Freedom was replying to that voice, “You’ve been saying that since middle school. Everything you say is trite and boring so everyone wishes you’d just shut the hell up.” Freedom was the insight that my alcoholism, which survives in my mind, was taking advantage of my fatigue to get some good punches in. We will try again next year, having learned from our mistakes.Īnd yet… and yet… during the exhaustion that overtook me on the long descent to base camp, a voice started up in my head: “No one likes you. ![]() Even so, it was a huge, gorgeous, thrilling experience - the kind of adventure I used to fantasize about while drinking.ĭespite having lost some of my left lung to radiation for breast cancer, I power-breathed to 13, 200′ and despite acrophobia and balance issues, I walked over boards laid on a ladder across a deep crevasse - not to mention daring this stuff at 59. We started too late (midnight) and had to wait repeatedly for the teams ahead of us to pass through areas where they’d trigger rockfall on us, then wait again when a ladder laid over a crevasse partially collapsed, so a number of my teammates got hypothermic and we had to turn back. In July, friends and I made a bid for the summit of 14,411′ Mount Rainier – the most prominent peak in the contiguous US and 5th highest. I focus instead on what I want to do with my life - with this one-time amazing journey of living in the world.įor example, I love climbing mountains. Sick voices still sound off in my head, but they project poorly, and I’ve learned to roll my eyes at them. As a result, I get to live IN the 9th step promises! Freedom and happiness, for starters, characterize my sober life. Many years have passed since I completed my amends, but I continue to live in the frame of mind that supported them. And in each case, I walked on air: I calmly spoke the truth, and recipients warmly forgave me. I remember several instances of sitting in my car cramming from my 8th step notes before I stepped off what felt like the roof of a skyscraper to meet people I’d wronged. “Did I wrong that person? Fuck that, they wronged me!” This was the pre-steps attitude that produced more and more people to avoid and more thoughts to shove to the back in our minds, with drinking needed to mute them.īy contrast, after a psychic change, we’re trying to live by what’s right and good or, in other words, to show up as god and our own spirits would have us be. By sloppy I mean done too soon, before we’ve really had a psychic change, which can lead to all sorts of blunders, including revealing harms unknown to the victim: “I slept with your partner I never really liked you I told so-and-so you were a liar.” No, no, no! That’s why we go through Step 8 with a sponsor, to figure out what will set things right for the recipient rather than cause new pain.Īnyway, the reason the Big Book authors placed the promises after Steps 8 & 9 is that to seek out the sheer awkwardness, humble pie, and admission of wrong-doing entailed in these two steps is something no ego-driven person would do - especially not hardcore bridge-burners like active and dry alcoholics. ![]() As I’ve written elsewhere, sloppy amends are worse than no amends at all. The “phase of our development” that requires we be “painstaking” is amends - Steps 8 and 9. Too often, people take the 9th step promises out of context, calling them the “AA promises” and ignoring the condition that precedes them. 12) We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. 11) We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. 10) Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. ![]() 9) Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. 7) We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. 6) That feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear. 5) No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. 3) We will comprehend the word serenity and 4) we will know peace. 2) We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. 1) We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through.
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