Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Putting First Things First

Today we started the story "Gutter Bravado". I noticed that in this story there was no childhood dysfunction. There was no childhood abuse or tragedy. There was no deprivation or poverty. The story teller had a spiritual upbringing. Yet he still became an alcoholic.

I observed in this and other stories that people with both good and the bad backgrounds can develop a spiritual malady or the disease of alcoholism. All that is necessary is the physical factor and human nature. In Gutter Bravado the story teller has a well formed upbringing. There is no abuse, no trauma, no poverty, no disease, no tragedy, nothing except a rebellious nature.

I found that I have to always put powerlessness first. I always have to see the lack of power, choice and control. It doesn't matter how I got that way or what started the ball rolling. I must always address powerlessness first.

It's not that past dysfunction is not important. It is about addressing the present condition first. I might need to find resolution to the past eventually but it's not what is required to get sober. In fact I can't find resolution from the bondage of the past until I find freedom from my present bondage of self.

It's about putting first things first.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Responsibility

My biggest experience with responsibility in recovery is to take responsibility for my own recovery.

In my first attempts at working the program I took no responsibility for it. I would wait for my sponsor to call me before I would call him. I would get angry that my sponsor was a hypocrite because he didn't call me. I would put other life maintenance ahead of doing my step work, then I would do the work on my sponsor's time. I would wait until somebody called me and showed they "cared" before I would get back to meetings. I would go to meetings and wait for someone to inspire me before I would try to share and I would leave dissatisfied if the meeting was "sick". I would blame my wife for not making sure I had quiet time for prayer and meditation. Worst of all I would wait for someone to ask me if I wanted to go to carry the message at H&I and I rarely got to do this. Then I would complain that no one asked me to sponsor them.

I couldn't stay sober.

When I came back this last time I was so desperate that I was willing to change everything starting with my initiative to work the program.

I didn't wait for the "right" sponsor or the popular sponsor. I grabbed a guy with 30 days who I heard come out of the Big Book and I asked him if he could sponsor me. I prioritized my step work ahead of everything else, my wife and job and my hobbies to make sure I was ready when it was time to meet with my sponsor. I would call him ahead of time and make sure that he could meet and that he remembered.

I had to do this because I was a chronic addict.

Today it is my responsibility to make time for prayer, meditation and evening review. I am responsible to stay accountable to my sponsor. I am responsible for teaching my sponsees to work a program and rely upon their higher power not on me. I am responsible for doing my part in meetings to share from my experience with this program so that there are no bad meetings. I am responsible for seeking out H&I meetings and reaching out to those who are trying to get sober.

My parents taught me responsibility when I was a kid but I lost that character trait in the years of my disease. The program has given this back to me in my life. Today I am presented with a great deal of responsibility in a job that I love. Today I get to be responsible for the care and formation of 4 beautiful little children. Today I get to be responsible for being a good husband to a loving wife. Today I get to be responsible for a home and a few vehicles and some finances.

Most of the time today my motivation to work this program is because it inspires me. Sometimes I have to do it because I am a chronic addict.

Thursday, January 17, 2008

The Spiritual Experience

The Spiritual Experience for me was like having my programming rewritten to become attuned to the directives of the Universe.

Sobriety was the reason I became willing but what I received was the key to the greatest life I could imagine.

The steps were like quantum shifts that combined to form the greater experience. The quanta sometimes came suddenly, the greater experience came over a longer period of time.

In the first step i had an awakening to the truth. I experienced total acceptance of my condition. The walls of denial and delusion were smashed.

In step 2 I experienced a reversal of paradigms in which reason became the construction of faith not the antithesis to it. It suddenly made more sense to believe than not to.

In step 3 I experienced power for the first time, power that removed the obsession to use.

Steps 4 through 9 got me reconnected to the stream of life and power began to flow through me.

Steps 10, 11 and 12 are where i experience growth and regeneration of the experience.

The experience happened in waves but is also something I must to keep active. It is "vital" in both the sense of "critical" and the sense of "alive".

My experience continues to be re-vitalized. Sometimes there's banging and heat and sparks fly, and clouds explode. It doesn't feel good while I'm being re-forged. But when I get through it is something new and entirely more effective.

Today I feel like God has given me everything I need, power, peace of mind and a sense of purpose. With that have come a wife, beautiful kids, great friends, and a good livelihood. The circumstances in my life are often difficult but my relationships and my acceptance are wonderful.

Oh yeah, and I don't have to shoot dope today.

Wednesday, January 16, 2008

What Caused the Spiritual Malady?

Lately I've been looking at the degree to which we focus on the early dysfunction of our lives as the events that shaped our disease.

The early parts of our stories often contain of lot of dysfunction that may serve to point out the spiritual malady was there before drinking ever happened. Perhaps this is a good reason to discuss this.

However, just as with reasons to drink, we don't need bad circumstances to have a spiritual malady, just something between us and God. This can be something bad or too much of something good, or just an absence of a spiritual life.

We all want to look at the circumstances and glorify them as the cause. perhaps this is because it is a distraction from looking at the absence of God in our lives. If we look at the absence of God more as the problem then this would make the connection to God More important.

Perhaps I should develop my story around this idea. I should show how there was this time when all was right in the world, all was complete, all was love. Then my faith in the divine changed and my will became more important than God.

When I was a little child I had complete faith in God, my parents and in Love. I didn't have the doubts about the existence or Power of God. I was obedient to my parents and they were the control limits for my will. Love for others was open, easily given and untainted by lust and narcissism.

I always attributed the loss of this to growing out of the naivete of childhood. But naivete of itself was not the reason for this blissful state. The real reason was the loss of faith, control, and connection to others.

The 12 Step process helps me get back to the state of connection to God that I had as a child.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Focusing on the First Cause

Lately I've been reading the stories in the Big Book and I've pondered the reasons we have a tendency to dwell on the first causes of our disease.

Perhaps we want focus too much on the cause because it is where our minds instinctively want to go as a strategy to solve the problem.

But we can't go back and change the past so we must focus on the solution for the problem as it is today.

Focusing on the beginning is just a distraction from the reality of today. We don't treat our disease by changing the circumstances of the past, we treat the state of our spiritual malady as it is today.

Why so much Drama of The Past?

Lately I've been reading the stories in the Big Book and I've pondered the reasons we have a tendency to dwell so much on the dysfunction of our lives in the early parts of our story.

Here are some reasons which we may do consciously or unconsciously:

Because we need to prove that we are real alcoholics
Beause we like drunk-a-logues
Because we think we will scare people into not drinking
Because we only have the disease to share not any recovery
To show how deep our denial ran
To show the circumstances that caused our drinking
To show we had a spiritual malady before we drank

I believe the numbers 5 & 7 are good reasons and may provide the guidelines to compose my story.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Why step 6?
Normies can just start with a list of character defects and strive to do better.
We have an exdcessive problem with perspective unmanageability so we can't see them at first.
We also suffer from powerlessness over them.
We need to get to the core problem.
Then we see them.
But we can't just act better.
We have to focus on access=ing power

Tuesday, January 1, 2008

The Miracle: "We Admitted"

I AM A MIRACLE , January 1
The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could never do by ourselves. ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, p. 25

This truly is a fact in my life today, and a real miracle. I always believed in God, but could never put that belief meaningfully into my life. Today, because of Alcoholics Anonymous, I now trust and rely on God, as I understand Him; I am sober today because of that! Learning to trust and rely on God was something I could never have done alone. I now believe in miracles because I am one!

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The Daily Reflections Website listed this reflection related to Step 2. I wondered why this would be in January and not be on Step 1. I thought it must refer to the fact that Step 1 IS "The Miracle". It got me thinking that it must be a transition from Step 12 since the last focus was on "all our affairs". Perhaps this was to bring us back to our Primary Purpose.

Another perspective might be that a 12th Step well performed always reconnects me with Step 1.

Tonight at a meeting I shared about this.

On my way home I thought more about the reflection and about "The Miracle". I remembered an insight a few weeks back that I'm not sure I wrote about.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

All my life I never witnessed a tangible Miracle. This was one of the reasons that I didn't have real faith. I believed that there was a God. But I thought this was just for the afterlife. I saw some synchronicities and even had some dreams and possible intuitions. But I never saw water turn into wine, until I came to AA.

I heard alcoholics and addicts give a description of their hopeless state of mind and body. They spoke of the nature of the disease, the physical factor and the mental obsession. They spoke of how they drank (or used) different than normal people early on in the progression and then how far gone they were at the end.

When I saw that they had recovered, I thought it truly WAS a Miracle. It was the first "real" miracle I had ever seen.

It was this witness that produced the 1st Step Miracle for me. The light of truth came on in me. I saw that I was medically incurable but the Power of God would restore me to sanity.

The miracle was that I could now see the truth about myself, The walls of denial and delusion were broken. I found willingness to consider that I needed to get this Power in my heart.

The same experience still occurs when I go to meetings and the light stays on.

They admitted, I admitted, "We admitted..."

This miracle is also the cornerstone of my faith.

My faith is the greatest joy in my life today. I am driven with desire to grow in understanding and effectiveness. I spend most of my thought life pondering matters of spirituality, religion, mysticism, philosophy and the nature of things. The architecure of my world view is built on the belief in the True and Living God. My world is secure, meaningful and Purpose driven.

Mission

This is a blog about one man's experiences in 12 step recovery and the spiritual life. ~