Posted by Bo on July 24, 19101 at 14:52:08:
In Reply to: Re: Happy Annivarsary! posted by Bob on July 23, 19101 at 15:45:02:
Hey, call me at 404.966.5423 cell and let's talk.
In Loving Service,
Bo S.
: Dear Bo,
: Congrats on your anniversary. You are an inspriation!! Keep the faith and know that you are loved....
: Peace, love and light,
: Bob
: : Dear Fellow Members,
: : Thank you for the joy and happiness of my life today. So much freedom and opportunity. Thank God I can just be still and grateful for all the beauty and wonder right now.
: : I just celebrated my twenty-seventh anniversary of the day I surrendered to my addiction and began to try to live a new way of life. The grace of God spared me the pain and hardship that comes from blind addiction - not knowing there is a way out. When you're in a hell of a mess, it is nice to find a back door leading out into the real world.
: : Just because so very, very few clean addicts ever write about their feelings and how they process the day to day crap that comes along, much less the wonderful mountain peaks of experience, I am doing so now. Due to the NA 12 Step recovery process, I am now well equipped to deal with anything from a blow to a kiss, a person yelling at me to a person looking me in the eye full of joy. The freedom of the Seventh Step is being able to move effectively in areas of my life where I was blocked. Whether by original ineptitude or past painful experience, I could not do certain things. This shows up when we first have people in recovery saying nice things about us and we want to draw up and explain how terribly imperfect we are. It is because we don't want to mislead them into thinking they can always expect good things from us.
: : My life today is full of joy and happiness. I almost never have to perform an unpleasant task. The people in my life, beginning with my family, are always happy to see me and I enjoy countless spiritual relationships. These include persons in business, past associations, lovers, old friends and new friends. I continue to discover new things about my life that I never even suspected before. It makes me glad I stayed on the clean road when things got tough. Many times I felt that there was no way out of a bad situation. Many times I lost things or experienced apparent failure only to find one more prison bar missing from my cage, one more wall crumbling into dust at my feet. It is good to be free.
: : So many understandings have come to me in recovery that I actually have to restrain myself in conversation with others that I don't branch or leap ahead to conclusions that have not yet become visible alternatives for the person I am speaking with in the present. People cannot generally help where they are at in their personal growth and it is unkind to flaunt your freedom in the presence of slaves. Society, evolution and ignorance impose many limitations on people for good and not so good reasons. If a person has been devastated in a love affair, they will certainly avoid going into situations where they might have to declare the terrible words, "I love you." Even to hear this from someone else can be frightening. We have to take life by degrees. I was sharing with a new employee I hired a few weeks back. He has a hard job and I try to take time to teach him how to be careful, protect himself from danger and how to help others avoid life-threatening situations. I was talking about different things and told him that there was an old story he might be interested in hearing. It is about the havers who were a tribe out in the deserts, I think around Mesopotamia. The havers developed a code of behavior that allowed them to live in peace with one another and enjoy their lives without causing harm. If someone came in from the desert, it was necessary that they learn the ways of the havers before they considered themselves part of the community. Havers embodied a tradition of being careful and considerate. They lived most of their lives among other havers and so did not ordinarily contact outsiders. Such contact required that they understand how to deal with someone who did not share their viewpoint or honor the many small customs that allowed havers to live in peace with one another. Non-havers were erratic and selfish. They seemed always afraid someone was going to trick them or use their better nature to disadvantage them in some way. Being with non-havers made havers glad when they got back home, among their on people who knew the ways to live without hatred and anger. If you haven't got the point of the story, think about it.
: : We must find ways to communicate and make real our experience so that it becomes a genuine shared attribute of our NA Fellowship. Building up the level of understanding and practice among ourselves is a big part of how we grow. Learning to be civil first to ourselves and then to others must precede acquiring things or positions that would lead us back into dangerous self-obsession and give us walls to hide our pain and thus perpetuate the pain. Civility is the essence of real civilization. Good people don't grow on trees. They come down from the trees and learn how to live by thought and self-improvement rather than violence and being able to intimidate others. Using our advantages to become able to victimize others more efficently is another trap that lies before us. I have always sought a way of life that was spiritual and yet would work anywhere, for anyone, at any time. When I first studied - to a very limited and superficial degree - the habits and attitudes of people to devoted themselves to prayer and meditation as monks or devotees, it seemed that the very necessity of cutting ones self off from the world sort of invalidated the learnings and practices that may have worked well within the right sort of walls. But if it were so dependent on the setting that the learnings were useless in �real, everyday life' then how valid could they be? As a beatnik, a hippie and a recovering person, I have always sought something real and lasting. A platform of belief that would stand the pressure of learning more things that would fit into the original pattern of understanding and never stop elaborating and completing in every detail as long as I live. Most paths I looked into had some near and very definite ends to them. And they didn't go far enough to sustain my interest. This and the disease of addiction made me suicidal and I felt ripped off by life, like it wasn't worth all the trouble and pain of growing up and trying to be a decent human being in a world devoted to military objectives and exploiting human suffering and deprivation. I never liked bullies.
: : I hope a few people will understand what I share here and if you are one of these, please feel free to share back - or forward as the case may be.
: : In Loving Service,
: : Bo S.