Today or yesterday I thought again about my old conception of 12 step recovery. My old conception was a caricature like Stuart Smalley. I thought the AA program was going to be a lame form of therapy with daily afirmations and sappy slogans. I realize now that this was a cheesy parody due to the shallow observations of outsiders. I realize now that the program is a discipline for living that has great strength like the martial arts or the samurai code. While the steps are used by persons who have hit moral and spiritual bottom, the program is actually the same steps that normal people use in their disciplines to find power, peace, and direction.

I intend to expand on this thought through further meditation.

This morning I struggled to wake up. Tonight I cooked dinner, practiced baseball, played washers, cut branches, and took a bike ride.

Today I had to be assertive with my wife and not react to her reaction. She seemed to get over it.

I got to go to the noon meeting.

Thanks be to God for a great day and for re-covery.

Tonight I watched a program about te way human beings track time in their minds. I watched as the scientists tried to show mechancal processes in the brain and were "asonished" at the measurements that showed an area of the brain that was actie supposedly while the person was tracking time. It didn't even
blink or anything it wa sjust a bright spot.

This made me think of how today's society wants to explain the workings of the mind by looking at the biology of the brain. I am starting to see this as like trying to understand the design of a database by taking x-rays of the hardware of a computer.

This morning I resisted acting resentful to my wife for sleeping until 10. We made it o church on time with low stress anyway. At church she didn't stick to our discipline method with our 2 and 3 year old and she and they fought the whole time. I was able to stay out of it and stay focused on the mass. Afterward I eventually gave in and gave her a litany of her mistakes.

This afternoon whe went resale shopping for a long time and I got resentful.

This evening she went to her meeting and afterward I enjoyed talking to her.

I am still resentful that she is undisciplined.

Last night I heard that a good friend of mine relapsed after six years sober. This morning I thought about how difficult it is to cope with the loss of all that time. I thought particularly about the social aspect of the fellowship. I see an emphasis on time as a measure of credibility that I believe can be demoralizing to someone because it is so difficult to get back.

I also think that this is problematic for other reasons. Often I have seen persons who have extensive clean time not practicing the program anymore or worse yet sharing opinions that are contrary to the principles of the program. I have also rarely heard a person with 10 plus years clean say that they have practiced the program rigourously the entire time or that they have never had self-induced unmanageability. A couple of prominent examples I know of have had psychological breakdowns that required hospitalization but they didn't use so they get to keep their clean time.

Another example is people who quit working the program but don't use so they get to keep their clean time. I believe the measure of credibility or efectiveness of a person in sobriety ought to be how well they practice and communicate the principles of the program, in short quality over quantity. I believe that time is relevent to the the quality of one's sobriety but I think the threshold for this is 3-5 years. This idea comes to me from the fact that this is how much time the founders had when they wrote the Big Book.

I think that clean time can also be an ego feeding proposition, especially if it is announced.

I lost the rest of this post when the login timed out.

Today I felt like I was too lax at work.

I went to the noon meeting, we finshed the vicious cycle. I left the meeting meditating on cycles of progression and cycles of delusion.

I thought today about how my idea of the program was the Stuart Smalley caricature. I thought AA was lame and weak. I am grateful to have a new conception that the program and teh people as something strong and a source of power.

Tonight I fulfilled my service cmmittment to the book study meeting.

My sponsee didn't show up.

3:34 AM, I woke up and started thinking and coldn't go back to sleep. I began to worry a lot and I was resentful at my wife so I had to try and stop it but I just couldn't. I realized that I have some emorional unmanageabiity so I had to look at why. I asked myself, how did I do in my spiritual practices today?

I didn't wake up easily this morning and didn't do much in the way of prayer and meditation this morning. Tonight I was very busy then I got caught up in watching a ballgame late and fell asleep right afterward so I didn't get in an evening review.

I realized that I was neglecting the most important part of my life wellness in my psychic health. I remembered that I can start over at any time so I decided to do these things now. I had a focused meditation and I reviewed the day.

I was resentful at how my wife uses her time and this is intefering with our reltionship.
I was afraid of our financial situation and ai couldn't stop trying to solve the furture now and my fear was killing my ability to enjoy the present.
I was something else...

Today I saw a picture of my son on his trip to the museum. he was posing in front of a Pleisiosaur. I immediately went into this spiel about the dinosaur and said that they found one just like that in a creekbed near our home.
My wife asked me how I knew about this anc I realized it was from a trip to the very same museum to the very same exhibit when I was a kid like my son.

This afternoon I got a call from a treatment center aasking for a speaker for family night. I tried to coordinate for my wife to go but she could not make it. I got to go and tell my story. I was grateful to get to cover this side of the triangle tonight.

I got to have a long conversation with a good friend in the program tonight.

I got to have a good life today thanks to a spiritual awakening.

The past few reviews I have neglected to write that I have been having using dreams most every night since Saturday. That night I didn't do a review for some reason.

Last night I griped at my wife for yelling at the kids right before bed. I don't know if I was right but that doesn't matter. All tha matters is that I recognize that I was angry and I need to ask God to remove my anger.

Today I went to a meeting at noon, the topic was tradition 11. Part of what I talked about was how I have seen some public figures who are in the program who have respected the tradition. At the time I didn't know why this encouraged me in my recovery. I realized afterward that it is because that I see that they are practicing humility and this tells me that they are practicing the program to some extent.

This morning I heard that George Carlin died. I thought about how he was an influence in my life in my agnostic tendencies. I thought about his criticisms of religion and theism in general. I thought about how I used to have the same conceptions. I listened to his piece called "religion is bullshit". He made typical atheist dogmatic statements like :

"eligion convinced the world that there's an invisible man in the sky who watches everything you do. And there's 10 things he doesn't want you to do or else you'll go to a burning place with a lake of fire until the end of eternity. But he loves you! ...And he needs money! He's all powerful, but he can't handle money!"

followed by "...this is bullshit!"

I thought about how I liked a lot of what he philosophised on and how clever he was with words.
I thought about how these ideas sound convincing on the surface.
I thought about how I adopted them as dogma without doing any objective research.
I thought about how I thought myself to be a free thinker when in fact I was closed minded.

I thought about how ironic it was that I was to find out that it was these ideas were the bullshit.

I went to a meeting at noon and we read "The Vicious Cycle". I remembered that I identified a major aspect of my story in the cycles of addiction.

Tonight I watched an episode of Intervention that helped me again get an idea of how much (actually how little) detail I should tell in my story.