Day 42... (and still here!)

So it has been a while since I last wrote an entry, but for once no news is good news!

I have done Step 3, and have been living it for a couple of weeks, praying and just observing life.

I have had three very manic, and fulfilling, weeks of teaching. As it was my 1st job there was a lot of planning for me to do, so I had to put in a lot more hours than otherwise would have been necessary. I also housesat for my sister (a house, 3 cats and 5 foreign students!), so I really was keeping busy.

It is not very long ago, 43 days to be precise, that I wouldn't have been able to do this, or moreover couldn't be relied on to.

It is wonderfully to be able to be a constructive, helpful, giving member of my both family and my community. For all changes I had to make and battles I need to win, I also had to add to my self-esteem and sel-confidence; working, having people look up to me, being responsible for others has been a revelation.

Not only have I enjoyed what I have been doing I have thrived at it.

Step 3

God,

I offer myself to Thee - to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt.

Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will.

Take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of life.

May I do Thy will always!

Results

I did Step 2 on Sunday. I got offered a job on Monday. (There is a God!)

The day after the world cup ended, which for me couldn't have been more perfect, I get a job!

So the last week has been satisfying busy*! I am now teaching, and next week I will also be hosting 5 students on behalf of my sister.

The downside, is that I havent been to a meeting for a week, and will struggle for the next week too. That said, I will be meeting my sponsor tomorrow, and we will be tackling Step 3.

So happy - if rather busy - days. I know I need to remain grounded, but I am so pleased that for once things are coming together. I can look back over the last couple of weeks, of the progress, and be truly thankfully for what this program and its members have given me.

*In fact rather manic - my first teaching job, there have been hours and hours of lesson planning, and a fair bit of nerves!

Step 2

Ok, I have finished reading We Agnostics, which was my suggested reading for Step 2, and I had a lot of identification.

I have just re-read what I wrote under 'We Agnostics', and I was amazed at how much there was in common. From my intellectually mocking of organised religion and blind faith, to my faith in reason and what can be empirically deduced. Also, having been open-minded, or had exposure to spiritual/ religious experiences earlier on in life, but having rejected them in later life.

So far, my recovery has been rooted in knowledge and understanding of addiction. I know about relapse cycles, old behaviours, I have had a chance to analyse my feeling and my past. Yet this, so far, hasn't got me very far. I need something extra to help guide me, give me the strength, and instill a sense of purpose. I have come to strongly believe that I will find this through a higher power. It is not something I can switch on, but it is something I can open my heart and mind to.

And I have. So last night, I got on my knees and prayed: as it says in the book "Some of us grow into it more slowly. But He has come to all who have honestly sought Him."

We Agnostics

Ok, I am doing Step 2, and I have a query: What about We Fully-Paid-Up-Richard-Dawkins-Brand-of-Atheists?!

How have other people, atheists, got beyond this point? (I think this is where we Brits differ from our American cousins: church attendance in this country is a minority rather than a majority.)

As a child I was very spiritual. My mother was into Buddhism when I was very young, and this is something that has stayed with me, but this is more of a philosophy, a way of life, than religion (i.e. the idea of a god in Buddhism is somewhat irrelevant*). Later in life I grew interested in Hinduism, but in my early 20s I rejected it - along with any other god based rhetoric - and have ever since rejected any notion of god.

So how do I get past this point? As the book says "we found ourselves thinking, when enchanted by a starlit night, "who then made all this?" There was a feeling of awe and wonder, but it was fleeting and soon lost". Well no, not really - I just thinking big-bang, hydrogen, light waves… ('wow, bet he's romantic'!!!)

So how do I get in touch with that lost sense of spirituality I had up till my teens? Haven't got an answer for that, but one thing is for sure - I am willing to try. And as someone once said**, he was asked "what you would like God to be?" He wrote down a lists of things, was then told "you can begin with that!".

So that is what I will be doing - write a list of what this higher power will be to me. My list, my god. I just hope I can rekindle that wonderment of yesteryear…

I would love to hear from anyone who has struggled with the idea of a god, or a higher power, and how you came to move beyond it.

*At least that is my reading of it, I do not profess to be an expert (and indeed I refer to Theravada Buddhism, other strands do have more 'mystic' elements, e.g. the more well-known Tibetan Buddhism)

** Charlie and Joe do an excellent read through and interpretation of the Big Book, it can be found HERE.

Little Fluffy Clouds

Things are going really well at the moment. I am not sure if this is what people refer to as a 'pink cloud', but I am certainly at a point where I still remember how grim it was, yet feel pretty good, mentally and physically. (This has in the past been superseded with feeling pretty good, but forgetting how bad it was....)

So, I havent written anything for a couple of days, and have been itching to (I say too busy, some might say a small matter of priorities!)

So, I met up with my sponsor on the weekend, and did my step 1. In a nutshell, it occurred to in much the same way as a beautiful lake would become pretty grim if left to stagnate, and in much the same it will drastically improve with a bit of TLC; if I drink I stagnate - in pretty much every sense of the word.

Also, after I went to a meeting, and as my sponsor seems to know every one (or as someone said, everyone worth knowing) I got to meet some more people. After 4 of us went for a coffee (joys of recovery) from which I only got back at 10.30. It might have only been something simple and casual, but how much I enjoyed the evening. Spiritually I progressed, I put work into myself, socially I got out and about, and I enjoyed a pleasant evening with friends without drinking (nor indeed thinking about drinking.

The meeting, saturday's, was one I had been going to regularly, was one I had been doing service at and I have slotted back into greeting there - so I have now got pretty much all of it in place: sponsor, plenty of meetings, service and steps...

Can't fail, surely!?

Wow 2 Posts in 1 Day, what the...

Just got back from a meeting, a very cosy meeting in Kemp Town, which I hadn't been to before.

I thought I would add something as i am feeling very positive at the moment, in a way that has been missing for a number of months. In short, I am back on track: if only at the very beginning once again.

One thing I have done (hence why I had no excuse to not go this evening) is add all the local meetings to my diary. They are included in the bottom of this page, so if you do find yourself in need - there you go!

The meeting itself was a 'step meeting', this one on step 6. The steps, twelve of them, go as follows:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

The only ones I can get my head around at the moment are:

1. I know I cannot drink, I can not do it socially, intermittently or anything like casually.
2. I have turned to others for help - I cannot do this on my own.

4. I have faults, and need to work on them.

8. Bit of a toughy - but I can see the point, to draw a line under the past, and let go (and in turn not make the same mistakes again!)
9. Say sorry (and again, do not make the same mistakes again!)
10. Don't make the same mistakes again!

You may notice that basically any with something along the lines of 'god' in them I am struggling with. I need not worry about that now though, that much I know. I had started 1 before my relapse - but that is as far as I got. (Which reminds me, I still haven't got on to my sponsor about restarting where we left off.)

"They are in that order for a reason" I have been told, so hopefully, by the race of 'whatever' it will all work out in the end.