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A Change is Gonna Come – Sam Cooke
First things first – no doubt our thinking was insane when we lived as active alcoholic/addicts, deluding ourselves into a sea of errant stuff-addled nonsense about how, “it didn’t matter, we could change anytime we wanted to, it was nobody’s business but our own and on and on until we just had to yell: “STOP THE MADNESS”!
And so we looked for a way to do that, hearing about recovery; it’s group therapy found in meetings, the hand-up of sponsorship and spiritual advisers; recovery literature and the liberty to seek the energy, force or power we searched for to be our strength “as we understood it” – having a free choice of selection.
But now, after some time clean and sober, we’ve found that lifelong habits and conditioning have led us to discover other forms of pre-programmed insanity. Maybe some of these:
*Go ahead! Get out your pen and paper and add your own specific descriptions of minor madness……
But there are solutions we know of. Prayer, (no matter to whom, where or how you send it) Meditation: a calming of one’s spiritual center as practiced on a regular basis; these can ease the adjustment roller-coaster emotional process of both short and long term sobriety and being clean in recovery.
This was, in part, a reason that I wrote “Living the 12 Steps of recovery for us all”. To give us daily reminders; to reinforce and repeat our intention and method for change from insanity to something calmer, doing it in parallel, reminiscent of our time honored principles.Â
Here is an excerpt of it for today:
February 10
We Lose in the Battle of Wits
Our presumptuous intellects, our lofty credentials, tall IQs and university degrees, these forms of our sheer brainpower have often stood between us and a reliance on faith.
As self-sufficient men and women, our “with high honors†attitude
may have been acquired through the University of Life. We thought experience and tenure were the truest of our credentials but have we discovered we were far too smart for our own good? Did we secretly feel we had floated above the rest of the species on our brainpower alone?
You can think yourself dirty and drunk
The spoils of superiority were ours for the thinking, or so we thought. Almighty knowledge was ours, we surmised, providing certain conclusions that allowed our intellects to disavow the God of our fathers.
Then smarter, more cunning and baffling authorities overcame us: drugs and alcohol. The debate was over, the issue resolved; they had outwitted the best of us.
There are, however, higher and greater powers than drugs and alcohol, in which we can find reasons to believe. They will help us right-size ourselves, overriding our ego-driven and disproportionate wits. Try as we may, those wits were unable to save alcohol and drugs threat to our sanity.
Want some more?
www.livingtwelvestepsrecovery.com
Everything Must Change – George Benson 1980\’s
(click on the link for a musical video)
"Once a Zebra - ALWAYS a Zebra"!
Insanity is not an all or nothing situation; for most of us it is a matter of degrees. In the manic depressive, the paranoid schizophrenic and bi-polar, it’s as serious as cancer. But for the rest of us slightly neurotic and depressed recovering alcoholic/addicts, its more like a cold – some are worse than others. Still, it leaves us sneezing and coughing (figuratively) doubting the value of our lives, our recovery and our ability to cope with both.
Now I would like to share today’s installment from my old friends: The Daily Ohm.com ( you can register for free) who seem to have once again said it the way I would want to:
February 6, 2012
Begetting Change
Same Choices, Same Results
A change in perspective, behavior, or response can do so much more to help us move past issues left unresolved.
Repeated bouts of adversity are an unavoidable aspect of human existence. We battle against our inner struggles or outer world forces, and in many cases, we emerge on the opposite side of struggle stronger and better equipped to cope with the challenges yet to come. However, we can occasionally encounter trials that seem utterly hopeless. We strike at them with all of our creativity and perseverance, hoping desperately to bring about change, only to meet with the same results as always. Our first instinct in such situations is often to push harder against the seemingly immovable obstruction before us, assuming that this time we will be met with a different outcome. But staying power and stamina net us little when the same choices consistently garner the same results. A change in perspective, behavior, or response can do so much more to help us move past points where no amount of effort seems sufficient to overcome the difficulties before us.
Whether our intention is to change ourselves or some element of the world around us, we cannot simply wish for transformation or hope that our lives will be altered through circumstance. If our patterns of thought and behavior remain unchanged, our lives will continue to unfold much as they have previously. Patterns in which fruitless efforts prevail can be overcome with self examination and courage. It is our bravery that allows us to question the choices we have made thus far and to channel our effort into innovation. Asking questions and making small adjustments to your thought processes and behaviors will help you discover what works, so you can leave that which does not work behind you. To break free from those unconscious patterns that have long held sway over your actions and reactions, you will likely have to challenge your assumptions on a most basic level. You must accept once and for all that your beliefs with regard to cause and effect may no longer be in accordance with your needs.
Stagnation is often a sign that great changes are on the horizon. Courting the change you wish to see in yourself and in the world around you is a matter of acknowledging that only change begets change. The results you so ardently want to realize are well within the realm of possibility, and you need only step away from the well-worn circular path to explore the untried paths that lie beyond it.
This entire month, the book: “Living the 12 Steps of Recovery” concentrates on the Second Step and Tradition in its daily spiritual affirmations. It’s available in softback signed original first editions (about 175 left out of the first 1,000) and also on KINDLE/NOOK e-books. Please visit for Author Arthur Messenger’s Blog and examples from the book. www.livingtwelvestepsrecovery.com
