Alcoholics Anonymous | Jan 8 2015 | DonInLondon | Step 1 "Freedom"

Don DonInLondon says

January 8, 2014 at 5:54 am

Alcoholics Anonymous Blog & Video | Jan 8 2004 – 2014 | DonInLondon | Step
1 “Powerless” |
January Step One Month: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that
our lives had become unmanageable.” Twelve steps all about emotional and
spiritual growth, or decay depending on where we are headed. Who cares to
admit complete defeat? The very last thing I ever wanted to do in my life,
all my working life would be to admit defeat. I could always see a way out,
a new way to work and to live. Alcohol did defeat me and I needed to
surrender to the truth of my situation. Truth love and wisdom in the moment
of now for me is God. God is truth, God is love and the wisdom learned in
the moment of now. I don’t have the truth until I share and check out and
listen to the truth of others, and between me and you we will get to the
truth eventually, of course it is still a limited truth. And as the day
progresses, working with ourselves and other people, truth develops and
expands. Sometimes we like the truth, sometimes we dislike the truth
intensely, usually when the common good is understood, as self-interest is
exposed for what it is.
January 8 Video
Alcoholics Anonymous Jan 8 2014 DonInLondon | Step 1 “Powerless” |

Step One Video 12 & 12
Alcoholics Anonymous | Step 1 Reading 12 & 12 | DonInLondon

DonInLondon January 8, 2014: I was struck yesterday just how easy it is to
put off a newcomer if we are debating the existence of our own particular
higher power. It will take a lifetime to debate the nature of God with our
limited experience of God. So whatever we come to understand God to be,
hopefully we don’t inflict our own beliefs on others. And yet reading from
the big book, it can lead anyone anywhere to feel “less than” those who
have a firm understanding of God in their lives. I find this very
disagreeable, because although the question of God is a part of my life, my
understanding of God is very limited. I surrender to the truth love and
wisdom of life on life’s terms, the truth as it manifests, love at it
manifests and the wisdom learned each and every day. I would not wish to
proselytise and inflict my own beliefs and opinions on another person with
regard to God. Surrendering to the truth, love and wisdom of now and in
every moment helps me immensely with this conundrum.

God willing: which for me is the truth love and wisdom in the moment of
now, I hope to have a sober day. And the notion of a higher power than me?
Just about everything can be a higher power than me, especially people who
can speak the truth, no how to love and keep on learning the wisdom right
here right now. This may be a very uncomfortable understanding of a higher
power, because the higher power is not necessarily on my side of this
particular moment, the higher power of truth love and wisdom, is what I
learn interacting with every human being I meet. The devil is in the
detail: what I feel and think, isolated it is just my experience which can
be very prejudiced by life events. In other words, the higher power is to
the common good, the devil in the detail is my self-interest, opinions and
beliefs which may be worldly, but woefully lacking without the help of
others.

Step one: I am happy to be powerless over alcohol, because when I surrender
to this truth, I can ask for help which comes in abundance from many
sources, at the same time the primary source of understanding and love
comes through Fellowship, where people know what it is like to try get
sober one day at a time. I am also happy to be powerless over people,
places and things. And this means through interaction and agreement I can
live in the company of people, in particular places with the things I might
need. With my needs met, hopefully extreme wants and desires subside and I
find where normal living is preferable, fun, joyful, happy and the opposite
as well because life is like that, good bad and ugly. And I can cope, and
when I cannot cope I ask for help. Even when coping, interacting with other
people is the very best it can be from moment to moment. Acceptance of
powerlessness is surrendering to the truth, love and wisdom in the moment,
where higher power works through people.

In the past, the pursuit of happiness led to extreme behaviour in me.
Popular myths about being able to drink other people under the table, well
that started when I was very very young. As life went on, and the culture
of the age, some might call it the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age was to
work hard and play hard. And with those givens or understandings, to
indulge in working as hard as possible, playing as hard as possible did
lead to extreme behaviour, which in the eyes of many was all about success
in career and private life. So driven, it is very hard to break those
patterns after thirty-five years of work and play. Unless of course we
breakdown in some way. Many people don’t go all the way to rock bottom and
the extremes available, and for that I have immense and great gratitude,
because Fellowship is open to people of all ages and backgrounds, culture,
politics, religion, you name it, we find it in Fellowship. And this is the
greatest gift to improve our truth, to improve our love and develop our
wisdom of living with each other day by day.

The welcome we receive in Fellowship is as good as it gets on the day we
arrive. And the welcome we receive is contingent on the current conditions
of the day, sometimes the current conditions of the day, even though they
are the best they can be, might be very attractive as an experience, or
driven by the opinions and beliefs of one person who extends a hand of
friendship to another. And some people in Fellowship, including me, can be
very limited in our approach to newcomers if we forget the basics of unity
service and recovery and not impose our own personal beliefs on other
people. I know for a long time that I felt awkward about my beliefs, my
personal beliefs and opinions, which were out of tune with some of the
rhetoric that is thrown about without thought and without consideration of
what it is to be a newcomer to recovery.

Self-prejudice which is a part of recovery, can lead to harsh conclusions,
shortcuts in explanations of the road ahead. And I am reminded of many of
the old timers who helped me in my early days just said, “whatever happens
to you, sober, relapse, madness, being restored to sanity for a little
while, and then more stuff to sort out, whatever happens just keep coming
back.” And keeping the door open to newcomers, no matter what happens, it
will be the many voices in the Fellowship sharing their experience strength
and hope which will help any newcomer understand their own life story. It
is the many, the Fellowship which helps restore us all to living a better
life together and a better life in society on a daily basis. There is no
graduation and no exam, simply living to the best we can be one day at a
time.

DonInLondon 2013 – 2005

January 8 2013 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 1 “Powerless” | Alcoholics
Anonymous What was a weakness is now a strength, no need to feel powerful
with a drink inside me, no need to imagine future success. One day at a
time, finding the measure of success in emotional and spiritual living.
Emotional, knowing my feelings, spiritual, in the moment of now. It does
not mean I will always be coping with what is going on, the strength is in
asking for help when needed from anyone anywhere at any time, including
most importantly our good conscience…

We all have a conscience, and depending on how we have learned life, our
conscience will drive us to do what is good, what is seen as bad and what
is seen as ugly. We may not like the consequences of our actions, and so
often we don’t even think about the consequences of what we do under the
influence of something, we just want to do it. Like an ad campaign, which
suggests: “just do it!” If we just do things because we are driven to do
them, without applying some common sense and gumption, the world would be
in more chaos than it is and nobody would ever find any serenity in
anything…

Under the deception of teaching me something useful, my father showed me
how to make homebrew at a very early age by throwing rhubarb and sugar into
a bucket with water, put it in a dark cupboard and waiting for it to
ferment into a very rough wine. To improve its flavour, throw in a few
raisins, and a few weeks later a very rough liquor to be ingested and cause
a new experience in my head. Giddy and carefree, for a little while and
then a headache, and then a desire for more giddiness and more carefree
feelings and a complete withdrawal from reality. Great moments of release
from reality. I guess back then reality was not that good, and my look back
with a sober head, reality was pretty awful, no wonder I was in the thrall
of home brewing from an early age…
All sorts of neat tricks to make alcohol from anything, beekeeping became a
fun activity in itself, producing honey, and then producing mead, and
getting a pat on the back for my enterprise from my dad. He seemed to enjoy
any sort of alcohol, and any sort of medication which might produce a
different way of feeling. In hindsight I feel he’d probably used us
children as guinea pigs, or a way of endorsing his natural inclination to
find substances which took away reality as soon as possible. Generally, my
dad was very angry about the world and he had good reason to be angry. And
his way of dealing with reality was to get out of it as soon as possible on
a daily basis. I think we used to call it, taking the edge off, and I
joined in enthusiastically as much as I could, because I thought that’s
what people did…

Taking the edge off reality, taking the edge off the good, the bad and the
ugly, meant my perception of the world was probably at extremes most of the
time. And one of the elements of recovery, which has been the most
productive, is learning about feelings and how they impact on my thinking
and the actions I take. Somebody said recently. Feelings are not truth, and
I waver on agreeing. I know feelings are very real, they inform me of my
spiritual condition right now. When my feelings do not match reality, that
they are exaggerated in some way and stop me seeing the truth, although the
feelings are real, I still need to find the truth of now. Feelings are the
truth in the moment, and then finding reality is another matter in
spiritual living, simply living in the reality of now…

My dad died early because of drink and substance abuse. There is no doubt
about it, and it is a wonder he lasted as long as he did. I feel he would
have made better decisions about his own life had he not been pickled most
of the time. He would have learned a better path with better choices based
on better information. And the world was mad when he was growing up, and
the world is still mad, as mad as hell about a lot of things. Depending on
your nature, and learning how to cope with life, we can all be driven mad
daily. The tools of the fellowship program, the fellowship of Alcoholics
Anonymous, help me work out what I can do and cannot do on a daily basis.
And to put the right value on my life, to live an emotional and spiritual
experience, where my feelings fit with reality and I can cope, I cope
mostly by including people and asking their opinions, and sharing outcomes
through negotiation, rather than trying to impose my will and my ideas on
anyone. We are all interdependent, and fellowship has taught me how to be
equal, included and find unconditional love works for one day, one hour,
one minute at a time. Imperfectly perfect in the ever present, present
moment of now…

Even when other people around us have a different set of rules, or rather,
it simply ways of living life, we don’t have to join in with their way of
living. If their way of living is unhelpful, bullying or simply a bad
practice, we need not join in with them. Easy to say and very difficult to
do. If we feel that we ought to be like them, we need to challenge our own
outlook and our own behaviour. One of the things I know most often happens
is that we think we can change another person’s attitude and behaviour, and
especially how they feel about the world. I am powerless over people places
and things, and when I remind myself that I can change my outlook, my
choices and my destination, with due care and attention, I’d need not
undermine other people and what they are about. We will encounter many
people in fellowship with different ideas and beliefs, attitudes and
outlooks, and just because they may be loud in their opinions, we do not
have to join in with them. As individuals we decide our right choice in the
moment of now, and often this is a difficult path, and the serenity prayer
helps always in the can and cannot do and accepting the wisdom we learn one
day at a time…

I am going to make mistakes today, and if I break down the word mistake to
miss and take it is like something which can be redone or completely
rebuilt. If I can forgive my fall into alcoholism and all the consequences
which led me astray and into a very small world inside my head, I need to
be able to forgive everyone everything in the moment of now. Forgiving
people does free me from trying to persuade people to my point of view,
forgiving people frees me from bad feelings about them, and restores me to
sanity faster than anything I know, forgiveness is a daily practice for
oneself and for other people, at the same time, and actions have
consequences. And some people we let go as they are harmful to our outlook
and our way of life today…

January 8 2012 | Daily Reflection|

Yesterday; at the hut for our lunchtime spiritual meeting. We read the
spiritual experience and then a five-minute chair and raised hands.
Newcomers, and old timers new to our area. Chair about acceptance of who we
are today. Feels like all the meetings recently have been about courage to
change as life is changing. Acceptance; of the past so important and
letting go. Opening the door to let go and let the world in, asking for
help when it’s needed and helping others when they ask. No expectations, no
resentments and a clear view to what might happen today…

Today’s AA daily reflection is about “do I have a choice?” And my
experience is we do have choices today. Sober and sobriety can smack of
puritanism. But I didn’t get sober to be a puritan; I got sober so my
natural instincts would work again. The good news is my natural instincts
work again; even better news is I see when other people’s natural instincts
are working well for them. And I also like the natural instincts of women
to like men, or whatever combination floats your boat works as we live and
breathe sober today…

Do I have a choice today? I wake up in the morning, as myself how am I
feeling? If I feel good I am likely to be thinking good and my actions will
result in good things. If I feel angry waking up, my thinking is angry and
my actions are likely to be angry as well. Whatever mood I wake up with, as
long as I ask myself what it is, I can influence what happens and make
choices. But if I wake up with a hangover and don’t think my actions may be
to act out badly all day long…

I didn’t get sober to be a puritan, I love being sober so I may enjoy every
single aspect of nature and providence, that is my natural instincts and
where life may take me today. Life is all about change, and the funny thing
about acceptance is we accept what happened, and accept life is going to be
changing forever. Most likely changes for the good when we know what can be
done, like to do each and every day. Can do and cannot do and wisdom to
know the difference today… Now how hard is that?

DonInLondon 2005-2011

Powerless over People Places Things ~ Henry David Thoreau “Nature puts no
question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her
resolution.”
-/-

Open honest and willing… freedom living in the moment of now

Freedom ~ Thomas Jefferson “Our greatest happiness does not depend on the
condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result
of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just
pursuits.”
-/-
Powerless over People Places Things ~ Henry David Thoreau “Nature puts no
question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her
resolution.”
-/-
Open honest and willing… freedom living in the moment of now

Inner Calm ~ “The greater the demands on us, the more we need to sustain
our inner calm and stability.”
/

God Is Truth ~ God Works Through People ~ God Is Love ~ Listen To The Inner
Voice, Listen To Others, Love In The Moment…

Alcoholics Anonymous Videos, AA is for Alcoholics, AA 12 Steps, Addiction
And Recovery, DonInLondon, Don Oddy,

Comments

rarabongostar03 says

February 11, 2013 at 10:05 pm

peace n love DONI thanx for helping others xxx
Don DonInLondon says

February 15, 2013 at 4:59 am

thank you and same to you too,
Don DonInLondon says

January 8, 2014 at 5:54 am

Alcoholics Anonymous Blog & Video | Jan 8 2004 – 2014 | DonInLondon | Step
1 “Powerless” |
January Step One Month: “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol – that
our lives had become unmanageable.” Twelve steps all about emotional and
spiritual growth, or decay depending on where we are headed. Who cares to
admit complete defeat? The very last thing I ever wanted to do in my life,
all my working life would be to admit defeat. I could always see a way out,
a new way to work and to live. Alcohol did defeat me and I needed to
surrender to the truth of my situation. Truth love and wisdom in the moment
of now for me is God. God is truth, God is love and the wisdom learned in
the moment of now. I don’t have the truth until I share and check out and
listen to the truth of others, and between me and you we will get to the
truth eventually, of course it is still a limited truth. And as the day
progresses, working with ourselves and other people, truth develops and
expands. Sometimes we like the truth, sometimes we dislike the truth
intensely, usually when the common good is understood, as self-interest is
exposed for what it is.
January 8 Video
Alcoholics Anonymous Jan 8 2014 DonInLondon | Step 1 “Powerless” |

Step One Video 12 & 12
Alcoholics Anonymous | Step 1 Reading 12 & 12 | DonInLondon

DonInLondon January 8, 2014: I was struck yesterday just how easy it is to
put off a newcomer if we are debating the existence of our own particular
higher power. It will take a lifetime to debate the nature of God with our
limited experience of God. So whatever we come to understand God to be,
hopefully we don’t inflict our own beliefs on others. And yet reading from
the big book, it can lead anyone anywhere to feel “less than” those who
have a firm understanding of God in their lives. I find this very
disagreeable, because although the question of God is a part of my life, my
understanding of God is very limited. I surrender to the truth love and
wisdom of life on life’s terms, the truth as it manifests, love at it
manifests and the wisdom learned each and every day. I would not wish to
proselytise and inflict my own beliefs and opinions on another person with
regard to God. Surrendering to the truth, love and wisdom of now and in
every moment helps me immensely with this conundrum.

God willing: which for me is the truth love and wisdom in the moment of
now, I hope to have a sober day. And the notion of a higher power than me?
Just about everything can be a higher power than me, especially people who
can speak the truth, no how to love and keep on learning the wisdom right
here right now. This may be a very uncomfortable understanding of a higher
power, because the higher power is not necessarily on my side of this
particular moment, the higher power of truth love and wisdom, is what I
learn interacting with every human being I meet. The devil is in the
detail: what I feel and think, isolated it is just my experience which can
be very prejudiced by life events. In other words, the higher power is to
the common good, the devil in the detail is my self-interest, opinions and
beliefs which may be worldly, but woefully lacking without the help of
others.

Step one: I am happy to be powerless over alcohol, because when I surrender
to this truth, I can ask for help which comes in abundance from many
sources, at the same time the primary source of understanding and love
comes through Fellowship, where people know what it is like to try get
sober one day at a time. I am also happy to be powerless over people,
places and things. And this means through interaction and agreement I can
live in the company of people, in particular places with the things I might
need. With my needs met, hopefully extreme wants and desires subside and I
find where normal living is preferable, fun, joyful, happy and the opposite
as well because life is like that, good bad and ugly. And I can cope, and
when I cannot cope I ask for help. Even when coping, interacting with other
people is the very best it can be from moment to moment. Acceptance of
powerlessness is surrendering to the truth, love and wisdom in the moment,
where higher power works through people.

In the past, the pursuit of happiness led to extreme behaviour in me.
Popular myths about being able to drink other people under the table, well
that started when I was very very young. As life went on, and the culture
of the age, some might call it the Zeitgeist, the spirit of the age was to
work hard and play hard. And with those givens or understandings, to
indulge in working as hard as possible, playing as hard as possible did
lead to extreme behaviour, which in the eyes of many was all about success
in career and private life. So driven, it is very hard to break those
patterns after thirty-five years of work and play. Unless of course we
breakdown in some way. Many people don’t go all the way to rock bottom and
the extremes available, and for that I have immense and great gratitude,
because Fellowship is open to people of all ages and backgrounds, culture,
politics, religion, you name it, we find it in Fellowship. And this is the
greatest gift to improve our truth, to improve our love and develop our
wisdom of living with each other day by day.

The welcome we receive in Fellowship is as good as it gets on the day we
arrive. And the welcome we receive is contingent on the current conditions
of the day, sometimes the current conditions of the day, even though they
are the best they can be, might be very attractive as an experience, or
driven by the opinions and beliefs of one person who extends a hand of
friendship to another. And some people in Fellowship, including me, can be
very limited in our approach to newcomers if we forget the basics of unity
service and recovery and not impose our own personal beliefs on other
people. I know for a long time that I felt awkward about my beliefs, my
personal beliefs and opinions, which were out of tune with some of the
rhetoric that is thrown about without thought and without consideration of
what it is to be a newcomer to recovery.

Self-prejudice which is a part of recovery, can lead to harsh conclusions,
shortcuts in explanations of the road ahead. And I am reminded of many of
the old timers who helped me in my early days just said, “whatever happens
to you, sober, relapse, madness, being restored to sanity for a little
while, and then more stuff to sort out, whatever happens just keep coming
back.” And keeping the door open to newcomers, no matter what happens, it
will be the many voices in the Fellowship sharing their experience strength
and hope which will help any newcomer understand their own life story. It
is the many, the Fellowship which helps restore us all to living a better
life together and a better life in society on a daily basis. There is no
graduation and no exam, simply living to the best we can be one day at a
time.

DonInLondon 2013 – 2005

January 8 2013 | AA 12 Steps In Action | Step 1 “Powerless” | Alcoholics
Anonymous What was a weakness is now a strength, no need to feel powerful
with a drink inside me, no need to imagine future success. One day at a
time, finding the measure of success in emotional and spiritual living.
Emotional, knowing my feelings, spiritual, in the moment of now. It does
not mean I will always be coping with what is going on, the strength is in
asking for help when needed from anyone anywhere at any time, including
most importantly our good conscience…

We all have a conscience, and depending on how we have learned life, our
conscience will drive us to do what is good, what is seen as bad and what
is seen as ugly. We may not like the consequences of our actions, and so
often we don’t even think about the consequences of what we do under the
influence of something, we just want to do it. Like an ad campaign, which
suggests: “just do it!” If we just do things because we are driven to do
them, without applying some common sense and gumption, the world would be
in more chaos than it is and nobody would ever find any serenity in
anything…

Under the deception of teaching me something useful, my father showed me
how to make homebrew at a very early age by throwing rhubarb and sugar into
a bucket with water, put it in a dark cupboard and waiting for it to
ferment into a very rough wine. To improve its flavour, throw in a few
raisins, and a few weeks later a very rough liquor to be ingested and cause
a new experience in my head. Giddy and carefree, for a little while and
then a headache, and then a desire for more giddiness and more carefree
feelings and a complete withdrawal from reality. Great moments of release
from reality. I guess back then reality was not that good, and my look back
with a sober head, reality was pretty awful, no wonder I was in the thrall
of home brewing from an early age…
All sorts of neat tricks to make alcohol from anything, beekeeping became a
fun activity in itself, producing honey, and then producing mead, and
getting a pat on the back for my enterprise from my dad. He seemed to enjoy
any sort of alcohol, and any sort of medication which might produce a
different way of feeling. In hindsight I feel he’d probably used us
children as guinea pigs, or a way of endorsing his natural inclination to
find substances which took away reality as soon as possible. Generally, my
dad was very angry about the world and he had good reason to be angry. And
his way of dealing with reality was to get out of it as soon as possible on
a daily basis. I think we used to call it, taking the edge off, and I
joined in enthusiastically as much as I could, because I thought that’s
what people did…

Taking the edge off reality, taking the edge off the good, the bad and the
ugly, meant my perception of the world was probably at extremes most of the
time. And one of the elements of recovery, which has been the most
productive, is learning about feelings and how they impact on my thinking
and the actions I take. Somebody said recently. Feelings are not truth, and
I waver on agreeing. I know feelings are very real, they inform me of my
spiritual condition right now. When my feelings do not match reality, that
they are exaggerated in some way and stop me seeing the truth, although the
feelings are real, I still need to find the truth of now. Feelings are the
truth in the moment, and then finding reality is another matter in
spiritual living, simply living in the reality of now…

My dad died early because of drink and substance abuse. There is no doubt
about it, and it is a wonder he lasted as long as he did. I feel he would
have made better decisions about his own life had he not been pickled most
of the time. He would have learned a better path with better choices based
on better information. And the world was mad when he was growing up, and
the world is still mad, as mad as hell about a lot of things. Depending on
your nature, and learning how to cope with life, we can all be driven mad
daily. The tools of the fellowship program, the fellowship of Alcoholics
Anonymous, help me work out what I can do and cannot do on a daily basis.
And to put the right value on my life, to live an emotional and spiritual
experience, where my feelings fit with reality and I can cope, I cope
mostly by including people and asking their opinions, and sharing outcomes
through negotiation, rather than trying to impose my will and my ideas on
anyone. We are all interdependent, and fellowship has taught me how to be
equal, included and find unconditional love works for one day, one hour,
one minute at a time. Imperfectly perfect in the ever present, present
moment of now…

Even when other people around us have a different set of rules, or rather,
it simply ways of living life, we don’t have to join in with their way of
living. If their way of living is unhelpful, bullying or simply a bad
practice, we need not join in with them. Easy to say and very difficult to
do. If we feel that we ought to be like them, we need to challenge our own
outlook and our own behaviour. One of the things I know most often happens
is that we think we can change another person’s attitude and behaviour, and
especially how they feel about the world. I am powerless over people places
and things, and when I remind myself that I can change my outlook, my
choices and my destination, with due care and attention, I’d need not
undermine other people and what they are about. We will encounter many
people in fellowship with different ideas and beliefs, attitudes and
outlooks, and just because they may be loud in their opinions, we do not
have to join in with them. As individuals we decide our right choice in the
moment of now, and often this is a difficult path, and the serenity prayer
helps always in the can and cannot do and accepting the wisdom we learn one
day at a time…

I am going to make mistakes today, and if I break down the word mistake to
miss and take it is like something which can be redone or completely
rebuilt. If I can forgive my fall into alcoholism and all the consequences
which led me astray and into a very small world inside my head, I need to
be able to forgive everyone everything in the moment of now. Forgiving
people does free me from trying to persuade people to my point of view,
forgiving people frees me from bad feelings about them, and restores me to
sanity faster than anything I know, forgiveness is a daily practice for
oneself and for other people, at the same time, and actions have
consequences. And some people we let go as they are harmful to our outlook
and our way of life today…

January 8 2012 | Daily Reflection|

Yesterday; at the hut for our lunchtime spiritual meeting. We read the
spiritual experience and then a five-minute chair and raised hands.
Newcomers, and old timers new to our area. Chair about acceptance of who we
are today. Feels like all the meetings recently have been about courage to
change as life is changing. Acceptance; of the past so important and
letting go. Opening the door to let go and let the world in, asking for
help when it’s needed and helping others when they ask. No expectations, no
resentments and a clear view to what might happen today…

Today’s AA daily reflection is about “do I have a choice?” And my
experience is we do have choices today. Sober and sobriety can smack of
puritanism. But I didn’t get sober to be a puritan; I got sober so my
natural instincts would work again. The good news is my natural instincts
work again; even better news is I see when other people’s natural instincts
are working well for them. And I also like the natural instincts of women
to like men, or whatever combination floats your boat works as we live and
breathe sober today…

Do I have a choice today? I wake up in the morning, as myself how am I
feeling? If I feel good I am likely to be thinking good and my actions will
result in good things. If I feel angry waking up, my thinking is angry and
my actions are likely to be angry as well. Whatever mood I wake up with, as
long as I ask myself what it is, I can influence what happens and make
choices. But if I wake up with a hangover and don’t think my actions may be
to act out badly all day long…

I didn’t get sober to be a puritan, I love being sober so I may enjoy every
single aspect of nature and providence, that is my natural instincts and
where life may take me today. Life is all about change, and the funny thing
about acceptance is we accept what happened, and accept life is going to be
changing forever. Most likely changes for the good when we know what can be
done, like to do each and every day. Can do and cannot do and wisdom to
know the difference today… Now how hard is that?

DonInLondon 2005-2011

Powerless over People Places Things ~ Henry David Thoreau “Nature puts no
question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her
resolution.”
-/-

Open honest and willing… freedom living in the moment of now

Freedom ~ Thomas Jefferson “Our greatest happiness does not depend on the
condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result
of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just
pursuits.”
-/-
Powerless over People Places Things ~ Henry David Thoreau “Nature puts no
question and answers none which we mortals ask. She has long ago taken her
resolution.”
-/-
Open honest and willing… freedom living in the moment of now

Inner Calm ~ “The greater the demands on us, the more we need to sustain
our inner calm and stability.”
/

God Is Truth ~ God Works Through People ~ God Is Love ~ Listen To The Inner
Voice, Listen To Others, Love In The Moment…

What is the worst thing that can happen when there is a newcomer in one of
our meetings?
AA Big Book Video | Chapter 1 | Bill’s Story |
AA Big Book Video | Chapter 1 Bill’s Story |

AA Big Book Video | Chapter 2 | There Is A Solution |
AA Big Book Video | Chapter 2 There Is A Solution |

AA Big Book Video | Chapter 3 | More About Alcoholism |
AA Big Book Video | Chapter 3 More About Alcoholism |

AA Big Book Video | Chapter 4 | We Agnostics |
AA Big Book Video | Chapter 4 We Agnostics |

AA Big Book Video | Chapter 5 | How It Works |
AA Big Book Video | Chapter 5 How It Works |

Alcoholics Anonymous Videos, AA is for Alcoholics, AA 12 Steps, Addiction
And Recovery, DonInLondon, Don Oddy,