Nothing like getting a very good message today. A great reminder for someone like me. The subject? Listening and learning.
Made me and a couple of others go back and recall how back, when we came in, that the old timers never hesitated to tell people like us, with our problems, to shut up and listen. Not today. If someone said that the person they were talking to would probably get hurt feelings and go out and drink again. Nevertheless it’s all right for someone to tell me that I should listen. But the real question is do I learn?
I do remember, when I came in, that listening wasn’t something I did. I only had come to stop drinking and not do anything else. I felt that the program and the people had nothing to say to me. I told myself I had nothing to learn. After all I knew all there was to know. And that I was to learn was one of my many mistakes in here.
I’ve never forgotten that old timer who yelled at me to shut up and learn to listen. Around the same time my sponsor told me that I didn’t know that I didn’t know I only thought I did. And then he added that I was educated beyond my intelligence. Talk about slaps in the face. But how right they were. I had all this education and none of it was useful in terms of what I needed to learn. I had to learn about a spiritual way of life and then how to change.
I was told to leave what I had learned before outside of the doors of these meetings. I was also to leave my personal problems outside with whatever it was I had learned. I was told that I could share them with my sponsor and others. But what I needed was to come in with an open mind and an open heart. Two things I needed to learn along the way. And over time I began to do exactly that. But like they say time takes time.
What I began to learn at first was a result of these humiliations. That I had an over sized ego, which needed serious reduction. It was too big and dominated my thinking and my actions. If I was going to get sober and stay sober I was first going to have to learn how to gain at least a minimum of humility and to listen to someone other than myself. I needed to get out of my own way. I was always running so much junk through my head that I was stumbling and fumbling over and over again.
Something struck me, as I listened to those in the meeting responding to the subject. I mean I’m always grateful that I got sober, but there’s something else I’m really grateful for. I’m grateful I’m an alcoholic. That’s because being an alcoholic gave me the opportunity to come into the program. It saved my life. But more than that, it gave me the opportunity to stop and listen and then begin to learn what it is that I must do, if I want to succeed. How to put this program into action and how to practice all these principles in my life. How to grow along spiritual lines and learn how to depend on my Higher Power and have hope and faith in him. And how to develop that compassion for my friends, who have helped me along the line. Plus that compassion and caring for the sick and suffering alcoholic like myself.
Anyway I thought I’d stop and think about all of this. It’s so important that it’s worth the time it takes to just run all of this within me. Part of the changes which have come to me. The Eleventh Step.