It’s one thing to know something, but another to forget where you got it. I was thinking about that today, after I read something I know I read before. The statement almost took the wind out of me. Yet I knew I had been “practicing” it. Just forgot, but glad to get it back.
What am I thinking about? The Eleventh Step in the 12&12. I happened to go to it, because I missed another meeting today. So I thought I needed to touch on the spiritual way of life in here and this did it. Another reminder to me of why I am here in the first place.
What I was going over was meditation. Not avoiding prayer, but meditation was what I found myself studying today. And as I was going through what it is that we need to do and why, I finally hit the sentence, which caught my attention. What had helped a chronic alcoholic like me and brought about the changes I needed.
It stated that one of the first “fruits” or gifts we’re given, as a result of practice, is what helped change me from what I had been suffering from for so long. My emotions. What those old timers kept telling us we needed to change. Intellect over emotions was what they told us. Thinking with my head and not my heart. Easy to hear, but not easy to do.
Negative emotions of all sorts running my life. Should say ruining my life. I know that spiritual writers have talked about this, as well as some psychiatrists. And this program has told me that I need to have a Higher Power, some kind of God of my understanding, who can empower me to change and stay sober. And controlling and changing my emotional life is essential.
Getting a cut back in my negative emotions; anger, resentments, fear, anxiety, hatred, self pity, and all the rest I have run into. And there in the book is a promise of this. The gift of emotional balance. The result of meditation, contemplation. Those moments, when someone like me has been placed in a place of neutrality. Quiet. Even silence. What the Step states about improving the conscience contact with the God of my understanding.
Anyway I had to think about this today, because it’s one of the foundations I know I have to practice as best as I can. Takes perseverance and discipline to get my attention and keep it where it belongs. And over time in here, if I keep doing it, it, as the book points out, begins to work and to change me.
Once again I am reminded of why I am here to start with. I’m here to stay sober a day at a time. And I need to remind myself of just how I am to do that. I’m here, as I understand it, to grow along spiritual lines and to practice these principles in all of my affairs. The result is that I have received gifts beyond my wildest dreams.
Again I am so grateful to my Higher Power and all those people in here, alcoholics like myself, who have helped me to stay sober. Thanks.