Today’s reading:

Big Book p. 61 beginning of last paragraph THROUGH p.62 end of 1st whole paragraph:

“Our actor is self-centered—ego-centric, as people like to call it nowadays. ….Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, sel-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt.”

Today’s Soul Work:

Look up: fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, self-pity, retaliate, provocation

Q1) Take the last paragraph on p. 61 of the Big Book and dissect it.

( “Our actor is self-centered…Whatever our protestations, are not most of us concerned with ourselves, our resentments, or our self-pity?”)

Take the businessman, politician, minister and the safe cracker and write how you used your addiction like they did to keep yourself alive.

“Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.”

Q2) Write about the root of our problems in comparison to the root of a plant – which we learn, in biology, is what the whole living organism depends on — the root, that is.

“Driven by a hundred forms of fear…”

Q3) Write about the fear- that I am not going to get what I want.

“Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate.”

Get down into your core and do soul-surgery on this selfishness and self-centeredness.

How can you recover?- via an Action Plan!

Ask God: How can I best serve thee?. Thy will not mine. God will show you action plans that will help you help others. And when you help others you will get the reward you were always looking for when you were demanding people give you everything.

Q4) Really look at your ‘hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking and self-pity’.

Look up these words and personalize them by listing your ‘hundred forms’ of each and going into them. Dig deep.

Once you realize that you have set the ball in motion to be hurt, take this statement:

‘I have set the ball in motion to be hurt’ and start getting into the habit of looking at yourself (instead of looking at others and thinking ‘ woe is me’). You will be so much better off.

Q5) What did you do to set the ball in motion? Was it your look, your action, your word (i.e. a slight)?

Stephanie doesn’t agree with many old timers’ belief that once recovered, the process of ‘recovery’ ends.

Says Stephanie: Recovery never ends. It just gets deeper, deeper, and deeper.

(Mark Houston and Joe Hawk said: ‘We learn and learn and learn’ throughout the 25 years they ran workshops.)

And she doesn’t want an overview anymore- which is what happens when you read a lot more pages (i.e. a whole chapter) of the Big Book at one meeting. She wants the real meat, which is why she’s happy to go slow, word by word- because every word has so much meaning.

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