Daily Reprieve

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

. . . we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives.  (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 86)

When said sincerely, this prayer teaches me to be truly unselfish and humble, for even in doing good deeds I often used to seek approval and glory for myself. By examining my motives in all that I do, I can be of service to God and others, helping them do what they want to do. When I put God in charge of my thinking, much needless worry is eliminated and I believe He guides me throughout the day. When I eliminate thoughts of self-pity, dishonesty and self-centeredness as soon as they enter my mind, I find peace with God, my neighbor and myself.

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Self-pity, dishonesty, and isolated self-seeking motives are particular manifestations of my disease.  They help to cut me off from vital connections.  When I am cut-off, the disease moves in for the kill.  I do disagree with the contributor in that I do not believe being of service to others is helping them do what they want to do.  Serving others is doing whatever it takes to help them manifest their highest self.  We do not honor the self-pity, dishonesty and isolated self-seeking motives in their lives any more than we do in our own.  It takes the guidance of Gomu (God of my understanding) and the council of the Sober Ones to develop an understanding of how I am to serve.  For me, to serve is to recognize the dormant powers created in me, and then I contribute that energy to the common good, the human collective.  The AA program provides me the best opportunity for such pursuits.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

We recovered alcoholics are not so much brothers in virtue as we are brothers in our defects, and in our common strivings to overcome them.  (As Bill Sees It, page 167)

The identification that one alcoholic has with another is mysterious, spiritual-almost incomprehensible. But it is there. I “feel” it. Today I feel that I can help people and that they can help me.

It is a new and exciting feeling for me to care for someone; to care what they are feeling, hoping for, praying for; to know their sadness, joy, horror, sorrow, grief; to want to share those feelings so that someone can have relief. I never knew how to do this-or how to try. I never even cared. The Fellowship of A.A., and God, are teaching me how to care about others.

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Today I am fighting a bit of depression.  I watched a film called “Machine Gun Preacher,” and later, I watched Mel Gibson’s “The Passion.”  There are some standards of caring about others that seem way out of my reach.  My social anxiety keeps me from connecting.  The Fellowship of AA has provided me with the opportunity to connect and care.  I am not sure how or if I will ever overcome this fear.  I desire to.  I suppose it is time for a meeting.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

All these failings generate fear, a soul-sickness in its own right. (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 49)

“Fear knocked at the door; faith answered; no one was there.” I don’t know to whom this quote should be attributed, but it certainly indicates very clearly that fear is an illusion. I create the illusion myself.

I experienced fear early in my life and I mistakenly thought that the mere presence of it made me a coward. I didn’t know that one of the definitions of “courage” is “the willingness to do the right thing in spite of fear.” Courage, then, is not necessarily the absence of fear.

During the times I didn’t have love in my life I most assuredly had fear. To fear God is to be afraid of joy. In looking back, I realize that, during the times I feared God most, there was no joy in my life. As I learned not to fear God, I also learned to experience joy.

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I am better with recognizing the illusions that are fear produced. Something in my gut still gurgles up raw anxiety and I have to remove the autopilot of fulfilling tasks and remind myself that this is not real or that it is being exaggerated. Maybe I will develop an automatic response over time that will cause me to process all fear more quickly. At times, it competes to become my Higher Power. Thanks to this program, that void is already filled, and fear no longer has an easy time of it when confronting me.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison. (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 66)

“Dubious luxury.” How often have I remembered those words. It’s not just anger that’s best left to nonalcoholics; I built a list including justifiable resentment, self-pity, judgmentalism, self-righteousness, false pride and false humility. I’m always surprised to read the actual quote. So well have the principles of the program been drummed into me that I keep thinking all of these defects are listed too. Thank God I can’t afford them or I surely would indulge in them.

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The assertion that the aggressive anger that pushes forth my isolated self-will is a luxury for all humans is something I have to consider.  It often seems to me that in order to get things accomplished, there has to be a fierce, angry approach to life.  This is a social delusion that most of us indulge in one form or another.  The Hollywood icon of the lone wolf justifies antisocial behavior by adorning it with accomplishments dripping with the blood of all who dare to resist the isolated will.

It is an illusion of strength.  When the alcoholic entertains it, then that first drink makes a lot of sense.  The tragic demoralization and death of addiction becomes the collateral damage that will be endured.

The moral inventory begins to reveal the true substance of strength.  It is found in the cooperative will that gets one up every day to do the little things.  It is found in realizing that we are all in this together.  My drive to work is not a competitive sport.  My daily schedule is not a hit list.  The strong man or woman that we all look to is the person that emulates the qualities of Gomu (the God of my understanding).  They give a damn about others. They seek to empower the individuals serving the common good.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

. . . harboring resentment is infinitely grave. For then we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the spirit. (As Bill Sees It, page 5)

It has been said, “Anger is a luxury I cannot afford.” Does this suggest I ignore this human emotion?  I believe not. Before I learned of the A.A. program, I was a slave to the behavior patterns of alcoholism.  I was chained to negativity, with no hope of cutting loose.

The Steps offered me an alternative. Step Four was the beginning of the end of my bondage. The process of “letting go” started with an inventory. I needed not be frightened, for the previous Steps assured me I was not alone. My Higher Power led me to this door and gave me the gift of choice. Today I can choose to open the door to freedom and rejoice in the sunlight of the Steps, as they cleanse the spirit within me.

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I experienced a great deal of emotional constipation in active alcoholism.  Actually, I experienced impacted anxiety feces in my emotional bowel tract long before alcohol grew into a full fledged demon.  I simply did not know of a good way to process intense emotions.  I either suppressed or exploded.  The moral inventory has given me a way to process perfectly legitimate emotions in perfectly appropriate ways.  Once my emotional digestive system has been cleaned out with fourth step work, I can work to maintain regularity with tenth step work (after working steps five through nine).

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

Resentment is the “number one” offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick. (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 64)

As I look at myself practicing the Fourth Step, it is easy to gloss over the wrong that I have done, because I can easily see it as a question of “getting even” for a wrong done to me. If I continue to relive my old hurt, it is a resentment and resentment bars the sunlight from my soul. If I continue to relive hurts and hates, I will hurt and hate myself. After years in the dark of resentments, I have found the sunlight. I must let go of resentments; I cannot afford them.

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For me, resentments are expectations gone wrong.  My expectations are usually exaggerated by fear.  So I am back to that tap root of my disease.  Resentments let me know that the dark Spring has come to awaken the death weeds scattered within me.  In the fourth step I am given a spiritual hoe to work the soil of my heart.  The tenth step reminds me to be vigilant when resentment begin cropping up again.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

Self-pity is one of the most unhappy and consuming defects that we know. It is a bar to all spiritual progress and can cut off all effective communication with our fellows because of its inordinate demands for attention and sympathy. It is a maudlin form of martyrdom, which we can ill afford.  (As Bill Sees It, page 238)

The false comfort of self-pity screens me from reality only momentarily and then demands, like a drug, that I take an ever bigger dose. If I succumb to this it could lead to a relapse into drinking. What can I do? One certain antidote is to turn my attention, however slightly at first, toward others who are genuinely less fortunate than I, preferably other alcoholics. In the same degree that I actively demonstrate my empathy with them, I will lessen my own exaggerated suffering.

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In order to forestall accountability in some real area of my life, I would embellish some sad saga in which I could present the strength of my endurance.  It was a form of protective pride.  I would say “Look at what is happening to me, and I am not sure how, but I have endured it.”  The benefit was its ability to distract from areas of defect in my life that I needed to address.  Without this belly-up manipulation, I would become vulnerable to some painful accountability.  All of this happens on such an instinctual level that I was unaware of the pattern of behavior until I set down with the moral inventory and discussed it with another person in recovery.  Now when this short-coming manifests, I start asking myself, what is the real story here.  It is a warning sign that needs to be heeded.

I must qualify this with the reality that some of us have dealt with co-dependent situations that causes us to feel guilty about everything.  That broken guilt-o-meter is something else that has to be addressed with the support network.  That is probably a better topic for Al-Anon.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

 . . . where alcohol has been involved, we have been strangely insane.  (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 38)

Alcoholism required me to drink, whether I wanted to or not. Insanity dominated my life and was the essence of my disease. It robbed me of the freedom of choice over drinking and, therefore, robbed me of all other choices. When I drank, I was unable to make effective choices in any part of my life and life became unmanageable.

I ask God to help me understand and accept the full meaning of the disease of alcoholism.

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My active use of alcohol matches outwardly the storm that is going on inwardly.  For me, that was usually the result of steady doses of fear which exaggerated my instinctual responses.  The battle with this heightened level of anxiety is an ongoing process.  My primary treatment comes from making decisions to stay connected with my Higher Power and others who support my strongest expression of life.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

To see how erratic emotions victimized us often took a long time. We could perceive them quickly in others,- but only slowly in ourselves. First of all, we had to admit that we had many of these defects, even though such disclosures were painful and humiliating-. Where other people were concerned, we had to drop the word “blame” from our speech and thought. (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 47)

When I did my Fourth Step, following the Big Book guidelines, I noticed that my grudge list was filled with my prejudices and my blaming others for my not being able to succeed and to live up to my potential. I also discovered I felt different because I was black. As I continued to work on the Step, I learned that I always had drunk to rid myself of those feelings. It was only when I sobered up and worked on my inventory, that I could no longer blame anyone.

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My success and fulfillment are my responsibility.  My prejudices and erratic emotions create a victim’s attitude toward life.  I need to correct my speech and thought by being willing to face some painful and humiliating truth about myself.  The moral inventory of the fourth step requires courage and a willingness to let go of the victim’s card.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

 The essence of all growth is a willingness to change for the better and then an unremitting willingness to shoulder whatever responsibility this entails.  (As Bill Sees It, page 115)

Sometimes when I’ve become willing to do what I should have been doing all along, I want praise and recognition. I don’t realize that the more I’m willing to act differently, the more exciting my life is. The more I am willing to help others, the more rewards I receive. That’s what practicing the principles means to me. Fun and benefits for me are in the willingness to do the actions, not to get immediate results. Being a little kinder, a little slower to anger, a little more loving makes my life better day by day.

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Should I measure my growth by what I view as reward?  My immaturity craves social approval in all its forms, like a baby crying for attention.   I let that go, and seek change.  When the path is opened plainly before me, I do what I have to do to secure that change.  I take on the hard work of  possessing the vision given to me of my higher self.

My maturing character finds reward in the natural excitement of actually living my life.  I seek the rewards that come from patiently sowing seeds of life in others, so that I can be surrounded by living souls.