A Dozen Steps

The Twistings of Acceptance

by Mark on February 26th, 2008

From The Language of the Heart: Bill W’s Grapevine Writings page 270;

“All of us will encounter failures, some retrievable and some not. We shall often meet with defeat - sometimes by accident, sometimes self-inflicted, and at still other times dealt to us by the injustice and violence of other people. Most of us will meet up with some degree of worldly success, and here the problem of the right kind of acceptance will be really difficult. Then there will be illness and death. How indeed shall we be able to accept all these?”

For me, through the Twelve Steps and from experience - to learn what I needed to learn to get through without a drink in order to pass that on to the next person who would experience the same pain. Because the oldtimers gave us a legacy - to pass this on…

But I need to take care. Alcoholism remains alive and well somewhere, therefore;

“It is always worthwhile to consider how grossly that good word acceptance can be misused. It can be warped to justify nearly every brand of weakness, nonsense, and folly. For instance, we can ‘accept’ failure as a chronic condition, forever without profit or remedy. We can ‘accept’ worldly success pridefully, as something wholly of our own making. We can also ‘accept’ illness and death as certain evidence of a hostile and godless universe. With these twistings of acceptance, we AAs have vast experience. Hence we constantly try to remind ourselves that these perversions of acceptance are just gimmicks for excuse-making: a losing game at which we are, or at least have been, the world’s champions.”

Live in the solution;

“This is why we treasure our Serenity Prayer so much. It brings a new light to us that can dissipate our old-time and nearly fatal habit of fooling ourselves. In the radiance of this prayer we see that defeat, rightly accepted, need be no disaster. We now know that we do not have to run away, nor ought we again try to overcome adversity by still another bulldozing power drive that can only push up obstacles before us faster than they can be taken down.”

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POSTED IN: Beginners Meeting, Reality