Daily Reflections

Remember, from the Seventh Step;

“In every case, pain had been the price of admission into a new life.”

I’d asked God for dozens of do-overs, never believing there was any hope. In addition, I sure didn’t exactly perceive that were I to be graced with a new life that, by necessity, it would have to be born through pain!

“But this admission price had purchased more than we expected. It brought a measure of humility, which we soon discovered to be a healer of pain.”

In our Eighth Step we discover more about pain: “I learned that the pain of my defects is the very substance God uses to cleanse my character and to set me free.”

We might want to consider embracing our pain as we grow…

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The Pain Of My Defects

From today’s Daily Reflection: “Those Who Still Suffer”

“For us, if we neglect those who are still sick, there is unremitting danger to our own lives and sanity.”

It is my personal opinion (fwiw) that this is a piece of writing that undoes the profundity expressed in meetings that the newcomer is the most important person in the room. I think whoever made that statement up about the newcomer needed to say something they thought made them sound important.

When you get down to reality, in a belief system based on a Higher Power, each and every life in our rooms is equal in value and has no more or less importance. We are all equal!

“I know the torment of drinking compulsively to quiet my nerves and my fears. I also know the pain of white-knuckled sobriety. Today, I do not forget the unknown person who suffers quietly, withdrawn and hiding in the desperate relief of drinking.”

They don’t even have to be hiding in drinking. I’ve known many folks with years of sobriety who’ve sat in the rooms in pain because they had somehow lost the ability to ask for help and no one asked them how they were doing because they were oldtimers and supposedly had it all together. They were not less important than the newcomer.

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White-Knuckled Sobriety

This, for me, goes a very long way to defining humility.

I was always Johnny-On-The-Spot when someone was troubled, in harms’ way or hurt. It seemed that accidents happened close by and I’d be there to help. But I had a motive despite the coincidental nature of most of these circumstances.

I wanted attention. I wanted someone to pay attention to me, to reward me. Self-centered in the extreme because if I didn’t receive attention or reward I got angry and pouted. Of true humility I knew absolutely nothing.

Then came AA and wise oldtime AA members including Matt and Rick. We talked about humility. We spoke about doing good things for others. Then they laid it on me, thankfully.

I can’t remember who, I believe it was Matt, who listened to me at that meeting speak of doing something good for someone else. After the meeting he told me that whatever I’d done good no longer counted. Still with my reward system nature I was affronted by his comment. What do you mean it doesn’t count?

To find true humility you do something good for someone and you don’t tell anyone you did it. That’s the way it works! Otherwise you’re simply doing what you’d always done – brag. EGO is all about bragging. And EGO is easing God out. So, keep your big mouth shut!

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Do Something Good For Someone And Then…

My first thought relating to how pride aims at the destruction of others comes from the term “character assassination.”

Suppose for a moment that you’ve worked on a project for your company for months finally arriving at what you believe in your heart is a magnificent piece of work.

Your co-worker has also worked on a similar project and has the same feelings about his/hers.

The boss chooses their project for the honors. And you begin a campaign of character assassination maligning anything good about your fellow worker, raising doubt about anything they’ve ever accomplished. You tell everybody willing to listen how your co-worker is nothing more than a dirty so-and-so, a cheat, a philanderer, a thief and on and on…

That is pride aimed at the destruction of another, imho. Alcoholics are quite talented at this sad mental twist.

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Pride Aimed At Destruction Of Others

This is from “The Language of the Heart,” June, 1961 – “Humility For Today,” pg. 258.

Bill wrote:

“Today I think I can trace a clear linkage between my guilt and my pride. Both of them were certainly attention-getters. In pride I could say, ‘Look at me, I am wonderful.’ In guilt I would moan, ‘I’m awful.’ Therefore guilt is really the reverse side of the coin of pride. Guilt aims at self-destruction, and pride aims at the destruction of others.”

“This is why I see humility for today as that safe and secure stance midway between these violent emotional extremes. It is a quiet place where I can keep enough perspective, and enough balance, to take my next small step up the clearly marked road that points towards eternal values.”

________________________________________

It’s not funny at all when I see this – “Guilt aims at self-destruction, and pride aims at the destruction of others” and I see exactly why talk of pride being okay upsets me so… especially within the rooms during meetings!

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A Link Between Guilt And Pride

This applies to me as well folks! Today’s Reflection;

Shortcomings Removed

“When I put the Seventh Step into action I must remember that there are no blanks to fill in.”

Isn’t this interesting? If I hadn’t read this I’d be wondering what they meant. They go on to say;

“It doesn’t say, ‘Humbly asked Him to (fill in the blank) remove our shortcomings.’ For years, I filled in the imaginary blank with ‘Help me!’ ‘Give me the courage to,’ and ‘Give me the strength,’ etc. The Step says simply that God will remove my shortcomings.”

Must be my lack of faith that keeps me in a never-ending condition of keeping my shortcomings…

What do you think? About you, not me

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So… You Say You Still Have Your Shortcomings Eh?

From page 75 in AA’s 12&12;

“During this process of learning more about humility, the most profound result of all was the change in our attitude toward God. And this was true whether we had been believers or unbelievers. We began to get over the idea that the Higher Power was a sort of bush-league pinch hitter, to be called upon only in an emergency.”

You know what the two foxhole prayers are – don’t you?

The first is “Please dear God, get me out of this one and I swear, I’ll never do it again!”

The second? The second is – “phew………”

“The notion that we would still live our own lives, God helping a little now and then, began to evaporate. Many of us who had thought ourselves religious awoke to the limitations of this attitude. Refusing to place God first, we had deprived ourselves of His help. But now the words ‘Of myself I am nothing, the Father doeth the works’ began to carry bright promise and meaning.”

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Of Myself I Am Nothing

And I damn well want to know why I am still unstable when I make no friggin’ demands upon God for anything!!!

I’ve been reading our literature and it’s references to demands as opposed to requests for some time now. I understand the differences. It was made clear to me what I’d been doing with my alcoholic, negative thinking when I was drinking and even early on (about 15 years lol) sober. There’s been a lot of water under the demand bridge between my God and I for years.

And still my emotional stability rests on very shaky ground.

“Years of dependency on alcohol as a chemical mood-changer deprived me of the capability to interact emotionally with my fellows.”

In the years since I stopped, by God’s grace, depending on alcohol as a chemical mood-changer, my ability to interact emotionally has improved, quite a bit.

“I thought I had to be self-sufficient, self-reliant, and self-motivated in a world of unreliable people.”

AA taught me that self-sufficiency was a juggernaut who’s end result is ruin. AA taught me that belief meant reliance not defiance. AA taught me that relying on people would fail me because they are human too.

“Finally I lost my self-respect and was left with dependency, lacking any ability to trust myself or to believe in anything.”

This very last attempt to make the best of the interaction opportunity that was presented came very close to a feeling of losing my self-respect. That didn’t happen. Yet I’m still feeling compulsive, drawn towards it. And when I fight the compulsion, I feel sad and depressed.

Yeah, they also said it was a strange twist of the mind, didn’t they?

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Dammit! I Didn’t Demand Anything!

“For thousands of years we have been demanding more than our share of security, prestige, and romance. When we seemed to be succeeding, we drank to dream still greater dreams. When we were frustrated, even in part, we drank for oblivion. Never was there enough of what we thought we wanted.

In all these strivings, so many of them well-intentioned, our crippling handicap had been our lack of humility. We had lacked the perspective to see that character-building and spiritual values had to come first, and that material satisfactions were not the purpose of living.”

The person in our literature who was allowed to respond to this says;

“I understood my shortcomings: I constantly put tasks off; I angered easily; I felt too much self-pity; and I thought, why me? Then I remembered, ‘Pride goeth before the fall,’ and I eliminated pride from my life.”

To those who perpetrate injustice upon me and other human beings, know this and hear it loud and clear! There is a God! And you aren’t it! That God brings all things full circle and what you have wrought upon others will be, in turn, wrought upon you. May He show you mercy in your suffering…

And to all my friends in recovery please know and understand that injustices brought upon us need not be used as excuses to kill ourselves by whatever addiction we might have! If God is for us, who can be against us? No one…

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When We Were Frustrated, Even In Part, We Drank For Oblivion

From The Seventh Step in the 12&12;

“True, most of us thought good character was desirable, but obviously good character was something one needed to get on with the business of being self-satisfied.”

Yeah – right. In the case of most alcoholics and also most humans, we were previously told “Instead of regarding the satisfaction of our material desires as the means by which we could live and function as human beings, we had taken these satisfactions to be the final end and aim of life.” How true! And how perverse was that thinking…

That led to others judging, then self-judging, that if we didn’t provide enough therefore we weren’t good enough. This one still haunts me with my “family.”

But the 12&12 lays it out, for me, very nicely.

First the sarcasm – “With a proper display of honesty and morality, we’d stand a better chance of getting what we really wanted.” Wrong again. There simply is no method with which to always determine we’ll be getting what we want. It truly isn’t up to us.

Then the old reality – “But whenever we had to choose between character and comfort, the character-building was lost in the dust of our chase after what we thought was happiness. Seldom did we look at character-building as something desirable in itself, something we would like to strive for whether our instinctual needs were met or not.”

Now, I ask you, when can you recall considering character-building when you were drinking? My answer would be – never!

Thirdly, our literature offers us what I believe becomes the answer when they tell us “We never thought of making honesty, tolerance, and true love of man and God the daily basis of living.”

When I can practice that, life is so much better!

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Displaying Honesty and Morality To Get What We Want