Various people tried to help me, from around 1986 onwards. In 1993, I start to adopt ideas and take actions that really, really helped. These ideas and actions literally saved my life (because they enabled me to stay sober and not commit suicide, the latter being a constant risk). In 2002, a new layer of ideas and actions came in, which upgraded me. In 2009 and 2010, yet more layers of solution came in. In between these key dates, other ideas and actions drip-dripped into my life from numerous sources.
The result of this is that I live a life that is highly effective, highly efficient, and remarkably harmonious given where I started.
Key ideas
- Recognising that most of what I came into recovery believing was wrong
- ... that most of what I was thinking was destructive to myself
- ... that most of what I was feeling stemmed from a delusional mindset
- The past has gone and cannot affect me
- I can be affected only by what is currently going on in my mind
- There is no one to blame for how I feel
- I am responsible for how I feel, 100% of the time, no exception
- It is possible to be absolutely fine, whatever is happening
- My problem stems from my values, my delusions, my demands
- Selfishness and self-centredness are my only core issues
- My solution must lie in utter destruction of self
- Self-forgetting and self-sacrifice are the name of the game
- Utter reliance on God
Key actions
- Inventory, confession, amends
- Prayer and meditation
- Service
- Building a life around being of constructive use to others
- Putting myself last not first
I cannot stress enough that the reason I incorporated the above ideas and actions into my life is because they worked, and nothing else worked.
I was horrified, insulted, offended, incredulous, and vicious in my response to the above ideas and actions when they were offered to me, and I was equally haughty and excoriating towards those who propounded them, out of their own experience.
This quotation from ACIM is apropos:
T-2.III.3. The acceptance of the Atonement by everyone is only a matter of time. ... 3 You can temporize and you are capable of enormous procrastination, but you cannot depart entirely from your Creator, ... 5 Tolerance for pain may be high, but it is not without limit.
It is important to understand this, when communicating with or trying to help others.
The ego will fight the above, tooth and claw, because they represent not only life to me but death to it. Because I was identified with the ego, I fought for it, against myself.
The ego will, in particular, latch onto forms of 'healing' which do not really heal but provide temporary relief, through the shifting of guilt onto the past and onto others, and the elevation of self to occupy so much of the picture that the illusory locus of fear in the world is temporarily obscured.
Many people presented the above ideas to me way before I adopted them, and they taught me this valuable lesson: don't try to yank unripe fruit off the tree.