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8/30/2018 0 Comments Recording For August 30, 2018 (week 346) 30 August 2018 12 Step Study Big Book All Addictions Workshop
Call back number: 641 715 3900 pin no. 95666# (available for a week) Open Study Buddy group on Sundays 11-12am EST. 319 527 3511 pin no. 587213# Tuesdays 8am EST Reading the AA literature: Living Sober & As Bill Sees It. Everyone is encouraged to come to this awesome group. To listen to the recording: 641 715 3900 pin no. 298913# However, next Tuesday September 3 2018 We will be finish step 12 from 12 x 12. Donations towards the cost of the website please send via Pay Pal on the website or mail a check to: Stephanie Whiting P O Box 531 North Pembroke MA 02358 If you are new to the workshop (or not receiving the questions) please phone Sue W *HS Ruddock on: 434 987 4346 and email her at: BR8A@hscmail.mcc.virginia.edu If you do not have a members’ list ask Sue to email it to you to enable you to phone other members. If someone is no longer on the meeting it is an opportunity to ask if they would be interested in joining the next Big Book workshop which will starts September 13 2018 IMPORTANT: The next Big Book Study Group will start on Thursday 13 September 2018. Pass this message onto anyone you think may be interested in joining. To ensure we finish the 12th step and tradition by September 13, the next workshop will be on Tuesday 8-9am EST (instead of Living Sober) and next Thursday the workshop will be two hours 8-10am EST. The Tuesday recording will be on the Tuesday callback number (see above). Step 12: “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” 12 x 12 Step 12 page 120 line 11 until page 122 line 12: Free of marital responsibilities, they can participate in enterprises which would be denied to family men and women. We daily see such members render prodigies of service, and receive great joys in return. Where the possession of money and material things was concerned, our outlook underwent the same revolutionary change. With a few exceptions, all of us had been spend- thrifts. We threw money about in every direction with the purpose of pleasing ourselves and impressing other people. In our drinking time, we acted as if the money supply was inexhaustible, though between binges we’d sometimes go to the other extreme and become almost miserly. Without realizing it we were just accumulating funds for the next spree. Money was the symbol of pleasure and self-importance. When our drinking had become much worse, money was only an urgent requirement which could supply us with the next drink and the temporary comfort of oblivion it brought. Upon entering A.A., these attitudes were sharply reversed, often going much too far in the opposite direction. The spectacle of years of waste threw us into panic. There simply wouldn’t be time, we thought, to rebuild our shattered fortunes. How could we ever take care of those awful debts, possess a decent home, educate the kids, and set something by for old age? Financial importance was no longer our principal aim; we now clamoured for material security. Even when we were well re-established in our business, these terrible fears often continued to haunt us. This made us misers and penny pinchers all over again. Complete financial security we must have—or else. We forgot that most alcoholics in A.A. have an earning power considerably above average; we forgot the immense goodwill of our brother A.A.’s who were only too eager to help us to better jobs when we deserved them; we forgot the actual or potential financial insecurity of every human being in the world. And, worst of all, we forgot God. In money matters we had faith only in ourselves, and not too much of that. This all meant, of course, that we were still far off balance. When a job still looked like a mere means of getting money rather than an opportunity for service, when the acquisition of money for financial independence looked more important than a right dependence upon God, we were still the victims of unreasonable fears. And these were fears which would make a serene and useful existence, at any financial level, quite impossible. But as time passed we found that with the help of A.A.’s Twelve Steps we could lose those fears, no matter what our material prospects were. We could cheerfully perform humble labor without worrying about tomorrow. If our circumstances happened to be good, we no longer dreaded a change for the worse, for we had learned that these troubles could be turned into great values. It did not matter too much what our material condition was, but it did matter what our spiritual condition was. Money gradually became our servant and not our master. It became a means of exchanging love and service with those about us. When, with God’s help, we calmly accepted our lot, then we found we could live at peace with ourselves and show others who still suffered the same fears that they could get over them, too. We found that freedom from fear was more important than freedom from want. Soulwork Look up: prodigy, miserly, spendthrift. Q1. In sobriety are you throwing money in every direction to please yourself and impress others or are you miserly? Q2. Is money still a symbol of pleasure and self-importance or is it just a means for living sober and using your money for God-honouring purposes? Q3. Is money an urgent requirement for you right now? Q4. Are you looking to God or to money for your security? Q5. Write on this: • I am not where I want to be in my recovery AND I’m grateful I’m not where I used to be. Q6. And (a) write on your situation with money AND (b) about where you want to be Number One - (e.g. home, community, family, etc.) •Do you want to be number one in your family of origin? in your Step group? Where? (See AA 12&12 p.122, 49th ed., para 2 sent. 2: “He wants to be his country’s number one man.”) Q7. THAT’S recovery: “He learns that he can be content as long as he plays well whatever cards life deals him.” (AA 12&12 p. 122, para 2 sent. 5) •Are you there? Write on this. ( Bring this to G-D in Quiet Time, share it with your buddy, write on it.) Q8. “He’s still ambitious, but not absurdly so, because he can now see and accept actual reality.He’s willing to stay right-size.”(AA 12&12 p. 122, para 2, last 2 sentences.) •Are you ambitious in the right way? (Pray never to stop wanting to be ambitious) OR •are you trying to be a first-rater, trying to go to the top of the heap? (Says STEPHANIE: I like to be in the middle of the heap so I have people to look up to and people I can help while we are walking side by side. Q9. Are you willing to be right-sized? Are you willing to have people see into you? (in-to-me-see ▶️ intimacy).
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8/23/2018 0 Comments Recording For August 23, 2018 (week 345) 23 August 2018 12 Step Study Big Book All Addictions Workshop
Call back number: 641 715 3900 pin no. 95666# (available for a week) Open Study Buddy group on Sundays 11-12am EST. 319 527 3511 pin no. 587213# Tuesdays 8am EST A Continuance Of This Study Until It's Completed Everyone is encouraged to come to this awesome group. To listen to the recording: 641 715 3900 pin no. 2989 Donations towards the cost of the website please send via Pay Pal on the website or mail a check to: Stephanie Whiting P O Box 531 North Pembroke MA 02358 If you are new to the workshop (or not receiving the questions) please phone Sue W *HS Ruddock on: 434 987 4346 and email her at: BR8A@hscmail.mcc.virginia.edu If you do not have a members’ list ask Sue to email it to you to enable you to phone other members. If someone is no longer on the meeting it is an opportunity to ask if they would be interested in joining the next Big Book workshop which will start after we finish Step 12 & Tradition 12. IMPORTANT: The next Big Book Study Group will start on Thursday 13 September 2018. Pass this message onto anyone you think may be interested in joining. To ensure we finish the 12th step and tradition by September 13, the next workshop will be on Tuesday 8-9am EST (instead of Living Sober) and next Thursday the workshop will be like today, be 8-10am EST. This pattern will be repeated the following week. The Tuesday recording will be on the Tuesday callback number (see above). Big Book Page 100 line 10: Follow the dictates of a Higher Power and you will presently live in a new and wonderful world, no matter what your circumstances! Soul work Step 12: “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” AA 12 x 12 page 117-119 Most married folks in A.A. have very happy homes. To a surprising extent, A.A. has offset the damage to family life brought about by years of alcoholism. But just like all other societies, we do have sex and marital problems, and sometimes they are distressingly acute. Permanent marriage breakups and separations, however, are unusual in A.A. Our main problem is not how we are to stay married; it is how to be more happily married by eliminating the severe emotional twists that have so often stemmed from alcoholism. Nearly every sound human being experiences, at some time in life, a compelling desire to find a mate of the opposite sex with whom the fullest possible union can be made —spiritual, mental, emotional, and physical. This mighty urge is the root of great human accomplishments, a creative energy that deeply influences our lives. God fashioned us that way. So our question will be this: How, by ignorance, compulsion, and self-will, do we misuse this gift for our own destruction? We A.A.’s cannot pretend to offer full answers to age-old perplexities, but our own experience does provide certain answers that work for us. When alcoholism strikes, very unnatural situations may develop which work against marriage partnership and compatible union. If the man is affected, the wife must become the head of the house, often the breadwinner. As matters get worse, the husband becomes a sick and irresponsible child who needs to be looked after and extricated from endless scrapes and impasses. Very gradually, and usually without any realization of the fact, the wife is forced to become the mother of an erring boy. And if she had a strong maternal instinct to begin with, the situation is aggravated. Obviously not much partnership can exist under these conditions. The wife usually goes on doing the best she knows how, but meanwhile the alcoholic alternately loves and hates her maternal care. A pattern is thereby established that may take a lot of undoing later on. Nevertheless, under the influence of A.A.’s Twelve Steps, these situations are often set right.* When the distortion has been great, however, a long period of patient striving may be necessary. After the husband joins A.A., the wife may become discontented, even highly resentful that Alcoholics Anonymous has done the very thing that all her years of devotion had failed to do. Her husband may become so wrapped up in A.A. and his new friends that he is inconsiderately away from home more than when he drank. Seeing her unhappiness, he recommends A.A.’s Twelve Steps and tries to teach her how to live. She naturally feels that for years she has made a far better job of living than he has. Both of them blame each other and ask when their marriage is ever going to be happy again. They may even begin to suspect it had never been any good in the first place. Compatibility, of course, can be so impossibly damaged that a separation may be necessary. But those cases are the unusual ones. The alcoholic, realizing what his wife has endured, and now fully understanding how much he himself did to damage her and his children, nearly always takes up his marriage responsibilities with a willingness to repair what he can and to accept what he can’t. He persistently tries all of A.A.’s Twelve Steps in his home, often with fine results. At this point he firmly but lovingly commences to behave like a partner instead of like a bad boy. And above all he is finally convinced that reckless romancing is not a way of life for him. A.A. has many single alcoholics who wish to marry and are in a position to do so. Some marry fellow A.A.’s. How do they come out? On the whole these marriages are very good ones. Their common suffering as drinkers, their common interest in A.A. and spiritual things, often enhance such unions. It is only where “boy meets girl on A.A. campus,” and love follows at first sight, that difficulties may develop. The prospective partners need to be solid A.A.’s and long enough acquainted to know that their compatibility at spiritual, mental, and emotional levels is a fact and not wishful thinking. They need to be as sure as possible that no deep-lying emotional handicap in either will be likely to rise up under later pressures to cripple them. The considerations are equally true and important for the A.A.’s who marry “outside” A.A. With clear understanding and right, grown-up attitudes, very happy results do follow. Acronym: PPPPP Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance. AA Big Book page 100 1st para ‘Follow the dictates of a Higher Power and you will presently live in a new and wonderful world, no matter what your circumstances!’ Soulwork Q1. Step 12 is a time of evaluation. Are you having sex and marital problems? Do you have a happy marriage? If single, how are your close relationships? Q2. ‘So our question will be this: How, by ignorance, compulsion, and self-will, do we misuse this gift for our own destruction?’ Look up: partnership Q3. What does partnership really mean? Are you in a true partnership? What are your relationships like? Are you lording over your husband/wife, children, close friend, family? It is only where “boy meets girl on A.A. campus,” and love follows at first sight, that difficulties may develop Q4. What does that mean? Write about it [This is very deep. It is really our internal life.] Q5. Look at yourself and where you are now. Write on your experience. I want you to be honest. I have not even formulated a question to ask you. [Living with myself has been my motivation for going to recovery programmes and really seeking God. Going to places that have God-centred people to guide me, spiritual directors, because I knew I was done at 23 years in recovery. I really started with all the humility and sincerity that I probably did not have before.] Ends 8/16/2018 0 Comments Recording For August 16, 2018 8/9/2018 0 COMMENTS
(week 344) 16 August 2018 12 Step Study Big Book All Addictions Workshop
8/9/2018 0 Comments Recording For August 9, 2018
8/2/2018 0 Comments Recording For August 2. 2018 (week 342) 2 August 2018 12 Step Study Big Book All Addictions Workshop
Call back number: 641 715 3900 pin no. 95666# (available for a week) Open Study Buddy group on Sundays 11-12am EST. 319 527 3511 pin no. 587213# Tuesdays 8am EST Reading the AA literature: Living Sober & As Bill Sees It. Everyone is encouraged to come to this awesome group. To listen to the recording: 641 715 3900 pin no. 298913# Donations towards the cost of the website please send via Pay Pal on the website or mail a check to: Stephanie Whiting P O Box 531 North Pembroke MA 02358 If you are new to the workshop (or not receiving the questions) please phone Sue W *HS Ruddock on: 434 987 4346 and email her at: BR8A@hscmail.mcc.virginia.edu If you do not have a members’ list ask Sue to email it to you to enable you to phone other members. If someone is no longer on the meeting it is an opportunity to ask if they would be interested in joining the next Big Book workshop which will start after we finish Step 12 & Tradition 12. IMPORTANT: The next Big Book Study Group will start on Thursday 13 September 2018. Pass this message onto anyone you think may be interested in joining. Step 12: “Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.” AA 12 x 12 page 116-117 When we developed still more, we discovered the best possible source of emotional stability to be God Himself. We found that dependence upon His perfect justice, forgiveness, and love was healthy, and that it would work where nothing else would. If we really depended upon God, we couldn’t very well play God to our fellows nor would we feel the urge wholly to rely on human protection and care. These were the new attitudes that finally brought many of us an inner strength and peace that could not be deeply shaken by the shortcomings of others or by any calamity not of our own making. As we made spiritual progress, we saw through these fallacies. It became clear that if we ever were to feel emotionally secure among grown-up people, we would have to put our lives on a give-and-take basis; we would have to develop the sense of being in partnership or brotherhood with all those around us. We saw that we would need to give constantly of ourselves without demands for repayment. When we persistently did this we gradually found that people were attracted to us as never before. And even if they failed us, we could be understanding and not too seriously affected.’ This new outlook was, we learned, something especially necessary to us alcoholics. For alcoholism had been a lonely business, even though we had been surrounded by people who loved us. But when self-will had driven everybody away and our isolation had become complete, it caused us to play the big shot in cheap barrooms and then fare forth alone on the street to depend upon the charity of passersby. We were still trying to find emotional security by being dominating or dependent upon others. Even when our fortunes had not ebbed that much and we nevertheless found ourselves alone in the world, we still vainly tried to be secure by some unhealthy kind of domination or dependence. For those of us who were like that, A.A. had a very special meaning. Through it we begin to learn right relations with people who understand us; we don’t have to be alone any more. Q1. With some people it is always all about them. a) How would you describe yourself? Are you a giver with the motive that the more I give then they will like me? Do you give because you really care about the other person? b) If someone wants to give you wisdom, or give you a gift, how do you handle that? In your spot check inventory ask: a) : God did I live in a give and take basis or was it all about me or I was giving to be a people-pleaser? Q2. How are you doing being in give and take partnership in brotherhood and sisterhood around you? Q3. Is there anybody that you are having a hard time being in partnership with? Look at yourself. What might be the issue? We saw that we would need to give constantly of ourselves without demands for repayment. Q4. look up: constantly. Write out what are your good times to really be giving constantly? Q5. Write an example of when you had to give when you knew you were hungry, angry lonely tired. If you handled it badly, what could you have done to handle it better? And if you handled it well, what did you do? Underline this whole sentence: circling ‘best’, ‘emotional stability’, ‘God.’ When we developed still more, we discovered the best possible source of emotional stability to be God Himself Q6. Do you believe this? Q7 How are you doing accepting God’s perfect justice, love and forgiveness? [How you accept these is how you will give them to others]. Q7. Where am I spiritually? Am I relying on God’s protection and care or am I looking to people? And how is it working out? Q8. Line 8 final paragraph circle ‘alone’: ‘But when self-will had driven everybody away and our isolation had become complete, it caused us to play the big shot in cheap barrooms and then fare forth alone on the street to depend upon the charity of passersby.’ ends |
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