All Addictions
12-Step Study
Workshop
12-Step Study
Workshop
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: [email protected] 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
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Our live phone meetings are every Tuesday at 8:00 AM EST. The phone number for these live meetings is (712) 775-7031, and the meeting ID number is 714744988#.
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P O Box 531 North Pembroke MA 02358 |
You can listen to our recorded meetings at (641) 715-3900, pin 95666# for our Tuesday Big Book Step Study workshop. You can also hear our Thursday Big Book Study recordings at (641) 715-3900, pin 298913#. These meetings can be accessed at any time.
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