Weekly Update
February 11, 2020
Announcements · We conducted a foundation meeting for the whole group during the regular meeting time on Feb 4th. A recording of that meeting and the outline that was passed out is available on the PPG website (http://www.austinppg.org) · The 2020 SWTA 68 Correctional Facility Conference is 2/21-2/23 at Emerald Beach Hotel (1102 South Shoreline, Corpus Christi, TX 78401) · A traditions workshop is being held Saturday, 2/21, from 10am to 4pm at the Bethany Church (10010 Anderson Mill Rd, Austin, TX 78750, In the Disciple Building, upstairs). There will be two speakers (Bill Neal and Jimmy Dean), pastry and coffee at 9:30 and lunch at 12 Chips In addition to the 3 month, 1 month and desire chips, we had 2 people pick up a yearly chip and share their strength and hope to the group. A chip was picked up for 12 years and 18 months of sobriety! Tradition Reviewed Tradition 3 (short form): The only requirement for A.A. membership is a desire to stop drinking. Tradition 3 (long form): Our A.A. experience has taught us that Our membership ought to include all who suffer from alcoholism. Hence we may refuse none who wish to recover. Nor ought A.A. membership ever depend upon money or conformity. Any two or three alcoholics gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. group, provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation. How it Works (pg. 61-62) Our actor is self-centered—ego-centric, as people like to call it nowadays. He is like the retired business man who lolls in the Florida sunshine in the winter complaining of the sad state of the nation; the minister who sighs over the sins of the twentieth century; politicians and reformers who are sure all would be Utopia if the rest of the world would only behave; the outlaw safe cracker who thinks society has wronged him; and the alcoholic who has lost all and is locked up. Whatever our protestations, are not most of us concerned with ourselves, our resentments, or our self-pity? Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt. Some Thoughts on what we read: This week we continued the chapter How It Works and we started with 5 examples of self-centeredness. We suffer from a delusion that if people see things from our perspective, then they would act right. We may think we have shed all of this once we work the steps but it is something we must continue to watch deep into sobriety. The confusing part of us “forever trying to arrange the lights” is when we think our motives are good. We must continuously look where we are acting selfish because we can easily move from God-reliant to self-reliant (for many of us, our natural state). Where are we hurting others? Do I need this just to make ME happy? Has our delusional mind crafted a story about the people around us to give us a resentment? The solution to alcohol isn’t sobriety. It’s a spiritual experience. Our self-will, selfishness, self-centeredness blocks us from having that experience with our Higher Power. ReplyForward |
