Alcoholics Anonymous Blog/Video Nov 19 DonInLondon Step 11 "Truth Love Wisdom"
"Love, forgiveness, harmony, truth, faith, hope, light, and joy to every human being."
November 19, 2013 Step Eleven Month: "sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out." Friends and family often ask about my faith and where it comes from. Faith is a very personal issue for the seven billion people who inhabit the planet. Everyone is developing faith one way or another and it is always linked to the opposite, fear.
Faith can move mountains; fear may hide us away from the reality of now. Every day we can be challenged in our faith and fear of what is going on. When we have no power over events, involving people and places and things going on for them which makers fearful, usually on our own we have no power at all to influence outcomes. Moving mountains is difficult when we are on our own, collectively and with the help of anyone anywhere, we develop faith and the mountains are moved.
Working to good conscience, with faith we can get help and agreement about the possible and impossible. What we can do and what we cannot do and keep on learning the difference. Even though we may be working to good conscience, our conscience is guided by our beliefs and opinions about the world based on our history. Sometimes our personal history and experience is right and proper for us and sometimes our personal experience and history will be completely unhelpful to many we encounter. Live and let live, in good conscience we work together and set aside many obstacles to progress one day at a time.
Wisdom learned from history, the writings we still find fascinating and are the foundation of many faiths, always bring us back to sanity if we are fortunate and not influenced by self-aggrandisement and self-interest? This is always going to be where conflict occurs: argument over the truth of now, the love we have for each other and the wisdom we learn which is corrupted by the prejudice of living with the people we know, familiar places and the things we feel are important.
Interesting questions raised within the family, my family about belief in God. I know my father was an atheist and had no reason to believe in anything beyond his own capacities and comprehension of spiritual matters. My mother was asked recently whether she believed in God or not. And the answer was no. And when asked about her particular outlook, it was about love and family and community and reaching out and helping one another. In essence living life with love and cherishing people with good conscience and without prejudice. I hope that is a fair description. My mother's spiritual connection to the truth love and wisdom of now. Everything changes in the moment as we learn more wisdom grows to the good, bad or ugly in what we do one day at a time.
One day at a time we are changing. How do I pray and meditate? The inner voice we all have is always chattering, sometimes we forget that the chattering voice is the voice of conscience. We can live to good or bad conscience and what is driving us in the moment of now. We can be emotionally happy or sad, in love or hateful in our feelings which then impact on our thinking, and the actions that follow. And if we do not consider that chattering voice, the actions that follow can be very difficult to deal with. And this is a personal journey in the company of those we encounter day by day. If we live to the principles we find acceptable and good, prayer and meditation helps us judge our reactions to life as it is and not some notion of perfection. We simply make progress by what we do today.
How am I feeling this morning? Quite tired, a week of rebuilding my computer and its programs back to normal. Issues to do with the health of people around me and my own health on the agenda as I go for a regular check-up for type I diabetes at the local hospital. And of course there are outstanding repairs required to my abode which are ongoing. Seems like this year has been about repairs to me and identifying what to do in these straightened times when our national health service is being squeezed and the budgets cut. And I just got my energy bills! Life is certainly difficult, at the same time there are things I can and cannot do which helps me with acceptance of the reality of now and accepting reality means I can be happy all day long even if the news makes me feel awkward and powerless today.
Prayer and meditation are very helpful even though my outlook is not contingent or attached to a particular doctrine or a particular outlook. Somebody I met yesterday suggested that God is hurt by humanity, and that premise does not work for me. The truth, the collective truth, love and wisdom of now is the reality in which we live and the way we contribute to our way of life in good conscience is the wisdom learned and spoken by the many. And many of us are still learning the truth, and dealing with reality step-by-step, moment by moment and it can be a very bumpy road with many potholes of learning along the way. Keep your faith, cherish the faith you have and it will serve you well today.
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