Staying sober. What is that?
One thing I learned when I came in here was that I couldn’t stay sober alone. I needed help. From others, of course, but also my higher power.
It took working the steps. It took the first paradox: Surrender to win. The second paradox: to give it away in order to keep it. And a third paradox: dying to that old life in order to live the new life.
Is it praying and meditating? Of course, but more than that. It meant getting comfortable with myself. And the only way to do that was to change. And that meant to learn how to stop doing what I used to do and to begin to do what was once uncomfortable for me to do.
One of those discomforts was to associate with others. The BB told me that we were people, who would not ordinarily get together. But guess what? The gun of alcohol was against my head and there was no other choice but surrendering my will and coming into a room full of people, who could teach me how to stay sober a day at a time.
It was learning ego deflation in depth. It was allowing others to puncture that overinflated balloon of an ego, until I could learn to do it myself. To get me out of the way and allow my higher power to step into my life and take charge.
It was learning all I could from the BB and my sponsors. And through experience I learned I could only hold onto what I had learned just for today. Tomorrow I would find that what I had learned I had forgotten. I would have to come back and be reminded of what I had forgot.
It was learning to talk to others and to listen to others. To get honest for the first time in my life. To listen with an open mind for the first time. Not an easy task for someone so closed and secretive as myself. I had to learn to share.
Part of sharing was to learn for myself what the solution was. For me it began with that 2nd Step. And then I had to learn and practice these Steps, but also the Traditions. Especially the 12th Step and the 5th Tradition.
It is all of this and so much more. But I don’t have to drive myself crazy doing all of this. After a while I have found that most of this becomes second nature. I just do it. And, if I will do it a day at a time, it works. Like the woman, who wrote Freedom From Bondage said, she didn’t always get what she wanted, but she always got what she needed. And, when she got what she needed, she found that it was what she wanted all along. Amen to that with a lot of gratitude.
Anyway, this was a subject for our meeting today and part of my meditation.