Endigar 408 ~ Free at Last
From Today’s Daily Reflections;
Another great dividend we may expect from confiding our defects to another human being is humility – a word often misunderstood. . . . it amounts to a clear recognition of what and who we really are, followed by a sincere attempt to become what we could be. (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 58)
I knew deep inside that if I were ever to be joyous, happy and free, I had to share my past life with some other individual. The joy and relief I experienced after doing so were beyond description. Almost immediately after taking the Fifth Step, I felt free from the bondage of self and the bondage of alcohol. That freedom remains after 36 years, a day at a time. I found that God could do for me what I couldn’t do for myself.
END OF QUOTE
————————————————-
I was cut-off from God and man. Alcohol was like an abusive and predatory mate that I had allowed to dominate my life. In order to have the most effective control over my mind, to manipulate me, it had to isolate me from my traditional support network. It developed in me an ability to believe and speak deception. It used my own desire for recognition and empowerment to enslave me to an “isolated me,” which is the lowest version of myself. This was my bondage to self. This was my bondage to alcohol. I avoided the humiliation of this reality by learning to lie. I thought this skill development was to protect myself or to protect others I loved. It was actually to protect my pathological relationship to alcohol.
In step one of this program I had to come to realize the nature of my relationship with alcohol. I had to let go of the dubious skill of self-deception and recognize the nature of this abusive and humiliating union between myself and my chemical rapist. I was powerless to control my drinking because I had developed a need for the intoxicated state. My life had become unmanageable because of the progressive isolation. This does not mean that I could not function. It simply means that I no longer believed that I could function without the aid of alcohol and that its aid trumped any other relationship so that I could maintain that illusion of lone wolf self-reliance.
This principle behind step one has been expressed both as Honesty and Surrender. The principle behind step five has been expressed as Truth and Integrity. Step one is an event that requires a recognition of our humiliation. Step five is the culmination of a process that builds in us humility because we can see more clearly who we are. That truth begins the process of my freedom from the bondage of my isolated self and my bondage to alcohol. We know we are free when we no longer feel the need to lie about who we are. My ability to recoil from alcohol is directly related to my ability to recoil from the deception within my head and what spills from my lips.
I am grateful to be connected to a program that allows me to humble myself in integrity rather than live in the humiliation imposed by denial.
SOURCE ON AA PRINCIPLES: [ http://www.barefootsworld.net/aaprinciples.html ]
Daily Reprieve 
Leave a Reply