Today was for me, and I know many others, Eleventh Step day. Proof that this is really a spiritual program. Prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with our Higher Power. Don’t always feel that’s what I’m doing, but how I feel is not important. What I do is.
There was a lot of talk about feelings, especially fear. Our emotions. And that was what brought the Eleventh Step up for me. What I learned in here about learning to overcome our emotional life. What Father Martin and my sponsor and those old timers taught me in here. To put the intellect over the emotions, or as my sponsor taught me, to think with my head and not my heart.
Of course like so many of us, I had to learn the hard way what happens when my emotions are in control. I’m no longer “thinking”. My emotions have control. Fear. Anger. Resentments. Worry. Anxiety. Self pity. And the list goes on. And my actions and my thoughts of others are subjected to my emotions. I’m totally out of control. I may tell myself that I’m in charge, but I haven’t left the drivers seat on the bus. I have been thrown out of the seat by my emotions.
Bill W. talks about this in the Eighth Step in the 12&12, when he talks about the damage done to us and others by what’s hidden in our unconscious minds. We may have no memory of some of our past, but our emotions never forget. Early on in my sobriety I remember what Dr. Scott Peck said about all of this and what the cure for all of this was. It is spiritual. Exactly what Bill and those old timers and Carl Jung experienced and believed. After all, when we put this into action we begin to get well, where nothing else helped.
That’s what these Steps and the introduction of the spiritual life has done for so many I have known in here. I know it’s done much for me. I was thinking this early on when I began my day. Stopping to pray and meditate. And I knew it didn’t matter what I was thinking before or feeling. It was a total change in thought and attitude.
It makes more clear what we are told in here. Yesterday is over and done with. Tomorrow is out of sight and our control. All I have is today. Where I am right now at this moment. What might happen further on in the day is not here yet. Where my feet are at this moment is all I have. I’m not to project into the future. Nor am I to go back into my past and stir up guilt and remorse. It’s unreal and only exists in my mind.
When I find myself drifting one direction or the other that’s when I need to pray. To ask my Higher Power for the help I need. All I have to do is to look at what’s been done for me. My sobriety. The very fact that I am sober ought to tell me something. That this spiritual program works. To renew my hope and my faith and to be grateful for all that I have received as a result of coming here and doing what I learned I needed to do.
The peace and the happiness. Like the Promises. I found a new freedom and a new happiness. As so many say, it’s beyond my wildest dreams. I know that in the past I never even thought I would still be alive at this time. Alcohol had driven me into a place where I thought I wanted to kill myself. I couldn’t stop drinking. Then I was given hope and I asked the God of my understanding for help and I received it. For the first time in all those awful years I was relieved of the mental obsession and craving for alcohol and I came into this program and my life changed. I’m sober and at peace.
And yet I know from my experiences in here that I’m not a saint. I still can trip over myself. I’m only human. Yet I have learned in here that I’m to pick myself up and dust myself off and keep on keeping on. I’m human and still have my faults. The important thing is that I’m still sober. I need to remember to pay attention to what’s important. And it’s just that. My sobriety. Everything in my life comes from that.
Had a funny thought. About shooting dice. The statement in that game, “Seven come Eleven”. And that’s exactly what I think about, when it comes to this stuff. The Seventh Step and the Eleventh. Works for me.
Anyway I just needed to stop and think about all of this and to express my gratitude for what I have been given.