1. We SURRENDER TO WIN. On the face of it, surrendering certainly does not seem like winning. But it is in AA. Only after we have come to the end of our rope, hit a stone wall in some aspect or our lives beyond which we can go no further; only when we hit "bottom" in despair and surrender, can we accomplish sobriety which we could never accomplish before. We must, and we do, surrender in order to win.
2. We GIVE AWAY TO KEEP. That seems absurd and untrue. How can you keep anything if you give it away? But in order to keep whatever it is we get in AA we must go about giving it away to others, for no fees or rewards of any kind. When we cannot afford to give away what we have received so freely in A.A. we had better get ready for our next "drunk." It will happen every time. We've got to continue to give it away in order to keep it.
3. We SUFFER TO GET WELL. There is no way to escape the terrible suffering of remorse and regret and shame and embarrassment which starts us on the road to getting well from our affliction. There is no new way to shake out the hangover. It's painful. And for us, necessarily so. I told this to a friend of mine as he sat weaving to and fro on the side of the bed, in terrible shape, about to die for some paraldehyde. I said, " Lost John"-that's his nickname-"Lost John, you know your going to have to do a certain amount of shaking sooner or later." "Well," he Said, "for God's sake lets make it later!" We suffer to get well.
4. We DIE TO LIVE. That is a beautiful paradox straight out of the Biblical idea of being "born again" or "in losing one's life to find it." When we work at our Twelve steps, the old life of guzzling and fuzzy thinking, and all that goes with it, gradually dies, and we aquire a different and a better way of life. As our shortcomings are removed, one life of us dies, and another life of us lives. We in AA die to live.
You can find this in the 2nd edition Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous
That reminds me of "Positively Negative", which is read at the beginning of one of the groups I attend. Will post it here for those who haven't seen it:
POSITIVELY NEGATIVE
We drank for happiness and became unhappy
We drank for joy and became miserable
We drank for sociability and became argumentative
We drank for sophistication and became obnoxious
We drank for friendship and made enemies
We drank for sleep and awakened without rest
We drank for strength and felt weak
We drank "medicinally" and acquired health problems
We drank for relaxation and got the shakes
We drank for bravery and became afraid
We drank for confidence and became doubtful
We drank to make conversation easier and slurred our speech
We drank to feel heavenly and ended up feeling like hell
This reminds me of a lot of many ideas I learned about in eastern philosophy while training in martial arts, for example, that we trained to fight so that we would learn how not to fight. (This is not necessarily connected to some styles that you might see like UFC or cage fighting) That learning about aggresion is vitally connected to learning about softness, or like the symbol of yin within yang, and yang within yin.
-- Edited by angelov8 on Saturday 4th of July 2009 12:45:22 AM
-- Edited by angelov8 on Saturday 4th of July 2009 12:49:05 AM
