From “A Two-Way Street” in today’s reflection;

“I was always taught to prepare for the journey through life, never realizing until I came to AA – when I honestly became willing to be taught forgiveness and forgiving – that life itself is the journey. The journey of life is a very happy one, as long as I am willing to accept change and responsibility.”

The last three days, for me, have been a journey beyond my imagination! Funny thing is – all I did was simply change a very small part of my “routine” and had no expectations at all for anything out of the ordinary. Something certainly out of my ordinary has happened.

Thank you!

Post from: Blisstree

Life Itself Is The Journey

Martyrdom

“A martyr is a person who is put to death or endures suffering because of a belief, principle or cause.”

Outside of an academic or religious context, the word “martyr” is used ironically in casual conversation to refer to someone who seeks attention or sympathy by exaggerating the impact upon themselves of some deprivation or work.”

Recovery is the time to let this go! Don’t believe you have a case? Well…

Search the deepest, darkest corners of your “stock room” and see if you find a sneaky little devil hiding in there who tells you that you deserve bad things in life. Who tells you that you don’t deserve good things in life. Who attempts to convince you that God doesn’t love you and that is why you are meant to suffer. After all, it is your fate.

LIES!!!

I Am A Worthwhile Person!

Listen to your Higher Power when He/She tells you that! Hear your worthiness. Know love…

[Image: Wikipedia]

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We Need The Wood!

“So Step Six – ‘Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character’ – is A.A.’s way of stating the best possible attitude one can take in order to make a beginning on this lifetime job.”

Think about this for a moment. It says this is a “lifetime job.” Job certainly does more than imply this will be work. Ought we think that God will be doing the work? I don’t think so, after all, God don’t row!

Nope…

“This does not mean that we expect all our character defects to be lifted out of us as the drive to drink was. A few of them may be, but with most of them we shall have to be content with patient improvement. The key words ‘entirely ready’ underline the fact that we want to aim at the very best we know or can learn.”

Oh heck, there we go, learning again…

T.I.M.E. = Things I Must Earn? Things I Must Endure? Or – “What keeps everything from happening at once.”

Time takes time. One day at a time.

Heard someone at a meeting once say something along the lines of “If I wanted patience, I would have become a Doctor.” (sic)

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Attitude – Lifetime Job

“Of course, the often disputed question of whether God can – and will, under certain conditions – remove defects of character will be answered with a prompt affirmative by almost any A.A. member. To him, this proposition will be no theory at all; it will be about the largest fact in his life.”

I think the only reason anyone with a drinking problem would dispute this fact would be to justify finding a rationalization to continue drinking. But that is only my personal opinion.

They won’t give it the continued attempt and effort the risk to have God remove these defects requires. They also think they somehow retain some level of power to accomplish the task themselves.

The result is inevitable, if you’re like me… my own willpower simply will not work on alcohol.

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From The Sixth Step – The Largest Fact In My Life

From page 63 in AA’s 12&12;

“Sure, I was beaten, absolutely licked. My own willpower just wouldn’t work on alcohol. Change of scene, the best efforts of family, friends, doctors, and clergymen got no place with my alcoholism. I simply couldn’t stop drinking, and no human being could seem to do the job for me. But when I became willing to clean house and then asked a Higher Power, God as I understood Him, to give me release, my obsession to drink vanished. It was lifted right out of me.”

How important is that??? Can it get more important? No! Yet;

“Having been granted a perfect release from alcoholism, why then shouldn’t we be able to achieve by the same means a perfect release from every other difficulty or defect? This is the riddle of our existence, the full answer to which may be only in the mind of God. Nevertheless, at least a part of the answer to it is apparent to us.”

The book goes on to talk sensibly about defying instinctive desires and how we take our instincts to places they weren’t designed to go or to extreme extremes. I have my own thoughts…

Were we perfectly released from every other difficulty or defect, how then would we learn our lessons? How could we grow in wisdom and understanding if we never faced a challenge?

To quote an oldtimer: “God isn’t a puppeteer!”

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The Obsession Was Lifted Right Out Of Me

Daily Reflections

“Now I was stuck on Step Six and, in despair, I picked up the Big Book and read this passage. I was outside, praying for willingness, when I raised my eyes and saw a huge bird rising up in the sky. I watched it suddenly give itself up to the powerful air currents of the mountains. Swept along, swooping and soaring, the bird did things seemingly impossible for mortal birds to do. It was an inspiring example of a fellow creature ‘letting go’ to a power greater than itself. I realized that if the bird ‘took back his will’ and tried to fly with less trust, on its power alone, it would spoil its apparent free flight. That insight granted me the willingness to pray the Seventh Step prayer.”

And since I had an elementary knowledge of God and His word, I consider this seriously;

How much more does God love me than He loves a bird? Besides, how does a bird know to let go in order to find freedom like what was described. If a bird can find such a freedom and the God I understand provides the bird that freedom simply because the bird let go, what might I experience were I to let go too?

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How Does The Bird Know?

“This is the Step that separates the men from the boys. So declares a well-loved clergyman who happens to be one of A.A.’s greatest friends. He goes on to explain that any person capable of enough willingness and honesty to try repeatedly Step Six on all his faults – without any reservations whatever – has indeed come a long way spiritually, and is therefore entitled to be called a man who is sincerely trying to grow in the image and likeness of his own Creator.”

It could have just as easily said: “This is the Step that separates the women from the girls. So declares a well-loved clergyman who happens to be one of A.A.’s greatest friends. He goes on to explain that any person capable of enough willingness and honesty to try repeatedly Step Six on all his faults – without any reservations whatever – has indeed come a long way spiritually, and is therefore entitled to be called a woman who is sincerely trying to grow in the image and likeness of her own Creator.”

But that’s not the point The point is;

“Are we now ready to let God remove from us all the things which we have admitted are objectionable? Can He now take them all – every one? If we still cling to something we will not let go, we ask God to help us be willing.”

Furthermore, guess what? If you’re not willing to let God remove them – you get to keep them and continue to live with them! How well did they work for you before? Simple answer eh?

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Step Six

The Tablemate was an early A.A. set of beginners lessons entitled ‘Alcoholics Anonymous: An Interpretation of the Twelve Steps,’ put out in the form of a little pamphlet. It was (and still is) the most successful set of A.A. beginners lessons ever devised.

And I’m drawing content from the Hindsfoot site, laboriously prepared by Glenn C. and others… We are now in Discussion No. 2: The Spiritual Phase (II) (see part I)

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Step No. 5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.

1. There is nothing new in this step. There are many sound reasons for “talking over our troubles out loud with others.”

2. The Catholic already has this medium readily available to him in the confessional. But – - the Catholic is at a disadvantage if he thinks his familiarity with confession permits him to think his part of A.A. is thereby automatically taken care of. He must, in confession, seriously consider his problems in relation to his alcoholic thinking.
3. The non-Catholic has the way open to work this step by going to his minister, his doctor, or his friend.
4. Under this step it is not even necessary to go to a priest or minister. Any understanding human being, friend or stranger, will serve the purpose.
5. The purpose and intent of this step is so plain and definite that it needs little explanation. The point is that we must do exactly what the fifth step says, sooner or later. We must not be in rush to get this step off our chest. Consider it carefully and calmly. Then get about it and do it.
6. “Wrongs” do not necessarily mean crime. It can well be wrong thinking – - selfishness – - false pride – - egotism – - or any one of a hundred such negative faults.

Step No. 6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

1. After admitting our wrong thinking and wrong actions in step five we now do something more than “admit” or “confess.”
2. We now become ready and willing to have God remove the defects in our character.
3. Remember it is our character we are working on. Not the other fellow’s. Here is a good place to drop the critical attitude toward others – - the superior attitude toward others.
4. We must clean our mind of wrong thinking – - petty jealousy – - envy – - self pity – - remorse, etc.
5. Here is the place to drop resentments, one of the biggest hurdles the alcoholic had to get over.
6. What concerns us here is that we drop all thoughts of resentment: anger, hatred, revenge.
7. We turn our will over to God and let his will direct us how to patiently remove, one by one, all defects in our character.

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The Tablemate – Discussion No. 2 The Spiritual Phase Part II

Trusting Others

“But does trust require that we be blind to other people’s motives or, indeed, to our own? Not at all; this would be folly. Most certainly, we should assess the capacity for harm as well as the capability for good in every person that we would trust. Such a private inventory can reveal the degree of confidence we should extend in any given situation.”

As Bill Sees It, p. 144

The response begins “I am not a victim of others, but rather a victim of my expectations, choices and dishonesty. When I expect others to be what I want them to be and not who they are, when they fail to meet my expectations, I am hurt.”

Victim

1. (original sense) A living creature which is slain and offered as human or animal sacrifice, usually in a religious rite.
2. Anyone who is physically harmed by another.
3. An aggrieved or disadvantaged party in a crime (e.g. swindle.)
4. A person who suffers any other injury, loss, or damage as a result of a voluntary undertaking.
5. An unfortunate person who suffers from a disaster or other adverse circumstance.

Yes, it does look that way! And, apparently I continue to victimize me “when my choices are based on self-centeredness, I find I am lonely and distrustful.”

I change that when “I gain confidence in myself, however, when I practice honesty in all my affairs.”

Plus, I’ve come a long way, grown up quite a bit, “when I search my motives and am honest and trusting, I am aware of the capacity for harm in situations and can avoid those that are harmful.”

[A shame that some self-proclaimed "gurus" say that checking our motives is middle-of-the-road psycho-babble. Yet, there it is - directly from our literature.]

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Is Victim The Right Word?

“Fear has caused suffering when I could have had more faith. There are times when fear suddenly tears me apart, just when I’m experiencing feelings of joy, happiness and a lightness of heart. Faith – and a feeling of self-worth toward a Higher Power – helps me endure tragedy and ecstasy. When I choose to give all of my fears over to my Higher Power, I will be free.”

I don’t often take the time to question how much faith I may have at any given moment, do you? Isn’t how much faith I may have “right now” a matter of what has developed, using the Twelve Steps, through the days, weeks, months and years of practicing the development of my relationship with the God I understand? Isn’t it also a matter of having found the level of faith I lacked at similar moments in my past learning from those times through the practice of the Twelve Steps?

I have to practice at, work at, changing my belief system. It said in the very first sentence of today’s reflection – “The achievement of freedom from fear is a lifetime undertaking, one that can never be wholly completed.”

With that in mind, ought I bother to waste the effort to question whether I should have more faith at a given moment? If suffering is occurring, I want to be in a state of mind where I have the chance to embrace this suffering as an opportunity to display my God’s magnificence!

Now… reaching that “place” is a bit of a steep uphill climb on a lot of occasions, isn’t it? As long as I follow His dictates though, and stay sober, there is hope I’ll make that climb at the time I need to. Therein lies that “feeling of self-worth toward my Higher Power.”

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A Feeling Of Self-Worth Toward A Higher Power