Living sober. We all want to solve the riddle right? Decipher the life of the unknown child in us. Search out understanding and find true answers. There must be some good somewhere? Even though we don't all agree on the journey or process, we can agree the needed end result is balance.
We all need balance and yes, balance is what we lack. Balance is generally something we alone cannot generate. Many are manic. Something is always wrong. Everything is bad. To life itself is euphoric. As if there are no thoughts in my mind to deter me. Step 7 suggests we offer ourselves to the Higher Spiritual power. All of ourselves? Good and bad? We understand bad alright? We just finished a thorough Step 4 moral inventory of one big fat flawed character. Now in Step 7 we surrender good also? Where does this "good" come from? Happy thoughts? Positive affirmations? You like me so now I like me? Without booze I'm just no good. With the booze I can lie to myself for a few hours. Even enjoy a window of denial where I'm an equal, I have a host of friends and feel free, all my past is lost until tomorrow.
It's easy to practice AA at the AA meeting. I'm ok, you're ok, we're all ok. Yep, I am no longer a liar thief cheat, a selfish inconsiderate immature box of other people's lives, a walking lack of coping skills tripping over common sense. A drunkard with no emotional off switch. Nothing but the booze.. Not anymore no. Now I'm at the meeting where I'm one hell of a guy, a success, handsome even? While leaving laughable pain and suffering behind. I'm safe now, they can't touch me here. I am all things to all people and all the people like me so I must be doing something right. Well of course this calls for more meetings. Meetings are my medicine, meetings make the people go down much easier as if a spoon full of sugar. Great to hear me, great to see me, they love me they really love me...how is this possible? I really have no idea. The old lady gives me a squeeze with the steel reinforced bra in my chest. The smell of mothballs and cigarettes, cheap lavender perfume and Aqua-velva cologne. This is AA. The show must go on.
If the great compassionate AA people or lets say all the kings horses and all the kings men could help us or even save us? Put us back together again? That would be great. An easy fix really. We do what they do? Live as they live? This AA quick fix takes us out of ourselves, out of the impending doom we feel when we are alone. That whole beauty of the forest thing where no matter our outside stimulus? It's dominated by the inside selfishness, the self centered fear. In a nutshell? All good things must end. Many before they have a chance to begin. It's as if I myself am destined to self destruct so why bother trying anything good or healthy. Anything but survival is a risk I'm not willing to take. I put the drink down sure. Now I am like a store front mannequin center stage banging out meetings in search of a soul.
WHERE IS THE GOOD
The good, right. We'll need to go back a few Steps to find the spiritual path entrance ramp. That's where it all began. Willingness really. Willing to take the risk and believe in something greater than myself. Willing to believe in something bigger. Something that was all around and through me. Something that was everywhere? Yes. I was willing to believe there was a Higher Spiritual Power. A great governing force somewhere between life and death. A spirit of all things underlying the totality of life itself. Oddly still I couldn't see it yet it showed itself to me. I couldn't locate it yet it was right next to me. It was everywhere? Yes it was everywhere.
Step 2 willingness. There was good in my willingness yet I wasn't ready for good yet. I couldn't handle it. I couldn't handle balance. Willing sure but still ignorant. Still I relied on myself, my own mind. The Spiritual path suggested was just talk at the meetings with some occasional thought on my part. I was not ready to let go of my selfishness. I continued to wallow in self centered fear hoping for a girlfriend or someone to save me. Someone who had enough good for both of us. I didn't know this would be a hard find at an AA meeting. That I myself wasn't the only alcoholic in the rooms who suffered in themselves. So I continued to drift. Willing to believe yes, but drifting and waiting just the same.
3 PERTINENT IDEAS
I was alcoholic yes. Probably no human power could relieve my alcoholism yes. God could and would if He were sought? Eh..yes.
God talk now? Capital H on He. That's got to mean Jesus. Was I to be all religious now? Door to door? Flowers at the airport? Midnight Mass? Is that what this was all about? Church? Have I been bamboozled to this point? I didn't know so, well? I decided to go along with the gag like my friend George from Ptown who rode with us to meetings did. I had nowhere else to go anyway and never had I had more than one or two friends. Here in AA I had a whole group of people like me. Young people who met every night and were staying sober. I didn't want to leave. I had nothing to go back to. I didn't even know where back was.
STEP 3 DECISION = GOOD AND BAD
I read the prayer in the Book. I did it word for word on my knees. There was no need to alter wording.I was sick and knew it. Sober yes and that was great but my head. My mind raced uncontrollable day and night with short periods of relief at the meetings. Something had to be done. I wasn't going to make it. People talked of balance and I had no idea what it even was? Balance? What is balance? I just wanted to get what others had from writing a 4th Step and apparently I needed Step 3 first. So mechanically I was willing, I made my decision. Got a pen and notebook and attempted to write. Nothing came. I had no childhood, no history really except for pining everyday over the losses in my life. Wife gone kids gone next wife gone more kids gone and again. Everyone had left me and taken me with them? I could not pick myself up without them. Without them, any of them? I would be alone forever.
INTELLECTUAL CURE FOR A SPIRITUAL MALADY
I thought this was a course in figuring it all out. Pass or fail.. Still not really convinced there was a Spiritual realm, this was all very new still so I went with what I knew as my understanding fell.
My 4th Step started like Step school. Yep I was in AA and now time to get educated. Put away the typical AA one liners and move on to the heavy stuff. I didn't know it wasn't anything like that. It was a Spiritual journey where my willingness would show me the next hill or turn, even when to coast. I began to pray for willingness and to my surprise? I began to write. I mean really burn ink! I ask for help? Pray for direction? Read that 3rd Step and pick up the pen. I was obsessed or maybe possessed, it wasn't me or I had never done anything like this before.. I wrote everyday for weeks sometimes all day into the night. An open blister was raw and bleeding from the tight grip on more than one cheap pen. Then one day? I was done writing my 4th. I was convinced and by praying to the Higher Power for guidance seen in a rough way who and what I was. I was getting answers.
But good and bad? Not really, not yet. Still mostly bad. A little good here and there but not the kind of good I needed for balance. Oh yes I had seen and sometimes relived a life of self centered fear ever since childhood. The Daddy issues, the mental and physical abuse. The sexual abuse ignored.. I had seen myself as the survivor, the manipulator, arranger of all things selfishly. Yup I was in every thought on every page. The sick boy. The failure. The one who has proven himself to be worthless in everyone's eyes, everyone on the planet. The frightened control freak. The low or really "no" self esteem guy. Forever trying to arrange people to suite me, to like me so I could like myself. Give me what you have so I can be like you or at least what I think you want me to be. Oh boy, it was bad alright. It was all bad.I had a history of bad and more bad.
STEP 5 LETTING GOD KNOW THAT I KNOW
If I could control it or box it up and keep it to show others I'd say here look, my 5th Step was like crossing the badlands on my Harley. The engine, the warm summertime air. Nothing but grass and sky for as far as I can see. Freedom a man needs to experience for himself. Sure pictures are great, a good description can put you there but this was different, something happened to me to my life. I began to see things where before I was blind. Feel things that I was always afraid to feel. I was growing Spiritually, I knew it now. I was changing. I was willing to let myself grow in a new attitude, a new philosophy of life even just as the Book said. There were other people on the planet and I was not afraid? I had no idea what they were doing. Nor did I care? Others who had their own history, their futures to look forward to. They had many beliefs much different than mine. It's as if I wanted them to all have what was best for them and no longer felt the need to control and risk failure. I was ok on my own now? Had I found the Spiritual path suggested in the Big Book 12 Steps?
MY CREATOR I AM NOW WILLING THAT YOU SHOULD HAVE ALL OF ME
GOOD AND BAD
I PRAY THAT YOU NOW REMOVE DEFECTS OF CHARACTOR THAT BLOCK ME
THAT KEEP ME FROM SERVICE TO YOU AND THE SUFFERING ALCOHOLIC
LET ME SEE THE BAD FROM MY PAST AND THE GOOD AS I GO OUT FROM HERE
The first thing I noticed from Step 7 was I was ready for Step 8. This new attitude was allowing me to see myself as I was and also seeing others which was new. Everything wasn't all about me anymore? It's as if I woke up with new coping skills. I could see and feel without fear of being exposed. People in my life needed help too. They had lots of issues themselves and now I was the one who could offer support. I could offer emotional security without something in return. And amazing still I could be a friend. I wasn't afraid they would find someone better. I was good enough. I wasn't even jealous!
8 AND 9
As I began cleaning up the old me from the many piles of wreckage. It seems as if I was replacing my spot in history with a new and different person. A person who has a second chance, a do over I could only dream of. Burned relationships were now introduced to a new me. A new me I believed in and not a new stage presentation with song and dance. I was sober and was working on balance. I could see the bad and now the good. My purpose. I had a reason to live. To give freely what had been given to me in AA.
YESTERDAY TODAY TOMORROW
The Spiritual path was open to everyone and in my willingness, my surrender, I had the gift. I could be available to show others how I found it today right now. I had balance. I could see myself clearly and if need be with the new man offer up some horror from my past. If it helped him? Helped him feel not so alone in his guilt and shame? Great I offer it without regret. Then I would put it right back in my past where it belongs. Bad has a purpose, there is acceptance there. I don't want to live in it and today I don't have to.
A bit of Step 7 thought here. Balance. Living sober with the good and bad.
Author
stepsherpa