Had to laugh today. A long time friend of mine and I were talking about resentments, when we both recalled the passage in the BB on resentments in How It Works. The part where it asks us to consider the offending person as spiritually sick and to treat them as we would anyone who was suffering and ill.
How hard that is to carry off, especially when we have lost our temper and are angry in response to whatever has offended us. That’s where the laugh came in. However, I think that’s when, hopefully, we remember to keep our hands in our pockets and our mouth shut. Then, perhaps later, we have time to take what Bill said under consideration. Time to learn how to forgive and forget. Maybe. Resentments can often run deep. Particularly, if they have been long standing in our minds.
I know all about dealing with those I know are not only spiritually, but also mentally and emotionally ill. However my emotions can easily dominate my rational response, despite what I may or may not know.
I do know how important it is for me to do what one deeply spiritual person said we all should. That is to place sentinels around our minds, so that these destructive emotions cannot rush the gates and overwhelm us. In other words, be aware of the fact that, like alcohol, my anger is still present, though I may not be aware of it. I have to remember each day I arise that my character defects are still there. They may be on hold from the effects of the Steps. But, like I said, I am aware that my emotions can arouse them in the blink of an eye and negate all the work I may have done the previous day or week.
We talked about how important it is to get some space to begin to put things into perspective within us. Time to come to some understanding about those we deal with on a day to day basis. Persons, who may just annoy us, or maybe those whom we hold imprisoned by our resentments. How dangerous these resentments are for alcoholics like ourselves. How many we knew in the past, who, though sober for a long time, went back out as a result of those resentments. I know full well that I’m never going to be immune to what they suffered, as a result of their picking up a drink over their anger.
I think our conversation was a wake up call for both of us. To be fully conscious of the peril hanging on to resentments and not being able to let go and let God. As the woman in the BB in Freedom From Bondage pointed out, to ask God for the willingness to be willing, when it came to seeking relief from this kind of burden we often can be carrying around within ourselves.
Then there is the BB, in which there are all the directions to deal with what can be sometimes seemingly overwhelming. It is right there in those pages. I have to be grateful for my sponsor and all those meetings, which helped me to understand just how this program works and protects me on a daily basis from what can destroy me; myself. Within that book is a road map on how to stay sober. That and all the wisdom, which has been handed down to me from the experience of those old timers, who knew what this was all about.
Anyway, after our talk I had to sit down and write my thoughts on what I consider one of the most important aspects of my continuing to stay sober.