Daily Reflections: 'We Forgive. . . .' & 24 Hrs a Day

Sobrietyspell · MIP Old Timer

Daily Reflections: 'We Forgive. . . .' & 24 Hrs a Day

Sacrifice · Veteran Member

We forgive....Well I have forgivin most people especially myself and my father was the hardest one to do however, I think I did do this one very reluctantly and I do not speak to him often at all because I can do with him or without him in my life. Is that wrong of me to think this way? Is it really all or nothing? Just my thinking this a.m. I'm off to a big A.A. meeting and lunch at the park, my family is going with me, it's a great start for a Sunday morning.

Chuck75 · Member

Hi Carla,

I think it takes time to be really forgiving. I did what they told me to do and prayed blessings for my stepmother even though I couldn't really mean it. Yet just the physical position of the praying (kneeling with my elbows on the bed and head lowered) put humility into the situation. I was willing to forgive. I was willing to give up my "right" to stay resentful.

As time passed, and I realized just how wrapped up in egoism and self-centeredness I had always been, I could better understand where a lot of my step-mother's anger toward me came from. I also realized that it is partly an animal thing for the female to prefer her own child to another's child. In your case, as in mine with my stepmother, I'm sure you have a story to tell that would place your father in a terrible light. If you're like me, you used the treatment you recieved to give yourself a "right" to remain all screwed up in your own life. I. e. - if you had to live my growing years you'd be screwed up too.

I even went to the psychology books to point out my right to be all screwed up. The only problem was, when I got to AA they were telling me that I, not my past, was responsible for whether or not I felt physically calm (no wars going on inside me), spiritually serene, (my "right" to have my way in life surrendered over to a HP of love, truth, wisdom, and understanding) and a daily sense of being at home in the universe (or at home in my own skin if you'd rather).

I finally could admit that I was blaming my stepmother for how I had turned out so that I didn't have to change (since it wasn't my fault). That's the trick we play on ourselves to keep on drinking and using until it simply doesn't work any more. When we get down the wrong road we're traveling to the point where the pain of staying on that road is far surpassing the pleasure we're getting out of being on that road, then we become willing to go to any lengths to get off that road.

So why do I have to work on getting rid of all my resentments towards others? Simple! I can't be free of the breakings of the golden rule (that I can't make amends for) and other personally felt lousy behaviors I can't correct which fill me with self loathing, guilt and shame until I see that I truly was, across my whole life, doing the best I could with the business of living that I could possibly do. Had I known better, had I had more wisdom and a smaller ego, I would have done a lot better. Yes! That's where forgiveness of self comes from. Yet . . . it can't be true so long as I maintain my "right" to continue to hate others for the treatment I received from them. Because if it is okay to be me since I was doing the best I could with the person I was at the time, that has also to be true for those who broke the golden rule in their dealings with me. Do you see it? Forgive us our trespasses AS WE forgive those who trespassed against us. It doesn't work unless its a two way street.

Thus you are working on forgiving your father for the freedom it gives you . . . not for any freedom it gives him. Seen in that light, you will certainly work dilligently at the job, even willingly seeing the places where maybe you would have been treated better if you had had the wisdom at that time to operate differently.

The literature of the program, as well as what is shared at meetings, point out that we AA people were, generally speaking, more selfish and self-centered than most normal people. If we were dealing with a parent who was as egoistic and self centered as ourselves, then we most assuredly will have a harrowing story to tell since they had more power to "win out" over us than we had to get our way.

So, my suggestion to you? If you really want this program, read the second paragraph of step seven (12&12) to see what is required for the kind of happiness that will keep you sober, then read the first sentence of step five (12&12) in order to see what is being asked of you in the way of a surrender to a new way of viewing life. You're being asked to let yourself be moved, through the ego reduction associated with an honest, open-minded and willing working of the twelve steps, along a continuum from egoism towards humility. I sincerely hope you're ready for that surrender. Love and Blessings - Chuck

Sacrifice · Veteran Member

Thank you Chuck and yes I will read the 12&12. Yes I do have a story with my father and I do realize and have come to believe that even though I did not hurt my son physically during my drinking spree's I did harm him mentally. I made him worry about me constantly and this did take a toll on him, I only thank the school that he goes to which is a private school that they had open arms for him, to cry on their shoulders, and I did not even know that they had begun to pray for me long before I got sober.....My point with my dad I guess is that he did not know what he was doing to me when he was in that state of drunkiness and I have to say I don't remember some of the things I did either. I do know that he has appologized and I have said okay I accept but I still don't need that constant contact with him, I don't need it. I preety sure I'm okay with that though. I still let my son have a relationship with him but on my terms not his and his sobriety this time is great. He is just I think you call them dry drunk-mean-sullen....Anyway thank you for your post it does help a lot and will help when I have others to tend to as well.

Have a good day.

Sobrietyspell · MIP Old Timer

Thankyou for sharing your hurt & acceptance, Carla. I know you're growing all the time & I'm so glad you're sober & going through this process x

Welcome to MIP, Chuck. Your heartgiving share & touching spirituality has humbled me to new reaches. Thank you for your sobriety & all the service you've put into A.A. over an amazing expanse of years 1Day@aTime. All your meetings & studying of the literature shines through in your words. I hope your actions bring you the peace & joy I'm getting from your energy. I hope you'll take a shine to us here@MIP & will continue to stay with your wonderful experience, strength & hope. What a beautiful message you are. Thank you for being here. I will certainly be taking up your suggestion as soon as I get home. Bless you, Danielle x

Chuck75 · Member

Hi Danielle,

Thanks for the kind words. My wife, Marilyn, a thirty-four year Alanon member, has a number of medical problems and I'm becoming more and more a care giver . . . which is just fine because I'm still making amends for the first 17 years of our marriage . . . actually, probably, more like twenty since for the first three years of sobriety I wasn't worth much as a husband and father either. (I was becoming God's ^special^ friend at that time and, I suspect, just as difficult to live with :( ).

So now, I'm going to start sharing my exp. strgth & hope online a little more since I'm missing more meetings during her bad spells. I think you can tell from my first couple of posts that I needed to get some "giving" out. lol. Love and Blessings - Chuck

Chuck75 · Member

Hi again, Carla,

Is your father attending meetings? If so, and his sobriety means anything to him, He'll commence becoming a different human being just as you and I are. It's a never finished journey (IMO), and some work the program more grudgingly than others :). Yet it still works for most grouchy types. I've watched their turn-arounds and they're beautiful to see.

Your dad was taught a lot of stuff as a kid concerning what is important in being alive which was meant to fit him into the society of his day. He lived with all that conditioned thinking for a lot of years and it's going to take time for him to be able to "let go absolutely." The portion of the fifth chapter we read at meetings makes it sound like it has to be overnight. I've always maintained that in step three I "make a decision," and it may take many lifetimes to get that decision completely implemented. After all, if I actually had my will and life completely turned over to the powers of perfect love, understanding, wisdom, and truth which I am commited to believe back up this business of living (completely unconcerned, of course, by what name they are called), then I would never get riled up inside for any reason. I would perpetually be in the place Dr. Bob's plaque which sat on his desk speaks to:

"Humility is perpetual quietness of heart. It is to have no trouble. It is never to be fretted or vexed, irritable or sore; to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me. It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised, it is to have a blessed home in myself where I can go in and shut the door and kneel to my Father [read, "Higher Power" here Carla, if you'd rather] in secret and be at peace, as in a deep sea of calmness, when all about is seeming trouble." (Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers - page 222)

While I spend quite a bit of time there these days, Carla, I'm definitely not there all the time - especially when I'm surrounded by my steel armor and king of the road feeling which comes with traveling around in my '02 Impala with an Andre Rieu disk playing my kind of music - and some fellow in front of me doesn't realize he's on MY road.)

The key for me is also in that "How It Works." I am more than, "willing to grow along spiritual lines." I just first need the upset in my gut, the loss of serenity of spirit, peace of mind, and that daily sense of being at home in the universe in order to get my attention and remind me that I am living in God's Kingdom, God is not inhabiting some small degree of space in My Kingdom. :)

When we pick up the paper (or watch the "telly") and see the horrible things that are happening to our fellow human beings, I think it's very important to use that information to determine what actually is important in being alive and what isn't. If I am going to keep all my eggs in the basket that Perfect Love, Truth, Wisdom, and Understanding is backing up this business of living (as that is precisely what I am being driven by the steps towards becoming a part of), and I can obviously see that it is not human bodies that are loved perfectly, then I (at least) have to begin to trust that the "I am" within me is a form of energy or something still unknown even more mysterious than energy that does not die with the body. If that is in fact the case, perhaps we have forever to grow up in, Carla, and the purpose of the body is to let us know when we are thinking wrong so that we learn to willingly drop our natural ego defenses and let ourselves be moved toward right thinking. If that be the case, then, by seeing through the Bovine Scatology we've been taught by parents and teachers concerning what is important in being alive, we come to see that the only thing actually important in being alive is that through human living, we have the opportunity to "grow along spiritual lines" and that is the only real purpose in human living. Quien Sabe? (Who Knows?)

Nor do we need to be frightened by doubt, Carla. For, if I make use of my commitment to trust that Perfect Love, Truth, Wisdom, and Understanding backs up this business of living in order to live a life which allows me to daily feel better and better about being alive, and which gets me ever closer to that place mentioned in the back of the BigBook which states (paraphrased) that the only real freedom a human being can every know is doing what they ought to do because they want to do it, and it turns out that my commitment was actually devoid of ultimate meaning and that the atheists were right, then I have lived a beautiful, ever more sensible to me way of life, and will never know I died. Our AA program is, without a doubt, the true win/win way through life, Carla, whether temporarily Bless-ed or permanently Bless-ed. Love and Blessings - Chuck