September 28 2012 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 9 Amends In Action Alcoholics Anonymous Today's AA daily reflection: "still sober after all these days…" "Still crazy after all these years…" Immunisation based on emotional and spiritual unity, service and recovery. We may get a flu jab to immunise for a year, in recovery emotional and spiritual living provides immunity one day at a time? So far it's working today…
Video For Today:
A slip, a relapse or the opposite, no slip and no relapse is simply based on our spiritual condition in the moment of now. Emotional and spiritual, able to understand our feelings in the moment and cope with them even at the extremes is how we keep sober today. And when we feel we cannot cope and don't know what to do, we know now that it is perfectly okay to ask for help from anyone anywhere as life can be so extreme in any given moment help can be needed and offered by being open and honest about our situation today…
Life in recovery offers every experience, the good the bad and the ugly. Nobody knows what can happen next, and if we accept that new experiences can cause us problems if we try to tough them out on our own, we put ourselves and those around us at risk. There is no shame and guilt in not knowing the answers and there is no shame and guilt in saying to people that we need help. Those who criticise? Usually the biggest critic resides in us, with the impact of upbringing and society suggesting individual prowess and bullish behaviour where people stand on their own two feet to prove themselves worthy, the inner voice in our head may stop us seeking help and information. Ignorance and isolation do not help solve our individual problems or global problems today…
Common sense! In the olden days when I grew up in the last century, as a child I was rarely seen and not heard. I was away from home, an adventurer, a tree house maker, a campfire maker, a River Dam constructor, playing bows and arrows, mediaeval enactments, a cross country runner, a county swimmer, a beekeeper, a stamp collector, an artist in clay and oils, anything my imagination was drawn to. Cuts and bruises abounded, the old cracked rib, the odd stitch or two, dog bites, and on and on. The experience of life: developing common sense, even when mountaineering and potholing and the odd engineering project in the backyard. At work and at play broken bones never stopped me striving and there was plenty of that. Then drink, then work, then romance, and a few years later University, then more work and more drink and more romance, then self-destruction and burn out, and only then realising all the common sense I had was useless against a foe that lies within. The amend to self, asking for help whenever I need it one day at a time…
DonInLondon 2005-2011
Stop and rewind time please! If only, “can we run that again?” What we say can be forgiven, and sometimes even forgotten. Deep wounds in our steps can be healed. Not everyone has this capacity for healing or wants it. We do reap what we sow, best to sow love and tolerance today…
Anger and expectations are resentments already constructed from the past. Today’s expectations are resentments in the making, and when we feel we deserve better or think what have I done to deserve this? Time for a spot check inventory, my side of the street and my attitudes and behaviour…
September 28 2010 ~ to love, be loved and useful, to cherish ourselves and others, without conditions. I will love myself when I am sober and therefore be able to love others? If I falter and slip, I can stop loving me, and stop loving others? No! Recovery is tough, the hard path yields the greatest rewards one day at a time, love for a day...
September 28 2010 ~ to love someone else responsibly requires forgiveness for ourselves and others. Without forgiveness nothing can be accomplished, either we close down or we close down on others. How we cherish and forgive is our responsibility. Treating ourselves and others with indifference and superficiality, we level everything to statistics...
What is love without strings? First we need grasp something of what love may be. Love might be a difficult to understand when we have felt abandoned and lost, and then we abandoned ourselves in whatever our isms are. My primary addiction which helped me into recovery was alcohol. Alcoholism, I am an alcoholic in recovery. And I realise I was co-dependent on alcohol. Alcohol had the power over me, and I always thought it was the other way round. Even one drink in the past would change the way I felt about life, to the good or bad, and in the end drink gave me oblivion from the hell life had become.
Fellowship has and is teaching me all about love. How to love and be loved back is difficult. Make no mistake love is always with us, we need learn how to express love and receive love, undemanding of others and unconditional. We need accept the capacities of love on offer from others, as we do our best; others are doing their best too. And sometimes love in action is fantastic, by us and to us, and on the other hand we may take for granted that we can do and behave as we may and be superficial and indifferent to our impact on others. We behave as if love is guaranteed and we need not develop or cherish and foster love by our actions. Love in action as we come to understand, as we learn and not as a theory without any foundation.
Love in friendship, love in fellowship, love of a partner, love of live are contingent on learning how to love. So often we had learned the opposite, how to be aloof, let go others and abandon them before they abandon us. My background is rife with abandonment and it has taken a while to realise the true impact this has had on me and my life today. I am still a learner and will be always.
Step nine sometimes the culmination of making amends for old times and old attitudes and behaviour helps us see how new attitudes and behaviour help us understand how to live well and keep sober. Step ten, eleven and twelve: “the keys to the kingdom” or for me, a normal hectic life extraordinary because I keep making mistakes and learning from them.
In life we make mistakes, feel the heat of them, and if we are open, honest and willing, we learn more as we go along. Not the same mistakes too many times as in the past, we make a fresh mistake if we are lucky, every day for the rest of our lives.
“miss-takes” is our natural state of living, out of misunderstanding we learn, when we miss the point we ask, if we feel pain, we need examine why. Step ten, the spot inventory, reveals most often what has happened, more is revealed, gratitude for knowing and responding becomes our daily life.
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AA Daily Reflections ~ "love without strings...Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics. [Big book]
Sponsorship held two surprises for me. First that my sponsees cared about me. What I had thought was gratitude was more like love. they wanted me to be happy, to grow and remain sober. Knowing how they felt kept me from drinking more than once. Second, I discovered that I was able to love someone else responsibly, with respectful and genuine concern for that person’s growth. Before that time, I had thought that my ability to care sincerely about another’s well - being had atrophied from lack of use. To learn that I can love, without greed or anxiety, has been one of the deepest gifts the program has given me. Gratitude for that gift has kept me sober many times."
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September 28 2007
DonInLondon - ‘Day in the Life’ Recovery Good For A Day
Seems right to me, that recovery from anything is just in the day. As a fan of Alcoholics Anonymous, and not a purveyor of the God of any understanding a few things have been difficult for me. Especially when giving a chair about spiritual.
At least these days I am more sure of what I do not understand and less certain on what others may have come to understand.
Analysis Paralysis
It is a well-trodden path. And the whole concept of God for me is truly easy. I am not god and if I decide to behave like God, I will surely lose the plot.
Yet this time last year Tony Blair offered his God as his judge and jury, not the world as we know it. A bit of a cop out for the fundamentalist in all of us. That God will give two pence for what we have done in his name? God if there is one is above all that. We are judged as we behave by our peers, our friends, our family and the man on the Clapham Omnibus!
Truth
Is the key to spiritual growth in the moment of now. I am pretty certain this so, as any deviation from it makes my head ache these days. And yet my truth is selective to me and how I see the world. So your truth has as much weight as mine in my book of rules to living.
Indeed we are lucky to find anything resembling truth in early recovery from obsessions and addictions. So Tony Blair and his obsessions to do the good he was meant to do, and his judgment is he will be judged not by history, but by some divinity I cannot get a grip on.. Well maybe I don’t have the sense or wit to understand, and so it may be.
Honesty
We like honesty? Not sure we do, I have tried it many times and had a slap across the chops because of it. Yet honesty is appealing, sharing our insides out can be very difficult as any of us knows. And we develop our honesty as truth of life emerges and we make some sense or nonsense.
Cherish
We need cherish people, we need not be superficial or indifferent to their feelings. And this leads us to desperate dishonesty often, and then we imagine the outcomes and consequences. All good grist for the mill of uncertainty.
As Time goes By
Everything changes by the day, there is nothing as certain as uncertainty. And we love it and hate it.
Control
We are best controlling nothing but our own behaviour and seeking our connections and being as good as we might be. Yet we still find even in honest talk, the dishonest amelioration when what we say is less helpful to those we share with.
Powerless
Is best, to see we are powerless over people places and things, and to make the best of what works in the day.
Love
Our deep, and our prime drive in life, to love and be loved. So hard as we fit and comport to patterns we have learned from past generations and everyone we encounter. We merely learn the human condition and love as we are taught and then wonder a lifetime often where our love is…
Safe
We need find places where we keep safe, explore and understand the way we are every day. I am lucky to have a fellowship which helps me accept that what I do, and how I am is a transition and never complete. I need learn every day about me and my life, and everyone I meet and encounter.
Never smooth life is hard work, it’s not for waiting, it’s for doing as well. And we need be careful as we travel, our life is short, our impact is least on those who never know truth is as we perceive, and yet those perceptions we hold to our ending. Best let go and let in the light of living with love, or not love, and finding the difference so we may share as life intends...
Just For Today, cherish always…
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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 9 "If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves." Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us…sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them." AA Promises
Step 9 Amends In Action Alcoholics Anonymous Anonymous Reading Video Link:
“How It Works” Reading Video Link:
“Into Action" 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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