:The AA Blog

All of us have been hurt, betrayed, lied to or disappointed in our lives. It goes without saying. If you’re a human, you will develop resentments and grudges. The issue is not whether you should or shouldn’t have them — the question is whether you will release them.

If you hold on to your resentments, you are chained to the past. If you hold on to your grudges, your life is predictable because you will continue to be stuck in repetitive ways of thinking and behaving. And until you forgive, you will never have full access to all of who you are because forgiveness is the hallway between the past and the future. It’s imperative to practice forgiveness and the only way to do that is to move out of your head and into your heart. It’s difficult to do it alone, but all you have to do is ask for divine grace. It’s almost impossible to forgive in your mind because it really has nothing to do with your mind – it has to do with your hurt heart.

Unknowingly, your resentments define who you are and who you can be in the future because you can be only as great as the size of your heart. And if your ability to love from deep in your heart is clouded by the experiences of the past, you are in a lose-lose situation. You first lose your freedom when something penetrates your emotional body and affects you so painfully. And you lose again when you decide to hold on to the bad feelings instead of turning them into powerful fuel for the future.
- Excerpt from The 21-Day Consciousness Cleanse.

 At the core of our 12 Steps is Finding Answers In The Heart (FAITH) and forgiveness is key to the process. Until we forgive others, we can never truly be forgiven. We will not know freedom and our spiritual experience will not be complete. This is a program of action, and that requires working The Steps. It doesn’t matter how sick we perceive someone else to be, if we have resentment against him or her and we haven’t admitted our part then they will continue to occupy space in our head, which blocks our freedom.

Forgiveness is the key to unlocking your greatest future. If you truly want to liberated and live a joyous and free life you have to forgive and release your resentments.

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The truly humble person is unable to feel anger.

Sure, we get angry. Who doesn’t? But anger gets in the way of recovery and renewal. It’s all-consuming, a kind of undifferentiated negative energy that gets in our way. Anger colors everything. It immobilizes us. We get stuck in it. Anger is one of the many things that led us to our addiction. If we can root out each of our addictions, one at a time, we might be able to find out how we got here in the first place. Not only will such a process of self-inquiry help, but without anger, it may no longer hurt.

In recovery, we transform our anger into humility-and bow our heads before God. Stop blaming yourself or those you love. Without humility, we can’t do Step Seven. What’s humility anyway? Simply a recognition that we’re not so great and that God is greater. That’s why we ask God to help us in the process of removing our shortcomings. In working our Twelve Step Program, we are partners with God, only God is a little more so.

When you feel yourself get­ting angry, look at yourself in a mirror. Think over why others may be angry at you. It’s a humbling experience.

 From: 100 Blessings Every Day

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The classic literature on spirituality suggests a more ancient image for the spiritual life-that of building, in which our life’s time is occu­pied in the construction of a spiritual edifice, a kind of “home.” The rich metaphor of architecture offers several advantages. It invites thinking in terms of tools, materials, and choices: Which tools, which materials do we choose to use in shaping our spiritual abode? Building also requires a plan, or at least planning, and so thinking-how and what one chooses to see-makes a difference to the outcome. And finally, although the task of construction is laborious, mistakes can be undone, and what is learned from them can be used to improve the structure as a whole.

While both growth and building add useful shades of meaning to the experience of spirituality, the spirituality of imperfection offers an alternative image for the spiritual life: that of journey. And the practice of storytelling brings the metaphor of journey to life, for the narrative format of “what we used to be like, what happened, and what we are like now” suggests the particular kind of journey that is a pilgrimage. That “plot” bestows on the storyteller the “identity” revealed by the story, the identity of the kind of “journeyer” who is a pilgrim.

The pilgrimage metaphor conveys spirituality’s open-endedness by reinforcing the essential distinction between confident certainty and the mysteries of uncertainty. A pilgrimage involves not a settled and determined lockstep march to a fixed point, but a winding, turning, looping, crisscrossing, occasionally backtracking peregrination-the ancient name for “pilgrimage” that conveys its wandering essence. It is no accident that Bill Wilson’s favorite image, repeated literally thousands of times in letters to people who sought his advice, de­picted sobriety as “a kind of Pilgrim’s Progress.” “We claim spiri­tual progress rather than spiritual perfection,” reminds the A.A. Big Book.

The paramount discovery gradually dawns as the pilgrimage continues-the realization that the ultimate goal you seek is not some reality “out there,” but the awaken­ing of an identity that lies within.

“Our destination is never a place, but rather a new way of looking at things,” writer Henry Miller noted. Such a destination fits T. S. Eliot’s description in concluding “Little Gidding.”

We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.

The goal of the pilgrimage that is spirituality is, simply, to keep moving-spiritually–one step at a time. Or as Confucius said, “It does not matter how slowly you go, so long as you do not stop.”

Excerpt from “The Sprituality of Imperfection”

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When someone does something that causes him to have an unpleasant or painful experience, he almost universally commits never to repeat the unhealthy behavior ever again. How often have you gotten nauseous after consuming too much food or drink and declared never to do it again? Or went to sleep much too late only to be exhausted and irritable the next day, and then committed to yourself to now always be in bed before 11:00 o’clock?

But like most everyone else, after a few days pass and the discomfort has faded into a memory, you’ll then easily repeat the identical negative behavior once again. This is because when the pain of a situation is no longer present and you saw there had been a relief, you will simply lose your once crystal clear clarity.

Imagine someone has a heart attack and is rushed to the emergency room. While recovering in his hospital bed, he prays to God to change his ways and begin to eat better, start an exercise program, and work much less at the office. Sadly, these commitments are often short-lived because when the pain of the experience subsides, the old habits naturally and quickly return.

The fact is if you’re in pain, it’s not very hard to have clarity on the type of behavior you want to begin to have. Anyone can do that. What takes effort and is uncomfortable is to accept God’s will and not drift back to your old ways when you aren’t in any physical discomfort.

A great way to accomplish this is: before you want to repeat a self-destructive behavior, stop and spend a moment to mentally recall the aftermath of the past event. It’s very important actually to take yourself through the whole experience and “bring it back to life.” This will make it real to you all over again.

Although there will always be a part of you that will try to push this negative association away so you can engage in your old ways, the more you’re able to focus on the negative consequence, it will dilute your anticipated pleasure. And just like lifting weights, the more you do this, the stronger and stronger your “God Power” will become, making the behavior easier to and easier to resist. So, reliving it in your mind today will allow you to have a happier and more meaningful life both today – and tomorrow.

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