Thursday Morning Big Book Step Study

Thursday Morning Big Book Step Study


Recording for February 13, 2014

February 13, 2014

(week 111) 13 February 2014 12-step Big Book study workshop


 


AA 12 x 12 Step 2 page 3, the entire paragraph which starts with:


‘As psychiatrists have often observed, defiance is the outstanding characteristic of many an alcoholic…’’ ending with ‘Damn this faith business!’ we said.


 


Website:  www.164andMore.com


A member kindly shared the above website which publishes a book where every sentence in the Big Book (pp.1-164) and the 12 x 12 is indexed alphabetically.


 


The God of my understanding.


This Big Book study workshop is a 12-step group, not a religious group. Stephanie would like us to use the words ‘the God of my understanding’ when sharing. This is not disrespectful. We leave the naming our God to outside of the rooms because we want unity and we cannot have one group calling God one thing and another group calling God another. She accepts all of us wherever we are and wants us all to allow others the dignity of finding their God as we allowed her the dignity to find her’s.


 


Soul work


 


look up: defiance.


 


The Set Aside prayer is probably the most important of prayers.


Q1.  Are you willing to put aside everything you think you know about yourself, about your life, about the influence your past life has had on you today and the God of your understanding?  Are you willing to live in this moment with a changed attitude?


 


Q2. If you do not have joy peace and serenity, there is a lie you are telling yourself.


What is the lie you are telling yourself?


 


‘…defiance is the outstanding characteristic of many an alcoholic’.


Q3. Write on this sentence.


a) Are you defying God right now with your attitude? a.Are you defying God with your attitude of phony respectability?


 


So it’s not strange that lots of us have had our day at defying God Himself. Sometimes it’s because  God has not delivered us the good things of life which we specified, as a greedy child makes an impossible list for Santa Claus.


Q4. Is that what you are bringing into your Quiet Time?


 


Self-righteousness, the very thing that we had contemptuously condemned in others, was our own besetting evil. This phony form of respectability was our undoing.’


Q5. Are you going to God with a list, maybe even unconsciously, because you deserve it? [‘I deserve it, I deserve it,’ rather than ‘thank you, thank you.’]


 


Q6. Turn around each of the sentences below and ask yourself: Am I doing this?


 


 


 


 


a.More often, though, we had met up with some major calamity, and to our way of thinking lost out because God deserted us.


 


b) The girl we wanted to marry had other notions; we prayed God that she’d change her mind, but she didn’t.


 


c) We prayed for healthy children, and were presented with sick ones, or none at all.


 


d) We prayed for promotions at business, and none came.


 


d) Loved ones, upon which we heartily depended, were taken from us by so-called ‘acts of God.’


 


e) Then we became alcoholics, and asked God to stop that. But nothing happened. This was the unkindest cut of all.  Damn this faith business!†we said.


 


Ends