Re: The NEXT 12 Steps (AA)

Hey Maya and others...

Thanks for a lively discussion here...I always wish the AA support forum got more action but it dawned on me not five minutes ago that my primary purpose (according to the AA tradition of carrying the message to the alcoholic who still suffers) is probably carried out in meetings, work I do with sponsees, etc.

Yet...it is great to hear from so many of my favorite Curezone people in one spot. People I have learned from since I was a newcomer here a year or so ago and since, and who did willingly and cheerfully for me what I try in like fashion to do now for newcomers to CZ (answer the same OP questions over and over and over again -- there is no resentment in those "overs" -- just, either you do it for the love of service, or you're going to get bored real fast, and OP has come to be my niche here as other forums are yours...plus I had some great example from Southern Belle!).

Anyway, it is very valuable service to moderate or to show up regularly at a forum and help the newcomer, and I say all of this because being of service here is a lot like being of service in the exact same ways that it is in AA. I know Maya will get it completely when I say the more sober or the more spiritually conscious I get, the more I need to do simpler and more repetitive forms of service! A while ago I posted the idea I heard that "service is bliss" -- a concept and experience that comes up in major world religions and that has been my experience SO often -- just a kind of geekishly high on helping feeling! -- and Maya was the one who really affirmed it for me then. I've shoved a few needles in my arm on top of all that professional bourbon drinking, and I can honestly say that the high I get from helping a newcomer and seeing them have a great experience, or a slower one where lights "come on," and to see them coming back again-- and most lovely, when they begin to help the next person -- well, it is a huge and powerful feeling that is greater than the most addictive drug. And I consider it as important to my sobriety as showing up at meetings and picking up cigarette butts after the meeting.

That's a long way of getting to the idea that all I wanted to do in the previous post was to clarify for that newcomer who might see it and could, um, be in a sort of "fog" that Maya's "Next 12" steps were not a part of the AA program per se. Not a judgment of Maya, or what she puts up, and I am the first to love to open her posts and see what I can learn from them. I've always felt a spiritual bond with Maya over this service stuff (and I have a feeling the higher up the service structure one gets, the more thankless it is!) and hope that my post was not harsh -- it was meant to elucidate, not repudiate.

I *do* believe, and that "Next 12 Steps" description is something that won't happen for a newcomer or someone who has been hanging around for a short time, but with prayer and meditation and time and practice (and for me a constant request that I be given the grace to get the hell out of my own way); that a higher consciousness is possible. I think what M. posted has to do with getting to a place where I don't feel like God is "in me" or "out of me" but just that I have let go of my thoughts, feelings, opinions, preferences, pet ideas, desires for money/property/prestige/authority/admiration (and even anonymity...) that I won't know the difference between God and me. Not that I'll think that I am God at all -- just that consciousness will cease to be "there" and just "of."

Anyway, not to get tooo hippy-dippy or freaky, but I do think for the most part the above state is something that monks and lamas and the devout with time and a calling to that have, and that we can in fact be OK because they do a lot of work for us so we don't have to do it. We can attend to our earthly service of mothering and moderating and cleaning up the second upended box of baking soda of the week and....

Hope that makes things clearer -- I'd have no problem disagreeing with Maya if I did, but that was more about the difference between you normal "earth people" (I"ve always thought that was kind of rude to non-alcoholics, as a matter of fact...like alcoholics are SO celestial...?) and us egomaniacal messes, and also about just providing clarity to a new desperate alcoholic who might Google and get this forum....so he or she knows that all they have to do first is get clear on a) mental, and b) physical powerlessness over and around alcohol. That can be surprisingly hard in and of itself!

Thanks for reading this far, good weekend to all --

50438 Tweet