December 2 2012 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 12 Living Principles Alcoholics Anonymous Today's Daily Reflections: "serenity, contingent on my spiritual condition…" Emotional and spiritual living: understanding how I am feeling in the moment of now and being able to cope. Understanding how I am feeling and when I cannot cope in the moment of now, asking for help. Serenity is possible when I understand what my feelings are right now. I may have clarity, I may be confused, I might not have a clue right now, and providing I understand my feelings, living reality is where I am. Clarity takes time and serenity is achieved in the moment when we are coping, asking the help and being alert to our situation as it may be…
Video For Today:
Sometimes we have a good day, sometimes we have a bad day and sometimes we have a plain old ugly day. And most often we have a bit of the worst of the day and a bit of the best of the day all in one, good, bad and ugly, all in one day. And usually, what happens with most human beings is feelings happen in the moment, and either we can cope with the good, the bad and the ugly, or we cannot. If we are coping, we are finding solutions as we go along, if we are not coping, better to ask for help from a reliable source. Asking for help is about humility and serenity is contingent on being able to ask the help when help is needed. It is a simple fact of living that some days are just plain old bad and ugly… With help though, we can get back to the good sooner rather than later...
Serenity is a feeling, each person can work out what serenity is for them. As life happens, feelings happen. As feelings happen, we may like them or dislike them, better not ignore feelings, because feelings have a direct impact on our thinking. And thinking gets more and more complicated, the more we deny our feelings and try make ourselves do things to rule the way we want to see the world and live in the world. Understanding feelings helps me understand why I think I want reality different, I want reality my way, and not the way it is. If I really understand how I feel right now, I can understand why my thinking can make my life very complicated, as I become a manipulator of reality. And of course if I am manipulating me, I am probably trying to manipulate you...
How am I feeling this morning? After yesterday, being at two meetings of the fellowship, gratitude was highlighted over and over. If I can find reasons to be cheerful and have gratitude, my feelings or my state of emotions is more likely to be happy, serene and peaceful. Actually, I found both meetings agreeable, and very helpful, listening to the experience, strength and hope of many people. I felt like I belonged in these meetings. I did not agree with everybody and their outlook, and not everybody agreed with each other. At the same time we were all there in unity, service and recovery, sharing our message, sharing laughter, sharing grief, sharing joy, sharing anger and resentments. And sharing what it is like to come back to fellowship after a bit of research in the old ways. In other words, everyone in the meetings have been having the good, the bad and the ugly happening in their lives and all jumbled up. Just as life is in the moment of now…
A couple of people mention being rocketed into the fourth dimension. I have been led to believe that the fourth dimension is time. And the only time which counts most is now! So when I hear people being rocketed into the fourth dimension, I feel they have been rocketed into the moment of now. And in the moment of now, in a group of people, life is very topsy-turvy, life can be good, bad and ugly. All the same time! So being rocketed into the moment of now, where we can feel life as it is, either coping, or not coping with reality. In other words, living life on life's terms. And if people are living in the moment of now, and God works through people by what they say and do, we get to the truth of recovery. Recovery is difficult one day at a time… Now how cool is that?
After we have been around a little while in fellowship, we get to know so many people and so many different outlooks on life, we begin to see that sharing experience strength and hope is of key importance to everyone. By sharing the truth of now, we get to hear how other people and how we as people cope with life, don't cope with life and have to ask the help. And if we cannot hear the solutions from others, we get a good idea who might have some answers and who we might ask for help and advice. And we get a very clear idea about those who are still barking mad and bonkers, might need some help and the answers they may have for others are based on insanity. The trouble is, we are all barking mad some of the time, and then the rest of the time we are all working on our truth, and sanity and serenity only possible because of our own self-awareness, prayer and meditation. And sometimes it's based on our own self-awareness, prayer and medication because sometimes we need outside help…
And, as life goes along in sobriety, we get to laugh at ourselves and cry at ourselves too. We become sensitive human beings, impacted by the experiences we are having, impacted less so by old experiences as we sort them out and put them to rest. We don't forget the experiences of the past, we learn from them. Which is why we keep on learning wisdom. Humour is so important, no wonder doctors in the past talked about the humours of the body and spent a lot of time bloodletting! The good news in all of this, bloodletting by doctors has stopped, the bad news emotional bloodletting still happens all the time with human beings. Anger and resentment is the number one offender when it comes to relapse and slips, and the second one, the number two offender is thinking we are okay when we are not okay and that we do not need regular infusions of emotional and spiritual wisdom. Thankfully, where I live, infusions of emotional and spiritual wisdom are available daily, around-the-clock and usually in the moment of now…
DonInLondon 2005-2011
Finance and romance all part of our spiritual awakenings, driven bonkers in our youth and then if fortune smiles, many people continue their growth in balance. All or nothing finance and romance and drink was not good for me and misunderstanding life and especially love. Today it is simple learning to love, be loved and useful, without conditions and unfolding in the moment, with no fear. Faith carries me today…
Each of us comes to an understanding about the spiritual life. I try to keep it simple and spiritual is living and coping with what is going on today. For a long time my outlook was made difficult by my drinking and I could not cope at all at the end, spiritual hell. Today I cope with reality, good, bad or simply a balance of both, asking for help in the moment… Your spiritual is always working for you...
December 2 2010 ~ Serenity for me is contingent on my spiritual condition. Coping with the way life is today and understanding the choices I have given my life situation. Knowing and experiencing my feelings as they change and life changes. Balance or extremes, in the moment and living life, to love, be loved and useful today...
December 2 2010 ~ Spiritual awakening in recovery? I have learned over the years that my spiritual awakening is continuous. We are always on our spiritual path in life. Today my ability to experience serenity is improved with each day sober. It is not about right or wrong, happy or sad, spiritual is being in reality in the moment of now...
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AA Daily Reflections ~ "SERENITY ~ having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, . . . TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS
As I continued to go to meetings and work the Steps, something began to happen to me. I felt confused because I wasn’t sure what it was that I was feeling, and then I realized I was experiencing serenity. It was a good feeling, but where had it come from? Then I realized it had come “. . .as the result of these steps.” The program may not always be easy to practice, but I had to acknowledge that my serenity had come to me after working the Steps. As I work the Steps in everything I do, practicing these principles in all my affairs, now I find that I am awake to God, to others, and to myself. The spiritual awakening I have enjoyed as the result of working the Steps is the awareness that I am no longer alone."
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December 2 2007
DonInLondon - ‘Day In the Life’ - Analysis Paralysis - Work in Progress
Progress Not Perfection
How many people on this planet? Somewhere over six and a half billion. And all of us humans are endeavouring, making progress in our lives. Some doing ok, some middle of the road and some struggling. Some adult some yet to mature into adulthood.
And in the big picture of living, can we apply measures to great numbers of people to predict their living and their ways of life? Of course we can. And still does this helps us as individuals or is just knowledge which brings more understanding?
Every person who lives, develops their own unique and authentic experience of life. We have so many similarities, we humans often are engaged in analysing the differences. For all sorts of reasons clumping people and populations has much attraction for those involved in predicting and making us of census information.
Know Your Toolkit and What it is For
Behind the scenes or rather in exchanges over you tube, I have encountered many who are interested in recovery programmes for addiction. Some see the common ground, some see the differences, some see religion, some see spiritual. Some want to analyse some want to see how people progress in recovery.
Tool Kits For Recovery
We identify and make use of many ways to stay sober and in a recovering frame of mind. Utilities and tool kits abound for those searching for their choices. And sometimes people look over and on to the recovering groups of people and want to know how it works.. Now here is the conundrum for scientific and behavioural analysts.
How?
How do people find the recovery process, what do people do to recover and how to measure recovery?
Discipline and controls - Science vs. Art the teachable vs. the creative
Engaged recently in the debate about “How It Works,” science has a problem with the individual and with the process or tool kits that people develop to keep close to a path of recovery in addiction.
Variables beyond the science: Humans have always had potential beyond conventional tools for measuring their relative success or failure. Humans have variations daily to their living, and we humans can react and respond. We often react to danger and respond later or as life enables. We always have this balance on going or lurching from one extreme to another.
Many science based behavioural analysts will encounter difficulties in their empiricism or as some call it hard facts and hard outcomes we can control and measure. The problem of reducing everything down to its components, especially humans is the level of predictability.
Art of Life
Long, long ago, I realised that behavioural analysis has so many flaws its pretty difficult to make models of living, make models which predict and support human development. As we have six and a half billion people all endeavouring, it’s a bit hard to predict much of anything.
If We were Widgets
If we humans were widgets we might be able to control our living and our outcomes. Some sort of safe place to make humans more workable, more predictable and more controllable.
Art of Living
Living is an on-going process of experiences, good and bad and somewhere in the middle. Add on the human authentic quality which makes us able to learn and live to freedom and choices, then we have so many conundrums about scientific analysis, it can be pretty much a dull and useless form of endeavour. Unless of course we narrow it down to groups of behaviour and why some form civilisation, some form small tight knit living, or some form dislocated living and some end up in the choke hold of an obsession.
Obsessions
Usually forms of behaviour which are not in balance. Obsessions about people places and things.
Courage Faith and Belief
Most of us humans have values and principles we learn, so we fit in somehow with life and the world. We are complicated and intricate, living absorbing and changing as we encounter life.
Fear, brave Facing and Ego
When we fear something we don’t understand, so often we turn to our inner selves and our least developed processes to make sense of living and life.
Control, Inclusion and Love
How we live day to day, and our confidence will provide us with pluck and courage to live as life is, that we know enough to make it work mostly and just for a day.
When we are fearful because of what we encounter, or we are stuck and out of the mainstream of our own lives, we can hide and isolate, we get worried, we look for palliatives to depressurise we are not so used to dealing with, and we can depend on anything, people, places, things. For some like me it was oblivion with alcohol and for others, drugs, and for others behaviour obsessions. Why do people become obese for example? A rhetorical question here.
Alcoholics Anonymous
Many want to know why AA can help a person on to the recovery road. Simply it helps us change our attitude to life and how to live it, how we behave on a day to day basis.
Mimic or Replicate
Many want to mimic, take the best from a fellowship and turn it into a scientific process to make rehabilitation demonstrable and therapeutic and successful.
Can we replicate - So that what we get is what is written on the can? A fix which makes it all so cleverly possible to recover people from the last chance saloon of life? Self-Harm in the extremes?
The answer my friends is blowing in the wind!
We can make process, we can show experience and develop a path as singular humans in fellowship. And what is behind fellowship? Love of course, unconditional and mostly self-driven self-managed and self-oriented. A selfish programme for broken people with similarities, addiction.
Love
It is all about love. Understanding its ok to love, to be unloved, to find redemption, to let go obsession, to let go control and to live free with choices in the framework of society we have day to day.
Grains of Truth and Shifting Sands
In all recovery, and this a mere generalisation for today, there are grains of truth, Ghandi suggested ‘God is Truth’ and this is good enough for me. It may only suit me and that is ok for today.
Shifting Sands
We know from history that nothing is ever certain for us humans and we cannot control much of anything which is of Nature. Including ourselves. We learn and live as life experience develops. And science has yet to solve these conundrums - YET
Control and Acceptance
Feels like the need inside us to control our environment is at odds with the things which most humans come to understand, diversity, imagination, endeavour and the journey of life.
Journey of Life
We need always be reminded I feel, and this is just me, the journey of life is as unpredictable as can be predicted. When we apply science, measures and control, we get stuck in outcomes of prediction rather than the wonder of where the human soul may soar and find peace, joy and a connection to the universe.
As we measure endeavour as a history we might find the truth of human doings. We will not find the answers to today or where six and a half billion people are headed.
Art and Living
How many can inspire and move nations? I have no clue nor is it my endeavour to find those paths.
I leave to science what science can do, and for my development and spiritual connection I rely on my understanding and temperament, the journey so far as with most other humans, a work in progress, just for today
2nd December 2006
Sombre Not I
Of course I can be quite sombre and at the same time, out of hard and adverse times comes joy beyond measure. We need to feel our world and give credence to every element.
Moving through this realm of hard knocks and hard places we feel our way with care. As the madness of this world often overtakes us we see inside the screaming fears that others live. And then we thank ourselves and our Gods for less madness in our own world.
Yet when we see the world as real can be, we can cast doubt on our adversity, simply because there is always someone somewhere worse off, if we have that gift to see.
We need look outwards often to ensure our balance. And as we look out we see more of what we can become, we can become more than we ever imagine as we move along, looking out.
As we may be circumspect about this world, and open, we can become involved, we are connected to the madness we see around us. We try impose order and control, we make it our world, as mad as it may be, or as sane as the world really is.
Like Canute of old teaching his minions that he could not influence providence and nature any more than they, that the crown of office might make for leadership, it does not give power beyond that of any other. Except in the madness of our world.
Tonight
Many tales of frustration and self will not give up, that feelings of love are lost that we might not ever capture again. Indeed we cannot capture love, or make anyone loves us, or we love them. It is happenstance and time which makes all these things true. In truth of tales of love lost and yet no way out of that obsession, I am relieved of this obsession as quickly as it forms. When I realise my right size in this world and the world as it really is love takes on its true meaning.
Love
We might think it, we might feel it, we may if we are blessed with its gift, experience it daily. We need remind ourselves that love is purely experience in the moment and a connection beyond any measure we can quantify. Love evolves and disappears as it may in all hearts held to love.
Of love we might cherish, we need to live its true nature, that unconditional love which enables the lovers complete freedom, and as we must observe the freedom is complete as each is loved. That notion of completion, unconditional and not conditional. Love is best described by what it is not more often than the love we express in truth. And in truth is its denial.
Pure love, without condition and without control, emanates from trusts which are known and experienced. We do not love as easily as we may, for our world so maddened these days puts strictures on our love.
Love is merely an asset and trade in many so many made mad, they cannot see obsessions translated as love. Control, denial, belief in higher thoughts, feelings and notions.
Love is commonplace, and we miss it most as we look for particular love and contentment. Love is complete living and sharing, as intimate as every touch of sense known to mankind.
Love is grace, humble, fortitude, without any preconceived panoply of conditions we are taught from those made mad by its loss, its lack of presence its twist to hates and controls.
One word makes good love, cherish. Two words tell the makeup of love wished and never delivered, superficiality and indifference. When we cherish and behave simpatico with our love of life and our fellows we know. When we treat with indifference and superficiality we are not simpatico with love.
Treat as we would be Treated
When we treat others shabbily and without thought or feeling, it is how we treat ourselves we reflect most to the world. As in Ego, the madness of obsession so deep can musters hates on self, no love can ever survive the tests it makes. And in superficial touch comes the cold and dark of desolate knowing we are not cherished as we may be.
Mad world can be made good
We can grow and learn and when we are struck by our totality we may move along to better times. Better times on a straight and narrow path with good conscience opens the world forever to our senses and how we may live.
As we let go without condition our world opens as big as magnificent and splendid as it may be in this one moment of now. Closed and discontent we lose our way in small times and imaginary ghosts.
Let ourselves be free to make good love of love and living. Experiencing love is in intimacy as we may learn, denial and half measures will lead to half-lives lived, and torments of will. Best live free and to our endeavour in our Mad World…
REM
All around me are familiar faces, worn out places, worn out faces
Bright and early for their daily races, going nowhere, going nowhere
Their tears are filling up their glasses, no expression, no expression
Hide my head, I want to drown my sorrow
No tomorrow, no tomorrow
And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you 'cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it's a very very
Mad world, mad world, mad world, mad world
Children waiting for the day they feel good
Happy birthday, happy birthday
To feel the way that every child should, sit and listen, sit and listen
Went to school and I was very nervous
No one knew me, no one knew me
Hello teacher, tell me what's my lesson
Look right through me, look right through me
And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you 'cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it's a very very
Mad world, mad world, mad world, mad world
And I find it kind of funny, I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had
I find it hard to tell you 'cause I find it hard to take
When people run in circles it's a very very
Mad world, mad world, Halogeon world, mad world
December 2nd 2005
Tick Tock Titan
There is something compelling in time, we do not heed it till its passage is felt and time is running out. It goes on and on without end. A fascination, a worry. We believe we might master time. And yet it slips through our fingers, and we feel its passing, the hardest grief we will bear as our lives end and Old Father Time, a new beginning leaves open our anticipation, our transition without description. When young, our time stretches like our immortality, cut short only when our alchemists touch is lost to reality. We cannot readily accept, all that time offers, as we get older and older. We don't and have little imagination for the end of time, for it is infinite for us and not for Chronos, our happy God of time. And we learn all too quickly the passage of time is simply a moment in our memory, never to be captured or replicated again. We might relish those times spent in persuit as innocents and moments which fill our hearts and rush our sense to joy. Sitting as a child, listening to stories told, imaginary and real, we hear tall tales and tales from history providing weave and context to our tick tock, time. We listen with sense and acuity to the tick tock of lives before our own. We hear of great deeds and small snippets of lives we will never witness as our time goes by and fills our minds with stories and tales to be told.
And our story, our lives unfold, going this way and that. We feel and experience our luxury of time, aware of it one moment and then wondering where it went, has gone, never to be put back. That relentless tick tock, aching hearts and reckless spendthrifts to the tick tock.
And we tinker with time and our experience, we feel its passing slow slow, quick quick, gone! Tick tock, the seconds a mere whisper to our concern, minutes pass as our impatience pushes, then so quickly we cannot count. Tick tock to weeks and months and years as our clock turns, tick tock, tick tock. As innocent as first breath, our growing burden of time. And innocence, that state of conscious emptiness, where no brush with element is lost and our future is assured and our tree of knowledge takes root and grows to seasons will. And knowledge informs and expands our Universe as surely as it keeps us stuck to our age of Reason, and spirit of our age. Weathered and dated to our horizon... our full measure taken to our clock...
And reason grows with every generation making good our foundation and grasp on life's meaning. Or breaking down our labyrinths as we learn our old science, our Alchemy is smashed on the rocks of time. We move on with our tick tock steady, tick tock, time moves on, never restless or hurried. And our clock speeds, as life shortens, we wonder at its passage and wonder where its gone. Time, tick tock. From the innocence of youth, to the corruption of time, our knowledge continues with our passing and our time. A harsh tick tock. And we feel the move from the bliss of ignorance, to knowledge, to wisdoms folly. Time teaches and gifts, with every tick tock, absorbing, changing, refining as our world transforms from age to age. Tick tock, our hindsight, time marching, and Old Father Time is ever closer.
That grim reaper of bursting minds, taken in the blink of an eye. Our minds full to our measure and then ended, that Grim Reaper spares none from his clock is set, and sets free new Innocence. That time is our Titan, with a simple tick tock, greater than any element, valued above all, cannot be bought, cannot be cheated, cannot be avoided. A colossus, immutable, precious beyond compare, never squandered or lost, forgotten Master... tick tock, tick tock, tock. And in that final breath, old knowledge has served us well and faith rejoices, or the silence, deafens, as a bubble of turbulence is lost to breath..
Chronicles December 2004
December 2nd 2004
Sleep
When sleep comes naturally its a blessing in a stressful world. Sleep that time to dream and capture in the mind’s eye, all manner of half notions, desires and reflections upon our world. Sleep enables assessment as well as fantasy, where we judge without hindrance our reality and our longings.
When sleep is aided with potent foods and chemicals, we alter natures perception, we accentuate every nuance of feeling. Thoughts in the day spread logic to our understanding, sleep affords greater luxuries for our feelings. Tripping into fantastic waves of possibilities, sleep nurtures our character and throws caution to the side as we weave a pattern of happiness.
Of nightmares where our fears take hold, we wander round and round, pushing our feelings and remembrances of times of terror, repeated as our guardian inside deals with memories felt and made real to our conscience. Nightmares are mere nightmares, they need not become reality.
Sleep our friendly fantasy most of the time, sorting out and filing our memories and fantastic notions into realities and possibilities. Happy sleep, oft a friend so hard to find when times are bursting and we are spent. Spend more time slowly so when sleep comes it has the time to sift and sort, and let natures healing take effect...
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Just For Today And Every Day, Cherish Always...
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“Awakening as the result of what? The result, or consequence of taking the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous is a Spiritual Awakening. Please reflect that this step does not say the awakening comes as the result of taking steps 1 through 11, those preceding Step 12. On the contrary, the awakening comes as the result of taking these (all of the twelve) steps, including Step 12. (If you disagree, that is wonderful. Keep on digesting these steps.)” Big Book Bunch
December 2012 | Playlist About Step Twelve: Step Twelve Playlist
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AA Official Online Site: Big Book And Twelve And Twelve
Big Book And Twelve And Twelve
AA Official Online Site: Daily Reflections
December 2012 | Step Twelve Reading Video Link:
December 2012 | Video Reading How It Works:
December 2012 | Video Reading A Vision For You:
December 2012 | Video About Grief And Depression
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