week 163) 12 February 2015 12 Step Study Big Book All Addictions workshop

Stephanie has two groups on this number: 712 432 8816 pin no. 32450#

They have the same callback number: 641 715-3900 with different pin numbers:

(1) Tuesday 8am EST Dr. Bob and the Good Old Timers pin no. 298913#

(2) Thursday 8am EST 12 Step Study All Addictions Big Book Workshop pin no. 95666#

There is an open buddy group on Sundays 11-12noon EST 712 432 0800 pin no. 587213#

(Thursday 9.30am EST group has disbanded.)

Please send donations to support the website to:

Stephanie Whiting

P O Box 531

North Pembroke MA 02358

To be added to the phone list and receive the soul work and notes from each workshop contact: sue7263@aol.com

Fourth step format

This is on the website or ask Sue for it. Stephanie asks us to write out the format for the first five people we are doing resentments on so we really get to know it. With steps 10, 11 and 12 we are all going to be living in this format.

This is a God-guided process.

Stephanie is not our God and does not have our answers. We have our own Higher Power who will give us the answers. She says: “I will keep repeating this as people sometimes get the wrong impression.â€

Keep the 12th step uppermost in our minds. Stephanie prays that our motive for showing up each week is to have a spiritual experience. The 12th step is not ‘having had a Stephanie experience’, it means in doing this work you meet your Higher Power on an intimate basis.

The Third step prayer is inviting God in. However, remember to ask for humility by saying the Set Aside Prayer. You don’t want to risk being unable to see clearly because you are full of pride.

AA Big Book page 66, first paragraph.

It is plain that a life that includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness.

To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while. But with the alcoholic whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die.â€

Why are we doing this work? Because our life has been full of futility which means you work hard but you get nothing but unhappiness. We may be sober a long time but we really understand that emotionally and spiritually our life is going nowhere; and deep down we know we are not where we are supposed to be. Life is just not what we know our Higher Power wants for our life.

It is plain that a life that includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness.

The Big Book is telling you something. You need to look what you are doing about your resentments. Stephanie says: “I have been doing this for 15 years and less than four months ago I went to a spiritual workshop and figured out I had a deep deep underlying resentment towards my son. How many times have I talked about him leaving and still crying about it? How many resentments papers did I write, talk about it? My son is thirty years old tomorrow. He left when he was 12 1/2. He came back when he was 21. Four months ago God gave me the blessing of realizing I still had a deep resentment towards my son. And I am so grateful. I really worked through it and went into deep deep prayer and meditation. I talked to the appropriate spiritual people and I did the appropriate spiritual work. Its gone. We really had a beautiful mother-son relationship and then he left. Ever since then our relationship has never really been the same.

I know now that my heart had a deep resentment which which has dogged me all my life: ‘how could he?’. That took a lot of spiritual work in the last four months. That last workshop truly changed my life. Everything God brings me today is life changing. I am so grateful. I take what God brings me very seriously. I don’t fluff it off. I was told by people: You need to go to this workshop it will change your life. You know what? That was God talking to me through people. So when people say things to you listen and bring it to Quiet Time. Ask: God did you just send a messenger that is trying to tell me something? The chances are the answer is yes. I cannot tell you how relieved I am. I didn’t know my heart had chains on it. Because the quality of my life is pretty good. I love my life. But knew I had something about my only son and I still really could not think about what happened without crying. Re-resentment means re-feel. And the resentment has been taken away.

Fifteen years of doing this work. Do you think you are done because you have written a couple of resentments? No. I am grateful from my own personal experience I never did think I was done. However I can live in complacency and denial. I don’t want to do that. The work I did in that workshop is very very important. If you are interested in knowing about the workshop e-mail me and I will tell you about it. It is not 12 steps or Big Book.

To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while.

look up: squander. That is an awful action . We are not doing God’s will. We are squandering the time our Higher Power is giving us to be a recovered person walking in the world with our emotions given over to our higher power. And so instead of getting all emotional about things we can respond in a recovered way by asking God: What is appropriate here?

When we have deep resentments we cannot align ourselves in a healthy emotional way with our Higher Power. We squander hours being hysterical, depressed, overly happy or overly giddy. We move from allowing God’s will to control us to letting our self-will and emotions control us.

That means we experience God in our day-to-day emotional life. Of course you experience God when you go to Quiet Time but what about when you are washing dishes, making the bed, driving to work, having a one on one conversation? We need to be in that spiritual place where we are doing God’s will in all of those day-to-day little experiences that can create a wonderful healthy recovered life. That is the spiritual experience that living in steps 10 11 and 12 in awareness brings.

The alternative is that your experiences create a life of brutal futility and a deep unhappiness.

Awareness is great but awareness without the willingness to work on it, is self-abuse. So today pray for the willingness to be willing. When we are willing, the awareness comes.

I was not ready for that workshop but God knew he had some work for me. I have been doing my work for the last 15 years. Steps 10- 11 and 12. working one on one with mentors. When I was ready I got the awareness. Why? Because I have lived in willingness to be wiling and let God talk to me and change me. That is a spiritual experience.

…this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal.

Yes because firstly it can lead us back to our drug and secondly because we can be a ‘dry drunk’ and miserable having nothing except our own unhappiness and futility. When you have deep resentment you say: I forgive them but will never forget them. Who hurts when you say that? It shows your inner interior of futility and unhappiness.

[More sober alcoholics commit suicide than active ones, because they have had recovery and put down the addiction but are not willing to put down the deep resentments.]

Why are we doing this work?

Because our life has been full of futility which means you work hard but you get nothing but unhappiness. We may be sober a long time but we really understand that emotionally and spiritually our life is going nowhere; and deep down we know we are not where we are supposed to be. Life is just not what we know our Higher Power wants for our life.

We do this work because not do so is fatal, not necessarily that we will go back to the drink or food. For Stephanie going back to the food at twenty-three years in the program was a blessing. “It got my attention. …I slipped from a) and b) on page 60 to c). Where I needed to be from day one in recovery. Seeking God like God is my only answer. It took me 23 years of trying to rely on human power. Thinking: I know I am powerless, I have a food plan, I have a group. They didn’t have the power. Even though I didn’t have my white light experience for three years, I had a peace around my food I never had before. God was protecting me. I was seeking him with everything I had. I had mega willingness to have a spiritual experience with God. And it really changed my life.â€

…this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit.

Q1. Take each half of the sentence and write on it and then on the whole sentence.

This will keep you motivated to keep writing your resentments. Do you want to be cut off from the sunlight of the Spirit? We need all the grace we can get. So it may mean going to God and praying about a deep resentment every day until it lifts. Need to question yourself. We have talked about holding my resentment close like a teddy bear. I am never letting anybody close again. I want to stay a victim because you did x y x when I was innocent and I am keeping the victimhood alive. Today you are now volunteering to be a victim.That’s what deep resentment is all about. Its gone and done and I am holding it close and defending my right to volunteer to be a victim. I don’t want to do it.

Harboring means you s.o.b. I am never forgiving you. I know, I did it with my only child. He meant more to me than anything yet my deep resentment came to light. That is insanity to hold a resentment when you know you can let it go. Definition of insanity: doing the same thing time and time again expecting a different result. Some people just stay dry drunks, and they are pretty miserable to be with. You may have met them or may even be one yourself.

Are you having trouble with personal relationships, with self-pity, with trouble in any area of your life? Look at the insanity of holding onto a deep resentment.

When I am really willing to be humble and look at myself, God shows up.

Action Plans

When we live in deep resentment, we don’t try to get out of it and we keep justifying it saying: They did this and that. Who are we to judge another’s character defects? Even before we get into looking at our character defects we can make personal action plans so we don’t have to live in all this emotional deep resentment – the crap we keep ourselves stuck in.

Q2. What could be your action plan for today?

Boundaries

And we maintain healthy caring boundaries. Do not need to even be loving boundaries. Al-Anon says above all else be courteous and kind. If you cannot help a person then don’t hurt them. Our action plan is to do the work to get over these resentments and then create healthy boundaries around these people being courteousness and kind. We do not isolate nor do we do the opposite and be inappropriately welcoming.

Writing Step Four

Let me repeat you are not doing this. You are taking your will and asking God to give the willingness. God is doing the writing through you. If you do the Third Step prayer and Step Aside prayer before you start, you will never write anything wrong or one word that is not supposed to be there.

End

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