Sometimes I wonder, when the promises are read out, Whether many of those present actually understand the context in which they are written. It seems at times like a "what's in it for me" kind of sales pitch with many people thinking that it relates to the number of meetings they attend and their progress in the steps - before we are halfway through can be stretched to mean somewhere around the 3rd step.
What they are really about is the 9th step, clearing the final blocks to our spiritual awakening. Before any of the promises begin to happen we have already taken inventory, we have made confession, we have asked God to remove our defects, we have made a survey of the damage we have done and listed those we hurt and now we are making restitution in the community. As a result we are no longer prisoners, we don't have to hide, we can see how our experience can help others, we have a clean slate and can hold our heads high. There are no hidden demons stealing our happiness, we can move forward with confidence and rejoin the human race. That is what is amazing, that all this has come to pass, but only after a concerted and vigorous effort to be rid of the things that have been blocking us. Half measures availed us nothing, half the steps will avail us the nothing. We must take the entire course.
Let's be honest with the newcomer. There are no easier softer ways and there is a power of work to be done to get to the promises.
God bless,
MikeH
-- Edited by Fyne Spirit on Tuesday 17th of April 2012 10:45:35 PM
-- Edited by Fyne Spirit on Wednesday 18th of April 2012 04:14:07 AM
Each step comes with conditions, promises and a prayer, I -think- there are roughly 144 promises in all, there are differing opinions about many of the promises, but there are a truckload
I love the step 3 and step 10 promises personally
step 3: Big Book page #63.
an effect, sometimes a very great one, was felt at once. More and more we became interested in seeing what we could contribute to life. As we felt new power flow in, as we enjoyed peace of mind, as we discovered we could face life successfully, as we became conscious of His presence, we began to lose our fear of today, tomorrow or the hereafter. We were reborn.
Step 10: Big Book page #84
And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone -even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame.
Big Book page #84-85
We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically.
Big Book page #85
We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid.
So I suspect it helps to know what "The Promises" are and where they are they located in the book, and they ALL come with conditions, "If we were painstaking about this " etc
__________________
Light a man a fire and he's warm for a night, set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life
I'm happy that AA works through attraction rather than promotion. If it were promoted like most "self help" groups, it might go something like this:
Join AA before April 30, and get three months sobriety for free! And work Twelve Steps in Twelve Days, and watch those personal defects melt away! You'll have 10 years sobriety before next Christmas! We guarantee you'll have your wife back, your kids back, your car back, your job back, and even get out of jail, or we'll gladly refund your basket contributions*
*basket refunds can take up to 10 weeks, less processing fee
Join now and get your first 20 years worth of coins in this leatherette binder... but that's not all... these AA coins are GEM BRILLIANT UNCIRCULATED PURE GOLD clad proof!
Actually... the first time I heard the promises read, they sounded kind of vague and pie-in-the-sky. Except for one:
"We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us"
I never was consciously aware that I was frequently baffled by ordinary situations that other people seemed to have been born knowing how to handle. It wasn't about coaching, or parenting... or even experience. I just seemed to not get it. I liked that promise a lot... I wanted it, it made sense to me, it identified a need and offered a solution. And I'm happy to say, I can see that promise happening in my life every day if I have my eyes open and pay attention.
Intuitively knowing how to handle situations which used to baffle me is 50%... heck maybe 75% just keeping my mouth shut!!! I used to think I had to have something to say about *everything*, if I didn't have an opinion or a demand or a complaint or something, people would think I was stupid.
You are so right, we can only be painstaking about about working the steps, the promises are results, we can't work results. Like they say, everyone want to be strong, but nobody want s to lift weights.
Where I got sober the promises where rarely read, but one day a couple years into sobriety, they read them at a meeting and I realized they had come true for me.
I have come to love what the promises stand for and I have developed a different understanding of them for myself.
First, they are things that can never be taken from me, I can only take them away from myself, they are within us and have nothing to do with our outside enviornment or circumstances.
A lot of good things have happened to me in sobriety and there have been some difficult things. The promises don't promise a perfect World or life, but for me they have meant that whatever happens, I can survive and accept the situation, use the tools and be alright with the situation.
If I get nothing more than the 12 promises, I have to be alright with it, I'm still getting better than I deserve.
For those who are motivated by avoiding pain, I think the page 18 promises are interesting... the things that will happen if you stay in the disease (below). Some call them the promises in reverse!
If a person has cancer all are sorry for him and no one is angry or hurt. But not so with the alcoholic illness, for with it there goes annihilation of all the things worth while in life. It engulfs all whose lives touch the sufferer's. It brings misunderstanding, fierce resentment, financial insecurity, disgusted friends and employers, warped lives of blameless children, sad wives and parents - anyone can increase the list.
We hope this volume will inform and comfort those who are, or who may be affected. There are many.
__________________
Rob
"There ain't no Coupe DeVille hiding in the bottom of a Cracker Jack Box."
I can always count on you to shine a bright light on the obvious, and I think the later promises on P85 and 85 were easier for me to understand. You are of course right, the book is full of promises.
Bari, the reading of the promises as practiced here (the ones that start on p83) has only been done in relatively recent times, but I think I would have thought it a bit airy fairy too because they were talking about concepts I had no experience of. I have found this with lots of things in the book, as I have taken an action or step, and subsequently read about it in the book, I often find they are describing how I feel. The action came first, the understanding came later.
Rob, good thought about the page 18 promises, not soemthing I was aware of. you guys are giving me some great ideas for a subject and reading for a meeting.
Well - hearing those promises sure helped me stay on track. It wasn't false advertising because they have come true mostly. Though I knew from the start that they were 9th step promises because that was explained to me and also some folks make a point of saying "These are the 9th step promises:" when they read them.
The promises are things for me that you can only tell came true in retrospect. For anyone new or somewhat new here...Those promises are are not mutually exclusive and they are all on fluid scales. I can say they are all true to a degree for me. The amount that they ring even truer will depend on how I live the steps and continue to work them into my life on a daily basis.
For example Do I intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle me? Yes, I do. does that mean I am never baffled? Heck no. It will only get better as I keep working the program. Yes, I "did" through step 9, but that doesn't mean the promises are all 100 percent complete and true and forever. Those are processes that I can see are now evolving in my life thanks to the steps, to AA, and to my HP.
__________________
Keep coming back. It works if you work it. So work it. You're worth it!
Well - hearing those promises sure helped me stay on track. It wasn't false advertising because they have come true mostly. Though I knew from the start that they were 9th step promises because that was explained to me and also some folks make a point of saying "These are the 9th step promises:" when they read them.
The promises are things for me that you can only tell came true in retrospect. For anyone new or somewhat new here...Those promises are are not mutually exclusive and they are all on fluid scales. I can say they are all true to a degree for me. The amount that they ring even truer will depend on how I live the steps and continue to work them into my life on a daily basis.
For example Do I intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle me? Yes, I do. does that mean I am never baffled? Heck no. It will only get better as I keep working the program. Yes, I "did" through step 9, but that doesn't mean the promises are all 100 percent complete and true and forever. Those are processes that I can see are now evolving in my life thanks to the steps, to AA, and to my HP.
What's beautiful about your post here is it illustrates the "conditions" the step 9 conditions are: " If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through." we will know a new freedom blah blah and for example the conditions on step 3 are: "when we sincerely took such a position" and the conditions on step 4 are:
If we have been thorough about our personal inventory, we have written down a lot. We have listed and analyzed our resentments. We have begun to comprehend their futility and their fatality. We have commenced to see their terrible destructiveness. We have begun to learn tolerance, patience and good will toward all men, even our enemies, for we look on them as sick people. We have listed the people we have hurt by our conduct, and are willing to straighten out the past if we can.
If you have already made a decision, and an inventory of your grosser handicaps, you have made a good beginning. That being so you have swallowed and digested some big chunks of truth about yourself.
So that being said I can track -exactly- what part of my program is slipping or needs to be looked at by sitting down with a sponsor who is -thoroghly- familiar with the book
here are the symptoms? ok, check page x, y and z
Personally for me it's pretty much always back to step 1, realizing I am powerless over whatever the situation is, then step 2, realizing I have tools that can help me get sane, then 3 turn it over......then 4...well....then 5...then 6 and 7 give me gyp, then dammit 8 since I acted out, then 9 to make those damned amends (fix what's broken) and to sum it up...oh look I just did a 10th step, best pray about it and help someone else (11 and 12)
takes less time to do then it took to type it out unless I am having a king baby moment, in which case I only harm me
-- Edited by LinBabaAgo-go on Wednesday 18th of April 2012 09:52:13 PM
__________________
Light a man a fire and he's warm for a night, set a man on fire and he will be warm for the rest of his life
