Salvum te | Sálvate | 自分を保存 | Save Yourself

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     You gotta work like everything depends on you
     but you gotta pray like everything depends on God.

--Jimmy Laffey, the Bay Ridge Group, 1994

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     The fruit of Silence is prayer. 
     The fruit of Prayer is faith. 
     The fruit of Faith is love. 
     The fruit of Love is service. 
     The fruit of Service is peace.

--Mother Theresa

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     We shouldn't be shy on this matter of prayer.  Better men the we are using it constantly.  It works, if we have the proper attitude and work at it.

  --Alcoholics Anonymous, 85:3

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     23-Aug-15

     Happy Monday everyone!

     Yesterday we spoke of the concept of using God as a sort of 'cosmic concierge', my go-to man if you will for all my hearts desires.  Thank God this is not, was not, could not - be the case. The things I prayed for years ago terrify me today.

     No!  My experience is that the purpose of prayer is to change the mind and heart of the one who prays to align it with God's will, which is always contained in the AA prayers we say.  Yes, I do believe God hears our prayers, and yes I do believe that God does work in the hearts and minds of all men for the greater good of Her divine plan, but Her plan is Her plan - she has Her plan for Her reasons.  How could my limited feeble and finite mind grasp the how and why of Her magnificent great will & reason?

     'Nothing, absolutely nothing happens in God's world by accident' Dr. Paul once wrote.  Just for today I need to focus on just what the serenity prayer instructs me to focus on:  1)  God's help to be at one with God's plan, however short-sighted and cruel it may seem at the moment;  2)  God's help for courage - that means the strength to fight when I KNOW IN FACT I am going to get my ass kicked, and 3)  to know there is nothing left to do when there is nothing I can do except rest in God's omnipotent grace.  All centered in prayer, all because of prayer, all is possible with prayer.  

     This is why 'ACCEPTANCE IS NOT THE ANSWER TO ALL MY PROBLEMS'. Some of the time, anyway.  I need to prayerfully ask each morning what God's vision is for me, and I am each day a little less misguided by own selfish plans and designs.  Honestly - every so often, someone will ask me to pray for them, or for their mother, or most recently, and I wish I was joking - to pray for their dog.  My answer is always:

     'Why'?

     They rarely can answer, but the honest ones will tell me because they think it'll somehow contribute to an outcome in - let's face it - their favor.  That is not God's will - that is a childish game of cosmic tit-for-tat.  God's universe does not work that way.  The bitter truth is they feel cut off from the sunlight of the spirit and have yet to experience being fully bathed in God's most sweet and tender grace, in full knowledge that - whatever happens - all is right with the universe, all is as it should be, and we shall - all of us - be home very soon with our Great mother who presides over all.

     Thus, I continue this foole's journey through life, creating my own heaven on earth with the daily and thorough application of step's 10, 11 & 12 creating the fellowship I crave.  And so can you, however jittery and alone you may feel at the moment. Relief is always twelve short steps away.

     The will of God will never take you where the Grace of God can't keep you.  (Dan B.)

     This really is the easier, softer way.  I love you all.  Thank you for my life.

--Yours in love and service,

COG, 1st class.

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Maiorem Stulte | El Loco Mayor | グレーターフール | The Greater Foole

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     By blundering, we learn.
--Goethe

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     “Why can’t we take a specific and troubling dilemma straight to God, and in prayer secure from Him sure and definite answers to our requests?”

     This can be done, but it has hazards. We have (asked) for God’s explicit guidance on (specific) matters. Quite often, however, the thoughts that seem to come from God are not answers at all. They prove to be well-intentioned unconscious rationalizations. The A.A., or indeed any man, who tries to run his life rigidly by this kind of prayer, by this self-serving demand of God for replies, is a particularly disconcerting individual.

--Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (107:0-1)

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     What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind. Being still inexperienced and having just made conscious contact with God, it is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We might pay for this presumption in all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely upon it.

--Alcoholics Anonymous (87:0)

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     23-Aug-15 | Happy Sunday everyone!

     Prayer and meditation has and continues to play such a valuable role in my personal recovery.  It was vitally important and necessary in the beginning to beg God to defend me against that first drink.  I was forbidden to call anyone, especially my sponsor if I felt like drinking – he understood my Power MUST come from God and taught me to pray not dial.

     Right around the 90 day mark that feeling that the drink problem was solved came as promised as part of the fifth step promises, and my mind and heart began to turn to other things, and thus my prayers, too turned to other things.  Somehow in my life’s journey I got the sense that God was some sort of ‘Cosmic Concierge’, a sort of Coke Machine in the sky, if you will.  Deposit 10 minutes of prayer here, reap x amount of dollars of reward there, and so on.

     On poignant example of this spiritually self-centered adolescence is expressed best in my ill-fated move to Florida around this time.  A guy in the rooms, knowing my restaurant background and wanting to give me a break, offered me a job in Longboat Key Florida during the winter of 94/95.  Being homeless, jobless and foolish, I said ‘sure’!  But wanting to sound spiritual, I added ‘but let me pray on it’. 

     Back at the homeless shelter, I made a very public show of getting on my knees at my bunk in front of 100 other guys – and – out loud – asked for God’s will in this decision.  Nearly immediately a radio started playing outside the window; it was a song that came out the fall called ‘Kokomo’ by the Beach Boys which extolled a tropical paradise.  THIS WAS IT!  I shouted.  This was the answer.  Florida it is – GOD HAS SPOKEN TO ME!

     I collected enough cans to get a greyhound to Sarasota Florida – against the strong suggestion to the contrary to EVERYONE I told this story to in AA – but what did they know?  GOD HAS SPOKEN.

     There may as well have been a tiny thread connecting my spiritual suit to my sponsor & home group, for the further that boat travelled from NYC, the faster that metaphorical suit unraveled, till I was quite falling to pieces when I got to Florida.  I walked to the first meeting I could find, raised my hand and shared my calamity, the vote was unanimous.  SEND THIS FOOL BACK TO NYC!  So they – and this just one of literally a thousand examples that come to mind of random acts of charity, patience, tolerance, kindliness and love committed on my behalf in AA – passed the hat, collected $122  in bus fare and sent me home – with a Big Book in my hand, bless their hearts.

      What I did not know – what I could not know at the time – was that being new and still inexperienced, I needed a GOD WITH SKIN to guide me and review my new-found God-give God consciousness with me, for having not yet finished the ninth step, every thought, however inspired, was sullied through the lens of an unfinished 9^th step, thereby rending me in fact spiritually blocked from the Sunlight of the Spirit.

     My sponsor had a nicer way of expressing this.  He called me a ‘Retarded Mystic’.  This is not far from the mark.  When retelling this story - which he did often and with great relish always to my chagrin, he would close this tale of the foole by adding:  'had David waited one more minute he would have heard the flip side of that record:  'New York NY'.

     As one who has long ago recovered from alcoholism and lives deep in steps 10,11 & 12 I can tell you that I rely on these thoughts, attiudes and ideas that arise from prayer and meditation unequivocally undoubtedly and unflaggingly, and quite rarely need benefit of counsel.  But occasionally I still do, for I still at times can play the ‘Greater Foole’ when my ‘new pair of glasses’ are temporarily befogged with self.

     I love each and every one of you.  Thank you for my life.

     Yours in love and service,

--COG, 1st. Class

Ratus Causa Patiendi | I 苦しみの原因を考えて | I Think! Therefore ISuffer

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     Upon my very first drastic self examination, the unconscious question that drove my entire life I learned was this:  

     Do I matter?

     I realized that I felt I didn't really matter - to others, to myself and to God,  and this set the behavior pathology that caused me to burn everything in my life to the ground through my unconscious  need to win at any cost.

     And all my victories turned to ashes in my mouth, for those actions are the bricks which separated me from myself, my God, and most importantly from my brother.

     This basic question is the human condition and the root of all suffering, and must be smashed if we are to ascend to the spiritual realm.

--David Morehouse, Remote Viewing:  An Introduction 

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     Stop thinking

And thus end all your problems.

--Lao Tsu, Tao te Ching (20)

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Dimittere , Divinum | 、神の許し | To Forgive, Divine

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     He that cannot forgive others breaks the bridge over which he must pass himself; for every man has needed to be forgiven.

--Thomas Fuller

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         Where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness...

--Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (21)

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     If we are sorry for what we have done, and have the honest desire to let God take us to better things, we believe we will be forgiven and will have learned our lesson. If we are not sorry, and our conduct continues to harm others, we are quite sure to drink. We are not theorizing. These are facts out of our experience.

--Alcoholics Anonymous (70:2)

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     18-Aug-15:  Happy Monday Tuesday everyone!  My friend Mike G. suggested 'Forgiveness' for today's reflection...

     To be perfectly honest, Forgiveness is not something I have thought very much about over the long haul of my sobriety.  Not so much because it wasn’t necessary for me to forgive, mind you.  God knows I suffer(ed) from resentment, guilt shame and remorse as much as any alcoholic.  To be quite frank, forgiveness is not the specific goal of any specify step, it is a by-product of the rapid and thorough application of steps 4-9.  In my view searching for forgives in sobriety, of either ourselves or others, is about as pointless as searching for happiness.  It just does not work.

     Well, then, what does, you ask?  GLAD you asked :-)  As far as happiness goes, I’ve learned that it is a byproduct of right living, of making morally right choices.  Washington said it best:  ‘Happiness & one’s moral duty are inseparable’.  Fixing the three basic human relationships fixes ALL emotional defects – not the least of which is resentment (what we are really talking about when we speak of ‘forgiveness.  

     These basic relationships are:  1. Myself (Steps 1, 4/5 & 10)  This is the most important, which it why it goes first.  If my mind isn’t right, nothing is right. 2. God (Steps 2, 6/7 & 11).  Now that the relationship w/me is right, which is to say I have an undeluded view of myself as the world actually sees me, my mind is clear enough to go God for the Power, which I will need to get right with his kids.  God always says yes to this question by the way :-) 3.Others. (Steps 3, 8/9, 12):  Once I begin to make amends, I begin to see the folks I make amends to as humans, equal to me in every way, truly brothers and sisters are they to me, by this time.  This is how it all works.  Resentment & anger melt like snow in June.  By the time we finish step 9, all negative emotion are completely ripped out of our once-black hearts.

     What a wonderful life we have in AA

     I love you all.  Thank you for my life.

     Yours in love and service,

--COG, 1^st Class.

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Vitam Mors | デイリー臨死を通じ生活 | Daily Living Through Daily Dying

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     Phoe·nix ˈfēniks/ noun (in classical mythology):  a fabulours bird that...burn(s)  itself on a funeral pyre to rise from the ashes with renewed youth to live through another cycle.

--Websters Dictionary
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     Keep ever in mind the admission that you made on the day of your profession into A.A., namely that you are powerless and that it was only with your willingness to turn your life and will into My keeping, that relief came to you.

--Why We Were Chosen; Judge John T., 1943
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     Our admissions of personal powerlessness finally turn out to be firm bedrock upon which happy and purposeful lives may be built.

--Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (21)
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     What seemed at first a flimsy reed, has proved to the the loving and powerful hand of God.

--Alcholics Anonymous (28:1)
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     17-Aug-15:  Happy Monday everyone! A friend suggested 'Let Go & Let God' as a topic for today, which is really about surrender I think.  

     A newcomer asked me question that really threw me.  Not to be arrogant but this does not happen often, for this program keeps getting simpler for me, so naturally the answers are always there if 'I have something to transmit' - living in the disciplines of steps 10, 11 and 12.  However, this particular question set me thinking, and thinking hard.  The question was a great one I think, perhaps the best ever asked in an AA meeting, which was: 'How do you get somebody to surrender', which is really another way of saying 'how does one cause another to "let go and let God".  The more I pondered this, the clearer the answer became, which is:  

     You can't.  One is either beaten to a pulp, or they are not.  There is no middle ground behind the two.

     Recently I was at a meeting where somebody was making the argument that 'we have to present this program at the level of the person we are trying to reach'.  Sounds good, feels right, we all want to helpful, who wants to see anyone suffer needlessly, right?

   Wrong.  In my experience any parts of this program I dumb down to make it palatable for someone who hasn't surrendered 1)  Just waters down the message for those who are in fact ready to recover, 2) Makes me a hypocrite and a liar, for the only real message of AA is 'that God could and would if he were sought, and 3)  is a complete and utter waste of my time - and theirs.  If a man hasn't 'let go absolutely', they can as my sponsor used to say attend one thousand meetings a day the ghosts of Bill W. & Dr. Bob left and right and the still would not 'get it'.  Why is this?  Becuase until they let go absolutely, they will not be willing to take all the seemingly drastic steps this program requires for it sucessful consummation.

     I love you all.  Thank you for my life.

     Yours in love and service,

-COG, 1st. Class.
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