aa Spoken Here Community Group
Fellowship Where you can share your thoughts, feelings, stories and get support to gain and continue sobriety.
The instructions for recovery are in our 12 Step program. Yet there are times when we feel our program isn't working. At these times, we need to read the instructions.
Have you followed the "instructions," the wise words found in the BB. The 12x12 and other recovery literature? When we do we recover.
Its hard at times and easy at others. Our problems go deeper than just staying sober. No matter what our problems, our problems, can help us start fixing them, if we follow the instructions. Don't use alcohol, or other drugs. go to meetings. talk often with sponsors and program friends. Work the steps until you start living them.
Today s Gift from Hazelden 5/16/2009
Works's for me any comments?
Have you followed the "instructions," the wise words found in the BB. The 12x12 and other recovery literature? When we do we recover.
Its hard at times and easy at others. Our problems go deeper than just staying sober. No matter what our problems, our problems, can help us start fixing them, if we follow the instructions. Don't use alcohol, or other drugs. go to meetings. talk often with sponsors and program friends. Work the steps until you start living them.
Today s Gift from Hazelden 5/16/2009
Works's for me any comments?
Also, Hazelden or any other institution (such as even much of today's AA) that "instructs" people to "Don't use alcohol, or other drugs [and] go to meetings" obviously has no comprehension of what taking the Steps is all about anyway!
To answer your question Hazelden is all about working the steps, as a way of recovery.
No Hazelden is not AA and I didn't go to one of their treatment centers, but am friends with several who have. From what they tell me they are probably the best treatment program for emphasizing the twelve steps and the programs that use them.
I myself use one of their devotionals for chronically ill people. You'd be amazed at how much it matches the same type of sayings and suggests the same type of actions that Daily Reflections does.
I liked this recent one and it was so true of me:-
'New feelings may seem uncomfortable at first. I may be used to feeling afraid and anxious, or depressed and alone. In my new life, I may begin to feel joy or happiness, or peace and calm.
These new feelings are signs that I'm changing and learning how to accept my new way of thinking. Feeling peaceful means I'm healing from all the crises in my past. If I confuse feeling peaceful with feeling bored, I need to remind myself that the absence of fear or crisis takes awhile to get used to.
I am glad to welcome my new feelings and emotions; they are one way to know how well I'm doing.'
How glad I am not to be living in drama anymore :)
My humble opinion,
Billy C.
I believe that the steps and certain other tennants of the program are the best way to sobriety and serenity. However, they are suggestions . There is only one requirement for membership
To who ... or should I ask, "To whom?"!
In any case, or at least in my own, "working" spiritual principles would have resulted in a dead-end gain rather than arriving at this:
"Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to 'God' and the people about us." (page 77)
And of course, anyone who is familiar with certain writings in Scripture might easily recognize this in that:
"For what is a man profited (or what is the value), if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" (Matthew 16:26)
Now, do you know the traditional (handed-down) avoidance of that question in much of today's AA? If not, here it is:
"We came here to saves our butts, not our souls!"
However, and like I have also heard in A.A., how could we possibly believe a loving "God" does not care about both?
So then, that is where only the individual can decide what is important to him or to her ... and while we all also keep this in mind:
"The wording was, of course, quite optional so long as we expressed the idea, voicing it without reservation." (page 63)
>> Lee what about "suggested as a program of recovery"?
>> Is that what you're getting at.
No two minds are identical, but anybody who can read or who can listen to a tape can easily confirm "working the Steps" cannot be found in our book! So yes, part of what I am suggesting is for people who might care to do so to take the time to check against the book everything they either hear or are told about how to do what is in it.
>> I believe the steps and certain other tenants of the program are the best way to sobriety and serenity.
>> However, they are suggestions.
>> There is only one requirement for membership.
This matter is about permanent recovery via spiritual transformation and not about A.A. membership.
'Be yourself. Who else is better qualified?
--Frank J. Giblin, II
Almost every magazine devotes its cover to movie stars and famous personalities. We are taught that we need to look like the most attractive and glamorous people. We need to wear what they wear, eat what they eat, and fix our hair like theirs. The message we are given is: Don't be yourself, be like someone else.
There will always be someone who looks better than we do, has more money, scores better on tests, or has more creative skills. If we're always trying to mimic other people, we won't be looking at ourselves. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it keeps us from being ourselves.
We need to stop focusing on what others have that we don't have. We need to look inward at our good qualities as well as our imperfections. We need to see who we are by being ourselves. Life is not made up of people who are good and bad, happy and sad, rich and poor, beautiful and ugly. Life is made up of people being themselves.
I will start to be myself. Help me show others the real me, not an imitation.'
Today I will be me. I will be true to myself and not people please and be afraid to speak what I believe. I can't promise to like my looks but I will smile at the image in the mirror and say 'you are ok' :)
I am not aware of having any learning disability, but that could be a matter of perception, eh?!
I do what I do for a very single purpose, and that is to carry the original A.A. message. Some folks have never heard it and some never will, but I want to never have played any part in that.