Author: redbeard

Thought to Consider . . .

“When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically.”

Simply asking for help seems to be a help in itself.

KNOW GOD; KNOW PEACE, No God; No peace.

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows but only empties today of its strength.

AACRONYMS

H O W = Honesty, Open-mindedness, Willingness; that’s how WE do it!

E G O = Easing God Out

Having gotten over drinking, we have only just begun to enjoy the benefits of A.A. We find new friends, so that we are no longer lonely. We find new relationships with our families, so that we are happy at home. We find release from our troubles and worries through a new way of looking at things. We find an outlet for our energies in helping other people.

“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. As soon as we admitted the possible existence of a Creative Intelligence, a Spirit of the Universe underlying the totality of things, we began to be possessed of a new sense of power and direction, provided we took other simple steps.”

In A.A. we find a new strength and peace from the realization that there must be a Power greater than ourselves that is running the universe and that is on our side when we live a good life. So the A.A. program really never ends. You begin by overcoming drink and you go on from there to many new opportunities for happiness and usefulness.

Faced with alcoholic destruction, we soon became as open minded on spiritual matters as we had tried to be on other questions. In this respect alcohol was a great persuader. It finally beat us into a state of reasonableness. Sometimes this was a tedious process; we hope no one else will be prejudiced for as long as some of us were.

We’re in A.A. for two main reasons: to keep sober ourselves and to help others to keep sober. It’s a well known fact that helping others is a big part of keeping sober yourself. It’s also been proved that it’s very hard to keep sober all by yourself. A lot of people have tried it and failed. They come to a few A.A. meetings and then stay sober alone for a few months, but usually they eventually get drunk.

Attitudes

“We find that our old attitudes toward our instincts need to undergo drastic revisions. Our desires for emotional security and wealth, for personal prestige and power, for romance, and for family satisfactions – all these have to be tempered and redirected. If we place instincts first, we have got the cart before the horse; we shall be pulled backward into disillusionment. But when we are willing to place spiritual growth first – then and only then do we have a real chance.”

“But my friend sat before me, and he made the pointblank declaration that God had done for him what he could not do for himself. His human will had failed. Doctors had pronounced him incurable. Society was about to lock him up. Like myself, he had admitted complete defeat. Then he had, in effect, been raised from the dead, suddenly taken from the scrap heap to a level of life better than the best he had ever known!”

Dianne

Thought to Consider…

A.A. is not something you join, it’s a way of life.

I have been to too many premature funerals due to our good friend alcohol.”

We are prisoners of our own resentments. Forgiveness unlocks the door and sets us free.

The road to recovery is always under construction.

“In A.A. we have found that the actual good results of prayer are beyond question. They are matters of knowledge and experience. All those who have persisted have found strength not ordinarily their own. They have found wisdom beyond their usual capability. And they have increasingly found a peace of mind which can stand in the face of difficult circumstances.”

All of A.A.’s Twelve Steps ask us to go contrary to our natural desires . . . they all deflate our egos. When it comes to ego deflation, few Steps are harder to take than Five. But scarcely any Step is more necessary to longtime sobriety and peace of mind than this one.

The Way of Strength

“We need not apologize to anyone for depending upon the Creator. We have good reason to disbelieve those who think spirituality is the way of weakness. For us, it is the way of strength. The verdict of the ages is that men of faith seldom lack courage. They trust their God. So, we never apologize for our belief in Him. Instead, we try to let Him demonstrate, through us, what He can do.”

THE PAST IS OVER

A.A. experience has taught us we cannot live alone with our pressing problems and the character defects which cause or aggravate them. If . . . Step Four . . . has revealed in stark relief those experiences we’d rather not remember . . . then the need to quit living by ourselves with those tormenting ghosts of yesterday gets more urgent than ever. We have to talk to somebody about them.

Disease

“Some strongly object to the A.A. position that alcoholism is an illness. This concept, they feel, removes moral responsibility from alcoholics. As any A.A. knows, this is far from true. We do not use the concept of sickness to absolve our members from responsibility. On the contrary, we use the fact of fatal illness to clamp the heaviest kind of moral obligation onto the sufferer, the obligation to use A.A.’s Twelve Steps to get well.”

“If you are as seriously alcoholic as we were, we believe there is no middle-of-the-road solution. We were in a position where life was becoming impossible, and if we had passed into the region from which there is no return through human aid, we had but two alternatives: One was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could; and the other, to accept spiritual help. This we did because we honestly wanted to, and were willing to make the effort.”

Awakening

“Alcoholism is a grievous and often fatal malady of the mind and body. We have found that these awful conditions invariably bring on the third phase of our malady. This is the sickness of the spirit; a sickness for which there must necessarily be a spiritual remedy. We A.A.’s recognize this in the first five words of Step Twelve. Those words are: ‘Having had a spiritual awakening . . .’ Here we name the remedy for our threefold sickness of body, mind, and soul.”

Dianne

Thought to Consider…

The Seven T’s – Take Time To Think The Thing Through.

“Nobody can cause more needless grief than a power-driver who thinks he has got it straight from God.”

Faith isn’t belief without proof; it’s trust without reservation.

AACRONYMS

A C T I O N =  Any Change Toward Improving One’s Nature

G R A C E = Gently Releasing All Conscious Expectations

Each Man’s Vision

“Beyond a Higher Power, as each of us may vision Him, A.A. must never, as a society, enter the field of dogma or theology. We can never become a religion in that sense, lest we kill usefulness by getting bogged down in theological contention.”

“Everybody knows that those in bad health, and those who seldom play, do not laugh much. So let each family play together or separately as much as their circumstances warrant. We are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free.”

In the late stages of our drinking, the will to resist has fled. Yet when we admit complete defeat and when we become entirely ready to try A.A. principles, our obsession leaves us and we enter a new dimension – freedom under God as we understand Him.

Self-restraint

“Nothing pays off like restraint of tongue and pen and text. We must avoid quick-tempered criticism and furious power-driven argument. The same goes for silent scorn. These are emotional booby traps baited with pride and vengefulness. We can neither think nor act to good purpose until the habit of self-restraint has become automatic.”

The A.A. program is one of submission, release, and action. When we’re drinking, we’re submitting to a power greater than ourselves, liquor. Our own wills are no use against the power of liquor. One drink and we’re sunk. In A.A. we stop submitting to the power of liquor. Instead, we submit to a Power, also greater than ourselves, which we call God.

The Sense of Belonging

“Perhaps one of the greatest rewards of meditation and prayer is the sense of belonging that comes to us. We no longer live in a completely hostile world. We are no longer lost and frightened and purposeless. The moment we catch even a glimpse of God’s will, the moment we begin to see truth, justice, and love as the real and eternal things in life, we are no longer deeply disturbed by all the seeming evidence to the contrary that surrounds us in purely human affairs. We know that God lovingly watches over us. We know that when we turn to Him, all will be well with us, here and hereafter.”

Few people will sincerely try to practice the A.A. program unless they have ‘hit bottom,’ for practicing A.A.’s Steps means the adoption of attitudes and actions that almost no alcoholic who is still drinking can dream of taking. The average alcoholic, self-centered in the extreme, doesn’t care for this prospect – unless he has to do these things in order to stay alive himself.”

The A.A. program is one of faith, hope, and charity. It’s a program of hope because when new members come into A.A., the first thing they get is hope. They hear older members tell how they had been through the same kind of hell that they have and how they found the way out through A.A. And this gives them hope that if others can do it, they can do it.

Dianne

Thought to Consider…

We are as sick as our secrets.

“Fear knocked at the door; faith answered, no one was there.”

“The identification that one alcoholic has with another is mysterious, spiritual – almost incomprehensible. But it is there.”

Faith isn’t belief without proof; it’s trust without reservation.

AACRONYMS

D E N I A L = Don’t Even Notice I Am Lying

Right Living

“Service gladly rendered, obligations squarely met, troubles well accepted or solved with God’s help, the knowledge that at home or in the world outside we are partners in a common effort, the fact that in God’s sight all human beings are important, the proof that love freely given brings a full return, the certainty that we are no longer isolated and alone in self-constructed prisons, the surety that we can fit and belong in God’s scheme of things – these are the satisfactions of right living for which no pomp and circumstance, no heap of material possessions, could possibly be substitutes.”

SELF-HONESTY

The deception of others is nearly always rooted in the deception of ourselves.  . . . When we are honest with another person, it confirms that we have been honest with ourselves and with God

I gain faith by my own experience of God’s power in my life. The constant, persistent recognition of God’s spirit in all my personal relationships, the ever accumulating weight of evidence in support of God’s guidance, the numberless instances in which seeming chance or wonderful coincidence can be traced to God’s purpose in my life. All these things gradually engender a feeling of wonder, humility, and gratitude to God. These in turn are followed by a more sure and abiding faith in God and His purposes.

Freedom through Acceptance

“We admitted we couldn’t lick alcohol with our own remaining resources, and so we accepted the further fact that dependence upon a Higher Power (if only our A.A. group) could do this hitherto impossible job. The moment we were able to accept these facts fully, our release from the alcohol compulsion had begun.

For most of us, this pair of acceptances had required a lot of exertion to achieve. Our whole treasured philosophy of self-sufficiency had to be cast aside. This had not been done with sheer will power; it came instead as the result of developing the willingness to accept these new facts of living.

We neither ran nor fought. But accept we did. And then we began to be free.”

“We have learned that whatever the human frailties of various faiths may be, those faiths have given purpose and direction to millions. People of faith have a logical idea of what life is all about.”

Language of the Heart

“As we better use the ‘language of the heart’, our communications grow apace: already we find ourselves in a safe passage through all those barriers of distance and language, of social distinctions, nationality and creed, that so divide the world of our time.”

“God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and wisdom to know the difference.”

We treasure our ‘Serenity Prayer’ because it brings a new light to us that can dissipate our oldtime and nearly fatal habit of fooling ourselves.

In the radiance of this prayer, we see that defeat, rightly accepted, need be no disaster. We now know that we do not have to run away, nor ought we again try to overcome adversity by still another bulldozing power drive that can only push up obstacles before us faster than they can be taken down.”

Dianne

Thought to Consider…

We’re responsible for the effort – not the outcome.

Laughter is the sound effect of recovery.

Every recovery from alcoholism began with one sober hour.

…where alcohol has been involved, we have been strangely insane.

AACRONYMS

D E A D = Drinking Ends All Dreams

C H A N G E = Choosing Honesty Allows New Growth Everyday.

Sharing

“In spite of the great increase in the size and the span of this Fellowship, at its core it remains simple and personal. Each day, somewhere in the world, recovery begins when one alcoholic talks with another alcoholic, sharing experience, strength, and hope.”

Progress

“We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas:

(a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.

(b) That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.

(c) That God could and would if He were sought.”

“Once more: The alcoholic at certain times has no effective mental defense against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other human being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a Higher Power.”

Amends

“Learning how to live in the greatest peace, partnership, and brotherhood with all men and women, of whatever description, is a moving and fascinating adventure. Every A.A. has found that he can make little headway in this new adventure of living until he first backtracks and really makes an accurate and unsparing survey of the human wreckage he has left in his wake.”

One of the simplest, yet most important actions we can take is to step aside and allow our Higher Power in, for He brings with Him the great Gift of sobriety and the Promise of a “New Life.”

“As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we became conscious of His presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow, or the hereafter. We were reborn.”

The majority of A.A. members have suffered severely from self-justification during their drinking days. For most of us, self-justification was the maker of excuses; excuses, of course, for drinking, and for all kinds of crazy and damaging conduct. We had made the invention of alibis a fine art. We had to drink because times were hard or times were good. We had to drink because at home we were smothered with love or got none at all. We had to drink because at work we were great successes or dismal failures. We had to drink because our nation had won a war or lost a peace. And so it went, ad infinitum.”

Every time we go to an A.A. meeting, every time we say the Lord’s Prayer, every time we have a quiet time before breakfast, we’re paying a premium on our insurance against taking that first drink. And every time we help another alcoholic, we’re making a large payment on our drink insurance. We’re making sure that our policy doesn’t lapse.

Dianne

Thought to Consider…

Humility is not thinking less of yourself but thinking of yourself less.

Minds are like parachutes – they won’t work unless they’re open.

Joy isn’t the absence of pain – it’s the presence of God.

Unless I accept my virtues, I will be overwhelmed with my faults.

Humility

“Our A.A. program is spiritually centered. Most of us have found enough humility to believe in and depend upon God. We have found that humility by facing the fact that alcoholism is a fatal malady over which we are individually powerless.”

Atmosphere of Grace

“Those of us who have come to make regular use of prayer would no more do without it than we would refuse air, food, or sunshine. And for the same reason. When we refuse air, light, or food, the body suffers. And when we turn away from meditation and prayer, we likewise deprive our minds, our emotions, and our intuitions of vitally needed support. As the body can fail its purpose for lack of nourishment, so can the soul. We all need the light of God’s reality, the nourishment of His strength, and the atmosphere of His grace.

“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.”

In A.A., alcoholics find a way to solve their personality problems. They do this by recovering three things. First, they recover their personal integrity. They pull themselves together. They get honest with themselves and with other people. They face themselves and their problems honestly, instead of running away. They take a personal inventory of themselves to see where they really stand. Then they face the facts instead of making excuses for themselves.

Objectivity Step Four

Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. “They comfort the melancholy one by first showing him that his case is not strange or different, that his character defects are probably not more numerous or worse than those of anyone else in A.A. This the sponsor promptly proves by talking freely and easily, and without exhibitionism, about his own defects, past and present. This calm, yet realistic, stocktaking is immensely reassuring. The sponsor probably points out that the newcomer has some assets which can be noted along with his liabilities. This tends to clear away morbidity and encourage balance. As soon as he begins to be more objective, the newcomer can fearlessly, rather than fearfully, look at his own defects.”

Vigilance

“Now that we’re in A.A. and sober, winning back the esteem of our friends and business associates, we find that we still need to exercise special vigilance. As an insurance against the dangers of big-shot-ism, we can often check ourselves by remembering that we are today sober only by the grace of God and that any success we may be having is far more His success than ours.”

Alcoholics recover their proper relationship with other people. They think less about themselves and more about others. They try to help other alcoholics. They make new friends so that they’re no longer lonely. They try to live a life of service instead of selfishness. All their relationships with other people are improved. They solve their personality problems by recovering their personal integrity, their faith in a Higher Power, and their way of fellowship and service to others.

Dianne