REAL RECOVERY with Gina F. - Morning Meditation Part II
Gina F. continues sharing what shes learned in her years of helping women get sober at our facility. This series is entitled REAL RECOVERY because this is how people REALLY recover in our program - by learning from the example of strong members of the AA community like Gina F.
Read Part I of Morning Meditation
Morning Meditation Part II
A good foundation for a Morning Meditation is to refer to the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous Pages 60-63 and 84-88.
Pages 60 through 63 reminds us everyday of who we are: selfish and self- centered human beings. Pages 84 through 88 tell us what we can do about it.
Page 60 starts out stating that the authors of the big book have learned “the three pertinent ideas:”
a) that we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives
b) that probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism
c) that God could and would if he were sought
So what does that mean for us?
First off, what does pertinent mean? It means relevant. So how is this relevant to us?
The first pertinent idea (a) states “That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.”
If we are truthful with ourselves, and look back just over the last few years of our lives we will see how true that statement is. Just look at where your addiction has taken you. Most of us come into the rooms of recovery with broken dreams, broken relationships, legal issues, school or work related issues, and a broken spirit. So we managed real well, didn’t we?
The second pertinent idea (b) states “that no human power could relieve our alcoholism."
That means that we can stay sober for a period of time for someone else, parents, siblings, boyfriends/girlfriends, or something, like a job or the courts. But these things cannot relieve us of our alcoholism. Relieve means to put an end to or make something stop.
The third pertinent idea (c) states "That God could and would if he were sought.”
So that’s the good news! The bad news is the “if he were sought” part. This implies work on our part and we all know how lazy alcoholics can be!
The book then goes on to tell us that “being convinced” of the three pertinent ideas (or "the ABC’s" as I have heard them referred to) means we need to wholeheartedly believe these things about ourselves and how it pertains to our lives.
The book goes on to say “being convinced, we were at step three, which is that we decided to turn our will and our life over to the care of God as we understood him” We decided, that’s action on our part no one forced us to.
But after we made that decision, what do we do? The book tells us! It says that the first, requirement is that we be convinced that “any life run on self will can hardly be a success.”
Letting Go of Self Will
In the next paragraph it goes on to say that we are constantly trying to arrange thing to suit ourselves. If things just went as we planned everything would great and we would be happy.
But how many times have we gotten what we wanted and then we were still unhappy or dissatisfied.
Page 61 says that we can be kind and loving, or mean and dishonest. Most humans have varied traits. So that paragraph is telling us that we will either kiss ass or kick ass to get what we want! And if one tactic doesn’t work we are capable of switching gears really fast. But what happens when we do this? Nothing goes our way and we become more dissatisfied as we try harder to make things go our way. As we try harder and things don’t go our way, we can become even more demanding or more gracious the book says.
We think in our heads that we know better than everyone else and we think people should listen to us! We truly believe that we have their best interest in mind, but we need to check our motives! Are we really looking out for them or our we looking out for ourselves or are we doing something for someone so we can hold a marker on them.. The book uses the word delusion: which means "a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence, especially as a symptom of a psychiatric condition." This is strong language but it goes right back to the 2nd step that a higher power could restore us to sanity, so if we have to be restored we must be insane to begin with.
The book asks this question “is he not even in his best moments a producer of confusion, rather than harmony? If that’s true what are we at our worst moments??
- Gina F
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