Daily Reprieve

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

We in our turn, sought the same escape with all the desperation of drowning men. What seemed at first a flimsy reed, has proved to be the loving and powerful hand of God.  A new life has been given us or, if you prefer, “a design for living” that really works.   (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 28)

I try each day to raise my heart and hands in thanks to God for showing me a “design for living” that really works through our beautiful Fellowship. But what, exactly, is this “design for living” that “really works”? For me, it is the practice of the Twelve Steps to the best of my ability, the continued awareness of a God who loves me unconditionally, and the hope that, in each new day, there is a purpose for my being. I am truly, truly blessed in the Fellowship.

END OF QUOTE

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I have struggled with today’s daily reflections.  I feel too critical of the contributor.  What is it that disturbs me so?  I walked away and attended a meeting.  I have been working to adjust my perspective so that I could harvest the spirit hidden from me in this recovery meditation.

Process?  Desperation led to willingness to grasp what appeared to be flimsy reed, and the persistent messy clinging of alcoholics responding as drowning men gain experiential evidence of the loving and powerful presence of God.  Why would I prefer the phrase “a design for living” rather than just saying I have been given a new life?  If a functioning design for living is synonymous with a new life, what does it matter?  Neither phrase takes away from the assertion that Gomu (God of my understanding) has given it to me.  It is a process from desperation to faith.  Maybe it is because a design sounds more pragmatic and less like a fantasy of magic.

The contributor seems to be at the faith end of this spectrum and talks about daily rituals to express gratitude for a pragmatic spirituality (design for living that works) and sees beauty in the Fellowship.  When attempting to explain what this new life is that has been given by a powerful and loving God, it becomes an intertwining of personal experience (“for me”) and the shared system of the Twelve Steps.  Again there are declarations of the faith of one who is recovered from a “hopeless state of mind and body”  (Alcoholics Anonymous, page xiii) in reveling in the awareness of God and unconditional love, hope for a daily expression of personal purpose, and being blessed in union with the Fellowship.

Maybe what has been disturbing to me is that I am somewhere between drowning man desperation and the faith of the recovered when I look at my own relationship with this design for living.  I do trust the process.  I trust Gomu, for the most part.  It is me that I have second thoughts about.

“And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone-even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality—safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition.” (Alcoholics Anonymous, pages 84-85)

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate.   (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 62)

My selfishness was the driving force behind my drinking. I drank to celebrate success and I drank to drown my sorrows. Humility is the answer. I learn to turn my will and my life over to the care of God. My sponsor tells me that service keeps me sober. Today I ask myself: Have I sought knowledge of God’s will for me? Have I done service for my A.A. group?

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Another important humility question to ask:  Am I connected and accountable to others who know me and are invested in my highest manifestation?

“Going it alone in spiritual matters is dangerous.  How many times have we heard well-intentioned people claim the guidance of God when it was all too plain that they were sorely mistaken.  Lacking both practice and humility, they had deluded themselves and were able to justify the most arrant nonsense on the ground that this was what God had told them.  It is worth noting that people of very high spiritual development almost always insist on checking with friends or spiritual advisers the guidance they feel they have received from God.  Surely, the novice ought not lay himself open to the chance of making foolish, perhaps tragic, blunders in this fashion.  While the comment or advice of others may be by no means infallible, it is likely to be far more specific than any direct guidance we may receive while we are still so inexperienced in establishing contact with a Power greater than ourselves.”  (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 60).

From Today’s Daily Reflections (August 5th);

How persistently we claim the right to decide all by ourselves just what we shall think and just how we shall act.   (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 37)

If I accept and act upon the advice of those who have made the program work for themselves, I have a chance to outgrow the limits of the past. Some problems will shrink to nothingness, while others may require patient, well-thought-out action. Listening deeply when others share can develop intuition in handling problems which arise unexpectedly. It is usually best for me to avoid impetuous action. Attending a meeting or calling a fellow A.A. member will usually reduce tension enough to bring relief to a desperate sufferer like me. Sharing problems at meetings with other alcoholics to whom I relate, or privately with my sponsor, can change aspects of the positions in which I find myself. Character defects are identified and I begin to see how they work against me. When I put my faith in the spiritual power of the program, when I trust others to teach me what I need to do to have a better life, I find that I can trust myself to do what is necessary.

END OF QUOTE

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When I take a solitary stand against my alcoholism, I must take a stand against my own mind and body with my own mind and body.  It is a suicide mission.

In the recovery program, I found ways to connect with others and with my Higher Power.  Through the collective conscience of recovery, I find a victory I had never thought would be possible.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

Faith, to be sure, is necessary, but faith alone can avail nothing. We can have faith, yet keep God out of our lives.   (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 34)

As a child I constantly questioned the existence of God. To a “scientific thinker” like me, no answer could withstand a thorough dissection, until a very patient woman finally said to me, “You must have faith.” With that simple statement, the seeds of my recovery were sown!

Today, as I practice my recovery – cutting back the weeds of alcoholism – slowly I am letting those early seeds of faith grow and bloom. Each day of recovery, of ardent gardening, brings the Higher Power of my understanding more fully into my life. My God has always been with me through faith, but it is my responsibility to have the willingness to accept His presence.

I ask God to grant me the willingness to do His will.

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In recovery I have been a lazy skeptic.  A scientific skeptic is proactively attempting to remove fallacious thinking from a theory to get as close to the truth as possible.  A lazy skeptic is one who has a habit of using intellect to shoot down areas of accountability.  A lazy skeptic is a professional critic of life.  Everyone is struggling to put together a mythology that works in their lives.  For me to have a mythology that worked in my life, I had to give up the role as professional critic and gather what bits I could find, and assert to myself what I believe is real, and my mythology had to include a Loving God. Something that I can hold onto.

This is why smart people have such a hard time in recovery. They have enough intellect to shoot down the working mythology of others. I do believe there is a loving God out there, yet the goal of this holographic universe is to develop a working mythology that allows us to overcome our lower self destructive versions and allows us to become a higher version of ourselves, one that can be helpful to others.

The way from lazy skeptic to scientific one is open-mindedness and work, I think.

[ My Definition of a Working Mythology ]

From Tomorrow’s Daily Reflections;

Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us.   (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 77)

It is clear that God’s plan for me is expressed through love. God loved me enough to take me from alleys and jails so that I could be made a useful participant in His world. My response is to love all of His children through service and by example. I ask God to help me imitate His love for me through my love for others.

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The love of God in this whole recovery process only becomes relevant to me as I learn to hear and comprehend communication from Gomu (God of my understanding).   Until that becomes a “working part of the mind” (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 87), I must rely on the strength of my self-love and desire for self-preservation to motivate me to help others.  I must find a way to give what I desire to keep.  So, until that time, the best I can give is a simulation of His apparent love.

I am posting tomorrow’s reflection today because I have to make a long distant journey on an amends’ adventure.  God grant me the serenity, courage, and wisdom for this mission.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

At the moment we are trying to put our lives in order. But this is not an end in itself.  (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 77)

How easily I can become misdirected in approaching the Eighth Step! I wish to be free, somehow transformed by my Sixth and Seventh Step work. Now, more than ever, I am vulnerable to my own self-interest and hidden agenda. I am careful to remember that self-satisfaction, which sometimes comes through the spoken forgiveness of those I have harmed, is not my true objective. I become willing to make amends, knowing that through this process I am mended and made fit to move forward, to know and desire God’s will for me.

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“I am vulnerable to my own self-interest and hidden agenda…self-satisfaction…is not my true objective…”

What then is my true objective?

“…through this process I am mended and made fit to move forward, to know and desire God’s will for me.”

The tools this program trains me to use so that I may have a helpful life to other alcoholics is prayer, meditation, principals of the steps to live by, and sponsorship received and given in the fellowship.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it.   (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 83)

When new in the program, I couldn’t comprehend living the spiritual aspect of the program, but now that I’m sober, I can’t comprehend living without it. Spirituality was what I had been seeking. God, as I understand Him, has given me answers to the whys that kept me drinking for twenty years. By living a spiritual life, by asking God for help, I have learned to love, care for and feel compassion for all my fellow men, and to feel joy in a world where, before, I felt only fear.

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In context on page 83 of the Big Book, the spirituality that surpasses theory and becomes something I live out is cleaning house and making amends to the people I have hurt.  I think the spiritual life is acting out on the realization that individual human lives are significant.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, Courage to change the things we can, And wisdom to know the difference.   (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 125)

The power of this prayer is overwhelming in that its simple beauty parallels the A.A. Fellowship. There are times when I get stuck while reciting it, but if I examine the section which is troubling me, I find the answer to my problem. The first time this happened I was scared, but now I use it as a valuable tool. By accepting life as it is, I gain serenity. By taking action, I gain courage and I thank God for the ability to distinguish between those situations I can work on, and those I must turn over. All that I have now is a gift from God: my life, my usefulness, my contentment, and this program. The serenity enables me to continue walking forward.

Alcoholics Anonymous is the easier, softer way.

END OF QUOTE

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The convergence of these three paths lead to the most powerful expression of my life.  The path of serenity is where I develop my ability to hear and understand Gomu (God of my understanding).  The path of courage is where I develop my interactive usefulness to God and others.  The path of Wisdom is where I take the events of my life and make them a way of living a balanced life.  I have the tools to learn from my experience at the crossroads of these three paths.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

. . . he has struck something better than gold. . . .He may not see at once that he has barely scratched a limitless lode which will pay dividends only if he mines it for the rest of his life and insists on giving away the entire product.   (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 129)

My part of the Seventh Tradition means so much more than just giving money to pay for the coffee. It means being accepted for myself by belonging to a group. For the first time I can be responsible, because I have a choice. I can learn the principles of working out problems in my daily life by getting involved in the “business” of A.A. By being self-supporting, I can give back to A.A. what A.A. gave to me! Giving back to A.A. not only ensures my own sobriety, but allows me to buy insurance that A.A. will be here for my grandchildren.

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In harvesting the spiritual wealth of A.A., I will be tempted by two natural impulses that could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  First, I could believe that I have arrived at the end of my efforts.  I have graduated from the program.  I can mark milestones in my journey, but should always reset for a further destination.  The second impulse is the desire to withdraw and horde what I gain.  Once my life has been restored, it is easy to return to isolated self interest.  It was in that state of fearful pride that I forged my self-destructive assertions.  I must develop a lifetime of connective habits and a sense of intimate responsibility as the primary force of my newfound freedom.  The skills I develop in the group can be used in my own life as an individual.  I who had once needed help can now become the helper.  My own grandchildren might find relief in the rooms I helped to strengthen.  If I remain persistently generous to this way of life I will leave a legacy of sobriety that will live beyond my physical existence.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

As active alcoholics we were always looking for a handout in one way or another.   (The Twelve Traditions Illustrated, page 14)

The challenge of the Seventh Tradition is a personal challenge, reminding me to share and give of myself. Before sobriety the only thing I ever supported was my habit of drinking. Now my efforts are a smile, a kind word, and kindness.

I saw that I had to start carrying my own weight and to allow my new friends to walk with me because, through the practice of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, I’ve never had it so good.

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Connect strongly.  Give where I know I will have to take.  Invest in the bank where I will have to make withdrawals.   Leave no voids of consumption untended.