251 to 260

251: Don't be discouraged by mistakes. Moving may not be the best solution. Face the music where you are and focus on recovery. Wait before making a decision. 252: Alcoholism is a lonely business. AA helps us find understanding and companionship. We don't have to be alone anymore. 253: Prudence is important, but fear and anger can cloud our judgment. We can learn from our decisions, whether they are right or wrong. 254: The satisfactions of right living are not about being special or having material possessions. It's about service, acceptance, and love. 255: AA needs understanding and goodwill from various sectors. We must use modern communication wisely and selflessly. 256: A mystic experience made me feel special, but I realize it was just a gift of grace. Others can have similar experiences through AA. 257: The key to helping newcomers is being an alcoholic who has found sobriety. Personal experience is more important than medical knowledge. 258: A 251 Face the Music. Don't be too discouraged about that slip. Practically always we drugs learn the hard way. Your idea of moving on to somewhere else may be good or it may not. Perhaps you have got into an emotional or economic jam that can't be well handled where you are. But maybe you are doing just what all of us have done at one time or another. Maybe you are running away. Why don't you try to think that through again carefully? Are you really placing recovery first or are you making it contingent upon other people, places or circumstances? You may find it ever so much better to face the music right where you are. And with the help of the AA program went through. Before you make a decision, wait in these terms. Letter 1949. 252 Alone No More. Alcoholism was a lonely business, even though we were surrounded by people who loved us. But when our self-will had driven everybody away and our isolation became complete, we commenced to play the big shot in cheap bedrooms. Failing even this, we had to fare forth alone on the street to depend upon the charity of passers-by. We were trying to find emotional security either by dominating or being dependent upon others, even when our fortunes had not totally embedded. We nonetheless found ourselves alone in the world. We still vainly tried to be secure by some unhealthy sort of dominance or dependence. For those of us who were like that, AA has a very special meaning. In this fellowship, we begin to learn right relations with people who understand us. We don't have to be alone anymore. 12 and 12, page 116 through 117. 253 Look Before You Leap. Wise men and women rightfully give a top rating to the virtue of prudence. They know that without this, all important attributes, little wisdom is to be had. Mere looking before we leap is not enough. If our looking is charged with fear, suspicion, or anger, we had better not have looked or act at all. We lose the fear of making decisions great and small as we realize that should our choice prove wrong, we can. If we will learn from the experience, should our decision be the right one, we can thank God for giving us the courage and the grace that caused us so to act. Letter 1966. 254 Satisfactions of Right Living. How wonderful is the feeling that we do not have to be specially designated among our fellows in order to be youthful or profoundly happy. Not many of us can be leaders of prominence, nor do we wish to be. Service gladly rendered, obligations greatly met, troubles well accepted or solved with God's help. The knowledge that at home or in the world, outside, we are partners in a common effort. The fact that in God's sight, all human beings are important. The proof that love, freely given, brings a full return. The certainty that we are no longer isolated and alone in self-constructed prisons. The surety that we can fit and belong in God's scheme of things. These are the satisfactions of right living, for which no pomp and circumstance, no heap of material possessions, could possibly be substitutes. 12 and 12, page 100 and 24. 255 Wider Understanding. To reach more alcoholics, understanding of AA and public good will towards AA must go on growing everywhere. We need to be on still better terms with medication, religion, employees, governments, courts, prisons, mental hospitals, and all enterprises in the alcoholism field. We need the increasing goodwill of editors, writers, television and radio channels. These public outlets need to be opened ever wider. Nothing matters more to AA's future welfare than the manner in which we use the colossum of modern communication. Used unselfishly and well, it can produce results surpassing our present imagination. Should we handle this great instrument badly? We should be shattered by the ego manifestations of our own people. Against this peril, AA members, an anonymy before the general public is our shield and our buckler. 1. Twelve Concepts, page 54. 2. Grapevine, November 1960. 256 A Special Experience. I was a recipient of a tremendous mystic experience or illumination, and at first it was very natural for me to feel that this experience stalked me out as assumed as somebody very special. But as I now look back upon this tremendous event, I can only feel very grateful. It now seems clear that the only special features of my experience were its suddenness and the overwhelming and immediate conviction that it carried. In all other respects, however, I am sure that my own experience was essentially like that received by any AA member who has strenuously practiced our recovery program. Surely the grace he received is also of God. The only difference is that he becomes aware of his gift more gradually. Grapevine, July 1962. 257 Key to Sobriety. The unique ability of each AA to identify himself with and bring recovery to the newcomer in no way depends upon his learning, his eloquence, or any special individual skills. The only thing that matters is that he is an alcoholic who has found the key to sobriety. In my first conversation with Dr. Bob, I bore down heavily on the medical hopelessness of his case, freely using Dr. Silkworth's words describing the alcoholic's dilemma, the obsession plus allergy theme. Though Bob was a doctor, this was news to him, bad news, and the fact that I was an alcoholic and knew what I was talking about from personal experience made the blow a shattering one. You see, our talk was a completely mutual thing. I had quit preaching. I knew that I needed this alcoholic as much as he needed me. 1, 12, and 12, pages 150-151. 2 AA Sums of Age, pages 69-70. 258 Beneath the Surface. Some will object to many of the questions that should be answered in a moral inventory because they think their own character defects have not been so glaring. To these, it can be suggested that a conscious examination is likely to reveal the very defect the objectionable questions are concerned with. Because our surface record hasn't looked too bad, we have frequently been abandoned to find that this is so simply because we have buried these self-same defects deep down in us under thick layers of self-justification. Those were the defects that finally ambushed us into alcoholism and misery. 12 and 12, pages 53-54. 259 Servants Not Master. In AA, we found that it did not matter too much what our material condition was, but it mattered greatly what our spiritual condition was. As we improved our spiritual outlook, money gradually became our servant and not our master. It became a means of exchanging love and service with those about us. One of AA's loaners is an Australian sheet man who lives 2,000 miles from the nearest town, where yearly he sells his wool. In order to be paid best prices, he has to get to town during a certain month. But when he heard that a big regional AA meeting was to be held at a later date, when wool prices would have fallen, he gladly took a heavy financial loss in order to make his journey then. That's how much an AA meeting means to him. 112 and 12, page 122. 2 AA comes of age, page 31.