(week 147) 23 October 2014 12 Step Study Big Book workshop

12 x 12 Step 3

Today’s reading:

AA 12&12 p. 36 last line- thru top of p. 39 end of 1st line:

“But the moment our mental or emotional independence is in question, how differently we behave. …..Whether in Alaska or on the Salerno beachhead, their dependence upon a Higher Power worked. And far from being a weakness, this dependence was their chief source of strength.”

Soul work

Look up: self-sufficiency.

Q1. How is it working for you?

Q2. When checking out new people to trust, take it slowly. Share a little and check to see what comes back. Then share a little more and again see if you like what comes back. Practice it this week and then write on how it went. How did it made you feel, taking a bit of a risk, trusting somebody?

This brave philosophy, wherein each man plays God, sounds good in the speaking but it still has to meet the acid test: how well does it actually work?

Q3. What do you want to do with your will power? Do you want to align it with the will of your Higher Power?

Q4. Good questions to bring to God:

a) Why do I need you God?

b) How well does my playing God actually work?

Q6a) Do you know any normal people?

b) Do you know people living on self-sufficiency?

Everywhere he sees people filled with anger and fear society breaking up into warring fragments. Each fragment says to the others, ‘“We are right and you are wrong.â€

Q7a) Are you filled with anger and fear?

b) Are you part of society that is warring with other parts of society or are you disagreeing with certain things in our society, being able to accept them while not accepting the way someone thinks?

c) Who is showing that in your life?

d) You (put your name here) are right, they are wrong. How are you going to handle it?

Q8. Write on the slogan: Let go and let God or be dragged.

We realize that the word “dependence†is as distasteful to many psychiatrists and psychologists as it is to alcoholics. Like our professional friends we too are aware that there are wrong forms of dependence. We have experienced many of them.

Q9. Write about faulty dependence.

a. Whom do you have a faulty dependence upon?

b. If you don’t have a faulty dependence, write about how you were able to get out of that faulty dependence and into a healthy dependence upon your higher power and into trusting relationships.

Dependence on an AA group or a sponsor means you are on b) This is OK for awhile. Then need to go down to a higher power to c).

Q10. Are you in a) b) or c)?

“When World War II broke out, this spiritual principle had its first major test. …. Would they be able to …stand up under fire…?”

Q(11 ‘Under fire’ – are you under fire, under stress right now? How did you handle it?

Did you hunker down and go to God? Or did you go to faulty dependence? Or your addiction?

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