Hers Bob
Try a vid each day of Demello Wonderful! And a meeting Haha
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y3Q7H2urto

When I am fighting something I cannot change, I am dragging a thousand pounds of desperation that gets heavier with each step. It is a different kind of struggle than the EFFORT to change the things I can.

Acceptance comes first and then I do the next right thing over and over until the change happens. I have to stay in humility and constantly check my motives. Usually, the answer comes and I can let go and move on if necessary.

I also pray a lot to be given the right answers. It has been amazing to me during this journey how many things I couldn't see or hear until I started looking and listening.

For me it helps to be outside. To look out over the pond and see the sky and trees reflected on the surface of the water. To walk through the woods and look up to see the sun through the trees or feel the rain on my face. Sometimes it helps.

I'm sorry you've been having a rough time and I hope you find your peace.

When you feel like your higher power isnt with you . He probably isnt.You can be rest assured he didnt go any place. Hes there waiting for you to make an effort to talk with him.I suggest you try some 12 & 12 meetings. If the Big Book is our guide to living a new life the 12 & 12 is the operating manual. It teaches us how to apply these principles in all our affairs and how to better communicate with your higher power. Greg

Maintain it! Took me years to understand it lol. The first part I got, but that wisdom line. Whoooo. I like Jersey's reply and I find I'm most at peace in little periods of meditation through the day. Can be sitting in a cafe watching life pass by or sitting down the athletics track smelling the fresh air. My favourite place is up Coogee Dolphin lookout over the ocean. It's also a memorial for our boys who died in Bali and sometimes I see their families there. My daughter and I were there about two hours ago looking over the ocean. She's takes photography at school and had me driving all over the Eastern Beaches at Sunset. Beautiful. My suggestion would be to use all of your senses and explore nature and life Bob.

"The wisdom to know the difference" - I believe it is through an inner God-consciousness that the wisdom comes. Examining something from the spiritual aspect, built up by the daily practise of Step 11.

The Big Book discusses it more clearly than I can on p.86:

"On awakening let us think about the twenty-four hours ahead. We consider our plans for the day. Before we begin, we ask God to direct our thinking, especially asking that it be divorced from self-pity, dishonest or self-seeking motives.

Under these conditions we can employ our mental faculties with assurance, for after all God gave us brains to use. Our thought-life will be placed on a much higher plane when our thinking is cleared of wrong motives.

In thinking about our day we may face indecision. We may not be able to determine which course to take. Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision. we relax and take it easy. We dont struggle. We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while."

It has to be a daily discipline for me.

Bobbo, my friend! You've been brought this far, right? Work on that conscious contact with your Higher Power and more will be revealed. It doesn't happen without some effort, though, on your part. Action. Always.

Hugs!

Look to your H.P. always. Faith isn't something that just comes. Faith is an action word and requires action on your part to reach out and do all that you can and then HP will do the rest. Don't wait for your HP...go out and meet Him.

I heard a speaker the other day say something simple, but really profound for me. Serenity was having faith even in really difficult and uncomfortable times. Just having faith that God's will would be done.

I'm a long way from that.....but I think that's the essense of the serenity prayer. We can change the way we react to things, to a certain extent. And we can learn from the ways we react to things. We can learn to see our HP's lessons, often in hindsight for me, but its there none the less.

I don't know that I have much "wisdom" but I'm working on serenity.

For me wisdom is hard to get right some times and all I can do some days is put one foot in front of the other and use the maintenance steps to keep working on it.

Yep, if you have faith you can not have fear...I keep the faith today :)

Hello Bob,

Ive been in that place for a while recently so I can understand how you feel.

Sometimes its a case of paying attention to Accept the things we cannot change and handing those things over to God. For me it was a case of going back to trying to do things according to my will and that certainly did not lead to serenity. It took a while but I eventually realized that it would be better to let God direct the show and then good-ship sobriety was back on course.

The thing that kept me going during the bad times was turning my attention to trying to help another alcoholic.

I can relate to this Bob Its Been like that for a while for me. So good for me to read your replys some days its just "grant me the serenity to accept " But I like bits of all those sugeations Hang in there