January 27, 2017 (this day)

Last week at this time I was staying awake to leave for the Women’s March on Washington at one in the morning.  When I first heard about the march I had said to Carole, “Let’s go.”  And Carole, being Carole, said, “Let’s get a bus and 54 of our best friends to go too!”  It was grueling, to say the least.  My daughter was there but I didn’t get to see her.  I live a good distance from Washington and I’m a very poor sleeper so I ended up literally not sleeping for days traveling there and back.  I remember the old AA adage that no one dies from a lack of sleep and I didn’t want to be the first.

It was very difficult, and I frequently got overwhelmed with sadness at the reason we all went there.  That said, it was uplifting and amazing and I’m energized to fight, fight, fight.

Every day I take at least ten minutes to fight this ridiculous president.  My idea is to make my call, write my letter, etc etc, and leave it, but I spend much more mental energy on it daily than ten minutes.  I want to cut that way down, because the mental energy I spend is not healthy or constructive.  I’ve subscribed to the New York Times on my Kindle in an effort to get informed and spend that energy in a constructive way, and to support the Times, which relentlessly bashes those who need to be bashed.

I’ve gone maybe my longest time without a meeting.  I couldn’t go to my Saturday night meeting, coming back from the march.  I wanted to go Monday but my stomach was too upset.  The rest of the week I didn’t try.  I’ll go tomorrow to my home group and I’m not really worried about it, just recording it here.  I’ve been sober for 32 years.  I plan, one day at a time to never drink again and to always be an active member of AA.  I just didn’t go to a meeting for approximately two weeks.

An AA friend wrote and deleted a Facebook post, but I read it.  She asked how all this worrying about things that haven’t happened yet goes along with One Day at a Time and other AA tenants.  It doesn’t, and when I see worry in myself I try to turn it into something constructive.  My ideal is fight serenely.  Because I am a good AA, but this is an emergency.  Changing the things I can’t accept if they are indeed changeable is a good thing.  AA gave me life and I’m living it.

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Ego continued

In my previous post I quoted every place the Big Book and the Twelve and Twelve mention ego.  I don’t pretend to know what the common understanding of ego was at they time they were written, or what Bill W knew and thought about Freud or anything else.  To me, ego in those books seems to refer to myself, sometimes my high regard for myself.  The books also say that lots of us, when drinking and when we stop, have too high a regard for ourselves, or alternately, or at the same time, too low a regard for ourselves.  I’m especially struck by the passage that says, “Our eyes begin to open to the immense values which have come straight out of painful ego-puncturing.”

Drinking, I was more on the depressive side and apt to think very poorly of myself.  This too is a sign of an ego that needs to be punctured.  Whatever my problems, I was ultimately willing to risk my life and yours by drinking when I knew what terrible consequences resulted.  I didn’t, because I couldn’t, do any real work on myself, do anything meaningful to improve my life or to improve myself.

Now I’ve been sober for a long, long time.  I’m sure I have a better perspective on my ego, more humility and more of a sense of my right size and right place.  Yet I struggle mightily with this, especially now.  Applying this part of the program to my present unhappiness tells me, for one thing, that if I had a healthy ego, I wouldn’t be so badly affected by world events.  Angry, disappointed, heartbroken even, but not so crushed and shattered.  I believe in the value of ego-puncturing and at this point I truly welcome the pain that will bring me a newer attitude and a newer outlook, and I know I will be privileged way beyond what I deserve to experience this yet again.

Ego

First, the places in the Big Book and the Twelve and Twelve where ego is mentioned:

He may be kind, considerate, patient, generous; even modest and self-sacrificing. On the other hand, he may be mean, egotistical, selfish and dishonest. -Big Book page 61

They took inventory all right, but hung on to some of the worst items in stock. They only thought they had lost their  egoism and fear; they only thought they had humbled themselves. Big Book page 73

After we came to A.A., we had to recognize that this trait had been an ego- feeding proposition. In belaboring the sins of some religious people, we could feel superior to all of them. 12 and 12 page 30

This, of course, is the process by which instinct and logic always seek to bolster egotism, and so frustrate spiritual develop- ment. 12 and 12 page 36

The problem is to help them discover a chink in the walls their ego has built, through which the light of reason can shine. 12 and 12 page 46

Our egomania digs two disastrous pitfalls. Either we insist upon dominating the people we know, or we depend upon them far too much. 12 and 12 page 53

ALL OF A.A.’s Twelve Steps ask us to go contrary to our natural desires . . . they all deflate our egos. When it comes to ego deflation, few Steps are harder to take than Five.  12 and 12 page 55

Our eyes begin to open to the immense values which have come straight out of painful ego-puncturing. 12 and 12 page 74

Over the years, every conceivable deviation from our Twelve Steps and Traditions has been tried. That was sure to be, since we are so largely a band of ego-driven individ- ualists. Children of chaos, we have defiantly played with every brand of fire, only to emerge unharmed and, we think, wiser. 12 and 12 page 146

I realized that my five-dollar gift to the slippee was an ego-feeding proposition, bad for him and bad for me. 12 and 12 page 163