Working With Others - How We Learn About Ourselves

May 18. Hey friends Tuesday's just about finished & for me it was a rainy & lazy day. I didn't have much on my mind & a care free feeling made it easy to relax under a warm blanket. The rain has an effect on me that usually either makes me tired, sore, or just out right cranky. Thankfully I was tired & didn't have to experience any of that. A friend stopped by to drop off some water pipe for my dad that he picked up for free. That act is the kind of "doing for others" that I talked about yesterday. I am sure the call I gave him to thank him afterwards felt twice as good as it does for me when I do those things. I had a good warm dinner on a cold day & got ready for my meeting afterwards, arriving just on time for a change. It was a packed house as usual for Tuesdays & I stayed in the normal meeting when the beginners broke off to their own group. I am still by far a beginner, but being on my Fourth Step the topics I need to hear most happen in the normal meeting rooms. I got an opportunity to share some things that worked for me to a person in need of solutions & the meeting adjourned after a few more people spoke.

It was after the meeting that I got what I needed spiritually & often times these days it happens that way. When I was new & more lost in life I heard much of what I needed to hear within the meeting, funny how that changes the more we learn. Its because of that I need to realize how little I do know & how much more there is still out there. I had a mini-talk with my sponsor afterwards, it lasted only a few minutes but some big things that I had lost in my fog the past few years returned to me. In sharing honestly, openly, & with a solution seeking purpose we helped eachother realize alot of good things in a short amount of time. I actually got to see my first alcoholic moment for what it was & when it occured, as well I got to see what the hiding & numbing it created in my emotional & spiritual life had done to me. It makes me think of a miraculous story of how a man in a coma was brought out after many years, when on his birthday his mom brough his favorite dish to the hospital.. the smell of it aroused a part of his brain & caused him to come out of his coma. He lived to tell of that as I live to talk about & help others with my story of recovery from alcoholism.

It was something that was said, or a memory that lead to another memory that gave me this insight tonight. It was something I had been searching for & many details that I had forgotten due to the fact that I was numb to them for so long. It's almost overwhelming, but in a good way for a change because I know there is a lasting solution if I do the honest & right thing in working the Steps & learning to live them. All of the pollution in my head will clear in time & with hard work, as the fog of my spirituality will be lifted as well, every day I spend sober my body heals more from the damages caused. We are resiliant creatures if we get past our self destructive ego's and tendencies. Many of us suffer from it, there were times in my life I felt crazy & didnt' value life that I had forgotten until now. I will get to address each of these things & turn them over to the one thing that has the power to handle them, since I did not, that thing being my Higher Power.

The topic, if you will, for my entry tonight comes to me as such: Through the action of sharing open & honest with another alcoholic & being willing to help them in their own struggles with our own story we can sometimes shake free things that are trapped inside or long forgotten. Because of this we are able to turn even more of our haunting pasts over to our Higher Power, which takes the burden of them away from us. Only a reliance on a power greater than myself & a belief that all of my fuck-up will be forgiven can get this job done. I have to be willing to forgive myself even if some whom I hurt cannot forgive me, that is so long as I offer an ammends & own up to my actions. This leaves my side of the street clean, and clean is spiritual. In all I've learned about this spiritual & new sober way of life the most important lessons I learn are about myself, all possible through my Higher Power putting other alcoholics/addicts that are recovering in my life. Good Night.. Good Morning.. <3 Jimmy