is pretty good just for today…
DonInLondon 2005-2011
Love Truth - Love People... Truth is timeless, stuck in old attitudes and behaviour, truth is elusive. As we open up and see people, places and life as it is now... As our earth revolves around a sun, the sun a star, a star in an infinite universe, truth and love changes everything in the moment...
"Honesty becomes part of our "tool kit" to free us from our past... Included, we learn to share and express, courage to be vulnerable. As a consequence we let go old fears of shame and guilt... Listening and not judging our fellows, open and willing we can change and find freedom today.
AA Daily Reflections ~ "READINESS TO SERVE OTHERS... our Society has concluded that it has but one high mission — to carry the A.A. message to those who don’t know there’s a way out. TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 151
The “Light” to freedom shines bright on my fellow alcoholics as each one of us challenges the other to grow. The “Steps” to self-improvement have small beginnings, but each Step builds the “ladder” out of the pit of despair to new hope. Honesty becomes my “tool” to unfurl the “chains” which bound me. A sponsor, who is a caring listener, can help me to truly hear the message guiding me to freedom. I ask God for the courage to live in such a way that the Fellowship may be a testimony to His favor. This mission frees me to share my gifts of wellness through a spirit of readiness to serve others."
May 31 2007
Gratitude - DonInLondon ‘Day In the Life’
We British people are not so good with gratitude. We can feel it and it makes us feel deeper emotions sometimes we have lost touch with as we get more mature in years. There have been tears from me today as things unfolded over the day. This morning reading some of my post from readers of the blog, and also news from family and support. Between both I am humbled and grateful. And this I do mean sincerely as the words are described. Love is what we need and love is what we fear losing most in this world.
It’s always been one of my hardest battles, to accept help or any sort of praise for anything really. And it still feels hard to cope with the feelings I now get as do all normal people as daily events unfold. Seeing the world as is and how it used to be makes me realise the journey to sobriety has been worth the torment and struggle. Most people don’t make it into sober life without grudges or some self-hate, unless they get help and understanding.
Help And Understanding
I decided to pop down the road a mile or two in the rain on the bicycle to see my Mum. I had shared some of the words sent and she wanted to understand more about what I was doing with the writing each day. It was good as always to see her and you know we are forgetful so often how much parents do, have done and how much wisdom they have to share if only we had been able to listen! Well these days I do.
I hope we came to an understanding about the nature of addiction and how impossible it is without the right support to get a person on anywhere near the road to recovery. And another point was manifest.
Blame Shame and or Guilt
For anyone close to an addict the sheer destructive force of addiction comes home as the person with and those helping get to realise the horror of this illness. An illness it is of the mind and body. No amount of help seemed ever to help and no amount of promises to give ever yielded one shred of success. These things we learn hardest first hand. And the torment is immense.
There is no blame, shame or guilt because even if we know we have gone too far, we cannot stop once the malady is manifest. The alcoholic is despairing as much as those who love them, and no amount of self will ever seems to make a dent in the return to drink in my case or drugs in others.
I hope today my Mother can accept she had never done the wrong thing, or dropped me on my head or had in any way caused this malady in me. Indeed both nature and nurture are confounded by this awful illness. It comes and never goes away. And is not the fault of anyone at all after the first sample has been taken.
Reservations about such a bold statement?
If we cannot blame ourselves how then do we apportion blame? The answer is there may be patterns of life which lead to fear and awful emotional states. The truth is some work themselves through and understand that life happens and there is no rhyme reason or blaming to be done. What needs to be done is healing and growing out of whatever hardships have happened.
Road Map
There is no road map to life and there is no set of instructions to keep a person on track.
Self Will
The torment in all this is often our self-will trying to get out of the problem and getting more stuck. The greater the self will the harder it seems to me to let go and let fellowship or indeed love find a way to help a person find time and effort to grow all over again.
As time has gone by
I might have wondered whether nature or nurture had caused me so hard a time. And all the truth I have points to depression being a big factor for years and years, and utilising alcohol as a means to damp down all feeling and become more and more reliant on coping strategies like more drink and working harder and harder till I cracked up.
The gap inside
That gaping wound of life not understood, filled with anything to take away the tremendous emptiness. Alcohol causes it to grow and any fix will do as we become more and more alienated from true feelings and the truth of life. Hard boiled and immune to our feelings, then alcohol rips us wide open and the depths just go deeper and deeper into black and dark times.
So Today
I hope my Mother does understand that she and my Father are not the agents of this malady in me. It was nature and my gap inside, my way of coping. And in this truth I feel acceptance for life is always on life’s terms.
Blame has no place in my recovery these days. And actually what I learn most is how I react or respond and have better tools and wisdom developed along the way.
Even in a simple meditation, accept those things I cannot change (anything, people places and things) and change the things I can, me and my attitudes.
Tonight
It’s been pretty full on today and tonight. As we listen in fellowship meetings to experience strength and hope, we hear our own story over and over. And of course we hear the ways to deal with, the wisdom of the years in others and the truth of living in the day.
Physical Emotional and Spiritual Progress
Comes in daily doses I find today and tonight. Hearing another’s story makes me feel just right and accepting of everything.
Gratitude?
Is a word we only get to truly understand through experience of living.
I am certainly in a good space tonight, and simply feel a good deal of help has been worth the effort. Just for today, and hopefully another day..
Cycling home tonight
I saw a friend, a psychiatrist walking along the path, I waved and smiled as did he. One day we may discuss all this over a cup of tea. I would like that. I wonder if he has my number. I guess not today and I have lost his sometime back. We never know where and when and happenstance and chance connections.. Life rolls on.
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
-/- Shakespeare
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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:
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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