The Point

By Justin W.

A daily Eleven Step practice has changed my life and my recovery. I believe this daily practice has enhanced every single one of the Twelve Steps in my life. I was oblivious to most of what I was thinking my whole life. Now that I meditate daily for forty-five minutes, I am always aware of what I am thinking, which is the key to the progress of my recovery because everything makes me reflect. 

I tell anyone if you want to see how truly powerless you are try to do what I do on a daily basis: single pointed concentration meditation. I try to keep one thought in my head for forty-five minutes every day: I am. I am is the only thing I truly know. Everything else is inference suspect to doubt. When I first started this practice seven years ago, I would come to without being able to focus on those words at all with my ADHD. This practice has been the only treatment for my ADHD that has ever worked for me. I can read pages off a book today without my mind wandering all over the place because of it. When I first started, I was amazed at how powerless I was over both the thoughts that arose in my mind as well as how they made me feel; it is how we feel about what we think that controls our actions. I tell anyone when they first start: Ask yourself if you have any control over the thoughts that rise in your mind and how you feel about them. Or “does nothing, absolutely nothing, happen in God’s world by mistake?”

If anyone is truly struggling with God, I tell them to look within, and a daily Eleven Step of any kind will help someone look within. I hated God when I got to recovery, but I made the words “I don’t know” my higher power, which is what Bill tells us to be willing to say in We Agnostics. “I don’t know” can honestly answer every question except “I am,” and God has all the answers. 

If anyone wants to do a true searching and fearless moral inventory, I tell them to sit in silence and just watch where your mind takes you. Everything that controls you will be shown to you. Your character defects will be revealed to you because you will always be aware of all that you are thinking. Because I meditate so much, everything about my behavior is reflected to me in the actions I take. Even the ones I need to make amends for. 

As it says in Step Ten: “It is a spiritual axiom that no matter what the cause, if I am disturbed the problem is with me.” Before daily meditation, I was oblivious when I was disturbed because I was never aware of what I was thinking. Before I meditated daily, I found my biggest problem with doing “the next right thing” was because I was never aware of my true motivations. 

As stated above, everything makes me reflect, which makes me so grateful I have this daily practice. A daily Eleventh Step has solved so many of my problems and allows me to continue to grow in a positive manner and carry the message to the next sufferer who crosses my path. So yes, every single Step is enhanced by Step Eleven.

By Dede H.

How do I know you?  
I’m certain we’ve met before
There’s something very familiar 
Something is ancient yet new 
I’ll think of who you are soon 

You want to tell me the answer
I’m just not ready to hear 
I know I’ve always known
you I have felt you draw very
near I often hear you in the
bushes 

I’ve sensed you were in the
rooms Sang of you in the
churches Felt a longing in empty
tombs There is no space
between us No time is like the
present

One Pebble At A Time

By Rick R.

When entering AA for the first time, looking at the steps, getting a sponsor, going to meetings, doing service work, and all the other suggestions we hear in the meetings, it can seem like an impossible undertaking, and that is not unusual. A sponsor might say, “Slow down, life isn’t passing you by near as fast as you think it is. These things take time.” Those of us who have thoroughly followed this path can testify to the fact that this process works perfectly if we meet the requirements suggested in each of the twelve steps. We get a slow and steady reprieve as we resolve these issues.

When people say this is a simple program for complicated people, they are not far off. Telling a new member that if it weren’t for the wreckage of the past, and those tormenting memories left in its wake, we would simply have to stop doing the thing we are ashamed of and after a while, time would heal everything. However it’s our past guilt and shame that are the things causing us to seek relief via the bottle. Deep down inside we feel unworthy. Does this mean that we can’t do anything about things unless we are at that particular step? 

I often hear people talking about carrying around a sack of rocks and I know getting through inventories and amends may take years for some of us. What can we do to get the ball rolling? I have come to realize the sack of rocks turns out to be a few rocks and a million pebbles. (Little selfish things I do, or did, in my daily life of which I’m not proud). Gossip, criticism, sloth, lying, and character assassination to name a few. If I am to live well today, I must identify these things and my motives for doing them and rid myself of them, one pebble at a time. 

I can even speed up the process by replacing those behaviors with unselfish deeds such as  minding my own business, letting someone ahead in traffic, having a smile for everyone, putting the cart back at the grocery store, and making my bed each day. These types of gestures, I call my spiritual pebbles. I get a warm feeling inside when I do them without fanfare. I have never gotten a warm feeling from doing a selfish deed. However, I have gotten a feeling of unworthiness from them. I can start with my family, my loved ones, my friends, my fellow workers and continue to spiral outward to everyone I encounter during the day. These unselfish things cost me nothing. As time passes, they become part of who I am. Today I have nothing to be ashamed of. Life is good.

By Anon.

No A.A. group or member should ever, in such a way as to implicate A.A., express any opinion on outside controversial issues – particularly those of politics, alcohol reform, or sectarian religion. The Alcoholics Anonymous group opposes no one. Concerning such matters they can express no views whatsoever.

As George Santayana once said: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” and thankfully, as the “Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions” recites, our Founders took heed of this advice. They learned from the failed Washingtonian Society that peril lies in the path that permits politicians to use their society for their own purposes, regardless of the apparent righteousness of the cause or controversy. Thus, having already committed to having one primary purpose, a logical ‘next step’ would be to avoid controversy¹ by steering clear of it, supporting no one, opposing no one, staying focused on the primary purpose, to help the alcoholic who still suffers.

But how does such a highfalutin principle come into play for the average drunk like me just trying to stay sober? I was surprised to see how that simple question and answer could play out in real terms. I happened to attend a regular meeting and in the course of small talk before the opening bell with a member whom I admire greatly, the topic turned to a news item of current prominence. With my legal background it was easy to have an opinion on point to satisfy the innocent inquiry, it was the follow-up that was not anticipated. My colleague took my point and applied it to an equally prominent news item, but took a tack quite different from my feelings on the subject. Here I was, right where I did not want to be, in an escalating discussion on the pros and cons of a question about which there were two distinctly different and discordant views. Fortunately the opening bell rang to commence the meeting and the distinctions and differences were lost in the Serenity Prayer.  

In the sober time that followed that exchange, I saw too many times the opportunity to repeat the same type of conversation, with one or another colleague, and always, initially, with the best of intentions. While, like Santayana, I have tried to learn from that past experience, no saint am I and too often the bait was taken before I realized the hook hidden within was set. I could only imagine the reaction of any group in a public setting where, with the best intentions of espousing the good AA has to offer, in that promotion slipping into one or more of my human defects, losing not only the listeners at the time, but any hope they would be attracted by the carrier of that message to relay it to someone who might really need to hear it.  

I have been one of the fortunate ones to get an opportunity to speak for the Public Information and the Cooperation with Professional Community (PI/CPC) service group and here particularly it is important for me to remember this is not a soapbox for my version of AA.  I have had the benefit of working with a number of more experienced members and have been able to learn from them how to “Talk the talk” in a manner that carries the message effectively and, at the same time, does not have me sounding off on controversial “outside issues,” but keeping my mouth shut on such things there is no chance I can say the wrong thing while trying to say the right thing. This knack is not one which comes easily or normally to me, it might to others, but it does not to me. So the years of experience I have had learning how to restrain my tongue in meetings has carried over well to the service groups at which I have had an opportunity to share my experience, strength and hope.

True to the observation that “more will be revealed,” the importance of this tradition started to grow on me at meetings and that growth blossomed during service opportunities when the lesson learned could be put into practice in real time. What I had learned first-hand at meetings, thereafter, was a valuable insight into the wisdom of the principles behind Tradition 10. In simple terms which I had learned when a youngster: “Remain silent and be considered a fool, open your mouth and remove all doubt.” 

1. Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 178. ↩︎

By John. W

As his head hit the pillow this night
Knowing this day he had fought the good fight,
He paused to reflect the discipline it required
To see the triggers and not by them get mired.

On Awakening he turned to his daily ritual
So different from the Before and now habitual.
His requests for help with his day’s tasks unspoken,
Their hearing, not granting, witnessed by another annual token.

Each day he found his token, just by the door.
Each day he was sober, now, each day since Before.
No small price to pay on The Toll Road called life,
The fare for his passage, a sober reply to joy or strife.

*   *   *   *   *

By Anon.

At a speaker meeting early in my sobriety I was to hear a claim that puzzled me greatly at the time, because I was on no “pink cloud” and the wreckage of my present lay strewn about me. The speaker had observed that: “You can take the alcohol out of the alcoholic, but you can’t take the alcoholism out of the alcoholic.”  

I had wanted so desperately of course to not be an “alcoholic,” you know what I mean, one of those falling-downers, wearing a trench coat on a hot summer day, slumped over in dark places, trying to bum spare change. That was an alcoholic and that sure wasn’t me. I had some trouble with the law, that crashed car in my history was never an easy memory, but I lived in a nice house, had a wife and kids, and a good job. I may have had trouble with booze every once and a while, but nothing I could not handle, nothing I could not fix.

The rude awakening of my bottom replaced my fantasy of life with reality. While the spiritual awakening which I was to find as a result of working the Steps was on the horizon, it was still quite a distance off when I heard this speaker’s comments. These words had dashed my hope of the “miracle cure” I had been expecting and caused me to wonder if I would ever be OK again. As the sober days began to mount, I was graced with a sponsor who has managed to stick with me through thick and thin. But at our first meeting, after my affirmation that I was willing to go to any lengths, he asked me what I thought things would look like in 365 days. Ruling out a PowerBall winning ticket or Bill Gates giving me his fortune, he asked for my realistic future outlook.

After some reflection I gave my reply. To this he responded that I had underestimated the benefits of the program on which I was beginning to embark. He then guaranteed me that things would be so much better than I had just declared I would consider it fantastic if they materialized in the next year.  In the days and with the work that followed, when my reticence to do the next right thing confronted me, he would remind me of the affirmative reply I had given him before. These reminders became the antidote for my fear when it reared its ugly head, disguised as uncertainty or “wrong place, wrong time.” So although our journey was indeed painstaking, his guarantee to me proved no idle ploy, he made good on his promise. Though my play had not followed the script I had written, I had won a personal Tony nonetheless.  

As we had then moved to Step Ten, my question to him was “Now what?”  His reply was as if set to a familiar lilt: “Keep on Trudgin’!”  What I had started to integrate into my daily life with his help, would be with me for the rest of it he said, there was nothing I needed but to Keep On Trudgin’.  

However, because I am the kind of person I am, always in search of the easier, softer way, I sought a second opinion. I asked a fellow with time and who “had what I wanted” how he kept on trudging over the years despite the hurdles in his sobriety. I wondered and asked him what the key to Step Ten was for him: “Discipline” was the one-word reply. After he let that sink in, he said I would never be cured of alcoholism (Oh where had I heard that before) and that my best hope was for a daily reprieve. But he said that for him, an atheist, his focus on the spiritual challenges of this task required him to stick to it in a rigorous, disciplined way. As a result, he said he had found that regardless of one’s concept of a Higher Power, in his time he saw that those people who “worked the steps” and did not just “talk the steps” seemed to persevere. He said that I was likely to find, as has proven to be the case, that the traits I exhibited when I was drinking were still behind that face I saw each day in the mirror. My demons were there, ready to ensnare me in sobriety if I failed to stay focused on the program that had brought me that gift in the first place.

My sponsor, my “second opinion” and now so many others too, have all echoed the words of that speaker from my past. Those comments however were now no longer a puzzle to me, they had become an insight into my disease. They bespoke too that the Spiritual Awakening of which they had been a harbinger could and would be achieved, today, as long as I was willing to Keep On Trudgin’.   

///

By Dede. H

Everyone is all gone now
I’ve made certain of that
People are forgiving too 
But I’m a particular brat
Cloven hooves often lose
I scan, scrimp and cheat
Never satisfied with you
I stomp and cry and bleat
I can’t even please myself 
Fair weather friendly deceit
Angrily returned to the shelf
Love’s sweet breast is tough
God forbid I should find fault
Mother’s milk is never enough
Life’s lessons assaulted me
It is none of my business 
What people do or seem to see
To what they say I only witness 
Not guessing what they think 
This thing that I am learning is:
I’m successful without a drink

Examine My Motives for All That I Do

By Rick. R

If someone were to ask me what brought me to the doors of AA, my answer would be: “Alcohol had got the best of me. I was desperately circling the drain and I didn’t want to die young.” Not everyone who comes to AA has that degree of desperation. I got sober on October 15, 1969, just before alcoholics were offered rehabilitation clinics. Up to that point most of our members who came there were looking for answers. The success rate at that time, according to the Foreword of the Second Edition of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, says: 50% of those who came looking for answers got sober and never drank again. 25% got sober after a few relapses and stayed that way. The rest 25% showed improvement. To me, 75% sounds like a surprisingly good ratio of success. 

The only requirement for AA membership is a desire to stop drinking. (Tradition Three) Not everyone who came to AA from the court system or from a rehab environment has the same amount of desperation as those original members had. This does not mean they were not invited back, for we treat them with respect. But a significant percentage of them relapsed and we welcome them back with open arms so as not to be considered an AA failure and eventually many of them did stay sober. 

The amount of desperation is often consistent with the depth of thoroughness a person is willing to go through as he takes the steps, and when I was faced with the suggestion that I do a fearless and thorough moral inventory, in the Fourth Step, I began to resist and did what I would call a shallow facade just to get my ticket punched. 

Being in the Navy at the time, I was abruptly flown out to the Western Pacific during the Vietnam War and assigned to a tanker replenishing fuel on ships in the Tonkin Gulf Fleet and I had four months to think about what I was going to do on my return home. My conscience told me to discard my original inventory and do it right the second time around. That is, I think, what made the rest of this program easy for me. Accepting accountabilities for all those disgusting behaviors of the past and to make restitution has been the answer to all those alcoholic behaviors in the past. If we have completed a good Fourth and Fifth Step and again in the Eighth and Ninth Step, how do we approach the Tenth Step, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it?

Early in my sobriety, my wife came home from an Al-Anon meeting excited about the topic they shared. She said, “We should examine our motives for all the things we do,” and that made perfect sense to me. I have been living a life based on Unselfish Principles and never finished examining my motives. All my outside behaviors (short-comings) are the result of my thinking (motives). So long as I am willing to continue this path it has taken all the fight out of me.

“Selfishness – Self-Centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity we step on the toes of our fellows, and they retaliate.” (BB pg. 62) What a profound statement! Living a life based upon unselfish motives has restored my self-esteem. The final and most important result is peace of mind. Never thought that would happen!!! This is my understanding of Step Ten.