Daily Reprieve

I did a 10th step inventory with the guidance of a friend.  She wrote down an unuseful idea that seemed to come out last night;

I will never be understood and if I try I will be deeply wounded.

I think I have something like that recorded already.  So, maybe that idea is the one I should work on with the moon guide.  Ah, here it is

From Endigar 282 & 277;

~ The concepts and thoughts that I value will be overshadowed by a stronger presence. The products of my mind and heart will be dismissed as insignificant in a crowd, and assaulted in the presence of a strong presentation. This idea moves me into withdrawal seasoned with a continuous, simmering, judgment or open and probably unwarranted aggression. People are usually surprised by the latter. Another idea that came out that seems related is that I would become nobody if not cloaked in some special ability.

~ Uncontrolled and spiritually undeveloped people will attack or hurt me. This leads me to create protective alliances by pretending weakness, vulnerability, or hurt. I call this the belly up manipulation. It is such an ingrained practice that I don’t realize when I am doing it.

Is this a root idea, or is it a resulting fear of something else? Is it related to the discussion of masculinity in Endigar 307? A couple of other ideas that seem to be close relatives to these are:

~ Personal assertions that are not wrapped in a mantle of pain, depression, and anguish will not be taken seriously. Assertions expressed with happiness will be seen as frivolous and thus, discarded. I realized I felt this at a Hoot Owl meeting this weekend when the topic was on laughter and not being a glum lot. It appears that this might create the deliberate manufacture of misery, a habit of morbid self-reflection, and the need to condemn simplicity.

~ Honesty is a social control mechanism and has very little to do with the discovery of truth. When I hear someone say, “I just want you to be honest with me,” I translate that to mean, “I just want you to give me enough personal information to ensnare you.” When I got my first Big Book, I attempted to go through and mark out and replace every mention of the word HONESTY with the word TRUTH. I gave up, because it was all over the place in my book.

The true powerlessness here belongs to the actual root idea, and I am just not sure what that is. I need to get with my guide and talk some more on this.

Just started reading “How Al-Anon Works.”

For those of us who never even knew the drinker, recognizing the true nature of the problem can be even more difficult.  We may have been affected by the alcoholism of a grandparent or distant relative whom we barely knew, or by relatives or friends who have been sober as long as we’ve known them.  Yet the effects of this disease are no less profound and far-reaching.  Often, our relatives never recognized the effects of alcoholism and inadvertently passed on those effects to us.  We may, for instance, have picked up the struggle in the form of daily bouts with anxiety, or we may have difficulty trusting anyone or anything, always waiting for chaos or disaster to strike, even when all seems well.

This resonates for me.

Even if we have no idea whether or not anyone around us has had a drinking problem, we can see the effects of alcoholism in our own lives if we know what to look for.  We who have been affected by someone else’s drinking find ourselves inexplicably haunted by insecurity, fear, guilt, obsession with others, or an overwhelming need to control every person and situation we encounter.  And although our loved ones appear to be the ones with the problems, we secretly blame ourselves, feeling that somehow we are the cause of the trouble, or that we should have been able to overcome it with love, prayer, hard work, intelligence, or perseverance.

Yes, I have felt this.  Hurt and worried.  Frustrated.  Resentful.

We urge you to try our program.  It has helped many of us find solutions that lead to serenity.  So much depends on our own attitudes, and as we learn to place our problem in its true perspective, we find it loses its power to dominate our thoughts and lives.

Maybe.

Page 28, the 12 & 12;

Sometimes A.A. comes harder to those who have lost or rejected faith than to those who never had any faith at all, for they think they have tried faith and found it wanting.  They have tried the way of faith and the way of no faith.  Since both ways have proved bitterly disappointing, they have concluded there is no place whatever for them to go.  The roadblocks of indifference, fancied self-sufficiency, prejudice, and defiance often prove more solid and formidable for these people than any erected by the unconvinced agnostic or even the militant atheist.  Religion says the existence of God can be proved; the agnostic says it can’t be proved; and the atheist claims proof of the nonexistence of God.  Obviously, the dilemma of the wanderer from faith is that of profound confusion.  He thinks himself lost to the comfort of any conviction at all.  He cannot attain in even a small degree the assurance of the believer, the agnostic, or the atheist.  He is the bewildered one.

Page 29;

Finally , when all our score cards read ‘zero,’ and we saw that one more strike would put us out of the game forever, we had to look for our lost faith.  It was in A.A. that we rediscovered it.  And so can you.

LOTR Quote;

From the ashes a fire shall be woken,

A light from the shadows shall spring;

Renewed shall be blade that was broken,

The crownless again shall be king.

God grant me the Serenity to flow like water

The Courage to stand like stone

And the Wisdom to know balance