10:05:55 MDT
I wrote the following today in response to a forwarded email from an AA friend, that I have not seen in a while attending AA meetings over at ARID.
“I’ve been a regular-customer of the Steps of the program of AA and a regular meeting attendee there and have become concerned but not worried w/ angst over your apparent-to-me- non-attending. When and should you feel I’m worthy of a deep response I am here, buddy!
My experience has been that when I hold-in the 10th Step I become sicker and sicker on the inside and feel bad and seem to only be able to skim the surfaces of the various aspects of this redneck-living in plain sight here in the good ole US of A. I need the debriefing as much as the next one.”
I wrote the following reaction to a thank you note for my time yesterday, both at the Club and in the neighborhood walking around and talking.
“I sensed the Dr. ordered some camaraderie yesterday at the dregs of the car-show, however did not know this until you brought your light to it. Thanks for typing this thank you note to me. I was of like mind considering the three of us talking back there by the cigarette bucket too.
The follow-up makes sense as well, pertaining to the-what we shared vocally… see if this has relevance for you? Remember, just like you, my experience has been regarding the 10th Step that I need the debriefing the same as the next one who has a thorough 4th Step on the plate.
The alternative to the debriefing is to hold the 10th Step in and then feel sicker and sicker. I am not invested holding this in… after all it pays a large dividend and has benefit to remind one-another that the 9th Step actions we take are merely a demonstration that,”…We have made our demonstration, done our part. It's water over the dam.” This I’m invested in.
It is of no lasting consequence whether those we harmed are accepting or throw us out with the bath-water!
It is helpful for us on the living-in-plain-sight line up, right here in the US of A to adhere to this.
Your thoughts, innuendo and overtone are welcomed.”
What is apparent to the practice as I sense it is that the benefit to practicing the principled living here in the US of A simply is the awareness that in the Big book of Alcoholics Anonymous the tertiary degree and bonded ness of understandings have made me more stable. I made demonstration of my cleaning my so-called side of the street with my family over many years and continued to harbor emotional draining thoughts concerning being non-accepted by those of the surviving family I was born into. It is now or rather in-the-NOW that the benefits of this generation of spiritual work has sent me the solace and comfort of knowing INSIDE that God indeed has helped. See? Simply it is notable, to understand in the core of the heart, my heart, my big-fat-heart; that making the living-change of behavior repetitively over many years is the required work/action.
This multi-year investing in time and endeavor bears fruit in the world and that it is of no lasting consequence whether I have been approved of or given verbal accolade or contrarily been thrown-out with the bathwaters.
It is of concern and lasting evidence that I made the repetitive actions over the long haul; the recordable cameras-checkable verifiable actions and that inside, my heart has settled in His Love.I feel for them in a way and other than this sentiment I feel lighter on the road less traveled. As though this past 4-5 years has been the water-shed time for me to morph or transform more slowly into the next space of maturities that are promised as a practitioner of a spiritual “program” such as AA’s.
For those unfamiliar with Alcoholics Anonymous meetings… a resounding Yes that, those meetings are central to the drinker who senses troubling consequences resultant from the brain physiology and chronic changes in neurotransmitter transmission. The program of spiritual principles and its instilment and embodiment in the adherent serves to remove the black-and-white from the every day sense of ego.
I am grateful for the authors’ suggestions in the same vein as I, as the adherent of Hatha Yoga all these years am grateful for my original Yoga teacher’s suggestions to me.
