Yesterday’s thought made me think about today’s. It was the ninth step and now I’m going backwards to the eighth. I couldn’t help but think about how valuable that step was to me.<\/p>\n
One of the things I found in this step was that the 12&12 writings on eighth got me to really start to investigate what was wrong with me. Believe me, there was plenty of fertile ground to be dug up. This didn’t happen over night and it didn’t hold me up from proceeding with the ninth, but it often forced me to go back to the sixth and seventh steps, because of all the feelings the list brought up. My defects seemed to explode, when I saw some of those I had to which I was going to make amends. Anger and resentments kept popping up. In other words the blame game. Self pity is another way of putting it.<\/p>\n
The 12&12 told me something I really needed to hear. That some damaging and forgotten emotional conflicts lurked beneath the level of my consciousness. Moreover, during some of my harms I had inflicted on others, these had damaged me as well. It says that these had given our emotions a violent twist and discolored our personalities and changed our lives for the worst. Without knowing this before, it was obvious this is what had happened in my life. I didn’t want to drink again and I sure didn’t want any of this stuff to sneak up on me and sandbag me and get me back to a drink.<\/p>\n
I didn’t do any of this by myself. I sure thought I knew how at the beginning, but my sponsor and others advised me to seek the proper kind of help and I got it through the spiritual guidance of a wonderful woman, whom a long time member introduced into my life. I will always be grateful for that. It was just another lesson in not going it alone. It was also a lesson, which brought the one thing I needed in my life to help me correct what was wrong. That was a lesson in humility, which I totally lacked. Want to correct that part of the disease which is emotional? It’s humility which begins the cure. I’m not saying I have it, but I have sure learned by humiliation.<\/p>\n
Anyway, I thought about this today, when a friend of mine and I were talking about emotional sobriety.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday’s thought made me think about today’s. It was the ninth step and now I’m going backwards to the eighth. I couldn’t help but think about how valuable that step was to me. One of the things I found in this step was that the 12&12 writings on eighth got me to really start to … <\/p>\n