(week 128) 12 June 2014 12 Step Study Big Book workshop

Buddy groups

712 432 0800 pin 587213#

Sundays 11-noon EST

Thursdays 9.30am EST

These are not being well-attended. Stephanie urges us to support them or they will need to close. Get committed. They are a place where those who are not doing the work can come and get encouragement and the motivation to begin.

Trust & Rely workshop Fridays noon EST

Stephanie says: ‘Angela and I started Trust and Rely meeting on Fridays so you can practice with us and with Pamela who has been coming. We have the willingness to practice turning our will and our life over. If the meeting doesn’t fly, it doesn’t fly. I really did do it for all of you. I don’t want to be a distant sponsor. I want to be down in the prayer and meditation trenches with you.

In the workshop we pray, share, write and meditate together. No greater intimacy outside of a relationship between a man and a woman. Encourage you all to come and give feedback about it.’

stephaniew324@gmail.com

Big Book page 60:

Being convinced we were at Step Three, which is that we decided to turn our will and our life over to God as we understood Him. Just what do we mean by that, and just what do we do?

The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. On that basis we are almost always in collision with something or somebody, even though our motives are good. Most people try to live by self-propulsion.

Soul work

Q1 Have you memorized the Third Step Prayer? If not, are willing to do so?

Q2. Are you convinced that:

a) you are powerless and that when you try to have power in the area of your addiction (food, drugs, alcohol, work, people, etc) your life becomes unmanageable?

b) there is nothing you or anyone or anything human (doctor, philosophy etc) can do to relieve you of your powerlessness?

c) the God of your understanding can and will if you seek your Higher Power?

Q3. Are you seeking your Higher Power?

Q4. a) How are you doing the Third Step?

b) How are you going to God and asking to be relieved of the bondage of self?

c) When you are relieved of the bondage of self, are you giving your Higher Power the credit?

Q5. Have you had an experience so that you are able to really mean but for the grace of God, I am sober? No judgment in the answer.

Q6) Stephanie says:

“It’s alright to confront when people are not doing what they said they would; ‘the truth will set you free!’ But, at first, it will make you very, very angry.” Write on that.

“Being convinced, we were at Step Three… The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success.” (BB p.60 para 3-4, sentence 1)

The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self will can hardly be a success.

Q7) What does a life run on self-will (ego) look like in your life?

“On that basis we are almost always in collision with something or somebody even though our motives are good. (On that basis — of self-will; collision- since each one wants his own way.)

Q8) Are you in collision with anybody today? If yes, examine if you are in your self-will.

[Stephanie really recommends that you put in everything that your Higher Power has ever shown you so as to really get the stark reality. And when you do your fourth step you will really understand what selfishness is. For example: Stephanie says when she used to help people she realized that this was how she puffed herself up as ‘a good person’. Now each morning she prays: ‘God help me sit at the back and let somebody else get the glory. Even though I may know how to do something let me guide somebody else into it.’]

Most people try to live by self-will: willing themselves. If you say to yourself, I can do that with God’s help, you’re moving the right muscle. But if you are trying to do it on your own then you are living in b) probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.

Q9) What do you do with others when your motive is good and you don’t bring God into it?

( Stephanie says even though she had a good motive of trying to bring others along to recovery, she was puffing herself up over the first 23 years of being in program).

Q10) Give an example from your life of why Stephanie says that any life run on ego can hardly be a success.

Updating the members’ list:

sue7263@aol.com

Anyone who is on this line and who listens to the recording, please e-mail Sue and she will compile an updated list of those who are committed.

Will keep the other list and you can call people on that list. They may need your encouragement or they may not return your call.

Recovery is about having healthy relationships with God and with others.

When you are busy trying to rope people into recovery and prayer and meditation and doing the steps and your step one recovery you are not going to feel like doing your drug. You feel on top of the world. Stephanie says: ‘It was when I was a lone wolf, isolated and I believed nobody liked me, poor Stephanie, nobody called me. That was very dangerous and a binge was right around the corner. When I started getting out, taking little jobs in the groups, holding doors open for people, being in relationship with people in the world instead of behind the curtains doing my drug, I got well.’