Yesterday I had to lead the noon meeting. As I sat up in front, I looked around the room at the crowd and suddenly I had a host of thoughts. My mind told me that I had to do several things very quickly. I had to get rid of a number of things, in order to run the meeting. I had to get rid of my prejudices. I had to get rid of my feelings of superiority. I must have thought someone was a dummy or something. Or someone was a pompous ass. Or someone was a bore. Or someone talked to much. What was that all about, I thought.
How could I be so dumb? I had forgotten one of the basic tenets of this program. One that used to drive me crazy when I heard it verbalized. If you spot it you’ve got it. That old saw, that whenever we’re disturbed there’s something wrong with us.
Today, as I sat in the back of the room, I could suddenly see what I had missed yesterday. It had nothing to do with the people I must have thought about yesterday. It had to do with me. I was not looking at their faults, but my own. They were my faults, which I often let slip by me. How could I have been so blind? Chalk it up to complacency or just mental laziness on my part. The failure to look at my tenth step and allowing my own character defects take deeper root within.
The reason I felt that this was so important was what others have told me over the years. Men and women, who have gone out and come back from a slip, telling me what happened to them. They had stopped going to meetings, because they had developed resentments against others in the group and finally the group itself. It began with not liking this one or that one, because of something they saw in the other person. And then it began to multiply. They had finally found fault with the whole group.
My sponsor Tom gave me directions on a number of occassions on what to do about this. He told me that I had to go up to the person, with whom I had found fault and talk to them. Often directing me to tell the person how I felt. As difficult as this was to do, it cured me of my self righteousness and judgement about people. Often I found that they felt the same way about me. Imagine. But the upshot was that we often became good friends as the result of this.
Yesterday told me that I have a lot of work to do on myself. Why? Because I don’t want to drink again and I have to be willing to go to any lengths to continue on this path of freedom from alcohol and from these things which make my life unmanageable.
Anyway, those are my thoughts today.
Ahhh…imagining that irresistible “new car” smell?