Recovery Thoughts & Quotes 4/17

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~*~A.A. Thoughts For The Day~*~
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Rationalization

"We 'constructively criticized' someone who needed it,
when our real motive was to win a useless argument.
We were depressed and complained we felt bad,
when in fact we were mainly asking for
sympathy and attention.
This odd trait of mind and emotion,
this perverse wish to hide a bad motive
underneath a good one,
permeates human affairs from top to bottom.
Learning daily to spot, admit, and correct these flaws
is the essence of character-building
and good living."
Bill W., Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pp. 94-5

Thought to Consider . . .

A victim is a spectator in his life.

*~*~*AACRONYMS*~*~*
FEAR
Face Everything And Recover!

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*~*~*~*~*^Just For Today!^*~*~*~*~*


Anonymity
From "The Three Legacies of Alcoholics Anonymous":
"The intense drive that most of us alcoholics have for money, prestige, and power then crashed into the open by way of broken anonymity at the public level. This development of the 1945-1950 period was made even more dangerous by the fact that most of the anonymity breakers meant well. Sometimes these folks wanted to use the A.A. name publicly in order to help other good causes. Sometimes they just wanted their names and pictures in the papers always, of course, to help A.A. [W]e saw that the risk to A.A. would be appalling if all our power-drivers finally got loose at the public level. Scores of them were already doing it.

"So A.A. Headquarters got to work. We wrote remonstrances, kind ones, of course, to every breaker. We sent letters to nearly all press, radio, and publishing outlets, explaining why A.A.'s should not break their anonymity before the general public. Group feeling, combined with the Headquarters efforts, finally squeezed the anonymity breakers down to a mere handful within a few years. Had this tendency not been checked, the whole character of our society could have changed, and its future could have been fearfully compromised."

2001 AAWS, Inc.; Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age, pg. 209

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*~*~*~*~*^ Big Book Quote ^*~*~*~*~*


"It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on
our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a
subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is
a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual
condition."

~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Into Action, pg. 85~

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Misc. AA Literature - Quote




Two Kinds of Pride

The prideful righteousness of 'good people' may often be just as destructive as the glaring sins of those who are supposedly not so good.

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We loved to shout the damaging fact that millions of the 'good men of religion' were still killing one another off in the name of God. This all meant, of course, that we had substituted negative for positive thinking.
After we came to A.A., we had to recognize that this trait had been an ego-feeding proposition. In belaboring the sins of some religious people, we could feel superior to all of them. Moreover, we could avoid looking at some of our own shortcomings.
Self-righteousness, the very thing that we had contemptuously condemned in others, was our own besetting evil. This phony form of respectability was our undoing, so far as faith was concerned. But finally, driven to A.A., we learned better.

1. GRAPEVINE, AUGUST 1961
2. TWELVE AND TWELVE, P. 30

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Member Submitted Quote



My sponsor told me to listen to people, that anyone ( even people that I hate or have resentments towards ) are right over half the time. ( Bryan C. )

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12 x 12 Quote

"To avoid falling into confusion over the names these defects should be
called, let's take a universally recognized list of major human
failings...the Seven Deadly Sins of pride, greed, lust, anger,
gluttony, envy, and sloth. It is not by accident that pride heads the
procession. For pride, leading to self-justification, and always
spurred by conscious or unconscious fears, is the basic breeder of most
human difficulties, the chief block to true progress. Pride lures us
into making demands upon ourselves or upon others which cannot be met
without perverting or misusing our God-given instincts. When the
satisfaction of our instincts for sex, security, and society becomes
the sole object of our lives, then pride steps in to justify our
excesses." (Twelve and Twelve, Step Four, pg. 48)