'Each group has but one primary purpose—to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers.'
- My entire experience, drunk and sober, has prepared me to carry the message.
- The message is one of death and rebirth.
- What is my primary purpose today: To carry the message? Or is it: sex, money, power, prestige, comfort, thrills, and appearance?
- To work Tradition V means to place carrying the message first and rearranging everything else around it.
- What's more: the secondary purposes can be achieved only if the primary purpose is achieved.
- Worrying means that my secondary purposes have become primary and that I'm not trusting that all will be well if I simply serve God by carrying the message.
- Tradition V means surrendering all my ambitions, whatever the cost.
- It also means surrendering all my beliefs, whatever the cost.
- The purpose of getting sober is not to get comfortable: if my primary purpose is being comfortable, I will resent all my duties or I will not do them.
- How do we carry the message? We bear down on the hopelessness of life before we surrendered to God, and the resolution of our problems since we surrendered to God.
- To practise Tradition V, we ask ourselves what skills and abilities we have and where these can be best employed in AA.
- Step 5 tells me what's wrong with me; Tradition V tells me how that can be used to help others.
Inventory:
Looking at the above ideas:
Where am I currently falling down?
What can I do differently?