June 15 2012 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 6 Spiritual Willingness Alcoholics Anonymous Today's AA daily reflection: "your higher power as you understand it, most emphatically it must be your understanding." We do need assistance to find a way to be sober. Shivering denizens of that mad realm, the many voices in recovery sharing their experience, strength and hope. The collective wisdom in fellowship offering a new path for newcomers and energising everyone just for today…
Gandhi said, "God is truth and God is love." And that is good enough for me. The collective wisdom and its application to living one day at a time, and it is often said that God works through people. We have a conscience connected to how we behave in the moment of now and if we are continually improving our outlook by listening to our inner voice and the voices of others then God is working always in the moment of now. Constantly changing, each moment different to the next… And if we falter back into the insanity of doing the same old same old, we can be restored as we ask for help and any day we can begin again…
Everything is evolving and we humans can keep on growing and understanding how to live life. Everybody experiences reality similarly or we would have no connection. At the same time our experience is unique to us as individuals. And through listening and putting into practice what is good for me, I keep on learning the truth of now. Truth, love and wisdom evolves and we are continually learning. The truth of life and living changes and moves along with every moment sometimes good and sometimes, bad and it can be ugly in the moment of now …
Whatever you choose your higher power to be, and you can access and ask for help then I do believe you and I can be sober today. I pray and meditate to understand the truth of now and this may take one or many moments. And when I cannot make sense of my situation I do ask the help from powers greater than me, people with wisdom, in a meeting, on the telephone… And medical professionals, and any professional, and very often " the man on the Clapham omnibus helps" with the knowledge to set me free to make good choices today…
After eights meeting last night, bloody wonderful and seeing so many people I know sharing from the heart. How was I feeling? Included and part of something far bigger than me. Why did I feel this way? Because when people share their most intimate truth of how recovery is working I can completely relate when I am listening and feel the deep of their experience strength and hope. What did I do? I shared the grief of loss over the years and what it is to cherish the good memories and to cherish the loving connections I have made in recovery. A room full of people laughing in adversity, sharing pain which is understood and being selfless by sharing their truth in the moment. A higher power in action, many voices energising newcomers and old-timers alike…
AA Daily Reflections ~ "MAKING A.A. YOUR HIGHER POWER..."You can make A.A. itself your ‘higher power.’ Here’s a very large group of people who have solved their alcohol problem. . . . many members . . . have crossed the threshold just this way. . . . their faith broadened and deepened. . . . transformed, they came to believe in a Higher Power. . . ” TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, pp. 27-28
No one was greater than I, at least in my eyes, when I was drinking. Nevertheless, I couldn’t smile at myself in the mirror, so I came to A.A. where, with others, I heard talk of a Higher Power. I couldn’t accept the concept of a Higher Power because I believed God was cruel and unloving. In desperation I chose a table, a tree, then my A.A. group, as my Higher Power. Time passed, my life improved, and I began to wonder about this Higher Power. Gradually, with patience, humility and a lot of questions, I came to believe in God. Now my relationship with my Higher Power gives me the strength to live a happy, sober life."
DonInLondon 2005-2011
Higher power and feeling the truth... Truth is beyond my opinion, my personal beliefs and often my thinking which justifies my outlook. Truth and good conscience over ride my desires to be right. Living well, is feeling comfortable with the truth of now, as life is, not what I thought it ought to be...
Making AA our Higher Power? As a beginning in finding out how to be me, I became a fellow in AA. Promised a path to sobriety, every fibre of my intellect looked for flaws and weaknesses in AA, a "get out." I found the flaws and weaknesses, they were in me, I stayed in AA and sober one day at a time...
Truth is timeless for me, my relationship with the Truth has been disagreeable on many levels because I did not like it. So my intellect offered me denial and power. And my feelings were always playing catch up with the truth, more denials which kept me blind to reality. Drink gave me illusions of power, then oblivion from the truth. Not only did I take the "edge off" with drink, drink took the "edge off" me. I prefer the cutting edge of reality and truth today, rather than being blunted and stunted by delusions which drink or drugs and fixing on behaviour which kept me in the luxurious miserable dark for decades...
June 15 2007
Let Go Again - DonInLondon ‘Day In the Life’
Seems right on track, the let go feelings we need. We need let go what hurts and continues to give us pain. Pretending seems to be some of it for me. Stopping the pretences we sometimes have about people we know, and we wish it were different. And it’s not. Sometimes it’s just right to let go, and sometimes it feels really awkward and unhappy. We let go and we must or we are sucked down again for another bout of painful and unhelpful connections. Let go we must or we suffer.
And we look on the bright side of life as much as we can, well I do. And yet even with the best will in the world, willing things to be different just has no legs. And we realise as sobriety motors along what we saw back then in early days is not for us. We grow and develop new outlooks and new connections as time enables.
Where we find people stuck going round and round over the same old stuff, we can wonder how many more times must it happen? And the answer is sometimes we need the circular and protracted musings simply till we run out of steam and let go eventually.
Tools
This extraordinary fellowship of ordinary humans just trying to do our best. And looking to find that road, where open honest and willing leads to better days. Sometimes we fabricate our friendships at our peril, as we delude and confuse ourselves we also confuse and delude those around us. We do it to look right and sound right.
We have huge examples in our own living to how things go well or founder on hard rocks of experience.
If we heed and let go we find we open up all manner of new possibilities and we need do this as we may. As we do eventually let go we find freedom is ours.
Freedom and Feelings
Even though we still feel connected in some way to people over the years, and we reckon we understand them, we most likely don’t. In our fellowship we realise we still wish for the best of life, and when it fails to materialise as we might wish we deploy all sorts of filters and denials of reality. This one day we have to make good as we may.
A Chance meeting tonight, and bound to happen. And for me and another we can see the change has occurred, from a friendship imagined to an acquaintance in truth. The product of life and its many twists and turns. Knowing another’s insides and mettle is no sure connection for the long term. We learn what we do as we develop and go our separate ways.
But
Well there is no but for me. As life shows, we find we do move along and the nature of friendships and fellowship offer much more as we grow in our esteem, faith and courage. And we honour our friends and acquaintance as we realise our times past and love them for those cherished ephemeral moments now gone.
Step six of our fellowship is all about doing less which harms us and others. When we are fearful, when we put a brave face on things and when we still hide behind ego’s drift, we are still only half human. The other half of human is all to do with other elements of human like faith and courage and confidence.
Two halves of the same coin?
We are and more for underneath what we show the world is our desire to be loved and be held and meaningful to ourselves and those we love. And the truth is as life is a pretty hard lottery, sometimes we do strike gold and find our soul mate. And sometimes we are left with an emptiness as we have misunderstood, or been misled. It matters not as we understand the outcome, and we understand how we made our way to these moments of realisation. What matters is we accept and let go all that we might imagine and see the reality of where we are today.
Hostages and Hurts
I have mentioned it a couple of times before, hurt people can hurt more people. We learn hurt and then it just goes on and on.
Broken
When we are broken and can find nothing to love about ourselves, we can crave as much as anything the warmth of another, and we can bargain and make ourselves believe almost anything when we are so alone and desolate.
Lonely
We need never be alone in our fellowship. We all are making progress as we may. We have some principles which help us if we do the time and listen and learn. And we do well to listen as hard as we can, for the wisdom is there if only we could accept and let go.
Learning to be
We need simply learn to be. It takes us all a lifetime, it’s just a journey from birth to expiration. And for me I feel lucky to be in a fellowship where we all stuff up from time to time, learn again how it all works if we just keep a steady grip on one thing, that is this one day. Let go the rest, where there is torment, don’t make it worse. Where there is happiness pursue and see where it leads.
Eyes open and ears listening, we will hear truth and falsehoods and wonder at the difference sometimes. Indeed even when we feel we have the truth we most likely have formed it in some denial which abrogates our part in it. I doubt we will ever learn truth which stands the test of time, just like all matters human we find one day and lose it the next. We need let go the harsh truth as we listen for our inner voice, which tells us best what we may do. Mine informed by wisdom learned the hard way always, and maybe just a little sooner and clearer these days.
We live, we learn as we may. Let go or feel our own dark come and hold us locked in circles of ego’s drift to melancholy, completes our tortured days, until we see the truth. Truth always sets us free…
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AA Official Online Site: Daily Reflections
AA Official Online Site: Big Book And Twelve And Twelve
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Step 6 "Spiritual Willingness" Reading Video Link:
wrongs. Chapter 6, Into Action, Big Book From: Page 72 Thru: Page 75, the bottom of the page. 12 And 12 Step 5."
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June ~ 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 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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