Daily Reprieve

Is seems that pushing forward feels like anger, just as loving feels like sadness.

It is everything or nothing for me.  I am either a jelly fish discarded on the beach by violent waves or I am Hitler invading Poland.  I guess that it is time to start goose stepping if I am going to get anything accomplished today.

I think this might be a common dilemma for alcoholics.  That is why our approach toward God must be “Everything or Nothing.”  It is not to appease divine insecurity or surrender to the control of a religious cult;  It has little to do with God and more to do with the powerful egos of myself and my fellow alcoholic / addicts.

“On the other hand—and strange as this may seem to those who do not understand—once a psychic change has occurred, the very same person who seemed doomed, who had so many problems he despaired of ever solving them, suddenly finds himself easily able to control his desire for alcohol, the only effort necessary being that required to follow a few simple rules.”~ Doctor’s Opinion from BB.

” One feels that something more than human power is needed to produce the essential psychic change.”~ Doctor’s Opinion from BB.

Soft and mushy thinking ~”we threw up our hands in doubt and said, ‘We don’t know.’ ” ~ page 53 of the Big Book.

WE AGNOSTICS “could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing.  God either is, or He isn’t.  What was our choice to be?” ~ page 53 of the Big Book.

This is one place where we take the black and white thinking that is usually counted as a fault, and turn it for our good.

Time to march forth.

As of the 3rd of this month, I have 18 months.  It has taken me 7 years to get it.  So this is new territory I guess.  The DUI case from my last relapse finally came up on the 8th and I was granted a deferment.  On that day, I went back to the Hut to pick up the token.

There is magic in recovery I would really like to tap into on a regular basis:

1.  Being rocketed into the 4th Dimension of Existence – Spiritual Experiences (page 25 BB)

2.  Hearing the morning Voice of Spiritual Awakening as a daily guide (page 86 BB)

3.  Remarkable things of the New Employer in the 3rd Step covenant (page 63 BB)

4.  The full protection of the Place of Neutrality (page 85 BB)

5.  The Fulfillment of the Promises throughout the BB.

6.  The protective review and rituals of the program of AA.

7.  The Sufficient Substitute of the Fellowship to replace the dark  magic of alcoholism. (page 152 BB)

I feel a cautious hope, and yet I am exhausted from the steady stream of anxiety that flows through me.  Must sleep.

I have not started sponsoring anyone, probably to the relief of Lydia [http://lydiacharlotte.wordpress.com/].  She advised against it, based on what she saw here in my writing, I suppose.  It has not been the result of a decision on my part though.  I just forgot that I had decided to take on that responsibility.  I have difficulty keeping things simple.  Simplicity bores me.  I love twists and turns and the mad employment of imagination.  Unfortunately, such a labyrinth makes it difficult to complete important projects and necessary tasks.  I overwhelm myself.

I was talking to my female about this latest quagmire, and why I often end up in the swamp, when she simply says, “I think your disease makes you go there.  How long has it been since you have been to a meeting?”  Internally, I slap my forehead.  Oh yeah, I’m an alcoholic!  How can I forget that?

The next day, I get a message from my sponsor, just wanting to touch base with me, saying that he has not heard from me in a while.  How was college and how am I doing.  If this is not the grace of Gomu (God of my understanding) doing for me what I cannot (or will not) do for myself, I do not know what is.

So last night, I went to a meeting in downtown Birmingham, and met my sponsor there.  The topic was from Chapter 7 of the Big Book, Helping Others, the first couple of paragraphs.

“Practical experience shows that nothing will so much insure immunity from drinking as intensive work with other alcoholics.  It works when other activities fail.  This is our twelfth suggestion:  Carry this message to other alcoholics!  You can help when no one else can.  You can secure their confidence when others fail.  Remember they are very ill.  Life will take on a new meaning.  To watch people recover, to see them help others, to watch loneliness vanish, to see a fellowship grow up about you, to have a host of friends – this is an experience you must not miss.  We know that you will not want to miss it.  Frequent contact with newcomers and with each other is the bright spot of our lives.”

The topic leader then went on to describe an experience of being of help to another.  Here are some of the other points I heard as the topic was opened for discussion:

1.  The 12th step teaches us to face life proactively, not just react.  It teaches us to secure insurance against those waves of alcoholic insanity that will assault in the future.

2.  Remember that 12th step work is not relegated to sponsorship.  Being present at meetings, sharing the AA message, serving the group, and willingness to be friendly, to listen and talk to newcomers, are all apart of the spirit of 12th step work.

3.  This program offers help outside of religion.  Some people benefit from church and religion, but many of us do not.  A lot of us have tried to make that work, and have despaired.  This program does work where religion cannot.

4.  This program has helped many establish a place of human connections.  As time goes on, you become apart of a secondary family.  In fact, many find most of their true friends in this program.

5.  Building up an intimacy with the fellowship provides additional resource for maintaining sobriety.

6.  It is important to remember not to seek to prosletize AA, but to rely on attraction rather than promotion.  In this way, we rely on Gomu, and do not take on the futile role of being someone else’s God.

7.  Co-dependency is a dangerous part of the 12th step, particularly if you are attempting to help family members recover.  (I think this is why Gomu has not had me sponsoring – I have issues in this area)

8.  My sponsor talked about his decades of service as a salesman that he retired from and one of the situations that the sales force was warned against was sitting on a china egg.  He explained that the china egg looks so good, and you just keep trying to hatch it.  Do not waste your time with prospects that are simply not ready.  It denies others who ready to go to any length for sobriety of your attention.  Know when to move on.

My own religious resistance caused me to have difficulty hearing the following points, because it sounded more like a churchian hijack of the program to me.  I could be wrong, so I will put them here anyway:

9.  We need to only be speaking AA’s message, and not our own.  Remember that you are the only Big Book some people will read.  (This felt felt like a religious straight jacket to me, a way of thinking that causes religious people to maintain a facade, to hide their struggles, to miss the “more to be revealed” aspect of the program).

10.  Knowing that my life is being directed by Gomu’s will helps me to accept the difficult and hard to understand elements of life.

I have acceptance issues…there is no doubt about it.  During active alcoholism, we used the cold slap of consequences to buy us moments of sanity, that allowed us to confess that we might truly be alcoholic.  Why would we now accept negative occurrences as anything but red flags?  Maybe there is something else that needs to change in either our circumstance, or more likely, in our perspective.  It just sounded to me like a surrender to eating sour grapes in sobriety because “God is in control.”  I am also not sure what relevance this had to the 12th step, since she was talking about her job interview and subsequent prospects.  Maybe it was the “living out these principles in all our affairs” part.

Anyway.  I am still sober, and for that I am grateful.  Even if I am a Swamp Thing.

“After a while we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis of life – or else.” ~ Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 4, We Agnostics, (page 44 – in my book).

“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.” ~ Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, Chapter 4, We Agnostics, (page 45).

The Or Else manifestations (Also known as the Bedevilments of this Disease – page 52)

~ We were having trouble with personal relationships

~ We couldn’t control our emotional natures

~ We were a prey to misery and depression

~ We couldn’t make a living

~ We had a feeling of uselessness

~ We were full of fear

~ We were unhappy

~ We couldn’t seem to be of real help to other people

Thus, a spiritually based life would be the inverse?

~ We were able to overcome trouble with personal relationships

~ We can control our emotional natures

~ We are not a prey to misery and depression

~ We can make a living

~ We have a feeling of uselfulness

~ We are full of courage

~ We are not unhappy (possibly even …happy)

~ We are of real help to other people

1. Sincere efforts to offer apology for past harm.
2. Wonderful bridge-builders for more positive future relationships.
3. Effective agents for removing the tremendous weight of guilt, shame, and remorse.

“Don’t sponsor, not with that mind set. I have passed through many successful years when I wasn’t sponsoring anyone. You can’t give away what you don’t have”

Lydia, I have been attempting to secure sobriety since 2006 and have never made it to 18 months. I have achieved a year 3 times, I think. I hear you that this has not been your experience. That you have had several years sober without sponsoring. I assume successful equates to sobriety in the context of our discussion. You can’t give away what you don’t have AND you can’t keep what you don’t give away. My mind set will not improve in isolated self-maintenance, which I can fall into even while parking my butt in the rooms. Maybe the answer for me is to be a friend and a temporary sponsor, and just drop the whole rigid concept of sponsorship. It does remind me so much of the discipleship movement in churchianity. That was a sort of proselytizing pyramid scheme popularized by groups like the Navigators.

I have never really met anyone in AA, including past sponsors, who I would deem as having a continuous and inspiring mind-set.  I think if I wait for AA sainthood, I may justify doing nothing.

Of course, it is quite possible that I am totally misunderstanding your words.  Communication is a fragile thing.

And the real crux of Endigar 319 was the question, “What am I missing?”  I was not really asking whether I should sponsor.  My sponsor, my support network, hearing me talk as I do, pointed this out as a deficit in my program.  I am in my head too much, and a sponsee that forces me to render the solution rather than dwell in the problem would be helpful.

Resonance from readings?

COURAGE TO CHANGE:  “When I am troubled about what lies ahead, I look back to see where I have been.”  This process is supposed to provide evidence of the progress I have made in the program.  Unfortunately, my memory only seems to pull from mental files that are shrouded in emotional intensity.  I can only recall what I was feeling.  The specific nuggets of magic that come with working the program of recovery are often lost in the fog of general feelings.  I do not gain much from this reading today.

HOPE FOR TODAY: “Gradually, by keeping an open mind and heart, attending meetings, and using the program tools, I became willing to have, and then actually yearned for , a relationship with a Higher Power.  This relationship allows me to share honestly, set boundaries, and express a full range of emotions.  I will be forever grateful to all those people in all those rooms who, while knowing their own truth, allowed me to find mine.”  I am grateful for this non-religious aspect of the program.  I am grateful to have recovered a relationship with Gomu (God of my understanding), that surpassed what I lost at the turn of the century.  Yet, I do not feel terribly close to the Goddess today.  My attitude toward the divine is very laissez faire, this morning.

DAILY REFLECTIONS:  “I can be free of my old enslaving self.  After a while I recognize, and believe in, the good within myself.  I see that I have been loved back to recovery by my Higher Power, who envelops me.”  Enslaving self.  That resonates.  I use so much time just trying to maintain myself.  It has and, unfortunately, continues to be a bit of a burden.

I wish I could just let go.  Even though my relationship with this Gomu is an improvement, it still lacks an ever-present relevance for me.  Or maybe I am just drained from drill weekend.  And from experiencing the same old problems of failure suppressing me.  No choice but to keep pushing on, and accept the fact that the Goddess may be indifferent to the things that are important to me.  Thus, acceptance sounds like learning to give up.  Just quit caring, lose ambition.

And now I have been reminded that if I hope to keep this sobriety, I must be able to give it away.  I must be able to sponsor.  So I will have someone else besides myself to lie to.  No real choice.  Conditional delegated power.

Tired of feeling this.  Faith continues to be a squiggly eel between my fingers.  It seems the best I can achieve is to not to blame Gomu.  A respectful disdain and distance and accepting It’s irrelevance in my life seems to be my path of progress.

“…there has been a revolutionary way of living and thinking.” page 50 of the Big Book.  “…they present a powerful reason why one should have faith.” page 51.

What am I missing?  The deity could answer this for me, but I am almost certain, will not.  Because my memory is filled with a lifetime of desperate appeals to pretty clouds, inspired by fantastic stories.  I have had to learn to be content with silence.  That is my experience.  It is what I remember today.

So, I will move on.  I have no other choice.  Not really.

I fear becoming someone’s sponsor.

All quotes will be from the chapter, “We Agnostics,” in the Big Book.

“Much to our relief, we discovered we did not need to consider another’s conception of God.  Our own conception, however inadequate, was sufficient to make the approach and to effect a contact with Him.”

I asked myself this morning, why would I want to make contact with God through an inadequate concept?  Obviously it is not inadequate to make contact.  I supposed it would be inadequate to sustain spiritual life and growth.

“So we used our conception, however limited it was.”

Why would my conception be counted as limited?  Limited and inadequate.  Why would I want to use such a flawed concept?  It seems the answer is ~ to effect a contact with Him.

Why is it limited and currently inadequate?

“Besides a seeming inability to accept much on faith, we often found ourselves handicapped by obstinacy, sensitiveness, and unreasoning prejudice.”

If my concept of a Higher Power seems limited and inadequate to me, maybe I should see if it has been confined be my personal limits and inadequacies.

Is there some area where I am being just plain bull-headed?   Is the world having to tip-toe past my sensitivities, lest they incur the wrath of my judgment?  Are my judgments disconnected from my calm ability to reason?

Carried away from morning solitude to use for soul mastication throughout the day.

I am not happy, but I am grateful.  I prefer to suffer my discontent while sober.  My devotional readings talked of the advantages of sponsorship, its ability to take the answers I am giving to others and apply them to myself.  I also read of the power of the 10th step.  Something I am still working on.  Still need to finish my amends.  I do not want to start sponsoring until I have actually finished the 12 steps, ALL 12 of them, and I have re-secured a year of sobriety.  And finally, taking what I learn, the principles of recovery, and using them in my intimate environment.  My new AA sponsor gave me another saying to record; “Religion is God on the outside trying to get in, and Spirituality is God on the inside trying to get out.  This is a spiritual program, not a religious one.”