I try hard to hold fast to the truth that a full and thankful heart cannot entertain great conceits. When brimming with gratitude, one’s heartbeat must surely result in outgoing love, the finest emotion that we can ever know. (As Bill Sees It, page 37)
I believe that we in Alcoholics Anonymous are fortunate in that we are constantly reminded of the need to be grateful and of how important gratitude is to our sobriety. I am truly grateful for the sobriety God has given me through the A.A. program and am glad I can give back what was given to me freely. I am grateful not only for sobriety, but for the quality of life my sobriety has brought. God has been gracious enough to give me sober days and a life blessed with peace and contentment, as well as the ability to give and receive love, and the opportunity to serve others – in our Fellowship, my family and my community. For all of this, I have “a full and thankful heart.”
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I wonder if it would be beneficial if, after writing out a gratitude list, it is followed by an emulation list. For instance, I am grateful that my Higher Power has helped me to stay sober. The way I would like to emulate my Higher Power is by helping other alcoholics find sobriety. It’s just a thought.
Man is supposed to think, and act. He wasn’t made in God’s image to be an automaton. (As Bill Sees It, page 55)
Before I joined A.A., I often did not think, and reacted to people and situations. When not reacting I acted in a mechanical fashion. After joining A.A., I started seeking daily guidance from a Power greater than myself, and learning to listen for that guidance. Then I began to make decisions and act on them, rather than react to them. The results have been constructive; I no longer allow others to make decision for me and then criticize me for it.
Today – and every day – with a heart full of gratitude, and desire for God’s will to be done through me, my life is worth sharing, especially with my fellow alcoholics! Above all, if I do not make a religion out of anything, even A.A., then I can be an open channel for God’s expression.
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Gomu (God of my understanding): “I taught you much when you were still content to be a slave. I taught you endurance and honor. And I waited for the day that you outgrew those chains. Then the slave became a zombie moving about the darkened streets of a post apocalyptic world. You drank from the pool of liquid death to silence the screams within. When finally you collapsed and your limp form was brought before Me, to the Temple of Agnostos Theos, I hungered to see you recover.”
Me: “Is it because you value my indoctrination as a slave?”
Gomu: “I value your life as a friend. I do not wish to command you as a slave. I desire to help you become the most powerful and true version of yourself, free from fear-soaked masks. Follow Me if you also desire this friendship and if you want to truly live. Everyday, it is your choice. I love you.”
This is not a passive relationship. It is full of passion and promises to be lived out. Today I chose friendship with Gomu.
We have seen the truth again and again: “Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. ” . . . If we are planning to stop drinking, there must be no reservation of any kind, nor any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol. . . . To be gravely affected, one does not necessarily have to drink a long time nor take the quantities some of us have. This is particularly true of women. Potential female alcoholics often turn into the real thing and are gone beyond recall in a few years. (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 33)
These words are underlined in my book. They are true for men and women alcoholics. On many occasions I’ve turned to this page and reflected on this passage. I need never fool myself by recalling my sometimes differing drinking patterns, or by believing I am “cured.” I like to think that, if sobriety is God’s gift to me, then my sober life is my gift to God. I hope God is as happy with His gift as I am with mine.
END OF QUOTE
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Choose not to urinate today. Save it all until it is time for you to go to bed. Imagine that if you do not, you will lose your job and family and may even be locked away for special bladder discipline treatment.
Choose not to eat for a month. Drink only water. Supposed that you know that if you do not abstain from eating, your children are likely to starve.
Choose not to drink liquid for a week. Imagine that there is the distinct possibility that you will lose your mind if you do.
Go one step further. Do not think about voiding your bladder, eating food, or drinking liquids during these times of abstinence. You will be working against your body, against your primal brain. The more highly developed intelligence will be looking for ways to accommodate the primal desires and needs. It will be seeking a loophole to escape the restrictions placed upon the body.
Somehow, I think alcoholism hard wires into our primal brain. When I first entered recovery, I was seeking abstinence. The fellowship and the first three steps helped me exit the hell of addiction and enter the purgatory of abstinence. In this place, reservation demons wisped around my head. “There is power in the bottle, don’t give up five minutes before you become invincible.” In purgatory I become all too familiar with my weakness. My shortcomings are paraded before me, while those damn reservations beckon me toward some temporary relief.
In this purgatory of abstinence, I have to decide to seek the fourth dimension of the Spiritual world because I must find sobriety. The only way for me to kill those lurking notions of power over alcohol is to move forward in my spiritual life demonstrated by my willingness and ability to help other alcoholics.
In active addictive thinking, I have no defense against the first drink. In the temporary refuge of abstinence, I have no long-term defense against these primal reservations that lead to that first drink.
My goal is to obtain Sobriety from my connection with Gomu (God of my understanding). I must develop the skill of listening to the intuitive leading of my Higher Power. I must develop a spiritual power that overcomes my primal powerlessness before alcohol.
“Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves. Obviously. But where and how were we to find this Power? Well, that’s exactly what this book is about. Its main object is to enable you to find a Power greater than yourself which will solve your problem.” (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 45)
And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone – even alcohol. (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 84)
When A.A. found me, I thought I was in for a struggle, and that A.A. might provide the strength I needed to beat alcohol. Victorious in that fight, who knows what other battles I could win. I would need to be strong, though. All my previous experience with life proved that. Today I do not have to struggle or exert my will. If I take those Twelve Steps and let my Higher Power do the real work, my alcohol problem disappears all by itself. My living problems also cease to be struggles. I just have to ask whether acceptance – or change – is required. It is not my will, but His, that needs doing.
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Here I am presented with a state of conditional magic. I have entered the world of the Spirit. Sanity will have returned, because I will seldom be interested in alcohol. When I am tempted, I will recoil, reacting sanely and normally. Without effort on my part, I will find that I am in a protective position of neutrality. The problem of addictive desire is simply gone.
This is the power of moving forward through the steps that cause us to clean up our past. When my recovery work has led me to step ten with the first nine complete, I am now developing a habit of correcting any new manifestations of my shortcomings as quickly and completely as possible. When they arise, and they will, I ask God to remove them and make any amends necessary. Then I turn my thoughts to pursue some way of helping others. This is how I stay spiritually fit and how I stay in the magical world of the Spirit.
IF WE ARE PAINSTAKING ABOUT THIS PHASE OF OUR DEVELOPMENT,
We will be amazed before we are halfway through (the 9th Step)
We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace.
No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
That feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear.
We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
Self-seeking will slip away.
Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change.
Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.
We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us – sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.
Fear . . . of economic insecurity will leave us. (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 84)
Having fear reduced or eliminated and having economic circumstances improve, are two different things. When I was new in A.A., I had those two ideas confused. I thought fear would leave me only when I started making money. However, another line from the Big Book jumped off the page one day when I was chewing on my financial difficulties: “For us, material well-being always followed spiritual progress; it never preceded.” (p. 127). I suddenly understood that this promise was a guarantee. I saw that it put priorities in the correct order, that spiritual progress would diminish that terrible fear of being destitute, just as it diminished many other fears.
Today I try to use the talents God gave me to benefit others. I’ve found that is what others valued all along. I try to remember that I no longer work for myself. I only get the use of the wealth God created, I never have “owned” it. My life’s purpose is much clearer when I just work to help, not to possess.
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I have struggled with this meditation during the course of the day. I agree almost completely with the words of the contributor. What then can I add? I will just reveal my own meanderings.
Is material well-being a sure sign of spiritual progress? Is it possible to have material strength and yet not have any real spiritual development? Is it possible to have great spiritual fortitude but be just this side of poverty? I am not sure.
What I have to take away from this meditation is that spiritual progress is the primary goal, and the pursuit of financial well-being cannot be a distraction from that destination. I cannot use it as an excuse to disregard my spiritual growth in recovery without risking a return to the hell of my alcoholic addiction.
I do value the magic of communicating with a Higher Power and experiencing life-giving transformation over the science of obtaining money. I am not sure that I have a good mind about the correlation between my spiritual and financial life. I remain open to a world in which I am greatly prospered in both the visible and invisible realms.
Love and tolerance of others is our code. (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 84)
I have found that I have to forgive others in all situations to maintain any real spiritual progress. The vital importance of forgiving may not be obvious to me at first sight, but my studies tell me that every great spiritual teacher has insisted strongly upon it.
I must forgive injuries, not just in words, or as a matter of form, but in my heart. I do this not for the other person’ sake, but for my own sake. Resentment, anger, or a desire to see someone punished, are things that rot my soul. Such things fasten my troubles to me with chains. They tie me to other problems that have nothing to do with my original problem.
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My fourth step work revealed to me a laundry list of grievances, real and imagined. Once they were brought out into the open, I had a choice to continue using them to attempt an execution of personal vengeance and maintain an internal fortress against any possible future vulnerabilities, or to turn my energy toward self-transformation and empowerment.
In order to follow the path of vengeance, I must experience life-threatening levels of anger and resentment. These emotions are radioactive to an alcoholic and prolonged exposure will kill me. Another problem for me is that I have a limited amount of interactive memory to face each day’s challenges. Consuming head-space to rehearse grievances and plots of revenge lead me toward an isolated and distrustful approach to life. Another reality I have to face if I embrace my resentment is the doubled-edged sword of justice. If I raise it to cut my offender, it cuts into my life to hold me accountable to the standard of its merciless blade. No one survives under the microscope. The probable outcome is that I will become the thing I hate and live with an internal environment of perfectionism. The fortress I build quickly becomes a prison. Cherishing my grievances also demands that I maintain a victim’s self image. I must remember over and over an event were I was powerless. I must fight to make sure that I am never powerless again. What affect does a continuous meditation on my times and possibilities of powerlessness achieve accept to establish me as a pathetic and perpetual victim. Finally, my personal crusade of vengeance often breeds more grievances creating a profound sense of futility. I become a weary keeper of a zoo filled with snarling, angry resentment-beasts that must be fed and sheltered.
The fourth step offers another possibility. Gomu (God of my understanding) says to me through the AA recovery process that I can achieve real vindication by becoming a more powerful expression of myself. This work of self-vindication is mutually exclusive to schemes of vengeance because you have to let go of the victim card. I have found that the magic of the moral inventory is the ability to pinpoint areas in my life, my shortcomings, that make me vulnerable to a repeat performance of victimization from myself or others, real or imagined, and turn them into sources of personal empowerment.
Today, I am far more interested in the work of transforming my life and achieving validation rather than vengeance. The goal of the recovery process is not simply to bring our alcoholism into remission, but to bring our lives into the spiritual awakening of sobriety. The primary demonstration of such a transformation is the freedom to exercise love and tolerance. For me, forgiveness is a major step in that empowerment.
It has been well said that “almost the only scoffers at prayer are those who never tried it enough.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 97)
Having grown up in an agnostic household, I felt somewhat foolish when I first tried praying. I know there was a Higher Power working in my life – how else was I staying sober? – but I certainly wasn’t convinced he/she/it wanted to hear my prayers. People who had what I wanted said prayer was an important part of practicing the program, so I persevered. With a commitment to daily prayer, I was comfortable with my place in the world. In other words, life became easier and less of a struggle. I’m still not sure who, or what, listens to my prayers, but I’d never stop saying them for the simple reason that they work.
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I have five types of prayer that I have developed in my recovered faith.
Ritual Prayer. I know that I am supposed to pray in recovery and that it is a big part of Step 11. I seek to create a habit with a specific time, a discipline, that will honor the importance of prayer even when I do not feel like doing it. Unfortunately, my disciplines have a shelf life of approximately two weeks. So, I often have to go through a process of self-persuasion to get back on track. Gratitude lists are helpful, because I forget the important and fall into old ways of reacting to the “urgent.” When I use this prayer, it works.
This brings me to the second type of prayer.
Panic Prayer. When I stop being proactive in my recovery, and wait until the pain finds me, I remember my Great Source and dial in a 911 prayer. I never feel judged or rejected in this scenario. I have to fight old religious shame and remember the care and love of my Higher Power. So, when I use this prayer, it works.
Relationship Prayer. This is my favorite. I just talk to and practice listening for Gomu (God of my understanding). I learn the most during this time and feel the comfort of a continual, loving presence. Fear and shame melt away. My intuitive skills grow. The only time that I am blocked from this prayer is when my anxiety blindsides me and then I realize that Fear also has a voice, and my intuitive skills hear it screaming in my ear. This is why I need serenity in my life, and I import this quality by developing meditation. I need it to stay connected to my Higher Power. When I am connected, this prayer definitely works.
Service Prayer. When I am feeling powerlessness settle over me, I ask for ways to serve, and the will to fulfill whatever opportunities come to me. I use my support network to attempt to filter out isolating ego. I want to help others not because I am cured and have THE ANSWER, but because we are all in this together. Our service should strengthen our connections, not exalt my rule over the fellowship. I seek only to fulfill the tasks given to me in prayer; nothing more and nothing less. This develops a connective, healing power in my life. When I use this type of prayer, it works.
Lost Child Prayer. Sometimes I find myself lost in a chaos storm. Nothing makes sense and I seem to easily forget all that I have learned. I may have relapsed, but that is not always the case. My intuitive senses are darkened. I may be afraid, or I may just feel numb. No matter who I talk to, I cannot retain their comfort or wisdom. I do not know why I get like this sometimes, but I do. In the mire of my spiritual disorientation, I reach out calling for Gomu. I believe this is why I “keep coming back” in the face of multiple relapses. I just keep reaching for whatever help I can get to. So far, this prayer has always eventually worked.
I hope this is helpful. I do care. More importantly, I know Gomu cares, and we are all in this together. I believe this is why prayer works.
The more we become willing to depend upon a Higher Power, the more independent we actually are. (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 36)
I start with a little willingness to trust God and He causes that willingness to grow. The more willingness I have, the more trust I gain, and the more trust I gain, the more willingness I have. My dependence on God grows as my trust in Him grows. Before I became willing, I depended on myself for all my needs and I was restricted by my incompleteness. Through my willingness to depend upon my Higher Power, whom I choose to call God, all my needs are provided for by Someone Who knows me better than I know myself – even the needs I may not realize, as well as the ones yet to come. Only Someone Who knows me that well could bring me to be myself and to help me fill the need in someone else that only I am meant to fill. There never will be another exactly like me. And that is real independence.
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Reality Check:
As a human being, I am dependent upon the maintenance of an oxygen-filled environment to live. I am dependent on my government to provide me with an infrastructure and protection. I am dependent on my body so that I can interact and achieve shelter in my environment. I am dependent upon the Captains of Industry to maintain an environment rich in technology and economic security.
I was also dependent on alcohol to feel normal, to squelch emotions I did not know how to process, and to create an environment based on an illusion of strength. That was a false independence.
Heart check:
I like the work “Independence.” It feels like privacy and power. It seems strong with self-reliance. It looks like rugged individualism on the screen of my imagination. Independence Day celebrates the victory of a great war and the rejection of a mighty monarch. Who does not want to be wrapped with this mantel of social achievement.
The word “dependence” conjures visions of a baby breastfeeding, an ill patient struggling in a hospital room, or a severally retarded young man being escorted and cared for, drool being wiped away from his chin. It feels like weakness and a loss of dignity. This is not the relationship I desire to build with my Higher Power.
My Take-Away:
All human souls contain pockets of dependency and unique manifestations of independence.
In recovery, I have decided to take my vulnerability of dependency and trust it to Gomu (God of my understanding), who seems to care deeply about my life. In this safe place, I can manifest my true individuality and live out the resulting independence. Powerlessness is a fading problem as the protective umbrella of God promotes my own personal Independence Day celebration.
. . . out of every season of grief or suffering, when the hand of God seemed heavy or even unjust, new lessons for living were learned, new resources of courage were uncovered, and that finally, inescapably, the conviction came that God does “move in a mysterious way His wonders to perform.” (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 105)
After losing my career, family and health, I remained unconvinced that my way of life needed a second look. My drinking and other drug use were killing me, but I had never met a recovering person or an A.A. member. I thought I was destined to die alone and that I deserved it. At the peak of my despair, my infant son became critically ill with a rare disease. Doctors’ efforts to help him proved useless. I redoubled my efforts to block my feelings, but now the alcohol had stopped working. I was left starting into God’s eyes, begging for help. My introduction to A.A. came within days, through an odd series of coincidences, and I have remained sober ever since. My son lived and his disease is in remission. The entire episode convinced me of my powerlessness and the unmanageability of my life. Today my son and I thank God for His intervention.
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The sin concept of any human weakness, such as self-destructive chemical dependency, has manufactured a culture of shame and revealed God as an entity always waiting for an opportunity to judge and punish humanity. In our day to day lives, he is a grumpy, detached deity barely tolerate of our lives. He is either ignoring or condemning us because we are steeped in sin.
Bill W. and Dr. Silkworth passed on to this fellowship another beautiful heresy by replacing the pathological concept of sin with the more accurate and hopeful disease model. Alcoholism is a disease, and not a first class ticket to damnation. The resulting calamities of this disease are the result of a progressive, chronic, and if untreated, terminal addiction. Now we can dispense with the ridiculous social control shaming popular in churchianity, and use specific guilt to identify the structure of our disease and begin the healing process of our lives. Shame never ends, but guilt can be addressed and satisfied.
What is funny to me is that the contributor of today’s daily reflection seemed to miss that his God was presenting the truth of the disease model to him in the situation of his afflicted son. The contributor said that he felt he was “destined to die alone and that he deserved it.” He was living in the shame of the sin-concept culture. In the midst of his alcoholism, did the contributor still love his son even though the child was weak enough to acquire a rare disease? Yes. Should his son be destined to die alone? Absolutely not. Did his son deserve condemnation for allowing the affliction to consume him? Of course not. As self-loathing as this alcoholic contributor was, he was willing to face the eyes of his indignant and condemning God, if only he could save his son’s life. I think God was trying to show him that he is a loving and concerned Father and not the iconic psychopathic Judge promoted by churchianity who is willing to send a majority of His created children into the damnation of an eternal hell.
My friend suggested what then seemed a novel idea . . . “Why don’t you choose your own conception of God?” That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last. It was only a matter of being willing to believe in a Power greater than myself. Nothing more was required of me to make my beginning. (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 12)
I remember the times I looked up into the sky and reflected on who started it all, and how. When I came to A.A., an understanding of some description of the spiritual dimension became a necessary adjunct to a stable sobriety. After reading a variety of versions, including the scientific, of a great explosion, I went for simplicity and made the God of my understanding the Great Power that made the explosion possible. With the vastness of the universe under His command, He would, no doubt, be able to guide my thinking and actions if I was prepared to accept His guidance. But I could not expect help if I turned my back on that help and went my own way. I became willing to believe and I have had 26 years of stable and satisfying sobriety.
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The prospect of choosing my own concept of God was heretical to my previous way of thinking. I was religious and there were certain fundamental doctrines that directed my concept of God. Much like alcohol, my confined religious system supporting my isolated ego would turn on me like a boomerang and cut me to shreds. I lost my faith in God. I wanted to believe, but no longer had the ability to do so. I was in spiritual grief, mourning the death of God.
This beautiful heresy was absolutely critical to my recovery. I am no longer a churchian. I have a new relationship with Gomu (God of my understanding). It is a much more simple and loving union for my spirit. This is not a judgment against my fellow humans who find their God in the various churches and temples on planet Earth. If that works to empower you, to free you, to manifest the true you, then so be it. Amen to you and your concept of God.
I have an idea that Jesus Christ is a real entity who was designated to reveal a way for mortal humans to become embryonic gods and goddesses. I have another idea that there was a Roman conspiracy to hijack the spirituality of his teachings to better control slaves and conquer opposing cultures. “In hoc signo vinces.” This idea follows a logical conclusion that centralized religion carries on this legacy of social oppression and obscures the magic of the Messianic teachings. I reject the notion that all human beings are to be converted to this centralized religion that I now call churchianity. I use that term to differ church-going from the actual non-religious and magical teachings of Jesus. From what I have read in scriptures, there are certain individuals who are chosen and become a member of the “elect.” Those who are members of the elect will be drawn to the Messiah and His teachings. The goal is to overcome mortal humanity, not to spread an “us and them” religion. Although I cannot escape the reality that I am a part of the elect, I reject the Greek concept of an eternal hell for those who chose a different path. In fact, it excites me to see the rise of the Individual. I reject the cross and embrace the empty tomb.
Bill W. brought forth several tenants from the Oxford movement that he saw as effective, and discarded those tenants that acted only to suffocate his fellow sufferers in a mire of religious doctrine. I seek to do the same in my rekindled spirituality.
Daily Reprieve 
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