I first published this two years ago and I’d like to refer to it again. It feels very appropriate considering some of the folks who’ve displayed their own recently…

****************************************

It surprised me when I discovered how defiant I had been toward God in my drinking days and for quite some time after He helped me sober up.

Small, simple things like, “no, I’ll do it my way, thank you.” Do you have any idea how often and to what degree we do this?

There’s an old “story” I wish I could relate about someone demanding a sign from God while they’re standing in the middle of a field. They dismiss a soft breeze, a butterfly and a couple of other signs because they misperceive them and leave discouraged.

I really like what it says on page 31 in the 12&12 – “When we encountered A.A., the fallacy of our defiance was revealed.” I like it today, I didn’t quite like it when I was a green pea. I didn’t want to be considered defiant. I’d been told that throughout my life – “You’re so defiant Mark.” I can hear my mom now. It was my ego and pride – I really didn’t want to be wrong in yet another way.

Our book goes on to say – “At no time had we asked what God’s will was for us: instead we had been telling Him what it ought to be.” I thought “how had I been telling Him what it ought to be? Consider that all, ALL my prayers, revolved around getting something I wanted or not losing something I had. “Please, please God, do this for me.”

God had other ideas… I wasn’t very accepting of God’s other ideas. When He didn’t deliver I became angry and hurt. I developed a manner of thinking that God didn’t love me because he never gave me what I wanted. Ever…

Then A.A. tells me “No man, we saw, could believe in God and defy Him, too. Belief meant reliance, not defiance.”

Oh heck, I’m done… but wait!

“In A.A. we saw the fruits of this belief: men and women spared from alcohol’s final catastrophe. We saw them meet and transcend their other pains and trials. We saw them calmly accept impossible situations, seeking neither to run nor to recriminate.”

There’s hope in those words! Maybe I’m not done after all?

“This was not only faith; it was faith that worked under all conditions. We soon concluded that whatever price in humility we must pay, we would pay.”

All Conditions!

From the previous page – “Self-righteousness, the very thing that we had contemptuously condemned in others, was our own besetting evil. This phony form of respectability was our undoing, so far as faith was concerned.”

Self-righteousness undid me and was phony!

Humility!

Post from: Blisstree

The Fallacy of Defiance

We have a good friend who asks this question at meetings – “how do I know that AA is working?” The answer?

I’ve never had it so good!

There are times like right now that I must bring this to the forefront of my mind. I’m on the right track. God has me exactly where he wants me. How do I know? Because I’ve never had it so good!

I could spend hours picking out all the negatives and fears in my life each day. All I have to do to live a happy day is remember, see factually, know without doubt, that my life is truly a gift. Had God not walked my ugly butt into AA when He did, there are many alternatives to what my life might have been like. The simplest is dead. I’m alive and thankful.

I’ll live it from there…

Post from: Blisstree

The World Of The Spirit

Listening to newcomers at today’s Noon meeting I heard it again. What I sounded like with the same amount of “sober” time. Especially when I attempted to speak about what my father “did” to me to make me drink. That is until an oldtimer asked me if my father poured any booze down my throat.

From today’s Daily Reflections;

I Am Responsible

“For the readiness to take the full consequences of our past acts, and to take responsibility for the well-being of others at the same time, is the very spirit of Step Nine.”

“The very thing I fear is my freedom. It comes from my tendency to recoil from taking responsibility for anything: I deny, I ignore, I blame, I avoid. Then one day, I look, I admit, I accept. The freedom, the healing and the recovery I experience is in the looking, admitting and accepting. I learn to say, ‘Yes, I am responsible.’ When I can speak those words with honesty and sincerity, then I am free.”

FREE!

Post from: Blisstree

I Am Responsible

“Made direct amends to such people wherever possible”

This reflection speaks of not being able to make amends to those folks who were casual acquaintances. People who passed through our lives briefly or barely. Like those neighbors I used to live near who no doubt heard my late night yelling…

“The only amends I can make to those untraceable individuals, the only ‘changes for the better’ I can offer, are indirect amends made to other people, whose paths briefly cross mine. Courtesy and kindness, regularly practiced, help me to live in emotional balance, at peace with myself.”

Just a personal thought – as you’re being courteous and kind to your fellow man today, don’t get carried away with your wonderfulness. You’re simply acting as our Higher Power had intended us to act from jump street. Nothing to be taking credit for…

Post from: Blisstree

A Step Towards Emotional Balance

How Bill W. explained what was meant by the saying that
“A.A. is a SELFISH program.”

…. Another correspondent complained directly that he had been ‘disturbed to hear some A.A. speakers say, ‘A.A. is a selfish program.’” The co-founder’s response was eventually published in “The A.A. Way of Life”:

I can see why you are disturbed…. The word ’selfish’ ordinarily implies that one is acquisitive, demanding, and thoughtless of the welfare of others. Of course, the A.A. way of life does not at all imply such undesirable traits.

What do these speakers mean? Well, any theologian will tell you that the salvation of his own soul is the highest vocation that a man can have. Without salvation – however we may define this – he will have little or nothing. For us in A.A. there is even more urgency.

If we cannot or will not achieve sobriety, then we become truly lost, right in the here and now. We are of no value to anyone, including ourselves, until we find salvation from alcohol. Therefore, our own recovery and spiritual growth have to come first – a right and necessary kind of self-concern.

[From "Not-God, A History of Alcoholics Anonymous", pp. 243-244, by Ernest Kurtz.]

Post from: Blisstree

AA – Selfish Program?

Didn’t We Hurt Anybody?

“Some of us, though, tripped over a very different snag. We clung to the claim that when drinking we never hurt anybody but ourselves.”

Wow, were we ever self-centered??? Yet, that was what I believed and it was the point! Though I wasn’t up to task. When the time came (and it did often) I couldn’t pull the final “plug.” Thank God…

“My parents, who had been deeply hurt by my isolation from them, my employer, who worried about my absences, my memory lapses, my temper; and the friends I had shunned, without explanation. As I faced the reality of the harm I had done, Step Eight took on new meaning. I am no longer uncomfortable and I feel clean and light.”

[The book doesn't mention (in this reading) the harm I did my wife and children, those I loved the most and caused the most harm. I'll mention it to satisfy my critics.]

Post from: Blisstree

Wasn’t That The Idea?

And it will eliminate the “easier, softer way” the Internet offers.

“When listing the people we have harmed, most of us hit another solid obstacle. We got a pretty severe shock when we realized that we were preparing to make a face-to-face admission of our wretched conduct to those we had hurt.”

I love the way Bill calls things – “wretched conduct.” He pulls no punches with his words.

“It had been embarrassing enough when in confidence we had admitted these things to God, to ourselves, and to another human being.”

I’d wonder about that. Was it truly embarrassing to you admitting your wretched conduct to your God?

“But the prospect of actually visiting or even writing the people concerned now overwhelmed us, especially when we remembered in what poor favor we stood with most of them.”

Get the picture? Oh he**! I have to go face them??? There’s a fear I’d have drank over/at! Anything to avoid the certain anger and condemnation my actions had earned. A “small” indication of more value to a thorough Third Step.

“There were cases, too, where we had damaged others who were still happily unaware of being hurt. Why, we cried, shouldn’t bygones be bygones? Why do we have to think of these people at all?”

To be thorough and complete with our God. Because I said I was willing to go to any length to gain victory over alcohol. Because “These were some of the ways in which fear conspired with pride to hinder our making a list of all the people we had harmed.”

I can’t be sure how you feel about it but I know I don’t want to meet my Creator having left someone out because of my pride and ego. He’s given me the most incredible gift I could have imagined. The least I can do to stay sober and say thank you is to be complete.

Post from: Blisstree

Preparing For A Face-To-Face

“Every A.A. has found that he can make little headway in this new adventure of living until he first backtracks and really makes an accurate and unsparing survey of the human wreckage he has left in his wake.”

Accurate and unsparing! Do you now know why the Fourth Step said “Searching and Fearless?” Oh, BTW – note it says the human wreckage we left behind. There are no mistakes. It is time to stand up and accept responsibility.

“To a degree, he has already done this when taking a moral inventory, but now the time has come when he ought to redouble his efforts to see how many people he has hurt, and in what ways.”

I believe if you get real about this you already know that you hurt others. I knew it yet hadn’t really been able to focus on exactly how. I was about to become able to do just that. For ex. – the times I came home in the early hours of the morning and she had been sitting alone listening to the police sirens wondering if I had wrapped myself or others around a tree. I caused her emotional pain and I was wrong. Selfishly, I hadn’t given it any consideration. I was wrapped up in me.

“This reopening of emotional wounds, some old, some perhaps forgotten, and some still painfully festering, will at first look like a purposeless and pointless piece of surgery. But if a willing start is made, then the great advantage of doing this will so quickly reveal themselves that the pain will be lessened as one obstacle after another melts away.”

I can’t say that was exactly what happened for me as anyone who has been reading would know but I can say that the advantages that have eventually revealed themselves are worth it – specifically that the obsession is gone.

Forgiveness. A tough subject in the beginning. Forgiveness is about to be brought into the light for us. Yet we’ll sometimes still be urged by old, inbred behavior, to revert back. That also lessens.

“These obstacles, however, are very real. The first, and one of the most difficult, has to do with forgiveness. The moment we ponder a twisted or broken relationship with another person, our emotions go on the defensive. To escape looking at the wrongs we have done another, we resentfully focus on the wrong he/she has done us. This is especially true if he/she has, in fact, behaved badly at all. Triumphantly we seize upon his/her misbehavior as the perfect excuse for minimizing or forgetting our own.”

And, if you insist on this focus, you’ll continue to have a deep challenge with sobriety! This is not humble!

Post from: Blisstree

They Did “It” To Me! Oh – You Think So?

Thought – if you’re new and having troubles with your personal relationships and thinking of drinking, don’t keep it to yourself and think perhaps you can solve it on your own! Meetings, sponsor, oldtimers.

Make note – From the 12&12, page 77;

“First, we take a look backward and try to discover where we have been at fault; next we make a vigorous attempt to repair the damage we have done; and third, having thus cleaned away the debris of the past, we consider how, with our newfound knowledge of ourselves, we may develop the best possible relations with every human being we know.”

And then it says “This is a very large order” to which I thought, in the beginning, oh screw this one! Amazing I would think that because the lack of good relationships was/is the primary emotional pain of my very being.

I can attest today that this is true;

“Learning how to live in the greatest peace, partnership, and brotherhood with all men and women, of whatever description, is a moving and fascinating adventure.”

An adventure that I often want to not live through because of its disturbances, but I make it with your help. Relationships, even after time sober, can still be major challenges, especially with those you love.

But I said I was willing to do whatever it took and I still am!

Post from: Blisstree

Oh No! Personal Relationships!!!

Naturally, I consider that, in “those days,” I was drinking so how honest could I have been? I suppose only my customers could say…

When working an Eighth and Ninth Step there is a lengthy discussion in the Big Book about just exactly how honest we ought to be. The answer, for me, is on page 80. Referring to a wrong a man felt he could not possibly make right, here is what follows;

“After consulting with his wife and partner he came to the conclusion that it was better to take those risks than to stand before his Creator quilty of such ruinous slander. He saw that he had to place the outcome in God’s hands or he would soon start drinking again, and all would be lost anyhow.”

Please let me remind you, this works for me – I don’t want to face the prospect of standing before St. Peter at the pearly gates and have him ask me questions that I won’t have an honest answer for… I’ll do whatever it takes to be as close to 100% honest as I can be. Besides, the God I understand today will forgive me for anything as long as I’m willing to be forgiven. Oh, and I don’t go running around using that as an excuse for poor behavior because I know that same God can see right through that crappola.

Post from: Blisstree

Honesty – But To What Extent?