Daily
Reflections reading October 15th
My Check, List Not Yours
Gossip barbed with our anger, a polite form of murder by character assassination, has its satisfactions for us, too. Here we are not trying to help those we criticize; we are trying to proclaim our own righteousness. TWELVE STEPS AND TWELVE TRADITIONS, p. 67
Sometimes I don’t realize that I gossiped about someone until the end of the day, when I take an inventory of the day’s activities, and then, my gossiping appears like a blemish in my beautiful day. How could I have said something like that? Gossip shows its ugly head during a coffee break or lunch with business associates, or I may gossip during the evening, when I’m tired from the day’s activities, and feel justified in bolstering my ego at the expense of someone else. Character defects like gossip sneak into my life when I am not making a constant effort to work the Twelve Steps of recovery. I need to remind myself that my uniqueness is the blessing of my being, and that applies equally to everyone who crosses my path in life’s journey. Today the only inventory I need to take is my own. I’ll leave judgment of others to the Final Judge–Divine Providence.
© Alcoholics Anonymous World Services
My thoughts on October 15th Reading
I had became entirely ready, to have God remove the
obsession from my life, by the grace of God He has removed the desire to drink
and by having faith, I have been able to achieve release from other difficulties,
that plagued me
This step did not include willingness to have God remove the
character defects of other, just my own
I was dealing with my defects, not those of others, or world
matters, just my own personal defects
I had a listing of my character defects and was willing to
look at what needs to be removed
This was hard I had to look over each thing on the list and
ask myself if I was willing to have it removed, so yes but I was not totally
willing to have some character defects removed right away the worst ones I was
totally willing to have removed
Some I took pleasure in keeping, pride and ego got in my
way, all I could do at this time was to pray for willingness to become willing,
to let the false pride and ego be put aside, so I could again look at the defects
in a different light helping me to have them removed
I needed the awareness of a problem or a character defect,
before I could have it removed, I needed a humble attitude to stop justify my thoughts
and actions, I can not keep doing what I was doing and expecting different
results, I had stop hanging onto it, I had to let go
When I did finally let go I willingly stopped looking at the
defects of everyone else around me, I was told to not try to take a speck out
of another’s eye until I get the log out of my own, this meant I had to make my
own check list of defects not someone else’s
Because I was honest and humble, the grace of God enter my
life, given me a new way of life, step six is a life time experience, it gave
me the best possible attitude I could take order to make a mere beginning on
this new adventure toward this new way of life
I thought I was ready to have every single defect removed,
until I started to look at the mild defects
I did not think I had, until I started making a list and yes
some of then I enjoyed, in a perverse way but I was ready to aim toward
spiritual progress
Free will always gets in the way, I just made a beginning
and keep trying, when I started to look at the defects I was unwilling to give
up I was still looking for the easer softer way and in some cases it took a lot
of time to accept that it was my defect of character
Not someone else’s, so it’s a life long endeavor to keep on
trying and try not say to myself this I will never give up, never comes to fast
for me, it takes a lot of humility and absolute honesty to even begin to open
my mind to the many changes I had to make
It is suggested that we become entirely willing to aim
toward perfection, but I did have to come to grips with some of my worst
character defects and take action toward their removal as quickly as I could I
had to keep my mind open to God's grace
God bless you Al M
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