September 1 2013 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 9 Amends In Action Alcoholics Anonymous DonInLondon [ Full daily blog link: http://donoddylondon.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/alcoholics-anonymous-september-1.html ] Today’s AA daily reflection: “willingness to grow means we need room to grow…” My interpretation, all the way through from step one to step eight is acknowledgement and greater understanding of what gets us to a point where we can change our outlook and lifestyle. Giving up the drink, the horrors that follow, understanding and acceptance and a great big gap inside some say feels like a hole in the soul…
Early days in recovery and all these steps and traditions, it was very confusing because I kept making it complicated by thinking about the twelve steps and twelve traditions, reading all about them and then wondering how on earth they might impact on my life. Every time I went to a meeting, a general meeting, a step meeting, lest we forget meeting which I kept forgetting about, I was definitely discombobulated, confused and full of bullcrap because my ego was still covering up my fear and my lack of understanding, and I realise now one day at a time I make some progress. All the steps up to step nine started to make sense as I put them into practice and started to live them… And they only work one day at a time, just like me…
Amends to be made, by the time I got to make amends, and I’m sure there are still more to come as memory and connections happen, most of those still close to me, they realised my situation and much to my surprise most had forgiven me long before I ever did understand that I could forgive myself by changing and letting go the old me. And yet there are consequences, and sometimes we just can’t make amends without harm or without ego rising inside us, and the consequences are real until we find circumstances might have changed…
As we let go our old selves, and as we let go our addictions, that feeling of emptiness inside becomes a wonderful feeling of room to grow. It did not feel like that in the early days, no substance to rely on, not relying in a co-dependent way on one person, I needed to be in fellowship with a great many others in the same boat. Finding out through experience, strength and hope did start to fill me with hope too. The agitation and desire to be sober kept on growing. New feelings emerged, usually and mainly the ones I tried to suppress because I thought they were inappropriate, the hateful side of feelings in particular. Now I know all feelings are real, it is what I do next knowing how my thinking is impacted, and then work out the appropriate actions, often with a great deal of help from my friends…
Truth is the spiritual foundation of life. And I tend to agree with what Gandhi said, “God is truth and God is love.”
DonInLondon [ Full daily blog link: http://donoddylondon.blogspot.com/ ]
AA Official Online Site: Daily Reflections http://www.aa.org/lang/en/aareflections.cfm
AA Official Online Site: Big Book And Twelve And Twelve http://www.aa.org/lang/en/subpage.cfm?page=359
Step 9 “If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and selfpity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.” Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.” AA Promises
September 2012 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 9 Amends In Action Alcoholics Anonymous Anonymous Reading Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRgwBCdVyVM
September 2012 | Video Reading How It Works: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Rj3wPVvk3Q
September 2012 | Video Reading Into Action : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueS51r5FzH4
September 2012 | Playlist All About Step Nine : http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5604F49542442A83
Email | don@doninlondon.com
Music | “music for airports” By Brian Eno | http://www.enoshop.co.uk/ |
September 1, 2013: “a meeting yesterday, last day of August, all about
tradition eight: Alcoholics Anonymous should remain forever
nonprofessional, but our service centres may employ special workers.” It is
quite clear when reading the traditions that they are very meaningful not
only within the Fellowship; they have great value in how we conduct
ourselves on a day-to-day basis. Unity, service and recovery does extend
beyond Fellowship into all our living.
Listening to another person sharing about tradition eight, and how much we
value the nonprofessional outlook, the impact is different for everyone
concerned. Whilst yes we do employ particular people within Fellowship to
keep the show on the road, they do not govern and are employed to support
everything in Fellowship as trusted servants. We can’t buy recovery! And
when money becomes an issue, the value that we place upon professionals in
the field of recovery can be very diverse, from those with qualifications
who are useless, to those with qualifications who are able and get people
on the road of recovery, well the experience is very up and down no matter
where we go and who we meet and how they do things generally. I do not
underestimate the help that can be given even when it costs money, however
in general, long-term sobriety is really a personal journey which cannot be
prescribed by another, no matter how cheap or expensive they may be.
I am nonprofessional and I know a lot about recovery. And everyone in the
room yesterday recognised that they are nonprofessional when it comes to
recovery for the simple reason, no single person can keep another person
sober, and it is a group effort which keeps all of us sober one day at a
time. The attraction rather than promotion, which belongs to another
tradition, tradition eleven, also applies in my humble opinion. Attraction:
what you see is what you get, WYSIWYG. Promotion: if you do this, you can
fix yourself, suggests there is a guarantee of sobriety by doing something
and then we are sober. Attraction works, because we hear a message of
experience strength and hope, and we find something which will help us for
one day or maybe every day, but we know we only have one day to live which
makes the difference. We do not know what we will face tomorrow, and if we
promote the idea or the notion that we are fixed for good, it would be very
foolhardy.
And on the nonprofessional note, if I don’t know what’s right for me all of
the time, how on earth could I possibly know what is right for you?
Acceptance of life on life’s terms means that life is going to keep on
changing every single day and each day we are going to find ourselves with
new challenges, new people, new places and new things going on. As
nonprofessional’s we keep on learning the wisdom of what we can do and what
we cannot do each day, and that makes all the difference to me and you one
day at a time. There are really good councillors, really good doctors,
really good psychiatrists who know intellectually what the twelve steps,
the twelve traditions and the Fellowship are about. What they don’t
recognise very often is the nature of Fellowship, an emotional and
spiritual experience of life one day at a time. Learning our feelings in
the moment of now, learning how our feelings impact on everything we do,
rather than the other way round, where we might wish we can think our way
into our feelings. Knowing that feelings come first in all matters, it is
one of the most difficult struggles that face everyone on a daily basis.
Thinking does not come first, feelings do and then we try contrive to make
the world the way we want it. Unless of course, you are on your emotional
and spiritual journey living reality, rather than contriving it to be a way
which might suit you, but is hardly likely to suit everybody else.
It seems like there has been a week of concern about boundaries. I do
recognise that we all need boundaries and the boundaries change depending
upon who we are with, and that some boundaries work in some situations but
not in others. When a person says in an angry and resentful way that they
must establish some boundaries to stop being hurt, I really understand what
they are talking about. We can all be conned by con men and con women! And
yet it is a trust issue when it comes to emotional and spiritual living. An
exclamation about why don’t people tell the truth to other people? It is
very simple, some people are manipulative and controlling and want
something from you, and it could be because of natural instincts, a desire
to get into your wallet, a desire to plunder your time in all respects:
emotional, spiritual, physical, and all the seven deadly sins! Once you
have found out the truth about where a person is coming from, if it is
good, you learn to trust them, if it is bad and ugly you learn to tell them
to fuck off sooner rather than later. It is always horrible when trust is
broken, at the same time if we build a brick wall, we don’t learn anything
and our emotional and spiritual development can be blocked for good long
time.
At some time or another, we will be a hero, we may be a villain, and we all
have opportunity to live to the good, the bad and the ugly. All round
forgiveness is a very difficult way to live until we do realise that there
is some good in the worst of people, and some bad in the best of people.
Every single day things change, emotional and spiritual living is all about
understanding the moment and our feelings and the activities which are
happening and we are part of today. Life is not black and white, life keeps
on changing, and people keep on changing hopefully, although sometimes when
we see a glimmer of good it can be snuffed out for a million reasons. Let’s
hope we do not snuff out the glimmers of good we see today.
Long conversations; this week I have had a few. And it seems that the power
of the steps to heal a person work really well. And the power of the steps
to judge others can work really well. Better always to look in the mirror
when we start to judge others. And in one element, just because we know how
to dig into other people, it is really unhelpful most of the time, unless
of course the person is asking you to do so. The realms of
“professionalism” when it comes to emotional and spiritual, I don’t know if
they can be put together very well. At least in our Fellowship,
nonprofessional alerts people to the understanding that we all have
experience strength and hope to share, at the same time; judge not, because
if you are judging, it is very hard to love and be loved back
unconditionally.
A wise person said yesterday, and I agree with them wholeheartedly, that
underneath everything, the Fellowship is underpinned by one thing, it is
all one about thing: “love, love, love.” All together now… Yes in deed it
is.
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