I don’t need to lay up stores…

The twelve Step program is all about God dependency. Relying on a Power greater then myself to supply me with everything I need. Every moment of fear is a lack of trust in my higher power. It is a fear of lack that something will not happen the way I want it to happen. There is this deep fear in me that I am not taken care of. It is part of my limited thought system; it keeps me trapped in the cycle of addiction. I don’t have to hold on to my old though system anymore and in fact I can’t. It is taken from me through the grace of God. It makes me so happy to be able to say that found what I was looking for. Nothing was ever enough in this world. I have learnt that I don’t need to lay up stores, because I am given everything I need in any given moment. And that can be as true for you as it is true for me.

Expectations

All grievances come from lack of communication and expectations that have not been met. I am going through my day planning every detail, wanting to control every situation, cover up my fear of the unknown, - alone - far away from God.

In Chapter 30 of the Course in Miracles, Jesus instructs me:
“Today I will not make a decision for myself.”

The biggest freedom lies hidden behind all my plans, ideas and control. I am letting go and letting God take over. I am sick of waiting for everything to be perfect as I have constructed it in my mind. It does not work like that. It never has and never will.
Right now is the only moment that there is. So only right now can I be completely happy. That’s when expectations turn to gratitude and fall away in a moment of remembering who I really am. I am not the sum of all my expectations. I am as God created me. I am light. That is what I share and extend.

One day at a time

One day at a time. Tells me very simple that there is no past and no future. The only moment that counts is today. Today I can be sane (sober, absitent etc.) This just gives me a focus in my mind. I can never handle more then one instant anyway. But I certainly have tried everything not to see that. Remoses and regrets from the past and fear of the future kept me in my addiction and gave me no solution no way out. Today I am sane because it is the only day there is, it is the only day that I can be happy. So I hand my life and my will over to the care of God, so I can be free to be who I am today.

Acceptance

"And acceptance is the answer to all my
problems today. I need to concentrate
not so much on what needs to be changed
in the world as what needs to be changed
in me and in my attitudes."
The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

There is one problem and one solution. Resistance is the problem and acceptance the answer. But how do I become willing? I was in a situation today, where I saw clearly that, if only I could let go of my ideas I would be happy. But I could not. Whatever prayer I used, whoever I plead for help. The idea kept circling in my mind. I realized that I still try to use ideas from the past to help me now. Like I had a revelation once with The Serenity Prayer and now I want to have the same result. It dawned on me that I even these prayers can’t help me, if I am trying to help myself. My only solution is the surrender to my Higher Power. Let go and let GOD.

4.Step

Well, until now the program has been great. To accept unmanageability, that was natural and to believe in a Higher Power was an act of grace and to give my life and will over to the care of god was the biggest relief. If you have come so far in the program - congratulations. But now oh boy! Lots of people do not make it through the 4th step. They give up. It’s too uncomfortable. I don’t want to go into my past, I don’t really have any grievances or any excuses that you can think of will come up in your mind. But please do not stop. At this point I always have to remember what I wrote in the first step. All my addictions and the conditions that I don’t ever want to find myself again. I have to remember how I have been and the willingness to do my inventory comes by itself. It is amazing what comes up, when I just give myself the quiet time to just think and watch my mind. All those things that I thought I had already forgiven or that I never wanted to think about again. Every thing goes on the paper. It is amazing to me too, that I was so dishonest when I did my first 4th Step. And I did not even know it. For that time in my recovery I was as honest as I could be. But looking back I thought I could have saved myself a whole lot of pain through complete honesty.
The thing that I love so much about this program is, that I found out through meetings and being a sponsor, that there are no thoughts that have not been thought before. Isn’t that amazing? Every thought that I feel guilty about and want to hide, lots of other people have had that thought. So in other words it is never a big deal. It is only a bid deal when I keep those thoughts hidden. Meanwhile I love the 4th Step and the power and freedom I derive from doing it. The most amazing discovery is always the 4th column. What is my part of the story. I never want to see that, and if I do it is hard to see the whole story. That’s were my sponsor comes in. I often think when I have a grievance - oh I don’t need to write it down, I can just work it out in my head… But I have done that forever and it has lead me to my addiction. The power of writing it down, and seeing it there black on white with nothing to hide or alter it, is immense. In the action of writing it down I am actually breaking my habit of trying to find a solution to my problem. I simple admit that I am powerless, hand my life and will over to the care of God, write it down, tell it to another person and let God completely take care of me.
This is the 4th Step in a nutshell. It takes guts to do it, put the rewards are undescribable.

3.Step

Being completely immersed in the love of GOD and for the first time feeling a relationship with GOD that I not thought was possible are some of my experiences with the 3.Step. The Step brings me from addictive thinking to creative thinking, an easy and effortlessness of being that does not require my control. I rest in the security that I am in the hands of GOD. I turned my life and my will over to GOD as I understood him. Now my part is to trust that. One day at a time.

2. Step

The second step is all about my relationship with God. Oh my God this is juicy. All the ideas that I had about God are coming up and want to be healed. I found myself being Agnostic, Atheist and Theist. I recognize all those parts in me to be free to just accept God as he is without the concept around him that make me who I am. That make a self concept of myself that I can hold on to and defend, and sometimes even fight for. I don’t know whether this makes any sense, but I think this is the most incredible idea. That through the action of defining myself, I keep God outside of myself. I defend myself from him through a self-concept that I have made rather then accepting myself exactly the way I am. In Chapter 16, section VIII from A Course In Miracles, “The only real relationship,” (one of my favorite sections from A Course In Miracles), is shown to me how much God loves me and that I would not want anything else but God. This second steps leads me there as well. It leads me to the recognition that there actually is a Higher Power, and that is had nothing to do with what I thought is was, and that I actually could have a communication with that Higher Power. This gives me so much hope and gratitude.

1. Step

The mere admission of something brings about a change. Step one is the admission of complete defeat, complete powerlessness over an addiction. In my case it’s others, food, fear, guilt, human condition, thoughts. I am completely powerless over them, my life has become unmanageable. It is usually a devastation that brings about a thought process, and a willingness to change. But with that the change alone does not occur. It comes from the grace of GOD and has nothing to do with my efforts. Yes, we don’t want to hear that because we think everything has to be so hard and has to be earned. This happens just through the grace of GOD and is inevitable.
This admission of powerlessness makes me free. It makes me vulnerable. It makes me step back from the situation and let something else occur. It’s scary sometimes, because I want to control every situation, to defend my story and keep my self image in place. I don’t want to let go, it’s so comfortable in that place in my mind. I am so used to being like that. The first step feels uncomfortable, scary, different and new. And the truth is that through letting go and not holding on to the story, questioning the reality of my perception and just being open for something new gives me back a natural sense relaxation and being myself. It offers me a whole new perspective of myself.
I am grateful for this program, I am grateful for my higher power. With that I pass….

The 12 Step and A Course In Miracle

Virtual Reality
The 12 Steps and A Course In Miracles is truly a blessing for me. It takes me always to the point where I don’t want to go. It takes me to the point of release and to the point where I let go of my resistance to reality. Every grievance, expectation, reaction is ulimately a resistance against reality. And forgiveness is not resisting reality.
But these programs take me so much further. It offers me the complete freedom of my mind. The first promise of the 12 step is: We will know a new freedom and a new happiness. When I first read it - my sponsor made me read the promises everyday - I could not believe it. Then one day after reading them for a while, I realized that all of the promises had become true for me. But I had no idea how it had happened. This happens through the grace of God.
One day at a time.