M'self, I'm dogmatically impaired, so I read the BB and 12 & 12 as pulp fiction. And if a proof texter gives me any grief for that, I simply explain as politely as I can that I'm constitutionally incapable of conspicuous compunction.

Well Nemo whatever works for you my friend. That's you but it seems more people than not that finds this deal has to take more direction or instruction to move on from the hopeless state that a lot of us was in to find hope.
In your short response I counted 4 I's in one short paragraph .I don't know about you but I have been taught it not all about I 'me' anymore.
Please don't take that wrong don't meanto be rude.

Have a good night.

Thank you for a thought provoking post G.

gjm,

A century ago there was a great debate among physicists and musicians about whether or not some pianists have a talent we can rightly call "touch." Even those pianists who by all aesthetic accounts "had it" were themselves inconsistent in their explanations as to why their playing was any better than the average klutz. The logic was that a piano is a simple mechanism, and if you strike a key with a certain force, the hammer will strike the string and that's that. Touch, said the skeptics, was entirely in the ears of the prejudiced beholders.

But then one physicist got a hunch. He removed a few strings from a piano and asked various musicians to play it. When the klutzes played the empty keys, there was an audible thud as the key itself struck the felt pad beneath the keyboard, though it couldn't be detected at all when the string was attached. But when the virtuosos played, and no matter how hard they struck the keys, they didn't press them all the way down, but released them a microsecond before they hit the felt and the resulting tone was clear. My point is that this was all done at the level of what philosopher of science and epistemologist Michael Polanyi called subsidiary awareness, and again the pianists themselves weren't conscious of doing it. They had developed this highly adroit and complex skill through aesthetic trial & error, guided only by when the tone sounded "right" and when it didn't.

Even in our humdrum daily lives we know how to do countless things without consulting the verbal stream of thought between our ears. Later, when we try to reflect on these actions, we are usually no better able to articulate them than were the pianists. And sometimes, to our consternation, if we try too self-consciously to think about something we otherwise know perfectly well how to do, such as remembering the lines of a favorite song, we freeze like actors suddenly choked with stage fright. To limit the mind and what we say we know to what can be expressed in formal, conceptual thought is to deny the existence of that subsidiary awareness which is always operating below the level of our focal attention and informing those moment-to-moment decisions that actually shape our lives far more than the ideas we say we live by.

As Polanyi put it, âTo affirm anything implies, then, to this extent an appraisal of our own art of knowing, and the establishment of truth becomes decisively dependent on a set of personal criteria of our own which cannot be formally defined... We know more than we can say.â

Recovery from alcoholism, as I've experienced it, has been a lot like learning to play the piano. In order to do it, to a large extent I had to let go of all formulaic, systemati and word-by-word thought, as this always led back to that old paralyzing self-consciousness, much like that state of mind in which I couldn't remember the words to the song simply because I was trying too hard to remember them. I had to learn by trial and error in a wide variety of situations to trust that illogical, aesthetic, tacit, subsidiary or intuitive dimension of the mind that produces the song or informs the fingers to strike the keys without a thud.

The simplistic and contradictory slogans and clichés I heard in AA served the same function a Zen koan or a pianist practicing with scales and simple exercises. They opened my mind to the realm of paradox, and it was there at last that, quite spontaneously and with no deliberate effort, I found my undiscovered self.

Well, I did it again. I said "I" nine times more, eleven if you count "my" and "self.".

There ya go again with that damn I.:)

Would love to spend a couple days with ya it would be very interesting, hell we could even hit a meeting or 2 in your area and see just what kind of people you share all your wisdom with.

gjm,

Here's a great shot of the house that Robert Frost lived in when he taught school in this town:

http://www.plymouth.edu/fsb/facility/frost7-2007.jpg

Behind it and about 100 feet diagonally across the parking lot is the parish hall of St. Matthews church, where I've been attending the daily 11:00 AM meeting for the last 20 years. Visitors often remark how laid back and accepting we are, and compared with many other meetings I've been to, I have to agree with them. Reformers have tried to reform us and organizers have busted their chops trying to organize. But their efforts never take hold for even a week before we're back to our old tricks again.

Now, there's a lot of speculation about why this is so, but so far no one has come up with an explanation that's very convincing. But I have this theory that's strictly between you, me and the lamppost. You see, I think it's the ghost of Robert Frost and something to do with those two roads that diverged in a yellow wood.

Then again, I could be mistaken...

Thank you gjm--your post is indeed a "gift" for me. I just discovered that you must work all of the program all of the time, not some of the program all of the time or all of the program some of the time. I stopped calling my sponsor, praying, but went to two meetings during a stressful week and had a near miss.

Nemo, I think I need a vacation of east sounds interesting . I attend a meeting like you describe its very spiritual and a lot of wisdom about 20 people attend and there's about 500 yrs of recovery.
I have found people that believe its one way or no way are the angriest people. Hmmm something to ponder.

gjm,

I simply no longer have time for the pain of the ism. Life is too short and has too much to offer to be wallowing in that crap and fighting it. It IS possible for this way of life to become second nature, and it IS possible to have the promises coming true 24/7. What I will continue to resist is the notion that lasting happiness is unattainable on this side of the grave and that the best we can do in recovery is repent, repeat and bear it.

Well said my friend. pretty much on the same page.

dontread, Thanks for bringing up the 3rd tradition. Was at a 12x12 last night and that was the topic.
All good stuff. The only requirement is the desire--Pretty simple.

I know some thats all they could hang on to the 1st month of sobriety. Also discussed taking direction and some one brought up the reading on reading the instructions. i just sat back and smile knowing that reading hit me right between the eyes and would be wiling to share that with any newcomer that might walk through the doors.