(ladies too)
The belief that our “misconduct" (“bad” human behavior) is attributable to animal instinct-gone-awry brings us to a heck of a dilemma. Solution-less. It leaves us willfully struggling with our problems for all of our life.
It is a trap that eventually leaves us feeling judged, inferior and less than those we suppose have what we want. Stuck, we never come toward the gift of a spiritual solution to our acquired 'animal' status. (God separation).
Our efforts and our trying to overcome and to become a better person will be redirected away from the internal solution to all human dysfunction. Instead we will tend to focus our attentions toward "faking it" till we "make it" - acting good so we can become good. We might brag of our apparent lack of concern for the judgment of others, while we continue to judge ourselves (Every-time we fall short) – as well as them. (For their judgment)
A human who has decided to take the easy way out - to resign himself to accepting the lie of his mere animal-ism ("I am a victim of my biology") -- believing natural human instinct to be the cause of his troubles, is focusing on symptoms and not causes.
He is a sellout. He is a traitor to truth. He doesn't' know it.The nagging hollowness deep inside him seeks to compensate through acquiring 'spiritual' knowledge.
The 'learning ' of spiritual principles substitutes for understanding and permits him to make spiritual noises to himself and to his fellows, but is a cheap knock-off of spiritual living through quiet stillness - and so his energies will be exhausted as he continues to struggle with temptation, still frequently falling and then making excuses -- even adding more and need to make more and more amends to those whom he continues to harm.
Finally you will give up making no amends at all. Your constant erring and stepping on the toes of everyone around has once again become unmanageable.That is because now the Step Ten task will just be too insurmountable to reasonably hold onto a normal social lifestyle. It is a frustrated lifestyle, becoming slaves to the mechanics or written inventories and amends making, without developing a real God directed gait with which to walk through life.
You compulsively rest on the laurels of your abstinence from alcohol and begin to adopt learned routines of behavior. Instead of turning inward for inspiration and intuition you begin taking direction and guidance out of books, and spiritual manuals and from spiritual gurus who have been doing the same exact thing, except for longer having acquired impressive sets of their own, rote doctrines to dispense. (New and improved Big Book 'procedures") We become like well trained dogs or dancing bears, waiving bibles, Big Book, Inventory sheets and speaker tapes and new age self-help books.
All of your cues for behavior come from others and not form within as you quote others and try to remember what they say so you can repeat them in AA meetings or in social media. Beware of fellowship parrots and followers of AA gurus.
There is nothing inherently wrong with books and speaker tapes or healthy discussion about spiritual principles. They can be quite interesting and helpful and even wonderful introductions to truth, standing in for a live human presentation. But un-recovered or spiritually ill alcoholics will abuse a ham sandwich when given half a chance. One look at how many of us have abused our own meeting places or who parrot sound bytes "heard" will abundantly confirm this phenomenon.
The sell-out will say. "Ah! I' m only human and to be human is just to be an overdeveloped monkey with too much brain". What an ultimate disrespect, lack of gratitude or love for God's creating us in His own image. The sellouts devo-lution will be well underway.
If we ever did come out of the slime then we are retreating back into it through our excuse making.
Peace & Love
Danny S – RLRA
Real Live Recovered Alcoholic
http://recoveredalcoholic.blogspot.com
