Daily Reprieve

Courage to Change of Jun 6:

How easy it can be to justify our own unacceptable behavior! Perhaps we excuse ourselves, claiming that we were provoked or had no choice. Or we dismiss our actions by telling ourselves that everyone does the same thing. With these and other justifications, we pretend that our wrongs don’t count. This denial must be overcome when we take the Fourth Step.

With this Step we take a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. It is fearless because of the strong spiritual foundation we have established by taking the first three Steps. It is moral because we list what we feel has been right or wrong about our conduct. And it is searching. The only way we can take this Step thoroughly, searchingly, is to resist the desire to justify and excuse what we uncover. It may demand courage and self-discipline, but by freely acknowledging who we have been, we can make positive changes about who we are becoming.

Today’s Reminder

I am a human being with strengths and weaknesses, capable of achievements and mistakes. Because I accept this, I can look closely at myself. Today I will find something to appreciate and something to improve.

“You never find yourself until you face the truth.”

~ Pearl Bailey

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There are several delusion producers in my life: programing from a dysfunctional family, addiction’s self-protection in my psyche, layers of fear from perceived threats, and the manifold coping skills to accommodate pain aversion.

In the 12 Step program, I have found that Hope and Action with a litmus test of whether I am helpful to others is my primary method of living a genuine life. Hope targets a destination of value. Action keeps that hope from metastasizing into wishful thinking. The usefulness to others proves the value of my work.

The moral inventory helps me see the truth about me and the life I have been living. It is a process that gives spirituality and self-recovery a pragmatic push toward fulfilment of whatever part of the Higher Power has been embedded within.

Courage to Change of Jun 5:

The Third Step talks about placing my will and my life in the care of a Higher Power. For me, this Power is a presence that loves me as I am, that accepts me with compassion on the bad days as well as the good. Once I have accepted that the destructive presence of another’s alcoholism has affected my life, I need the benevolent influence of a Power untouched by this disease. What I do in turning over my will and my life is to become receptive to guidance; I become willing to accept the care of a Power greater than myself.

I think of this care as a source of love and support that surrounds me in my daily life. I do not need to earn it or to work for it; I need only be receptive to it. I continue to have a will to exercise and a life to live, but I do so bathed in a light of love and understanding.

Today’s Reminder

When I open my heart to a Power that fills me with love and acceptance, I can begin to extend those qualities to others. I may not do it perfectly or even consistently, but I can recognize my progress one day at a time.

“God’s gifts put man’s best dreams to shame.”

~ Elizabeth Barret Browning

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I did not seek a Power “untouched by this disease.” There is a natural cruelty to a Higher Power that only officiates the big, infinite reality of life. I looked for a power intimately acquainted with my own suffering. I looked for a Power that embraced my individual life. Is it possible that when the words, “it is not good for the man to be alone,” were written, this Higher Power was letting us all know that It was lonely.

“I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward the consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it-is temporary?”

~ John Green, the Fault in Our Stars

It is this intimate Higher Power that I seek, and that I trust to care about me and mine.

Elizabeth Barret Browning began writing poetry under the protective umbrella of her father’s massive slave-owning business in Jamaica. She sacrificed that protection for the intimate love of a fellow poet. He had fallen in love with her through her writing. The marriage of Elizabeth and Robert Browning brought an end to her affiliation with her Father’s individual-crushing dominance and a new poetry arose from the intimacy of the married couple as they moved from England to Italy.

For me, the ultimate god-gift is genuine, intimate care that hungers for my reciprocation. No more distance. I seek an exclusive relationship with a Higher Power that hungers for the same. The paradox is that when I have such a reality in my life, I want to share it with others. I suppose the Infinite One can have an exclusive relationship with everyone and there is no risk of losing my own private intimacy.

Be prospered.

Courage to Change of Jun 4:

The Second Step is about possibility, about hope. With this Step, we come to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. We are asked to open our minds to the possibility that help is available. Perhaps there is a source of assistance that can do for us what we have been unable to do for ourselves. We don’t have to believe that it will happen, only that it could.

This little bit of hope, this chink in the armor of despair, is enough to show that we are willing to move in the direction of healing. Once we recognize that the possibility of help exists, it seems worthwhile to explore a relationship with a Higher Power. A little willingness can go a long way toward making hope and faith an ongoing part of our lives. In the hands of a Higher Power, sanity and serenity become realistic hopes.

Today’s Reminder

Our literature speaks of the possibility of finding contentment and even happiness through recover in Al-Anon. Today I will take the Second Step in that process and open my mind to hope.

“Finding inner strength is looking beyond the visible and focusing life’s search on the unseen.”

~ As We Understood . . .

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As a young man, I never understood why hope was considered a virtue. The word feels like a synonym for wishful thinking. It seemed to be an excuse to daydream about better days ahead. Wasn’t hope an admission of abdication?

Then I witnessed the ignition of hope in my own life and in the lives of others in these rooms devoted to personal recovery. This is what I now know about the capacity for hope. It is a trained response to those times in life when the wolves are at the door. It is for the time when retreat and surrender will only invite further destruction, a shrinking brain, a tragic end. Surrounded by the confident assertion of impossibility, hope garners intelligence, builds networks, and remembers the place where life spirits are forged. Hope sharpens my senses to a course of action in the midst of the overwhelming clamor of fear. Isn’t hope the first step in the hero’s journey?

“What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end…”

~ Friedrich Nietzsche

UNLESS the God of my understanding builds my home, it is futility for me to build in isolation. I ask the Infinite One to build through me.

UNLESS the God of my understanding guards the city of my birth, no security system will keep it safe. I ask the Complete Entity of the Universe to keep safe that which is important in my life.

It is futility for me to get up early, go to bed late, and eat the bread of anxious toil, for the God of my understanding gives blessings to me even when I am sleeping. I ask for the loving embrace of the Spirit to help me pause, relax, take it easy, and to listen.

Behold, my new life is a heritage and a gift from the God of my understanding. Gomu causes the womb of my soul to bring forth a reward. I shall not close the door on it but will learn to pack it all into the stream of life. I ask you to relieve me of the fears that come with this mortal body.

Like the precision strikes of a warrior’s arrows, so are the works of the God of my understanding from within me. I am blessed with a full quiver of new life because of my connection with Gomu. Help me to walk the narrow path of my own individuation that gives permission to others to do the same.

I will not stand in my isolating selfishness, and when I meet my adversaries at the city gate of my mirror, I will not be ashamed. I will address my true wrongs, make amends, and forsake debilitating shame. Help me, Gomu, to be useful through this process.

Speaking for me, I will look expectantly to You, God of my understanding, and with confidence in You I will keep watch;

I will take this confident expectation with me today and wait for the God of my recovery of the true Self.

I know that You will hear me.

Do not rejoice over me when I suffer the tragedies of life, O my enemy!

Though I fall, I will rise;

Though I sit in the darkness of distress, the Spirit of Gomu shall be a light for me.

So be it and so say we all.

Courage to Change of Jun 3:

In order to keep family and friends from interfering with their drinking, alcoholics sometimes create diversions by accusing or provoking. At such a time, we who have been affected by someone else’s drinking tend to react, to argue, and to defend ourselves. As a result, nobody has to look at the alcoholism, for we are too busy focusing on the particular point being argued — any topic will do. And unfortunately, what we defend against we make real.

When we take Step One, we admit that we are powerless over this disease. We do not have the strength necessary to fight it. Defending ourselves by engaging in arguments with actively drinking or otherwise irrational people is as fruitless as donning armor to protect ourselves from a nuclear explosion. Only a Power greater than ourselves can restore us to sanity.

Today’s Reminder

I am responsible for taking the actions necessary to keep myself safe. But when my safety is not at risk, I can take time to make choices about my responses. I don’t have to react instantly to provocation, and I am not obligated to justify myself to anyone. By turning to my Higher Power for protection, rather than my wits or my will, I avail myself of the best possible defense.

“Once we learned to see our situation as it really was, we understood why it was necessary for us to turn to a Power greater than ourselves.”

~ Al-Anon’s Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions

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I found in my own life that spiritual proclamations with no meat hooks are worthless. The saying to “Let Go, and Let God,” means nothing if it isn’t offered in a room with 12 Steps hanging on the wall. If you cannot find a way to digest a spiritual assertion into a pragmatic expression, discard it. Spirituality without boots on the ground is recreational religion.

Also, the notion that my wits and will are mutually exclusive in seeking connection with God is not helpful. The will of the aversive control I experience from alcohol, directly or indirectly, is the enslaving impulse in my life. It was active in me to enforce the negative contract I had with addiction and its intimate agents. I have found that to overcome that aversive control, I need distance, detachment, and some time to work on myself, so that I can establish a system of counter-control in my own life. I have discovered that it is important for me to know myself, to learn to better process my emotions, and to build my personal freedom by increasing the gap between stimulus and response. Connecting with the Higher Power gives me an archetype to emulate, because there is no one more professional at “loving detachment” than the God of my understanding.

Finally, it was important for me to see the iron clad link between sanity and honesty. The eyes of a sane man can see things as they are. The clearer that vision was in my life, the greater the possibility of having some sanity in my head and in my home. That is why the first principle in the program is a commitment to truthful appraisal of the dysfunction of my world, and the unmanageability of my mind in isolation.

Be prospered as you transform into the highest version of Yourself.

Courage to Change of Jun 2:

One gift of being a longtime Al-Anon member is that I have accumulated a large supply of healthy, positive experiences which remind me that my Higher Power is worthy of my trust. Although I have faced many challenges and difficulties over the years, my Higher Power has never let me down. This hasn’t prevented me from having problems; if that had been the case, I would have missed out on life-changing lessons I might not have learned any other way. Instead, I was given challenges and opportunities – but never more that I could handle. Even when I feared that my circumstances were too much for me, help, guidance, and comfort were always there.

Today when I encounter a crisis, I have no need to fear. My own experience teaches me that I can rely on a Power greater than myself to help me through whatever happens. At first, I had to “act as if” I believed that I’d be cared for. But each time I took this risk, I observed the results. Again and again, my Higher Power stepped in to help. I have never once regretted my decision to trust.

Today’s Reminder

Each day is an opportunity to build a supply of positive experiences. Today I will take note of what happens when I trust my Higher Power.

“By far the best proof is experience.”

~ Francis Bacon

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Francis Bacon and the English monarch of the time, King James I, both were pedophiles by today’s standards. Bacon is considered the Father of Empiricism and the Bible project under the reign of his King created a source authority for the Christian Protestant religions, the King James Bible. There is some pretty significant evidence that both of these men used young boys for sexual satisfaction. When Bacon was 45, he took a 13-year-old bride, Alice Barnham. So, the quoted assertion that the best proof is experience takes a bit of a twisted turn in my own mind. These fathers of science and religion had achieved what Joe Rogan calls “escape velocity” in any attempts to hold them accountable at the time. There is also the distinct possibility that there is some character assassination that has integrated itself into the historical record. But when I see the quote by Francis Bacon, my mind causes it to transform:

“My consuming lust was to experience their bodies.”

~ Jeffery Dahmer

I have experiences with seeking the Higher Power that honors the big picture of reality and sometimes disregards the significance of the individual, such as the death of my infant son in Augsburg Germany, the post-marital apocalypse of divorce for words that I wrote in a journal, the death of my stepson, the robbing of my own childhood development, and the witch hunt betrayal of church leaders. I have acceptance issues.

Out of these horrendous events in my life, I have seen “lost child” introspection develop into writing skill and depth of thought. I have experienced a heart of empathy for those that suffer but fight to live. I have seen the chaos storm of “life’s terms” free me from social constraints allowing me to become open to something more useful than scientific nihilism and religious dogma. I have found the God of my own understanding only after surrendering to alcoholic isolation to weather the big picture of God’s will.

I have experienced something genuine in the spiritual pursuit encouraged in the recovery rooms of the 12 Step program. Something out there does seem to give damn about us. But I have a healthy respect for the cruelty of the big picture psychopathy of my Higher Power. I have been in the military and know that the mission outweighs the significance of individuals on the battlefield. The only path of sanity in such circumstances is acceptance of big picture cruelty as one of life’s terms. When such a time comes, we most hold on to one another and be better than our God to each other. Later we may understand. And I will continue to seek conscious contact, because, for the most part, it works in making me a better person.

“Tyger, Tyger, burning bright, in the forests of the night, …Did he who made the Lamb make thee?”

~ William Blake from The Tyger

From Courage to Change of Jun 01:

A longtime member says, “An expectation is a premeditated resentment.” I take this statement to suggest that when I have a resentment I can look to my expectations for a probable source.

Here’s an example: I have a brother who is less attentive to being prompt than I am. When I make a plan with him that involves meeting at a certain time, I am cooperating in establishing conditions that encourage me to nurse a resentment. On the other hand, when I make a plan with my brother that is based on no expectation of promptness, I feel no resentment.

Today’s Reminder

I have the right to choose my own standards of conduct, but I do not have the right or the power to impose those standards on others.

“I have accepted myself and I’m beginning to accept other people the way they are each day. Now I have fewer resentments.”

~ Living with Sobriety

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I would say that an expectation that goes against established experience is a resentment waiting to happen. I do have a right to seek reciprocated respect. When someone proves that they are incapable of personal integrity in their interaction with me, resentment comes when I take no action to care about myself. Their word, their expression of Self, is weak and corruptive. Nursing a resentment is weak and corruptive on my part.

I have no expectations of a corpse. I have very little expectations of a stranger. The more intimate a relationship becomes, the more I seek reciprocated respected. Resentments, I believe, come from my inactivity and whining more than from expectations. I could be wrong. I have been before. I don’t think I am.

From Courage to Change of May 31:

Legends have often told of spiritual journeys in which the hero must face great challenges before gaining treasure at the journey’s end. As the heroes of our own stories, we in Al-Anon have also embarked upon a spiritual journey – one of self-discovery.

With the help of our program and the support of our fellowship, we explore our hidden motives, secrets, buried memories, and unrecognized talents. As we draw upon the wisdom of Al-Anon’s Steps, principles, and tools, we learn to overcome obstacles to personal growth, such as the effects of alcoholism and a variety of defects of character.

We are guided on this journey by a Power greater than ourselves, but the steps we take must be our own. Only by facing the darkness can we receive the treasure – the light and joy of emerging released from all that has held us back.

Today’s Reminder

Self-knowledge is the path to personal freedom. The Steps give me directions and help me to cope with anything I encounter along the way.

” The world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles . . . only by a spiritual journey . . . by which we arrive at the ground at our feet, and learn to be at home.”

~ Wendell Berry

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The above diagram shows my inner onion of mental and emotional challenges that often manifest in defects of character. Any one of the outer circles could trip a self-destructive reaction. I used to say that my inner child would go radioactive. Once I had activated my alcoholism, I could not see any of this. All I knew was that I needed to quit feeling what I was feeling. I needed to find a way to separate myself from the radiation pouring out of my inner core. It has taken me 17 years and so many alcoholic relapses to create the above chart in my mind.

The voices of my early development have not yet gone and may never. But I can better see the true from the false. When someone in the Fellowship “calls me on my shit,” I am able to stop and see if that is valid. I do not automatically embrace criticism. I become an advocate for that little boy I have hidden away. There are people in recovery who have stopped drinking or have better relationships with their family, but who have not peeled away their own onion. They might project their internal coping mechanisms into my life. They have learned to lock their inner child away in the downstairs basement and believe that telling me to do so as well is part of recovery. It took me seventeen years to come to this level of clarity, and most people are not willing to do that much work. I can understand why. But I cannot stay sober without doing so.

Ebby Thatcher should have been listed as one of the co-founders of AA, in my opinion. He was not because the program was designed to help overcome alcoholism and he kept suffering relapses. He continued to struggle but died sober. If you are having problems staying sober even while working the Steps, I would suspect that you have some onion peeling to do. You are really going to have to know who you are, and that is not easy if you have spent a lifetime burying your inner child. If you need someone to talk to, email me and I will encourage you to do what you need to do.