Traditions Checklist – Tradition One: Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon AA unity.

1. Am I in my group a healing, mending, integrating person, or am I divisive? What about gossip and taking other members’ inventories?

2. Am I a peacemaker? Or do I, with pious preludes such as “just for the sake of discussion,” plunge into argument?

3. Am I gentle with those who rub me the wrong way, or am I abrasive?

4. Do I make competitive AA remarks, such as comparing one group with another or contrasting AA in one place with AA in another?

5. Do I put down some AA activities as if I were superior for not participating in this or that aspect of AA?

6. Am I informed about AA as a whole? Do I support, in every way I can, AA as a whole, or just the parts I understand and approve of?

7. Am I as considerate of AA members as I want them to be of me?

8. Do I spout platitudes about love while indulging in and secretly justifying behavior that bristles with hostility?

9. Do I go to enough AA meetings or read enough AA literature to really keep in touch?

10. Do I share with AA all of me, the bad and the good, accepting as well as giving the help of fellowship?

Comments accepted…

Post from: Blisstree

Traditions Checklist – Tradition One

From Silkworth.net;

Tradition Ten: Alcoholics Anonymous has no opinion on outside issues; hence the AA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.

• Do I ever give the impression that there really is an “AA opinion” on Antabuse? Tranquilizers? Doctors? Psychiatrists? Churches? Hospitals? Jails? Alcohol? The federal government? Legalizing marijuana? Vitamins? Al-Anon? Alateen?
• Can I honestly share my own personal experience concerning any of those without giving the impression I am stating the “AA opinion”?
• What in AA history gave rise to our Tenth Tradition?
• Have I had a similar experience in my own AA life?
• What would AA be without this Tradition? Where would I be?
• Do I breach this or any of its supporting Traditions in subtle, perhaps unconscious, ways?
• How can I manifest the spirit of this Tradition in my personal life outside AA? Inside AA?

[Also worthy of being returned to the top and brought into the now ]

Post from: Blisstree

Tradition Ten Checklist

From Silkworth.net;

Tradition Eight: Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.

• Is my own behavior accurately described by the Traditions? If not, what needs changing?
• When I chafe about any particular Tradition, do I realize how it affects others?
• Do I sometimes try to get some reward – even if not money – for my personal AA efforts?
• Do I try to sound in AA like an expert on alcoholism? On recovery? On medicine? On sociology? On AA itself? On psychology? On spiritual matters? Or, heaven help me, even on humility?
• Do I make an effort to understand what AA employees do? What workers in other alcoholism agencies do? Can I distinguish clearly among them?
• In my own AA life, have I any experiences which illustrate the wisdom of this Tradition.
• Have I paid enough attention to the book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions? To the pamphlet AA Tradition – How It Developed?

Post from: Blisstree

Traditions Eight Checklist

From Silkworth.net;

Tradition Seven: Every AA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.

• Honestly now, do I do all I can to help AA (my group, my central office, my GSO) remain self-supporting? Could I put a little more into the basket on behalf of the new guy who can’t afford it yet? How generous was I when tanked in a barroom?
• Should the Grapevine sell advertising space to book publishers and drug companies, so it could make a big profit and become a bigger magazine, in full color, at a cheaper price per copy?
• If GSO runs short of funds some year, wouldn’t it be okay to let the government subsidize AA groups in hospitals and prisons?
• Is it more important to get a big AA collection from a few people, or a smaller collection in which more members participate?
• Is a group treasurer’s report unimportant AA business? How does the treasurer feel about it?
• How important in my recovery is the feeling of self-respect, rather than the feeling of being always under obligation for charity received?

Post from: Blisstree

Tradition Seven Checklist

From Silkworth.net;

Tradition Six: An AA group ought never endorse, finance, or lend the AA name to any related facility or outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose.

• Should my fellow group members and I go out and raise money to endow several AA beds in our local hospital?
• Is it good for a group to lease a small building?
• Are all the officers and members of our local club for AAs familiar with “Guidelines on Clubs” (which is available free from GSO)?
• Should the secretary of our group serve on the mayor’s advisory committee on alcoholism?
• Some alcoholics will stay around AA only if we have a TV and card room. If this is what is required to carry the message to them, should we have these facilities?

Some things I can do if I don’t ascribe credit to AA but do them personally, like raise money for beds for alcoholics in our hospitals. I think our secretary can also perform duties like that but in a personal capacity.

No, I don’t believe we need to have a TV and a card room. Disagreements arise. Focus is altered.

Post from: Blisstree

Traditions Six Checklist – 2008

From Silkworth.net;

Tradition Five: Each group has but one primary purpose – to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.

• Do I ever cop out by saying, “I’m not a group, so this or that Tradition doesn’t apply to me?”

• Am I willing to explain firmly to a newcomer the limitations of AA help, even if he gets mad at me for not giving him a loan?

• Have I today imposed on any AA member for a special favor or consideration simply because I am a fellow alcoholic?

• Am I willing to twelfth-step the next newcomer without regard to who or what is in it for me?

• Do I help my group in every way I can to fulfill our primary purpose?

• Do I remember that AA old-timers, too, can be alcoholics who still suffer? Do I try both to help them and to learn from them?

[Edited and brought into the now... 05/14/2008]

Post from: Blisstree

Tradition Five Checklist

The Language of the Heart: Bill W’s Grapevine Writings

“In each Tradition, the individual or the group is asked to give up something for our general welfare.”

• Tradition Six points at the corroding influence of money, property, and personal authority; it begs that we keep these influences at a minimum by separate incorporation and management of our special services. It also warns against the natural temptation to make alliances or give endorsements.
  
• Tradition Seven states that we had best pay our own bills; that large contributions or those carrying obligations ought not be received; that public solicitation using the name Alcoholics Anonymous is positively dangerous.
  
• Tradition Eight forswears professionalizing our Twelfth Step work but it does guarantee our few paid service workers an unquestioned amateur status.
  
• Tradition Nine asks that we give up all idea of expensive organization; enough is needed to permit effective work by our special services – and no more. This Tradition breathes democracy; our leadership is one of service and it is rotating; our few titles never clothe their holders with arbitrary personal authority; they hold authorizations to serve, never to govern.
  
• Tradition Ten is an emphatic restraint of serious controversy; it implores each of us to take care against committing AA to the fires of reform, political or religious dissension.
  
• Tradition Eleven asks, in our public relations, that we be alert against sensationalism and it declares there is never need to praise ourselves. Personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and film is urgently required, thus avoiding the pitfall of vanity, and the temptation through broken anonymity to link AA to other causes.
  
• Tradition Twelve, in its mood of humble anonymity, plainly enough comprehends the preceding eleven.

The pitfall of vanity… “Excessive pride in or admiration of one’s own appearance or achievements.”

Post from: Blisstree

“Giving Up” Is The Essential Idea Of Them All – Traditions 6-12

The Language of the Heart: Bill W’s Grapevine Writings

A glance at the Twelve Traditions will instantly assure anyone that ‘giving up’ is the essential idea of them all. In each Tradition, the individual or the group is asked to give up something for our general welfare.

• Tradition One asks us to place the common good ahead of personal desire.
• Tradition Two asks us to listen to God as he may speak in the group conscience.
• Tradition Three requires that we exclude no alcoholic from AA membership.
• Tradition Four implies that we abandon all idea of centralized human authority or government. But each group is enjoined to consult widely in matters affecting us all.
• Tradition Five restricts the AA group to a single purpose, carrying our message to other alcoholics.

I’ll bring the balance to you in the next post or two…

Post from: Blisstree

The Twelve Traditions – “Giving Up” Is The Essential Idea Of Them All

From Silkworth.net;

Tradition Twelve: Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our Traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.

• Why is it a good idea for me to place the common welfare of all AA members before individual welfare? What would happen to me if AA as a whole disappeared?
• When I do not trust AA’s current servants, who do I wish had the authority to straighten them out?
• In my opinions of and remarks about other AAs, am I implying membership requirements other than a desire to stay sober?
• Do I ever try to get a certain AA group to conform to my standards, not its own?
• Have I a personal responsibility in helping an AA group fulfill its primary purpose? What is my part?
• Does my personal behavior reflect the Sixth Tradition – or belie it?
• Do I do all I can to support AA financially? When is the last time I anonymously gave away a Grapevine subscription?
• Do I complain about certain AAs’ behavior – especially if they are paid to work for AA? Who made me so smart?
• Do I fulfill all AA responsibilities in such a way as to please privately even my own conscience? Really?
• Do my utterances always reflect the Tenth Tradition, or do I give AA critics real ammunition?
• Should I keep my AA membership a secret, or reveal it in private conversation when that may help another alcoholic (and therefore me)? Is my brand of AA so attractive that other drunks want it?
• What is the real importance of me among more than a million AAs?

Post from: Blisstree

Tradition Twelve Checklist

Paraphrasing the 12&12, page 173;

Not even the “humblest group committee can issue a single directive to an A.A. member and make it stick, let alone mete out any punishment.”

Hmmm – I wonder how that applies when a newcomer sits in a longtimers’ “assigned seat” and gets booted? Does anyone else know?

“Groups have tried to expel members, but the banished have come back to sit in the meeting place, saying, “This is life for us; you can’t keep us out.”

I wonder if this might be a reason why clubhouses began?

“Committees have instructed many an A.A. to stop working on a chronic backslider, only to be told: “How I do my Twelfth Step work is my business. Who are you to judge?”

Now, that sounds like an itty bitty shi**y committee!

“Who is more unpopular than the oldtime A.A., full of wisdom, who moves to another area and tries to tell the group there how to run its business?”

Aaah – now this one I have an answer for… who is more unpopular? Those who make it a point to tell every “transfer” from another area not to attempt to tell them how to do it or what worked where the new person came from, because they don’t want to hear it!

Post from: Blisstree

Ought Never Be Organized