Alcoholics Anonymous | March 18 2013 | Steps In Action | Step 3 "Your Higher Power" "when I was profoundly disappointed in myself, drinking myself into oblivion and not wanting to wake up… I was listening to what happened when another person was suicidal recently, and they ended up in hospital…" What to share, what can we say when we meet and try help?
Video For Today:
In a room full of people, over a hundred, to share this profound news of surviving a suicide attempt and recovery… Under the question, "what can I do when I find myself in a rock bottom in recovery?" Not surprisingly, a lot of people have found themselves in a profound depression of one sort or another, so severe that there seems no way forward. We seem to have an argument in our heads, and it can be a brief moment when the urge to let go life and the opportunity to coincide. I know I used to fantasise that jumping under a train would end the desperate darkness inside me, and for whatever reason, I did not jump. And eventually with professional support to get me on safe ground, I could then find help and support in fellowship one day at a time…
When I look back, over so many meetings when people have expressed the opposite of the gift of desperation, the horror of desolation, I wonder how the fellowship ever got started. And then I realise it is coincidence that two people were able to share the truth of their situation with each other, which started a movement, a society to help anyone anywhere into sobriety by sharing their truth, by sharing their love and by sharing the wisdom, that life can go on and we can recover and find ourselves again. So often we forget to share that we love people, for the way they are, completely imperfect and simply perfect as they are in the moment. We all need love, and we are so inept in sharing it, and it is only when we hear just how low our fellows can feel that we try in our best way to show love and express love for them in their darkest hours…
When I got to fellowship, and people talked of love, those who have been around a while were able to share their friendship without fear and without worry that it might be misunderstood. How can a broken down human being cope with the language of the heart? Having been isolated, and in our own minds we have failed in all aspects of living, the touch of kindness can be overwhelming. Why do people love me? Well, they did, even though I didn't realise it. And even though I did not like being loved. When I had no love for myself, why did people persist in trying to help me? I was utterly baffled, and I did not want to be touched and did not want love. But that changed as I went to meetings and made friends gently and with a great deal of fear that I might not measure up in their eyes. I don't know if anyone else ever felt that way…
Fellowship started to thaw me out, I will still full of fear, false pride and ego covering up my shame and guilt about my failure as a human being and my failure as a going concern. And only when I admitted to myself just how frightened I was and then shared my fear with another person in fellowship, did I realise that I was not alone in these feelings which were keeping me so low and unable to feel anything but fear of the unknown. I don't know who inspired me to accept that I did not know how to live life, and that it was okay to try to learn the simple basics of how to stay alive one day at a time. This started with H. A. L. T. Simply, am I hungry, am I angry, am I lonely, am I tired? Any combination of those four questions, the answer was always to come to a meeting and share if we can with one other person or to the group as a whole. And then I started to realise it was okay to start life over again from scratch…
There were two things I needed to do in the early days of recovery: first, to accept professional help with regard to my drinking and suicidal nature. And to accept that whatever professional help I got, it was going to take time and I needed to give myself time as well. Or I would be frustrated and back to square one, on the brink yet again. And having got professional help to deal with my suicidal nature, I came to the fellowship of AA. And in the fellowship, having got professional help to improve my outlook and deal with the clinical depression, I found myself on common ground, or at least in a place where I could listen and start to learn how other people in fellowship began their lives again. It had to be one day at a time, because in recovery we do feel everything about life, when it is good, when it is bad, and when it is absolutely horrible. Fellowship helps us learn how to live life and we can only do this in the moment and in the day in my experience…
The good news when we come through these dark moments in recovery, we do see that life is possible. Even though we may still face very adverse situations, there is no reason to doubt that life will continue to be very challenging. I needed to have long term professional help to keep me on an even keel so that I could learn how to live life again. And having got professional help, life has continued and I have learned how to live life one day at a time, be it good, bad or ugly times or just a mixture of all. If I ignore professional advice, or if I ignore what I've learned in fellowship, I fall down into deep and dark times. How do I know this? Because it has happened to me and I don't need to rely on my own desire to try to be perfect, when progress is always the answer and humility keeps me alive today… When I don't know what to do, I can ask for help from anyone anywhere today… And sometimes we meet people with strange ideas which don't feel right, keep on asking until the right people are in the right place and can help you today…
Alcoholics Anonymous | March 18 2013 | Steps In Action | Step 3 "Your Higher Power" "real independence." To let go old attitudes, and old behaviour associated with self-harm and then led into harming others, is absolutely necessary in recovery. Let go and let good, learning how to be open honest and willing to change takes time, and patience as we progress. I don't know if it is about real independence or about how we as humans are equally interdependent in this complicated world. I prefer freedom of choice in this interdependent world…
Video For Today:
I enjoy my recovery, even when the road gets a bit bumpy. I don't enjoy recovery when life is painful for whatever reason. So sometimes life is good, bad or indifferent? I guess it is when I realise and understand my feelings fit with my experience today. Feelings being right sized in the moment of now. I do enjoy living as independently as life affords, with freedom of choice to do what I can and cannot do today. And an understanding of my real circumstances and opportunities when I let go and let the world in…
Much is made of the suggestion, "let go and let God." Step three and any of the steps work and become tailored to the individual as we explore life and live it. Letting go and letting the good of life happen opens the door to new living and ways of improving our adventure day by day. We may have desires, needs and wants and when we share with others, we improve the possibilities of where life may go. I never thought I would be alive today, and my usefulness changes as life changes and no longer hampered or driven to distraction by needing to be right or feeling wrong footed in any given moment…
Gone are the days where I feel I need to make a mark on this planet, or prove my worth or worthiness in some bright shiny way. Life is without conditions and learning how to love people and be loved back, and find usefulness in endeavour whatever it may be makes life worth living. Being a beginner upon waking and learning a little bit more or a lot more before retiring to bed, about who I am and who you are is always good enough for today…
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DonInLondon 2005-2011
"my way or the highway?" for me has become "thy way is the highway" now I know I am right sized, no bigger or smaller than anyone. No guru's, simply truth, love and wisdom from others, in abundance each day. A broad and bigger highway today
All life experience includes good and less good interludes, each case taken on its merit ..~ Samuel Johnson "It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust" -/- Tempted by apples, we can always find a peachy one.. books and covers, judge less, investigate more!
Right sized and right relationships, independent and interdependent, life works for a day ~ Oliver Cromwell "Trust in God, and keep your powder dry." -/- And for some of us, "Trust in God and keep your brain box dry" let in truth, love and wisdom of others..
Often we share what is agreeable, and listen with a great deal of judgment ~ Henry David Thoreau "It takes two to speak the truth - one to speak, and another to hear" Truth is easier to speak with experience, listening to the truth difficult when we fear it, change is inevitable.. more stuck or more open..
Freedom of choice, smooth passage, potholes and puddles always on the road of destiny ~ Henry Van Dyke "In the progress of personality, first comes a declaration of independence, then a recognition of interdependence" -/- Learning how to be interdependent and trust without expectation helps us understand our own fallibility, and that we and everyone makes progress and is never perfect, the steps helps us resolve our conduct not that of others... Henry Van Dyke
-/-
AA Daily Reflection: REAL INDEPENDENCE The more we become willing to depend upon a Higher Power, the more independent we actually are. TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 36
I start with a little willingness to trust God and He causes that willingness to grow. The more willingness I have, the more trust I gain, and the more trust I gain, the more willingness I have. My dependence on God grows as my trust in Him grows. Before I became willing, I depended on myself for all my needs and I was restricted by my incompleteness. Through my willingness to depend upon my Higher Power, whom I choose to call God, all my needs are provided for by Someone Who knows me better than I know myself - even the needs I may not realize, as well as the ones yet to come, bring me to be myself and to help me fill the need in someone else that only I am meant to fill. There never will be another exactly like me. And that is real independence.
-/-
Just For Today, and every day cherish always...
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AA Official Online Site: Daily Reflections
http://www.aa.org/lang/en/aareflections.cfm
AA Official Online Site: Big Book And Twelve And Twelve
http://www.aa.org/lang/en/subpage.cfm?page=359
January 2013 | Step One Reading Video Link:
January 2013 | Video Reading How It Works:
January 2013 | Video Reading A Vision For You:
January 2013 | Playlist About Step One:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD1355CD80542DBFC
don@doninlondon.com |
"music for airports" By Brian Eno | http://www.enoshop.co.uk/ |
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