Alcoholics Anonymous Blog/Video Nov 6 DonInLondon Step 11 "Truth Love Wisdom"
"Love, forgiveness, harmony, truth, faith, hope, light, and joy to every human being."
November 6, 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." "Good morning God, a good reminder yesterday about what I can and cannot do one day at a time. Knowing I am powerless over my feelings, I see many times just how powerless we all are over feelings caused by nature, nurture and the current conditions today." Fortunately, if I accept through the experience and I can think clearly, my actions will be better than my intentions.
As the song title goes: "love is a feeling." And yet love is something almost indefinable, because the nature of love changes from moment to moment. How we are able to cherish, how we may treat others with superficiality and indifference is all part of the mixture of feelings we have. When somebody has hurt feelings about a whole range of issues and current experiences, it can be very hard to work out what to do, our intentions may be good, our actions can cause more hurt by trying to make things better.
If we are fortunate, we have fellowship, we might have family, we may be part of the community, and we can play our part in society. We might be a son, daughter, mother, father, any combination of roles within family, and then there is work and all those relationships and on it goes. We may like a lot of people, and we may dislike the behaviour of many people. We can love people and hate their behaviour and we can hate people sometimes and think we love them, but we don't feel the love because there isn't any. Sometimes the best way is a reminder to treat others as we would wish for ourselves. Unless of course we have never learned; how to love, without conditions because the conditions of a lifetime may have been horrible. Not easy to deal with our feelings, no wonder we often rush to action and thinking rather than considering the feelings behind our intentions.
Emotions are not rational a lot of the time, because the feelings going on right now may not fit with the reality we are experiencing. Pride, ego and fear produce anxiety and barriers to sharing the true feelings we have. Even when we have courage to change, faith and confidence, it seems emotional and spiritual can fall down in our list of priorities when we are driven by the moment of action and achievement, success and failure, accepting life as it is or covering up and denying the truth. The mayor of Toronto recently denied smoking a crack pipe and demanded video evidence be produced. The video evidence was produced and only then did he admit it could have happened. Ask anybody in recovery, and they will say this behaviour is not unusual. Indeed, if we are challenged on our conduct, guilt and shame will keep us hiding the truth, until the truth comes out.
And because we are human, with complicated feelings, we often try doing things to make situations appear better. The intent to do better, to work harder, to be a better person, all these intentions and energies to get over something which has not gone away, the truth of now never goes away, it is often the case that the truth is lost in how it is reported and shared by those involved. Living to the truth becomes easier, less complicated and far more enjoyable the longer we can keep to being open, honest and willing to learn. And we are not superhuman, we all need help, and just because we might get away with something, we all know the truth once denial is understood. Anyone can get stuck in denial and sometimes depending on the issues; we need enough denial to cope with overwhelming reality.
How do I feel this morning? Deprived of sleep and quite tired. I feel tired. I don't feel anger this morning, I am not hungry this morning and I don't feel lonely. I do feel concern about how to help in certain situations which are very complicated. Helping friends who show and act with great loyalty and affection, they may hope for the same loyalty and affection with those they love. And sadly not everyone is capable of having the same feelings of loyalty and affection when they are driven by other matters and problems. Just because we feel affection and loyalty and can express this by the way we behave and act, will not mean the same will come back our way. Unconditional love is good beyond measure. It is not always a two-way Street in all our experiences.
So often we are driven by our fundamental nature and the way we have been brought up and the way life has treated us. It gets very complicated, we can expect more than our fair share, or we can expect nothing and be surprised. Living in the moment of now, learning how to live in the moment of now would seem to be the best option, and even though we know that this, our history can confound our situation now, and our hopes for the future can stop us working out a way forward to wherever we wish to be. There is no substitute for practical experience of life, no amount of book learning, or any sort of learning outside the practical will make practical life easier. At the same time we can learn the theory through education and what we learn from others, at least it will give us a clue? Not always, sometimes being clueless and then open to everything we get a better chance of practical experience in many different ways depending on the current conditions. A conversation with God and very reliable human being can be very helpful today.
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