Rule #4019 - D.D.E.I.Y.A.F.O.

DONT DESPAIR EVEN IF YOUR ARROWS FALTER OFTEN
 

AA Needs More Spiritual Mentors;

It has Enough Junior Therapists

              
Once upon a time I thought my spiritual advisor was just plain mean and insensitive when he lovingly suggested I stop sharing at AA meetings. Didn't he know how much I had to offer, and how special and different and sensitive I was?  Whenever I reminded him of that great fact, he'd say:  "...dummy, anybody with as much to say as you is better off listening". He was right - dead right.  Why did he say such mean things to me?

Relief is the enemy of recovery, so minimize relief to maximize recovery. Encouraging a newcomer to 'share' their feelings makes them 'feel better' (i.e. 'psychobabble'), and thus removes their impetus to run towards actual relief, which is from God who is introduced to the newcomer via the steps. More newcomers die from talking than from drinking, in my experience.

For years, my spiritual mentor didn’t’ seem that intelligent, either. Why, everybody knows that if it's off your credit report that it doesn’t count anymore, right? Well, it does, actually. Accepting credit is a moral obligation; every man I've sponsored who has refused to clean up his credit has eventually has drank again, and some have even died.  Is your purse worth your life?

There Are Absolute Rights, and Absolute Wrongs

Life is not relative - if it were, that means that actions are subject to negotiation, which would beget judgment, which would give rise to attachment and aversion, which would beget suffering; basically, the polar opposite of 'happy, joyous and free'.  It's all on page 55 of our Book - the very Book that was so insidiously locked away.

How Can I Be Happy?

For years my spiritual advisor droned on incessantly about how AA needs warriors, and the only way to become a true warrior was to practice my marksmanship.  I thought he was out to lunch - but I get it now. Now matter how badly I failed, his only question would be:  'did you do your best'?  If the answer was yes (and it usually was), he'd say 'then it's in God's hands – in your seventh step you are make perfect in God’s eyes'.  And for the occasional no, he'd say 'can you aim a little higher next time'?

Lately, now that my sensei is approaching 90 years old, he is divulging more to me, and he laid something pretty heavy on me today that I had to look up. He explained to me that the word 'sin' is a word from the ancient Greek that refers to poor marksmanship, or 'missing the target'.  That is even one of 'The Four Agreements' - always do your best.

I Must Aim Higher

This lofty goal is suggested on page 14 of our Book: “...for if an alcoholic failed and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trails and low spots ahead...".  So, like Hercules the Archer, I must continually try to aim for the Mark of marks - the bull’s-eye being freedom from attachment, aversion and indifference to suffering.  I will miss wildly and often, but I must try to do my best and carry this message with patience, tolerance, kindliness and love.

Or, to put it another way – ‘...practice makes the master.  If you practice doing your best, you will become the master'.  One day perhaps I will be able to master carrying this message perfectly, but another teacher of mine got it right, and they hung him on a cross anyway. 

T'was ever thus, so must I continue trying to carry the AA message as lovingly as possible, keeping ever in mind to ' Don't Despair Even If Your Arrows Falter Often'.  They shall, and I shall keep attempting to aim ever higher, because I love each and every one of you, and you are all precious in the eyes of God; no matter how often you worship your time up on the wall - time which is only given you by His grace.

Live, Laugh, Love (...is in the middle...).

|COG, 1st Cl.|