Short form: Final responsibility and ultimate authority for AA world services should always reside in the collective conscience of our whole fellowship.
- Surrender to love through service
- When we love, we want to serve. Love requires an action in order to express itself.
- That action is called service.
- We dedicate our sobriety to serving the collective conscience of the fellowship.
- We dedicate our lives to serving the universe and thereby God.
- We put the greater good first, at all levels.
- Finding opportunities for service
- We do this by listening out for requests, which are the expression of that collective conscience, within AA and outside AA.
- In practice, that means we say 'yes' to a reasonable AA request.
- We extend this attitude to requests at home, at work, and in the world.
- The practice of Concept I requires the practice of the Twelve Steps, particularly the first three.
- Here are examples of how the Steps fit in with Concept I
- The price of non-surrender (Step Zero)
- Alcoholism is progressive; ego-slavery is progressive.
- The transition from insanity to sanity (Step One)
- Concept I enables me to move from the illusion of separateness to the reality of interdependence.
- Nothing in the universe can live separately.
- To live means to be interdependent.
- The insanity suggested in Step One is the attempt to exist alone.
- The sanity referred to in Step Two is the sanity of recognising my place in the whole.
- The move from self-reliance to God-reliance (Step Two)
- Bill transferred final responsibility and ultimate authority for AA world services to the fellowship.
- I transfer final responsibility and ultimate authority to God.
- God works through the collective conscience of the fellowship.
- The transition from selfishness to selflessness (Step Three)
- We give up living to achieve our own ambitions in order to be of service to others.
- The dedication required by Concept I is like the surrender asked of a monk.
- The higher level of spiritual existence demands renunciation of self.
- We go from being takers to being givers.
- We go from being slaves to the ego to being servants of God.
- We go from being self-seeking loners to being humble servants.
- The transition from transaction to love
- Love is giving of oneself for fun and for free, expecting nothing in return.
- At work, I seek to serve the beneficiary of the work instead of seeking money, power, or prestige for myself.
- The purpose of service is not to achieve the ego goals of pleasure, power, property, and prestige.
- Anything good I receive is welcome, but it is freely given as a gift from God.
- The surrender is therefore unconditional.
- My steadfastness does not depend on the results.
- What happens when we surrender?
- Surrender is to a process not a state.
- It requires ongoing inventory.
- It requires ongoing reading, listening, and discussion.
- Surrender to God is progressive.
- Spiritual progress means growing in understanding and effectiveness.
- The more I surrender, the greater the challenges, responsibilities, and opportunities.
- God always enables me to meet these well.
- Once surrender has taken place, the way back to the old life is barred.
- The energy released through the spiritual awakening must be turned outwards to service.
- If it is not, it corrodes the vessel that attempts to contain it.
Inventory:
Looking at the above ideas:
Where am I currently falling down?
What can I do differently?