Post by THE SIXTH PROMISE on Mar 1, 2004 4:26:48 GMT -5
Any person, whether suffering from an addiction or not, would feel rewarded with "the key to happy, fruitful living" if he or she were the recipient of sobrieth's sixth promise. It states, We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows.
When we give up the bottle, we also relinquish our envy and self-centeredness. We are extremely colorful liars about our successes. How our hungry egos thrived!
Alcoholics are expert people-leasers, always hoping to influence others to respond with material or emotional rewards. Kindness merely for the sake of feeling good was an unthinkable waste of opportunity. Most of our drinking was done to benefit only ourselves. We reveled in the false feelings of pleasure, power, and important that alcohol brought us. Alcohol made us believe we were somebody. even when misery followed a binge, we usually felt the lift we'd experienced was worth the price. Sadly, the agony got progressively worse.
It is a drinker's self-centeredness that disregards the symptoms of our disease and the warnins of loved ones. Our egos, a potent factor during drinking, can continue to retard our spiritual progress. Few things in life are more rewarding than the realization that we enjoy helping others and sharing solutions instead of working evertime to attract attention to ourselves. We find that generosity without thought of return is a cure for problems. It becomes evident that people who share freely seldom sink into depression. We become aware that faulty thinking can be the root of our depression.
Since reaction to people, places, and things is a source of depression, positive thinking depends on close contact with other people. That requires action. We need to focus outside ourselves on the mainstream of life.
Sharing is the key to enjoying the sixt promise. We begin to practice the slogan, "We can do what I can't." By exchanging ideas and experiences with one another, we rid ourselves of emotions that enable selfishness to flourish - pride, vanity, self-righteousness, jealousy, self-pity, resentment, and condemnation. Interest inothers that prompts giving and sharing takes us far from that drunken existence where we complained that the world owed us a lot and never paid off. When sober, we do more than make friends, we understand how to be friends.
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An early sponsor once said to a fellow, "What does binge taste like!" He had said, "Well I don't know if I have a problem or not, I am a binge drinker."
Our denial and our lack of willingness to get out of self can keep us sick for a long time. Isolation is part of our disease, and when we stay "within" ourselves and don't open and share, we are unable to find our true selves. We need to get rid of the darkness so the light of reason can shine. If we can not see, we can't learn what we need to change in order to grow.
When we give up the bottle, we also relinquish our envy and self-centeredness. We are extremely colorful liars about our successes. How our hungry egos thrived!
Alcoholics are expert people-leasers, always hoping to influence others to respond with material or emotional rewards. Kindness merely for the sake of feeling good was an unthinkable waste of opportunity. Most of our drinking was done to benefit only ourselves. We reveled in the false feelings of pleasure, power, and important that alcohol brought us. Alcohol made us believe we were somebody. even when misery followed a binge, we usually felt the lift we'd experienced was worth the price. Sadly, the agony got progressively worse.
It is a drinker's self-centeredness that disregards the symptoms of our disease and the warnins of loved ones. Our egos, a potent factor during drinking, can continue to retard our spiritual progress. Few things in life are more rewarding than the realization that we enjoy helping others and sharing solutions instead of working evertime to attract attention to ourselves. We find that generosity without thought of return is a cure for problems. It becomes evident that people who share freely seldom sink into depression. We become aware that faulty thinking can be the root of our depression.
Since reaction to people, places, and things is a source of depression, positive thinking depends on close contact with other people. That requires action. We need to focus outside ourselves on the mainstream of life.
Sharing is the key to enjoying the sixt promise. We begin to practice the slogan, "We can do what I can't." By exchanging ideas and experiences with one another, we rid ourselves of emotions that enable selfishness to flourish - pride, vanity, self-righteousness, jealousy, self-pity, resentment, and condemnation. Interest inothers that prompts giving and sharing takes us far from that drunken existence where we complained that the world owed us a lot and never paid off. When sober, we do more than make friends, we understand how to be friends.
========================================
An early sponsor once said to a fellow, "What does binge taste like!" He had said, "Well I don't know if I have a problem or not, I am a binge drinker."
Our denial and our lack of willingness to get out of self can keep us sick for a long time. Isolation is part of our disease, and when we stay "within" ourselves and don't open and share, we are unable to find our true selves. We need to get rid of the darkness so the light of reason can shine. If we can not see, we can't learn what we need to change in order to grow.
. I will be back looking for Lin and others.