Alcoholics Anonymous Blog/Video Nov 28 DonInLondon Step 11 "Truth Love Wisdom"
"Love, forgiveness, harmony, truth, faith, hope, light, and joy to every human being."
November 28, 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." Dear God, I don't know if many people will agree with this particular situation, I am very happy to be powerless over alcohol, and after that I learned the strength and freedom of being powerless over people places and things. Freedom in my choices and direction happened as a consequence of recovery."
I am free! Just as nature intended, and gaining freedom to be me, which meant I did not have to fit in to other people's rules and regulations, their laws on a personal basis, has made me a better citizen today. I do believe in the rights and responsibilities we all have in society, at the same time I do not have to join anything which is wrong for me today. I do not belong to a cult, an organisation which dictates anything, I belong in a Fellowship where freedom is on offer one day at a time. I'm grateful for being civilised and a more balanced person today. If my feelings are hurt, I will probably show it and explain it, and if you tread on my toes I will say ouch quite loudly! I do good things when I can do good things, and try not to be bad and ugly to anyone today, including myself.
There was a documentary on the TV by a BBC team about Amazon and how they treat their workers. It reminded me what it was like to be a cog in the wheel in an industry which had no feelings and had no compromise about productivity. What might seem like a positive and productive means of getting the best out of individual workers, was seriously undermining their mental and physical health every minute of every working day. Mental and physical torture take many forms in society. And I realise that self-medication leading to self-harm is something which can happen in all walks of life. The TV programme highlights the problem, often the solution is very hard, and it requires acceptance and effort beyond a single human to change. If I were able, and available to work, I would not choose Amazon as a means to earning a living. And with the benefit of hindsight, I would have been better placed working in many different industries than the industry I chose because it paid the most money. At least I got my marbles back, even if I only got one marble back a day at a time in recovery.
Today is a day which includes hospital and a consultation. And also a day when the gas boiler man is coming. And there will also be other news which may be sad. I can cope with these realities and be helpful to myself and more importantly because I understand and can cope, I am able to be available if asked to be helpful to others. And yesterday was interesting, a friend asked me about information I was holding on to for them and whether or not it was safe. They were concerned about anything getting out, and had forgotten an agreement for me not to look at it and actually to make sure there were no copies. I checked and assured them, all files no longer existed. And I can understand the fear behind it. Nobody wants stuff lying about which they don't want to share and that is a good thing. Freedom of choice and trust are absolutely earned in this life. And when we break trust, we often break ourselves in the process. These days I prefer being trustworthy, and even then if I'm not careful I can break it without knowing and then the consequences are horrible. At least they were in the past.
So quite a lot to do today. It is a mad mad world with insane things going on in it. I may not be able to restore the world to sanity, in my backyard however, where I live and who I meet and what goes on? Step two: insanity can be defined as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result according to Einstein. And who am I to argue with him? Part of me does not want to go to the hospital and have a consultation, but that is old behaviour so I will go today. If I do my part in trying to look after myself, even though I might have the best of medical care, the results cannot be influenced by anything. But as a consequence of knowing something, I can change something. And so often in the past, fear would keep me from finding out the truth.
I can remember being trusted with information which was personal and about a career, it was a good news story which had not yet broken within the organisation. My particular department, the keeper of the secrets, in secret safekeeping we were a group of four. And we all need to trust somebody? It's a hard learning exercise, I told another colleague also imbued as a keeper of secrets because I felt they needed to know. My fellow keeper of the secrets did not keep this one secret and trust was broken all round as a consequence. Even with the best will in the world for the right reasons, wrong things happen. And even though the person with the good news had forgiveness for me, that trust was broken. How else do we learn? Every principle of life is learned one way or another and I have gratitude that I was forgiven and I still work on forgiving myself in what I do today. And sometimes the only way to do this is to forgive everyone everything every single day. No matter what is going on today, good bad or ugly, we are all doing the best we can do in the moment of now. And the best we can do sometimes is not as good as we might have wished on any given day. Step ten, amends in the moment of now can be very difficult, ultimately however worthwhile on the day and every day thereon.
There are many bad things going on in this world, we don't have to join in with them. The temptation to break rules laws and regulations which harm people, which corrupt people are very often done because something is being done to you. Very easy to join in the badness when bad things are happening. In Fellowship, whoever decided, or whatever group decided it was better to have no rules laws or regulations, simply suggestions up for discussion at any time probably came to a very wise conclusion. If there are no written laws rules or regulations, no single person can control another person or tell them what to do. A Fellowship which works because people prefer to work rather than to fail. A Fellowship which works to a group conscience, bigger than anything one person might feel is right for another let alone themselves. And for this I have gratitude today and every day, powerless over everything apart from the freedom to choose my path one day at a time.
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