Feeling All Right

Not Feeling Too Good Myself

or

“How To Get Rescued From Happy Horseshit”

In the cobwebs of the mind there are morsels of “events” lodged that are long dead. Yet a new type of life spanws as they cling and rot – like maggots on chopped chuck.

We call them resentments. Resentments are not the only special of captured ‘bug’. There are others, but nothing is more deadly to our health that these festering pieces of dead memory. (see the BB page 84) You never know when a new ‘bug’ will get caught. The trick is to clean it out before it infects its disease. As I have grown spiritually I don’t think they have lessened their appearances at all. What has changed is the way I handle them. I do the process and it has become so much a part of my life by now that I can’t go back and recall specifics anymore. It works THAT well. Fears are still very regular though. Fear of not getting what I want are pretty much old too. And they usually involve the fear of being found out .

When I first begin practicing Step Ten on a regular basis – we are going back almost ten years now – it was during a time when I had a lot of financial fears. I had just had surgery and had my business wiped out the very afternoon of 9/11 and even though I was now a “step guy” and real power was about to flow – but I had been resting on my laurels – which in BB context means not practicing Step Ten. It does not mean cutting back on meetings because now I am dry and complacent, as so many people seem to have converted it.

I was getting desperate. I wanted to feel better. My Big Book told me that God wanted me to be “happy joyous and free” and I felt that He owed me. I’m going to lots of meetings God, c’mon and deliver!

I didn’t realize that happy joyous and free was not a promise. It was just an observation or opinion about what God “wants” from the co-authors. The do not swear it is so – just that they are sure it is. They also admit that they truly have no idea what God really “wants”. They weren’t that arrogant.

Hell. I don’t know if God”wants” the earth to spin for at least the next twenty four hours – but I am reasonably sure that He does want it. I’ll let you tomorrow if I was right

But I had been resting on my laurels – which in BB context means not practicing Step Ten. It does not mean cutting back on meetings because now I am dry and complacent,

I had resorted to reading page 449 – the “Acceptance” page, over and over and over trying to cram Dr. O’s ideas and his experience into a feeling that I could own too. Pilfering is really w hat I was trying to do. Which had worked in the past but had lost its efficacy. It has lost because it wasn’t real. It was Dr. O’s acceptance that he wrote of – not mine. Dr. O was describing a Twelve Step experience that I wasn’t having. And why should I – I wasn’t doing what he did – which was practicing these principles in ALL my affairs and that meant Step Ten as much as it meant all the rest. Like many others, I wanted to feel as groovy as Dr. O without doing the work that Dr. O did to get there!

I had begun to “mantracize” his experience as he wrote it. As a student of hypnosis I should have realized that all I was doing was self hypnosis. But I was desperate to “feel better”. During this same depressive time I was scheduled for a Fifth Step. The night after that fifth step the promise of “our fears fall from us” which is in the fifth step came like water to a drowning man. The spiritual experience everyone seems to find so elusive began. NO QUESTION. It just happened. No human inspiration gleaned from a dead mans writings.

From that fifth step, as most of us already know, I was brought straight through 6,7,8 began work on 9 and then incorporating Step Ten practice into my daily regimen. I have not suffered from fear since. I get afraid, of course I do, but those are dealt with on the spot and they melt like ice cubes on a griddle.

Not living on page 52 is dependent upon me practicing Step Ten daily. It frees me up to be helpful and keeps from falling into the deadly trap of willfully trying to live in a spiders web that life on life’s terms afford. It replaces those with life on God’s terms.

Life on life’s terms – well, life kicks my ass. God has not once ever raised a harmful hand to me.

I am such an ass that a simple trip to the grocer and back could easily smack me into three or four resentments, fears, opportunities for dishonesty and selfish thoughts or acts. Yeah I am that much of an asshole – trust me.

They can be so subtle that in the past I would not even have noticed them. I might even have told you that my trip to the store was uneventful, when it wasn’t at all – not deep inside, not when the lady in front of me had thirteen items on a twelve item line, or when some girl in short-shorts asked me if I was “in the band” that headlined last night at he melody tent, she’s a groupie and look at that piece of ass – or I couldn’t bring myself to pay the TWO-FER price for a pound of coffee – that would save me five bucks n the long run – because I was afraid of not having an extra three dollars in my pocket. It gets those low levels and it is high level depression in the aggregate.

Yeah it gets that petty and ridiculous.

Step Ten keeps me free an clear of this kind of living as I keep the broom swishing back and forth, all day long. This is a HUGE chuck of “practicing these principles” in all of my affairs. It is Steps 4,5,6,7,8, and nine all rolled into one.

And here’s a BIG PLUS: My Eleventh Step is shorter and sweeter when I get to bed at night. The Step Eleven Q & A machine that we run through each evening has more positive answers and goes faster, so I get to fall off to sleep sooner – and meditation is sweeter without falling off to dreamland when I am trying to do just the opposite. The head hits th pillow and I end up not end in an exhausted sleep but in a contented state of rest for body mind and spirit.

Acceptance is not the answer to all of my problems. God is. “Father, remove my fears today and direct my attentions toward what YOU would have me be – not what I would have me be”.

Imagine asking God to keep you away from a drink today when we have a prayer like THIS ONE available? – and calling that a “Program of recovery”.

Peace,

Danny S

Feeling All Right

Not Feeling Too Good Myself

or

“How To Get Rescued From Happy Horseshit”

In the cobwebs of the mind there are morsels of “events” lodged that are long dead. Yet a new type of life spanws as they cling and rot – like maggots on chopped chuck.

We call them resentments. Resentments are not the only special of captured ‘bug’. There are others, but nothing is more deadly to our health that these festering pieces of dead memory. (see the BB page 84) You never know when a new ‘bug’ will get caught. The trick is to clean it out before it infects its disease. As I have grown spiritually I don’t think they have lessened their appearances at all. What has changed is the way I handle them. I do the process and it has become so much a part of my life by now that I can’t go back and recall specifics anymore. It works THAT well. Fears are still very regular though. Fear of not getting what I want are pretty much old too. And they usually involve the fear of being found out .

When I first begin practicing Step Ten on a regular basis – we are going back almost ten years now – it was during a time when I had a lot of financial fears. I had just had surgery and had my business wiped out the very afternoon of 9/11 and even though I was now a “step guy” and real power was about to flow – but I had been resting on my laurels – which in BB context means not practicing Step Ten. It does not mean cutting back on meetings because now I am dry and complacent, as so many people seem to have converted it.

I was getting desperate. I wanted to feel better. My Big Book told me that God wanted me to be “happy joyous and free” and I felt that He owed me. I’m going to lots of meetings God, c’mon and deliver!

I didn’t realize that happy joyous and free was not a promise. It was just an observation or opinion about what God “wants” from the co-authors. The do not swear it is so – just that they are sure it is. They also admit that they truly have no idea what God really “wants”. They weren’t that arrogant.

Hell. I don’t know if God”wants” the earth to spin for at least the next twenty four hours – but I am reasonably sure that He does want it. I’ll let you tomorrow if I was right

But I had been resting on my laurels – which in BB context means not practicing Step Ten. It does not mean cutting back on meetings because now I am dry and complacent,

I had resorted to reading page 449 – the “Acceptance” page, over and over and over trying to cram Dr. O’s ideas and his experience into a feeling that I could own too. Pilfering is really w hat I was trying to do. Which had worked in the past but had lost its efficacy. It has lost because it wasn’t real. It was Dr. O’s acceptance that he wrote of – not mine. Dr. O was describing a Twelve Step experience that I wasn’t having. And why should I – I wasn’t doing what he did – which was practicing these principles in ALL my affairs and that meant Step Ten as much as it meant all the rest. Like many others, I wanted to feel as groovy as Dr. O without doing the work that Dr. O did to get there!

I had begun to “mantracize” his experience as he wrote it. As a student of hypnosis I should have realized that all I was doing was self hypnosis. But I was desperate to “feel better”. During this same depressive time I was scheduled for a Fifth Step. The night after that fifth step the promise of “our fears fall from us” which is in the fifth step came like water to a drowning man. The spiritual experience everyone seems to find so elusive began. NO QUESTION. It just happened. No human inspiration gleaned from a dead mans writings.

From that fifth step, as most of us already know, I was brought straight through 6,7,8 began work on 9 and then incorporating Step Ten practice into my daily regimen. I have not suffered from fear since. I get afraid, of course I do, but those are dealt with on the spot and they melt like ice cubes on a griddle.

Not living on page 52 is dependent upon me practicing Step Ten daily. It frees me up to be helpful and keeps from falling into the deadly trap of willfully trying to live in a spiders web that life on life’s terms afford. It replaces those with life on God’s terms.

Life on life’s terms – well, life kicks my ass. God has not once ever raised a harmful hand to me.

I am such an ass that a simple trip to the grocer and back could easily smack me into three or four resentments, fears, opportunities for dishonesty and selfish thoughts or acts. Yeah I am that much of an asshole – trust me.

They can be so subtle that in the past I would not even have noticed them. I might even have told you that my trip to the store was uneventful, when it wasn’t at all – not deep inside, not when the lady in front of me had thirteen items on a twelve item line, or when some girl in short-shorts asked me if I was “in the band” that headlined last night at he melody tent, she’s a groupie and look at that piece of ass – or I couldn’t bring myself to pay the TWO-FER price for a pound of coffee – that would save me five bucks n the long run – because I was afraid of not having an extra three dollars in my pocket. It gets those low levels and it is high level depression in the aggregate.

Yeah it gets that petty and ridiculous.

Step Ten keeps me free an clear of this kind of living as I keep the broom swishing back and forth, all day long. This is a HUGE chuck of “practicing these principles” in all of my affairs. It is Steps 4,5,6,7,8, and nine all rolled into one.

And here’s a BIG PLUS: My Eleventh Step is shorter and sweeter when I get to bed at night. The Step Eleven Q & A machine that we run through each evening has more positive answers and goes faster, so I get to fall off to sleep sooner – and meditation is sweeter without falling off to dreamland when I am trying to do just the opposite. The head hits th pillow and I end up not end in an exhausted sleep but in a contented state of rest for body mind and spirit.

Acceptance is not the answer to all of my problems. God is. “Father, remove my fears today and direct my attentions toward what YOU would have me be – not what I would have me be”.

Imagine asking God to keep you away from a drink today when we have a prayer like THIS ONE available? – and calling that a “Program of recovery”.

Peace,

Danny S

Page 449 – Another Shortcut to Happiness?

Leave it to short cut seeking alcoholics to always zero in and grasp onto a quick fix. I know people who wouldn’t know a forth step inventory from a Chinese menu and who have never cracked a Big Book to take another sufferer through the steps – but “The acceptance page”?

THAT they know! THAT they’ll pull out into their miserable little foxhole while the mortar shells fly overhead – trying to save their ass.

It is the height of self-centeredness.

I know people that carry the “Acceptance passage” around with them in their pocket along with their credit cards – just waiting for some of the days’ events improperly met to get to them.

If something is bothering me, its ALWAYS my self-centeredness and re-inflating ego behind it.Acceptance is NOT the answer to all my problems even if they were the answer to Dr. Paul’s. His interpretation hasn’t got any practical application for me. Maybe others – but not me.

If acceptance is the answer, then I am putting the cart before the horse in asking the question. I GET acceptance after I seek God as the answer to all my problems.

I am not on some spiritual mountaintop here – I’ve done it too. Not anymore.

When my sponsor bought me my first Big Book, I turned to the back first. I wanted the answers NOW.
I didn’t want to go through the whole book. Not being satisfied I then thumbed through the pages skimming the Chapter titles. No satisfaction there either.

If I had the “Cliff Notes” to the Big Book, I’m sure today I’d be a quote spoutin‘, lip flappin‘ thumper with no understanding or life-experience with what is written in that book.

That is how I passed English Lit in High – and today I know little of what I was supposed to be learning back then.

This book is written the way it is for a reason. There are no quick easy shortcuts to learning about alcoholism. A hundred and sixty four 164 pages are a lot to read for the impatient alcoholic – and I should know.

A few days or weeks of honest toil – enduring the plow – will produce great yield. Not CAN but WILL.

When I looked for shortcuts to sobriety, the easier softer way, I floundered for two years and it nearly cost me my life. It HAS cost the lives of millions of others looking for an easier, softer way. There is none.

The Steps are NOT an easier softer way. They are HARD! Anyone who says they are is probably doing a half-assed job living them.

Ironically, page 449 (417) caused me more anxiety than if I had never tried to glean acceptance from it – it kept me trying to “Get it” on my own, willfully.

I kept reading and reading as if I could psychically suck the acceptance off the page for my own – conjuring the ghost of the dead author like a voodoo witch, taking his acceptance as my own – vicariously. It was unearned and hurt me in the long run because if provided only fleeting hypnotic relief. It was swamp gas.

Only true humility can bring me serenity – the deflation of self and taming of the will of the self. Today I have written my own page 449. It is written in my heart and it is in my behaviors and share in the serenity that the author of page 449 shares.

When I sat down and trudged through this process the way it is laid out and began living that way – the way it was intended, I recovered and have gained a life unparalleled with anything I could have otherwise dreamed. I wish this blessing upon all those who suffer from alcoholism. And upon those who don’t, I hope they find what we have also.

We haven’t got a solution for “Non-acceptance” Why not call a spade a spade – we RESENT!

This is why folks who live the Program out of the Big Book don’t ever get to talk about acceptance as a goal. We’re already there. Trying to “accept” is a trap – right back into our own will. Lots of people don’t know what a resentment is, or don’t want to admit they have them as much as they do, for as petty a reasons as they do. They like to talk about “Acceptance” instead. “I havent accepted . . . .(fill in the problem)” OR “I need to find acceptance”yada yada.

Lets face it. You’re a petty,
resentful asshole who must get their way
and it’s killing you!

C’mon. Step Ten. Deal with the resentment. The elusive “Acceptance” will follow on its own. Leave the “Acceptance” nonsense to folks who haven’t GOT a Step Ten practice.

Peace,

Danny S

Acceptance

Oh how I wish I could convince everyone who struggles with acceptance that it is my experience and the experiences of millions- that struggling for acceptance it is not necessary – a waste of precious life energy. I wish I could convey what it is like to participate in a fellowship bringing this sort of hope to others instead of going to meetings trying to “feel better” because I haven’t got a program which solves these issues.

But I can’t. I still try. It’s part of “the job” with my new Employer.

My Employer, yes God, has been doing for me what I have never been and will be able to do for myself – and that includes providing acceptance. Whatever the issue – no matter how dire. No matter how light. It doesn’t matter.

I cannot will or force myself to be accepting and tolerant. Never could. Not when drinking and not when not drinking. The elimination of alcohol was not an automatic panacea toward that end. So, each morning I ask God to show me how it’s done, instead of trying to do it on my own.

There was one and only one willful acceptance that opened the door for me: Accepting the principles and procedure that had helped other alcoholics recover. (139:1) And those principles include to stop willing myself into happiness and to pray to a loving God for the rest. He delivers.

Like Bill said, “These were revolutionary and drastic proposals, but the moment I fully accepted them, the effect was electric.” (14:2)

I have not had to search to “accept” the things around me which would have given me grief. I haven’t had to read and re-read page 447 trying to glean some of the authors serenity. He owns his own acceptance.

All I had to do was make ONE acceptance commitment and that was the spiritual tools in the kit – after all isn’t how the author of page 447 did it? Don’t I want my own acceptance?

In that toolkit…..(You know….. those revolutionary and drastic proposals – the ones so many of us will wait to “get to” one day….put off….till after our lives are in order…the 12 steps?)

….. there is a prayer for daily use that says, “God show me how to show kindliness, tolerance, patience and love toward everyone I meet, especially my family members.” * – a prayer I say each and every morning. This has been part of turning my life and will over to God, instead of trying to wrest acceptance and tolerance and happiness on my own. I can trust it, and frankly I haven’t had a bad day since – an it’s been years.

Since doing this I had yet to ever again walk into a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous saying, “I am trying to accept….(fill in the problem) . I have stopped trying because God has done it already for me.Honest to God, I don’ know anyone who follows the path laid out by our co-founders who STILL has ongoing issues with acceptance of life situations. They just don’t.

Acceptance may been the answer to all of Dr. Os problems – but God is the answer to mine.

Peace,

Danny S

*This is my paraphrasing of the prayer which comes from: “So we clean house with the family, asking each morning in meditation that our Creator show us the way of patience, tolerance, kindliness and love.” (83:0)

Acceptance From The Crypt

Willfully seeking Acceptance never brought me Serenity. I had to let God bestow both.

The moment I think that serenity and acceptance are things I can “go get”, or think myself into, I immediately lose all hope of ever attaining my goal – selfishly set.

Ironically, page 449 (417) caused me more anxiety than if I had never tried to glean acceptance from it – it kept me trying to “get it” on my own, willfully.

I kept reading and reading as if I could psychically suck the acceptance off the page for my own – conjuring the ghost of the dead author like a voodoo witch, taking his acceptance as my own – vicariously. It was unearned and hurt me in the long run because if provided only fleeting hypnotic relief. It was swamp gas.

Only true humility can bring me serenity – the deflation of self and taming of the will of the self.

Asking God that His will be done – NO MATTER WHAT – is the type of thinking my sponsor taught me and during difficult times. It has kept me (And he) on the beam, bringing right acceptance — breaking apart that thick wall built from the bricks of guilt, pride and fears. Letting that wall crumble exposed the gift – the wisdom to know the difference between what I can change and what I cannot.

Today I have written my own page 449, and share in the serenity that the author of page 449 shares.

So from where am I getting acceptance and serenity? What is its source?

Am I following the paths of those who went before me, doing what they did in order to experience what they experienced? Or am I a grave robber – selectively pulling whatever I can to feel better, out the tombs of the dead?

Peace,

Danny S