Alcoholics Anonymous Blog/Video Nov 3 DonInLondon Step 11 "Truth Love Wisdom"
"Love, forgiveness, harmony, truth, faith, hope, light, and joy to every human being."
November 3, 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." When needs are met, wants are often forgotten? Covering basic needs, most likely our outlook is as nature intended. When we have persistent wants, most likely our outlook is more extreme. As nature intended: the reminder of fearless moral inventory; step four helps anyone understand the difference between natural needs and extreme wants.
Driven by wants: step six defects of character of pride ego and fear can make prayer and meditation very difficult. Romance and finance! Romance: What do we do when we are infatuated and desire a particular person in a particular place when the particular person in a particular place may not even know that we exist? Even worse, the person knows about our desires and feelings and either they ignore them, or they just don't want to share them and they do not mirror our desires, how long do we hang on hoping? Finance: getting what we want by any means possible? Expectations are resentments leading to?
Natural instincts: step seven where we are learning how to have courage to change, faith in doing the next right thing and developing confidence often with the help of the serenity prayer. Romance and finance! Romance: what on Earth do we do if we express a natural instinct and have a natural instinct to get to know another person romantically and share our feelings with them? Sooner rather than later? Finance: naturally we need security financially, and often there is no financial security. Simply, sometimes we need to ask for help to get by, and the serenity prayer is truly helpful. Hard work always and yet sometimes the rewards are very slim. No entitlements?
Prayer and meditation: step six prayers and meditation undermined by pride, ego and fear. Step seven prayers and meditation: more likely about courage to change, faith in doing the next right thing and growing confidence by having humility and being vulnerable.
H.A.L.T: hungry angry lonely or tired. This is “Remembrance week” for all the fallen in war and conflict in the United Kingdom. I felt desperately sad this morning watching a program about those who have lived through conflict and war, the impact on a nation, society, community and families. The sadness is about the suffering and the horror. Remembrance is not a celebration as some silly politicians have indicated recently; it is about everything and the deep wounding of humanity. And it is not about those who won or lost, it is about the fallen.
I do meditate on matters far beyond my personal control and influence directly. I feel it is about the intention, our outlook and about our understanding of the world. What we can do is find our way to the good of what next and in some ways even the smallest kindness we can share can make a profound difference which we will never know. We all have humility and humanity within us today.
Sometimes I wonder if I watch too much news, and is a timely reminder very often what happened to me. Rags to riches, to rags, to just enough seems to have been my journey thus far. And just enough in my world, is beyond the wildest dreams in many other parts of the world. And yet in my world, 80,000 children are homeless in our civilised society. Bad enough that I was homeless for a number of years and lost everything, the children though I feel it is more profound and not something our politicians and government make worse the reasons of ideology and punishing the poor, who probably don't realise why they are living in poverty and who caused it. And this makes me angry and upset. It does not make me thirsty, it activates my civic responsibilities.
Accountability and responsibility for our actions is part of the learning process. Whatever we do, whether we are driven to extremes or driven to accomplish natural activities where needs are met, there are always consequences. We are accountable and we are responsible and there are consequences to our actions. Some prayer and meditation to the good of life and the God of your understanding at any time of day can offer a little bit of clarity in the midst of good bad and ugly situations. Half the world is driven one way or another, and no matter what the conditions of the day, good bad or ugly, we are accountable and responsible and we live the consequences. A clear conscience and a good night’s sleep can be very difficult!
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