Alcoholics Anonymous Blog January 6 2015 "Freedom Through Powerlessness”
Video January 6
Am I still trying to pull myself together, put on a brave face and show the world the best I can be? A mixture of questions, these days I don't try and pull myself together, maybe I just try to collect my thoughts and understand my feelings. Do I need to put on a brave face and pretend to the world that I am okay, no is the answer, I can show the world who I am today, whether I am feeling good bad or indifferent. I have freedom just to be me.
Freedom through powerlessness? The freedom to make the best choices given the current conditions today. Freedom to make choices without having to have power to make that choice? Being powerless over alcohol, people, places and things, simply means I'm not trying to control anything external to me, to make me feel complete. Freedom to accept that I am a learner, that given the current conditions today, I am able to cope, and if I cannot cope, I may ask for help from anywhere at any time appropriately. I don't always get the help in ways which I might feel are useful immediately or ever, sometimes I am simply barking up the wrong tree. And sometimes what the heart wants is not available or what the heart really needs. Romance! Thank God we never get over it, love is abundant always when we cherish! Acceptance delivers understanding and freedom today and what we can and cannot do.
Freedom through powerlessness really is quite difficult to understand if we feel we have entitlements that if we put in the effort into the right endeavours we can meet our expectations and our entitlements will be met. Just because I might have wanted to be a doctor, in the dim dark past, my expectations were far beyond my mental faculties at the time. Being a late bloomer, and with a lifetime of experience, I would make a great doctor, except for the fact that by the time I qualify, I will be in my dotage. I gave up the idea of being a doctor when I was mystified studying biology at school, and much preferred studying biology in real-time before during and after raucous parties and social events back in the day.
I need not pretend to be in control of anything, indeed control anything outside myself is subject to negotiation and depends on the current conditions today. In social relationships, we are interdependent, we are able to define ourselves and our role within family and social situations. We don't have to control other people, realising a person has every right, like we do on the planet to be themselves and do what they do makes for an easier life. At work, we all are subject to the rules, systems and procedures and everything else that goes with being in an organisation working a command and control system. We need to fit in and produce the goods and services, and then we get paid for it. If you don't like what you do, the door is open to try new options under the current conditions today. In other words, the world is open to what we can and cannot do, and often we can work this out and make our choices, and when we are uncertain asking for help is a good idea. Self-reliance, it can be wonderful, self-determination is a human right, and yet in my case I gave up that right without realising, and was controlled by addictions to alcohol, romance and finance. Thinking I would be okay when I got to wherever I thought I ought to be. Unfortunately addiction drove me to rock bottom. Powerless I was and certainly not free to make good choices one day at a time.
Freedom to make choices for oneself, for those we care for and developing a happy existence does not happen overnight. And sometimes we find ourselves locked into particular ways of life, because we think we ought to have that life. And what we thought we ought to have, to fit in, to be loved and be able to love back was simply a fantasy rather than a reality. Putting the fantasy to one side and coping with reality opens many opportunities, as long as we understand the current conditions today, the possible and the impossible, and take account of our respective responsibilities and living the consequences that we have and can deliver toward on any given day. To thine own self be true, so that others may be true to you. Of course you cannot control or understand sometimes when we can be or have been deceived and misled by others, those are the current conditions which I face on any given day. Forgiveness for our past and our consequences, which need to be met and our responsibilities, means we can forgive others who continue to defy the truth and reality of now.
There seem to be big decisions going on around me. I don't know what they are or what the consequences may be. Worrying about them, even when I don't what they are, well it would make me feel very low and despondent trying to find out. So I need to let go what I don't know, and deal with what I do know. Powerless over what other people are up to, and thank goodness I am, because trying to be in control is what caused my addiction and dismay for quite a long while. I like being powerless, not trying to control behaviour in me or others. There are conventions by which we live and principles of conscience which keep me on track. And within these conventions and conscience, every day is a good day for any new beginning or continuance of a good path today.
Wisdom is born in silence and then becomes negotiation to find truth in this interdependent world.
Step One Reading 12 & 12
Alcoholics Anonymous Videos, AA is for Alcoholics, AA 12 Steps, Addiction And Recovery, DonInLondon, Don Oddy,
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