Daily
Reflections reading June 10th
Impatient? Try Levitation
We
reacted more strongly to frustrations than normal people. AS BILL SEES IT, p.
111
Impatience
with other people is one of my principal failings. Following a slow car in a no-passing
lane, or waiting in a restaurant for the check, drives me to distraction.
Before I give God a chance to slow me down, I explode, and that’s what I call
being quicker than God. That repeated experience gave me an idea. I thought if
I could look down on these events from God’s point of view, I might better
control my feelings and behavior. I tried it and when I encountered the next
slow driver, I levitated and looked down on the other car and upon myself. I
saw an elderly couple driving along, happily chatting about their
grandchildren. They were followed by me–bug eyed and red of face–who had no
time schedule to meet anyway. I looked so silly that I dropped back into
reality and slowed down. Seeing things from God’s angle of vision can be very
relaxing.
© Alcoholics Anonymous World Services
My thoughts on June 10th Reading
Steps eight and nine are concerned with personal relations,
first I had to take a look backward and try to discover where I had been at
fault, second I had to make a vigorous attempt to repair the damage third,
having thus cleaned away the debris of the past
I now had to consider how, with my newfound knowledge of
myself, I may develop the best possible relations
with every human being I know, and Impatience was a concern with personal relations with others
Asking forgiveness for myself along with my forgiving everyone for harms done to myself, HARM is:
injury, hurt, damage, misfortune, grief, pain, sorrow,
evil, wrong or wickedness I want this done now, Impatient I was
I need to make amends for most of these things I did to
others again asking for their forgiveness, I think the fear of even thinking of
forgiven others was my biggest obstacle in the beginning of recovery
It was very hard to not let go of the anger I had for thing
I perceived others did to poor me, another touchy subject there were a lot of
things I thought could be skipped over because I did things to some but at the
same time they wronged me
My thinking was one hand washes the other in theses cases,
but the truth of the matter is I did not want to go over these obstacles EVER
Again, I had to look at purposeful forgetting real close, because of my
blackout drinking
I had third hand information on what I did and like a good
drunk I sure did not believe I did those entire thing, some I did remember but
just let it slide not at first willing to make amends, because I feared it
would open old wounds
Steps four and six were necessity for the exhaustive survey
of myself and all my personal actions this was really a huge obstacle, who
wants to admit they are wrong in the first place, to look at all my past faults
WOW I never thought I had any
My sponsor started to point them out in step four and again
in step six, he told me to always balance the negative things with the positive
things after all we were not always doing wrong we all had sum redeeming
qualities
A deepening awareness of my self was a very positive thing
it helped me to seek Gods will for me it was one of the great things about
doing a fourth step with my sponsor, who I hand absolute trust in
Believe me he was not going to accept anything less than
complete thoroughness in this step this cause some impatience because I wanted
to please him, but most of the harms I did when I lied or stole from places
I just did not want to admit my faults in these areas with
those who I had harmed, like the stores I stole from or the many people I lied
to because I needed to look important and wanted to fit in with the rest of my
friends
Again I stress the positive must balance out the negative in
our amends to everyone it was a relief to know most of them did forgive me and
for the other who could not forgive well I tried to just clean up the wreckage
on my side of the street
I had to forgive myself in these cases so I would not hold
resentment Making that list in Step eight and being willing to go to any length
to stay sober gave my the freedom to see how I was just a part of the great
whole
God bless you Al M
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