July 18 2012 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 7 Courage To Change Alcoholics Anonymous Today's AA daily reflection: "grateful for what I have…" I'm grateful and have gratitude to be an emotional and spiritual being one day at a time. For the most part emotionally I understand my feelings in the moment and as they occur as life experiences happen. Grateful I can feel joy and sadness as life is and every emotion any human can feel today…
Video For Today:
Being able to share the truth of my situation, love and be loved back and keep on learning what life is all about has made serenity possible day by day. Understanding the people I meet, sharing the truth as I see it and then having my truth challenged modified by the outlook and opinions of those who matter in my life. It is not about being in control of my environment, people places and things, it is about coexisting and taking account of the big picture and where I fit in today…
Humility and gratitude are part of sobriety and life working on a daily basis. Learning what I can learn and thankfulness to be alive and to be included and have friendships and have a fellowship where people understand me. As I have grown to understand my own situation, I realise I'm not different from the rest of society and civilisation in terms of basic needs, what I can do and what I cannot do as life unfolds day by day…
Do I have a higher power? Most emphatically yes, starting with nature and providence: nature in terms of being alive with various capacities, and providence, that life can keep on working today where I live with the people I know. And that the people around me have great wisdom about many things that have eluded me over the decades. As Gandhi suggested as part of what God may be, "God is truth, God is love…" The greater the number the greater the wisdom I can turn to today and every day…
So why did I find it so difficult to get to a place where I could accept that I was in need of help daily to keep sober? The answer was in my upbringing and what society pounded into us, part of being a man was "stand on your own two feet" and "aim for the top" and "strive to be the best that I can possibly be" and show no weakness, ignorance or need for help from others… No wonder alcohol became my best friend, tormentor and almost death warrant…
AA Daily Reflections ~ "Grateful for what I have: During this process of learning more about humility, the most profound result of all was the change in our attitude toward God. [12&12]
Today my prayers consist mostly of saying thank you to my Higher Power for my sobriety and for the wonder of God’s abundance, but I need also to ask for help and the power to carry out His will for me. I no longer need God each minute to rescue me from the situations I get myself into by not doing His will. Now my gratitude seems to be directly linked to humility. As long as I have the humility to be grateful for what I have, God continues to provide for me."
DonInLondon 2005-2011
The good news is the people who disturb us and rent out space in our heads are evicted sooner in recovery. And it is true, no amount of any philosophy can shift the tenant until we have processed, from denial to acceptance and the eviction is complete. Progress can take time, and I am working on awkward tenants who seem to squat from time to time...
Usually the tenants move in when I am happy and then for some reason they hurt me, because I trust them to behave as I do. Open, honest and willing and hope they will treat me fairly as I do them. When they don’t, accept and forgive, and the consequence is they can’t come back for a while… or never!
July 18 2010 Grateful for what I have... Rock bottom, some time back, I woke up, no idea what time of day. A moment of clarity, life could get no worse. If this was as bad as it could get and still be alive. No idea what to do, I picked up the phone and asked for help. Now I can do this every day...
July 18 2010 Working Hard... Living life to the full? Driven to be the best I could be. I feared not being good enough, being found out as lacking. Evading guilt and shame and hiding in a bottle. Today I live life with faith and courage, imperfectly perfect, open, honest and willing to change today...
DonInLondon - July 18 2006 2007 One More Day ‘Day In the Life’
This Year Last Year
We all compare our outlooks when we recall things from the past. More often people recall matters to do with us and our outlooks, sometimes good and sometimes less good.
Part of my programme of living these days is seeking a path and doing what makes life worthwhile and work as best it can. Writing, photography helping people through all sorts of matters. I have found a niche and way of living which helps me and helps others. I have purpose today.
I realised more this year than any other the struggle for survival has been a pretty hard road and I needed a lot of help and support after a big dip in my fortunes and outlook. I was actually a lost cause in many ways and the truth was hard to face.
Forever learning and learning to live with what we have and how to find happiness takes us places when we have eyes to see and ways to live again. Having lost the plot completely for a number of years, its true I did. Reclamation has been a pretty hard road. There are no short cuts, no fixes, merely living as we can and keeping faith courage and confidence uppermost.
Hope
And of course the human condition is predisposed to hope. As we have clear minds, and make sense of our path, the choices are easier to make, less to do with compromise, more to do with real opportunity we can make work if we work at it.
Tonight I feel calm, with tomorrow and a funeral for my sister’s partner Christopher. I am relieved to be there and be there for others as others are there for me. A level and clear field of vision.
Kensington
I went to Kensington for an meeting. Just right, and the right people there, and all about making life work in this ever present, present moment of now.
People who know me, know the story of the last few days as I relate and express my feelings and sadness as they are with me, less suppressed and not about having a brave face. Acceptance and understanding is more clear to me now, and other times I always used alcohol to mediate my feelings and keep a mask as tight as it may be, not to show hurt and loss was a gift in times past, and not so now. Now its ok to be me and just be me.
These tough times are so important, and we learn the range of all emotions as we move along and keep with life experience without convenient filters. We are not often able to take in everything as life deals hard blows, at least with time we can let out enough as we may over and over till we find compassion and acceptance of what is. Then we find our moments to cherish living and life lived. Not easy and the torment of loss hurts as much for anyone. No fixes these days to living for me. Time and expression are key.
So looking back to words written this time last year, I realise over and over the forgiving we need do every day and every moment almost as life is full of good and less good blundering.
Communities
There was some nonsense posted on one of my video entries. I don’t mind challenge actually, and some remain there and others less delicate to my sensibilities get the heave ho. After all it is my space! I forgive myself for censoring some off my space, and they most likely will do the same for me.
My community here in London, well now, it’s pretty extensive and quite widespread. I have people and places to be and to see. Any day of the week morning noon and night, there is a big world out there, with people from every walk of life I connect with as need and time offer. Surprising I have found out more about life since the old life collapsed into chaos. And actually
Something else is true.
Acceptance does come with this simple understanding, that it is not what needs to be changed in the world, it was what needed to change in me and my attitudes.
So for today I recognise these simple fundamental principles in most of my living and endeavour. Faith courage and confidence are best, and leaving fear and so brave faces and ego to where they belong, more in the past than the present. We are all these conundrums these days, and better equipped as we live to choices as we go and not edicts we cannot ever keep or prisoners we become once again.
Finally
I was pleased to receive a note from a friend from some years back. Knowing they are well and happy is good news indeed and I felt good to know their situation. What a change! And all for the good.
And for tomorrow? Being there, being part of, with a head calm and feelings as they will be. Is just as may be. Just for the day…
~ good conscience ~
keep safe to ego's drift as shadows hold their sway
Somewhere inside us we all have a conscience, for every element in our world we have the opposite. When I talk of good conscience so much comes to mind. What comes to mind is how we find our good conscience. What makes us tick to the good of living and behaving, how we access the good in us over our less good our opposites. Words are words. With our good conscience we have:
backbone, fibre, grit, guts, pluck, spunk, determination, purposefulness, resoluteness, resolution; bravery, courage, fearlessness, intrepidity; endurance, stamina, tolerance; heart, mettle, spirit; audacity, boldness, brass, cheek, chutzpah (also chutzpa or hutzpah or hutzpa), effrontery, hardihood, nerve, temerity
And so much more going on. We convert where we can our good conscience into actions and behaviour, or we let it lie, lie inside us as we lie openly to the world where we have in good conscience forgotten all it means to get with our goodness and being. We have so many opportunities to touch this world in good conscience, and when we do we access most likely our internal intrinsic truths of living.
So many hardy attempts to good conscience in a world which brokers truth and integrity as we broker our parts in our living. We abrogate and procrastinate truth so often we might wonder where we left the path and found our false trails to salvations door. Salvation is merely a second away and good conscience is always talking deep inside, that whisper to goodness we feel deep. And the other side our devilish friend, our ego driven collaborator, connects as we find our fears in the deep of us.
We may wonder to our nature and this good and evil struggle portrayed so well and in full colour every day, as we weave our path and good conscience to truth.
Truth our elusive and effusive buddy ticking away at our insides and holding us good or not as fear makes prejudice swing this way and that. Our good buddies, the devils brew and Godly touch, their gentle and insistent persuasion keeps us safe from harm and self-harm. Although we drift to ego and ego’s drift fights all we might become, the path of truth and endurance is beggared by our miss-steps and turns off the track to blind and denied ends and means.
We broker and bargain away our living to truth as we move and keep faith with fear. Best not fear for fear itself will keep ego’s drift alive and well. And the foolish forget as brave hearts attest in their testimony, not made by them, but our history to good of conscience knocking and martyrs team, silent in their acknowledgment to time.
Our good books of conscience burn into our very presence in this world and hold us to our tests. And man manipulates to control the pestilence of their truth taught and squandered on good hearts that die in the name of manmade wars. And conscience bleeds as we do, and our gut splayed and sodden with half lies to conscience door, the house of good conscience is littered with our rhetoric and keeps fanned our awful ego’s drift.
Beware all we touch and hinder in our progress, for it is not the wheel we forge and path we tread to fortune that keeps us safe.
It is the silence and the reckoning inside, where we hear our whispered thoughts and let it ride or fear stables our intent, and keeps our traps alive.
Keep faith and hope and all we may encounter as honest and free, and let attempt to pervert our course be mindful that in truth, we cannot see our blind touch and fate has its hand in all we do. As to fate, that brew and mixture is manmade, as weary travellers attest. Their testimony and truth is revised as we melt away our ego’s drift, and truth sparkles keenly on the rust of mankind’s words. Spinning we find our reverie and make good with good and good conscience how we may. And we are human and forgiveness screams or we never learn as this life offers, and find the truth of us.
Rest easy and innocent as criminals hold our keys, beware acceptance and fates remedy as powerless thoughts hinder as help the flow to truth and salvations magnetic pull..
Keep truth flattered as we find some more and confidence to move along, let ego’s drift play its part too as good conscience is nothing without its opposite. So nature determines as we drift or stand and make our path to true destinies we make along the way of life. Breached only by us as we find our deceptions help us keep a peace of mind and ready wit to deny all as deniability confuses every mortal whim, to make our good conscience prime...
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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 7 "Step 7 Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings" "The way we have come to look at humility is that it is a virtue, one of the principles that AA teaches us to live. The definition we have adopted pictures us as standing naked before God, without pretence nor reservation. It means hiding nothing, being our real selves, both good and bad. A good synonym for humility is honesty." BB Bunch
July Video Reading Step Seven Into Action Link:
Step 7 "Courage To Change" Reading Video 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 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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