Alcoholics Anonymous Blog & Video July 28 2014
Swings and roundabouts, at sixes and sevens with life is very pertinent in the 12 steps for me, and I can only speak for myself. And that's good, because I don't want to speak for you ever, it would be wrong to even suggest that I could speak for another person in Fellowship. The good news in Fellowship, nobody can tell you what to do, it is enshrined in tradition one. So where we choose to speak is a personal choice always. I can be at sixes and sevens, even apoplectic at world events unfolding every day.
On the one hand, we know the answers to all the world's ills and the devastation being wrought by human beings. On the other hand, nobody is listening, and nobody seems able to engage and get over their hatred, the prejudice which has evolved over centuries, let alone what has happened one day at a time. Nobody is listening when they are fearful, prideful with ego running riot. The courage to stop doing the old things, and build some courage faith and confidence to change on a daily basis is hard enough for an alcoholic let alone a nation with decades to thousands of years of conflict. And my nation is no better, easily able to rush to anger, domestically and nationally. An alcoholic is fighting a war with themselves, until surrender has been accepted on a daily basis.
I bumped into a friend of mine not far away yesterday. Still in full flow, drinking whatever he drinks in the way of alcohol from a Lucozade bottle. He saw me and greeted me, calling me by the wrong name, the name of a person I hated with murderous intent in my early days. Not a good start to our encounter. I reminded him of my name, and I said I hadn't forgotten him and his name. He grabbed me by the neck, and pulled me in so that our heads merged. I said to him that I was aware of what he was drinking from a Lucozade bottle, and he said, "What can I do?" And the only answer I had for him, "just try to be yourself." And he knows what I mean by this because he is a very gifted clever man and is heard me speak many a time about recovery.
And for ages yesterday I was chatting on the phone with another friend in recovery, who is quite a number of years sober and never wants to go back to the old days of chaos and misery. And they had been in the company of many friends in recent times, some of whom had relapsed after many years in recovery. We agreed no one is immune from the trials and tribulations of daily life and if we do not have support and challenge in our lives, anyone anywhere could be sucked under into the mire again if tragedy were to strike. And this is why Fellowship is so important to me, if something happened and I could not cope, or something just happened when the pain and anguish might strike, I need meetings and people who are aware of me and would listen to me if and when such a time happens.
This thing of being at sixes and sevens in my world: where defects of character described in step six, pride ego and fear with the seven deadly sins, and where step seven shortcomings of courage, faith and confidence and the seven virtues are always part of everyday life. We can stumble blindly into our defects given the current conditions today, and we can spend quite a while rebalancing with step seven with the support of other people we have inside and outside Fellowship with the current conditions offer today.
Road rage, even as a cyclist can happen if we engage in confrontation. And rage is an issue for every human being challenged and tested by the current conditions today. In the 12 and 12 "steps and traditions," within the 12 step reading it suggests that under the current conditions today, the steps can work. But they can only work if we put the action in, and learn about them, and put them into practice over and over again, or relapse is possible. Just knowing the 12 steps and 12 traditions is not enough, applying them in everyday life, outside Fellowship has been the key to happiness and serenity when happiness and serenity are possible. And when happiness and serenity is not possible, the 12 steps and 12 traditions help me cope and ask for help as needed.
Being a practitioner of life, is to be immersed in life and not talking about it. As many people who go to university or college find out, a qualification is a starting point and then real life dictates that we need produce and work to understand life, experience it and gain wisdom over and over again. The same is true within the Fellowship of AA, if we are lucky, we listen and learn and then find out how things work in practice one day at a time. Life is your best teacher, not somebody with their belief and opinion trying to dictate how you live your life today. The only qualification required to start the journey is to try to be sober today.
Step Seven Video 12 And 12
Alcoholics Anonymous Videos, AA is for Alcoholics, AA 12 Steps, Addiction And Recovery, DonInLondon, Don Oddy,
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