I just got a call this morning from a close friend in AA about a potential job loss. This is a man, who is one of the most active in service work and has helped a lot of people to find their way in the program. Fairly young, in his mid thirties, he has often seen fit to call me on a lot of his problems in his life and in AA. He heard on Fri. and worried all weekend about this and then called me this morning.
The details are not important, I suppose. I just know that my experience in a lot of areas is not all that admirable. So, on a “practical” level I don’t have much to offer. What I do have to offer is that in spite of all that has happened to me, I have still been able to stay sober. Fear of economic insecurity will leave us.
I had to think back to what I’ve been thinking over this past few months; that the application of spiritual principles will solve a! ll our problems. Sandy B’s story about being cashiered out of the Marines and so dissapointed and angry, only to find that the Marine team he was on was killed in plane crash. His saying to God that if he had only told him what his plan was, he would have been willing to go along with it. But, even then, the personal feelings, the self pity, and resentment, the human side does not go away easily.
We all have to deal with our dissapointments. Letting go of them is a challenge we have to face frequently. How do we do that?
It seems easy for me to say, sitting where I am in my life, but I can go back to my own experiences. I can remember Tom saying to me, to first calm the disturbance. He would point out the spiritual axiom from the tenth step; that whenever we’re disturbed there’s something wrong with us. I used to hate that. I knew it was everyone else’s fault. Eventually it sank in. Didn’t matter whose fault. The fact was that I was disturbed. That was the problem.
How was I to do that? Tom told me that a problem shared was a problem cut in half. He said that I would then have elbow room to address the problem. I became to know that initially I always had two problems; fear and anger. Didn’t matter what the situation was. Fear and anger were my first response to every problem. I was disturbed. If someone seemed to have slighted me, I instantly responded with fear and anger. Whatever happened it didn’t seem fair. It never did.
Although it took time, I eventually learned that it was important to get in touch with someone and tell them what was going on, rather than let it cook inside of me. I was an expert chef. I could cook with the best of them. A! nger and resentment, self pity, had been my constant companions through life. That was my plan for living for a lot of years And, as Bill W. said, my plan for living was stupid.
When I was in such a disturbed state, I could not pray. I wouldn’t pray. I was too bent out of shape to pray. I was often too messed up to go to a meeting. I wanted to hang on to what I knew best. So, I had to learn a new way to pray; make a phone call. Tell someone what was going on with me. The first step in gaining the willingnesss to be willing.
What a task that was. With everything inside of me screaming to hang on to bitterness, I eventually began to learn the benefits of becoming undisturbed. Getting back into a spiritual state of being, rather than suffer from the state of unspirituality. It’s true, I discovered, that anger cuts us off from the sun! light of the spirit. The insanity returns and, although I never drank, I would suffer greatly from that form of mental and emotional pain.
The next step, was to pray. I still have to remind myself to first calm the disturbance. I have sometimes forgotten that. When I forget, it tells me that I have become complacent and fallen asleep again.
Ned
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