(week120)  17 April 2014  12 step study workshop

AA 12 x 12 Tradition 2.
For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority- a loving God as He may express himself in our group conscience.  Our leaders are but trusted servants; they do not govern.

Bottom of page 134 paragraph beginning: ‘This brings us to the question….’ until the end of the tradition.

Soul work
look up: “connives”

The bleeding deacon is one just as surely convinced that the group cannot get along without him, who constantly connives for re-election to office, and who continues to be consumed with self-pity.
Q1a) Write on principles above personalities what does that mean?

b) When you bump into someone’s controlling personality how do you become a Good Orderly Directed member of the group?

c)  Do you constantly connive power or re-election to office and continue to be consumed with self, self, self?

Happily, most of them survive and live to become elder statesmen. They become the real and permanent leadership of AA. Theirs is the quiet opinion, the sure knowledge and humble example that resolves a crisis.
These people sit at the back and pray and wait to be asked. And when they are asked they have wisdom and don’t go on for ages especially about the ‘good old days’, it is the here and now that matters.

Q2. Are you an elder statesman yet? 

1. 
   
2. Are you praying? 
   

c) Are you reading and studying and digging deep to learn wisdom? Or is it all about you, getting your own comfort, trying to get your own way, manipulate people?

Circle words in bold:
This is the experience which has led us to the conclusion that our group conscience, 
well-advised by its elders, will be in the long run wiser than any leader.

Next week back to the Big Book and starting step three.

We need a group of god-honoring people in our lives. People who are in recovery and who love us enough to tell us, no, that is not a good idea. Anyone who has themselves as a sponsor has a fool for a sponsor.  We need accountability because we can lie to ourselves – denial and rationality – due to our selfishness and self-centredness.

Q3.
NOTE: Write this down:
When you don’t know what to do.  
Sit down and use your own wisdom. Make sure you are in a quiet environment then on the right-hand side of the page write down your experience strength and hope on the subject.  
Then empty your head and go to God: I am clueless I have this this and this. I am going to go to you. Listen to God and write down on the left hand side anything that comes to you.
Then go to recovered godly people and run it by them before you make a major decision. (It does not have to be whether or not you buy or sell your house). This week practice this way and write down what they say on the left hand side of the page.
Then wait a few days and return to back to Quiet Time: ‘I am clueless I have all this but I want your input God.’ 

Be sure to go to godly people as others may urge you to  take care of No 1. No 1 will never be taken care of. You do God’s will and you will be taken care of. That has been Stephanie’s experience after 36years of recovery. Thy will not mine be done.  It may not look as imagined, but it works out beautifully.

ENDS