June 23 2012 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 6 Spiritual Willingness Alcoholics Anonymous Today's AA daily reflection: "trusting others…" Trust others to share their experience strength and hope as they see it. It is a view of life, their life and what has happened. I know in my early days I told tall stories based in truth, and trust me there were many embellishments to the truth!
Fellowship is all about how to be open honest and willing to face life on life's terms. I began to see the truth of my situation on a daily basis, how it was improving some of the time and going downhill quite a lot of the time. I had to get honest with myself and seek truth, trust in myself came as I shared experience, strength and hope with those around me. I do trust others to share what they can and then trust is an understanding of my own fallibility and the fallibility of everyone. After all as we are all learning life together, some of us need to take our time to straighten out what our feelings are and why are thinking is somewhat deluded… This happens every day to an extent and just for today I hope and trust I see reality more than a fantasy…
I do trust people, full of information based on life experience, some of their experience, strength and hope will help me. And at the same time I do not follow blindly. A phrase comes to mind, "trust God and clean house," and as Gandhi said, "God is truth and God is love." Usually we do get the truth, and as we progress day by day, we learn to love unconditionally who we are, sometimes living reality, sometimes fantasies and sometimes delusions just for today…
When I can forgive myself when I screw up, I need to forgive everyone who screws up daily just like me. I trust the human condition, sometimes temperate and often intemperate when pushed. And I have the optimism to know as life progresses I can trust and the truth coming out and that if we are able to nurture ourselves and other people, love does conquer all… And when it doesn't fuck them, metaphorically and just a little bit and then forgive them as quickly as we can…
What a gift, when we are gifted with recovery and find we can keep on learning, making mistakes, not really understanding what we doing and still have the courage to change, we trust in the principles and experiences as life evolves. The principles, the twelve steps, open the gateway to a new way of living, freedom to evolve, freedom to understand the choices we have, what we can and cannot do and the wisdom to know the difference today…
AA Daily Reflections ~ "TRUSTING OTHERS... But does trust require that we be blind to other people’s motives or, indeed, to our own? Not at all; this would be folly. Most certainly, we should assess the capacity for harm as well as the capability for good in every person that we would trust. Such a private inventory can reveal the degree of confidence we should extend in any given situation. AS BILL SEES IT, p. 144
I am not a victim of others, but rather a victim of my expectations, choices and dishonesty. When I expect others to be what I want them to be and not who they are, when they fail to meet my expectations, I am hurt. When my choices are based on self-centeredness, I find I am lonely and distrustful. I gain confidence in myself, however, when I practice honesty in all my affairs. When I search my motives and am honest and trusting, I am aware of the capacity for harm in situations and can avoid those that are harmful."
DonInLondon 2005-2011
If we expect others to be as we wish, rather than the way they are, our expectations will never be met. Assuming people have the same outlook and values will cause resentments. Better to ask rather than expect, find common ground and avoid resentments under construction…
If only, wishful thinking... Our expectations of how others will treat us mean we will feel let down often. Who indeed can maintain our standards? As we judge others, they too judge what we do. We cannot control outcomes; we can improve them through our choices and actions, for today...
Trusting others... letting go our fear of vulnerability opens the door to being open honest and willing to share our truth. We need to love, be loved, and feel useful, included. As we trust to truth, others may entrust their truth with us. Not always, sometimes never, when trust happens, it works...
We can have a complete conversation in our own heads which leads to good outcomes and conclusions. When we share our needs and desires, others can be confused, they are playing catch up with our ideas, and often what seems obvious to us is impossible to fathom by those around us.
Romance, where we have deep feelings for another, and the person we desire and hope to love does not feel the same way. This happens often, and we forget we need to grow our relationships. Many of us fall head over heels in love, and are surprised and shocked when the person we desire has no idea. And the same applies as another may love us and see a partnership develop, we have no clue…
Finance, where we have a great idea, or think we might be right for a particular job. As we forget, our great idea may come to nothing if others cannot follow. And for every job we think we can do, we are not the only ones. In all aspects of finance and employment, transparency is needed to find the right job at the right time with the right people. And sometimes we have no choice right now, but to accept what we can do and what we cannot do, we need build a future starting today…
June 23 2007
Addicted To Love - DonInLondon ‘Day In The Life’
Today has been a different kind of day for me. I had a very difficult night.
As you may realise I write mostly in the evening and into the early hours of the morning. And in the morning I read the headline global news and choose what to include on my web links to different media organisations.
It’s my way I guess for now, it’s the time, the evening, when all my feelings are settling and usually after a meeting of AA, Alcoholics Anonymous. The good in the meetings is helping make sense of life and the relating on how I am doing daily is no chore for me, it’s just a way of expressing my insides out.
I was late to bed and after only a few minutes could feel the cramping in my calves. It got worse. So all night it went on. Walking off cramps are the best way I feel. And yet walking was very difficult and the pain to stand or move just made the situation worse.
So what’s all that got to do with love?
Nothing of course it’s just me and my conditions, so back to addiction and love.
Love
We seem best when we have love in our lives, often we don’t day it or realise it’s about. It’s something we often take for granted and then we wonder where it went. Some of us learned love differently, or many of us do. Loving behaviour and feeling is a unique gift we develop and share as we live and experience life.
Love
We know when we are bereft, when we feel loss and the most obvious love is for mother, father, siblings and as we grow, its kinship and friends. We love according to custom practice and what we feel in our own minds about people we meet.
And of course lovers.
Lovers
Partners we have as we grow in adulthood. The depth of sharing and intimacy. The understanding, unconditional and love just rocks us and hold us in sway with another. We find peace in their arms, we share every element we are, and intimacy brings us to our knees when love leaves.
Lost Love
A friend of mine is coming back to the fellowship after a long and protracted period of drinking. I am hoping they make it back. And the dismal and grief stricken situation humbles us as we realise we have done this ourselves. Fallen in love with the wrong partner who seemed to be the perfect partner..
Recollections for me
I have been in love, lost love, obsessed about more love, felt completely besotted by the right girl in the right place. Girls in my outlook are about the same as me around 50, so whilst they are still girls to me, to you they may look like your mother or grand ma. Take it from an older man’s perspective beauty is beauty and is an inside job no matter the age. And when we love, its everything we understand and see, empathy and quite frankly it’s the whole package. Personality and character for both men and women I guess. And what we see on the outside often reflects what is happening in a person’s mind. At least some of the time
Anyway about Grief and Loss of Lovers
Its life these days and we don’t always understand why, and then we break up and try fix things. And then we go into deeper glooms. And then we get what we want and it’s not what we want.
Maybe it was not love - just obsession and control and power?
Love Control and Inclusion
We look at love differently depending on how we live and work life. Sometimes we feel in control, sometimes we need inclusion and sometimes love of any kind would be better than being alone, excluded and out of control.
My friend heartbroken for the right reasons now? Absolutely and feels inconsolable and so have I been so. The truth is we find our partners where we were somewhere along the path. Often like us, needy, and yearning, a gap inside, and some space for a relationship.
Fixing and Loving
We yearn it believe it and behave like we have found the love of our life..
Often we fix a hole in our soul. As we have a space and gap so big it’s bigger than love, its obsession and control and inclusion gone mad for want the want of love..
Drink
Cures nothing makes things worse, makes us suicidal, mad as hell and resolves nothing.
Alcoholic drinking, kills our spirit, our ability to love, masquerades control and self-will as masterful and righteous, and often ends in violent acts on ourselves or potentially others. As we might kill ourselves with grief and self-loathing, we can spin and hate the object of our affection, and be ruined by hate and self-hate and violent dreams, which may surface as “crimes of passion.” There is no such thing as a crime of passion, simply the controller who squeezes life out of a relationship and sometimes physically is mad and made worse with drink. Insanity indeed and there to witness in society too often.
Self-harm
We alcoholics end up self-harming as we take the blame often, and sometimes and inevitably we are the cause of this woe. We never learned how to love, even ourselves.
Tonight it’s good to reflect differently
That this world can turn us one way or another, and through civilisation and fellowship for me, I am better able to love. I can see where I drew the line in physical aspects of hurting, except for my own self harm. Yet the horrid behaviour of control and manipulation I find done to me, and then I did back makes me shudder and reflect I am glad to understand love, by what it is not these days
Love - What is It?
A day at a time I’ll try let you know…
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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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