The material presented
here is not Al-Anon Conference Approved Literature. It is a method
to exchange
information, ideas, feelings, problems and solutions on a personal
level.
During the hard times, when everything seems to be off course, when life is taking us down the path of despair, when we are feeling trapped, and sadness, sorrow and fear seems to invade every area of our lives, what can we do to find the light of hope and healing?
That is what this writing is about. I am not a educated writer. I am a man who has walked through the storms of life, and felt everything any other human being has felt. I have walked down the path of despair, on so many levels, on so many fronts. I have felt so trapped. Unable to change circumstances, situations, living environments, relationships, finances, or even myself. I have been paralized by sadness, sorrow, and fear. At times, depression was so overwhelming, that I thought the Weeping Willow tree, was a symbolic statue that represented my existance and purpose.
However, I don't want to lean so heavy on the trials and tribulations of my life here. I want to write about how I have overcome them. How I have found freedom from them. Not once, but time and time again.
I will write here about the law of Faith. Everything is governed by something. Nothing happens in a vaccum or void. Everything has cause and effect. A beginning and an end. The one stronghold, that substains the human experience is faith.
Faith, in and of itself, is not the answer to our life conditions. It's the proper application of the law of faith that changes life conditions. I have seen and used both sides of the coin of faith. "I know nothing is ever going to change". "Things are only going to get worse". And as long as I held onto that faith, nothing changed, and things got worse. At least within me, my perception and attitude. On the other side of the coin of faith is, "change is right around the corner", "God has my back, He didn't bring me this far to simply drop me off", "this door closing means another is about to open", "falling apart is a sign of something good, better, coming together, it's in the making right now." As soon as I spoke that faith, change happened immediately, starting with a calm within myself. I stopped feeling like I was unable to breath, the tight constriction I felt around my chest loosened. Fear was replaced with hope and excitement about tomorrow.
Learning how to live in the law of faith, is where we will find relief from the life conditions that seemly hold us in mental, emotional, relational, financial bondage.
The law of faith operates universially. It has no parameters or boundaries. Our faith is portable. We take it every where we go, into everything we do. It brings about the manifestations of it's application... positive or negative.
This writing will be ongoing. I hope that you have the opportunity to see how your circumstances, situations, mental and emotional conditions, and every area of your life is being dicated by the law of faith, and that how it is being applied in your life, is what determines the course of your life experience.
John F.
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Lois W. Co-founder of Al-Anon - "I didn't know about Bill, but I had faith that I was going to be fine." (Lois Remembers 1979)
Bill W. Co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous - "Faith has to work twenty-four hours a day in and through us, or we perish." (Alcoholics Anonymous - Bills Story)
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The Thought Closet
Take a moment to visualize your internal thought closet. Where you pull from and hang the warerobe that you are wearing each day. "I'm such an idiot!". That garment needs to be rejected, and rephrased, so that it is wearable. It should not be put in your thought closet as is. You don't want to wear it. "I learned a lesson, now I'm smarter." Now, that garment looks a bit more comfortable, doesn't it? It does not have the stain of self loathing on it.
"I can't do anything to change this!" That garment needs to be rejected and rephrased. You don't want to hang that in your thought closet to possibly have to wear tomorrow. "I can change my response to this, I can change how much energy I'll give to this". Hang that in your thought closet, it doesn't have the stain of inadequacy on it.
What we hang in our thought closet is what we pull out of it to wear.
Faith is the umbrella that covers what we put into and pull out of our thought closet. As soon as we speak such words, entertain such thoughts, we are putting them under our umbrella of faith. Positive or negative. Again, faith has no parameters or boundaries.
Watch what you are putting in your thought closet, and that is what you will see coming out of it. As you work towards the rephrasing process, you will discover that less and less of what you are wearing has the stain of fear on it. Less and less will have the stain of self pity on it. Less and less will have the stain of hopelessness on it.
In the rooms of recovery, we will often hear..."it's an inside job". "Happiness is an inside job", "Change is an inside job"...ect. However, unless we understand how our inside world, effects the outter conditions of our experiences, we can erroneously set ourselves up with a faith that doesn't work to bring about change, but instead reinforces the conditions that manifest, and fortify our pain, our lonliness, our fears, and our insecureties.
What are you hanging in your internal closet today? If you don't want to wear it, stop putting it in there! It's covered by the faith that it is aligned with inside you.
John
P.S. More to come... This is just a beginning on the Umbrella of faith. I hope you enjoy, learn and grow as a by product of this writing. I believe by faith that I will.
Comments and editing help is welcome.
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" And what did we gain? A new life, with purpose, meaning and constant progress, and all the contentment and fulfillment that comes from such growth."
Interesting, I came to MIP today to write about having a hard time in dealing with my higher power not just fixing things...Just expecting things to get better just because my HP has the power to simply make it better. Why doesn't my HP make this stress and anxiety go away? Why doesn't my HP make this anger go away? Why doesn't my HP make my wife not drink anymore? Why doesn't my HP make my wife be not depressed anymore?
Reading this was very helpful, and was really what I needed to see. Undoubtedly, not a coincidence. Thank you.
Faith is the pressure of the Spirit on humanity, the force that urges humanity towards what is better, not only in the order of knowledge but in the whole order of spiritual life. Faith, as the inward sense of truth, points to the object over which fuller light is shed later.
—S. Radhakrishnan
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Even today when the intellectual temper of the intelligentsia is too often that of materialistic scepticism, we come across remarkable incidents which modern science cannot account for. The unbelievers scoff and ridicule or try to explain it all by using big technical terms which fail to explain and only explain away. The credulous in awe whisper, "a miracle!" and yet feel somewhat ashamed and sometimes rather fearful.
The fact is that our modern knowledge, while it may tell us about the external side of nature and the outward man, is still ignorant of the inner forces which exist in both. "Spiritual and divine powers lie dormant in every human being," says H. P. Blavatsky, "and the wider the sweep of his spiritual vision the mightier will be the God within."
Most people today deny the very existence of the inner God and are thereby blinded to its manifestations. Face to face with expressions of the Divine, they prefer to deny or ignore. The many "providential" escapes; the varied strange and remarkable "interventions"; the so-called coincidences—all can be traced to their real source, the manifested spirit within.
Many of these unexplained occurrences are made possible through the power of faith. But what is faith? What does the modern man know of faith and its workings? What are the ingredients of faith? What did the ancients mean when they affirmed that "with faith all things are possible"? The educated intellectual is likely to laugh and say it is all ignorant superstition: how can faith cause anything to happen? And yet that same man will accept the fact that if you give a pellet of bread to a patient suffering from constipation and he believes you have given him a laxative, the effect on his body will be that of a laxative! "Oh, yes, but that is easy to explain," says the sceptic. "That is a clear case of auto-suggestion and demonstrates the action of the mind upon the body." Very well. But was not that action of the mind the result of the belief held by the patient? Or—to change the illustration—when a man is incapable of walking, though there is no actual physiological incapacity, because he thinks he has suffered an injury to his legs, what paralyses his legs? Is it not his belief (or faith) that he has received an injury that incapacitates him for walking? Such examples could be multiplied. And the same principle explains the common experience that we do better when we have faith in our own skill of knowledge, that self-confidence brings success and lack of it failure. The question really is: Can anything be done without a measure of faith? Could we live at all without faith? Rightly did the one man write to a large population of others: "For we walk by faith, not by sight."
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We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that He may be found. It was so with us. (Alcoholics Anonymous - There is a Solution)
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The Inner Spirit, Higher Power, or as referred to by many, God, cannot take up comfortable residency in a thought closet that is full of negative, condensending, degrading, devaluing, and belittling stains on the garments hanging within it. The thought closet is the "secret place" within, that stores our true nature. Our faith. The thought closet, or secret place is where our moral fiber gets manufactured. Many of us often feel we have been abandoned by the higher goodness that we see others enjoying as a way of life. This is not true. We have not been abandoned, we are simply wardrobed in the wrong garments, stained by our thoughts feelings and words. Those who seem authentically happy, joyous and free, if we could peek into their secret place, we could easily see why. They are not hoarding the negative stains of yesterday, manufactured by thoughts, feelings and words. Their closet's would reveal far less stained garments that they have to wear every day. They had the ability to choose what they are going to wear today. Upon wardrobing themselves in dress of integrety, or the pant of compassion, putting on the blouse of wisdom, or the shirt of trust, the shoes of sturdiness, they are picking up the umbrella of faith to place over themselves. A faith that works. Their moral compass is now properly aligned with that of the Inner Spirit, the Higher Power , or God, and they can sense the presence of the universial goodness, because it is radiating from them!
John
-- Edited by John on Friday 9th of December 2011 02:45:04 PM
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" And what did we gain? A new life, with purpose, meaning and constant progress, and all the contentment and fulfillment that comes from such growth."
Faith is everything and everything is faith. The modern world increasingly puts its faith in materialism, and in technological inventions. Our society is going off track, losing sight of the higher powers that govern our lives. This trend started hundreds of years ago, but now it's becoming extreme.
I am very grateful that decades ago I started to see through the materialist illusions. Faith does not come easily but the option is always there for those of us who have the basic belief.
I am so glad I found Alanon years ago. It came along at the right time for me, because I had already been questioning materialism for a long time and had already started to believe in something greater than myself, something greater than humanity.
Now it's second nature for me to believe and to pray and ask for guidance. I am skeptical and distrustful of humans, but I have complete trust in my God. The trust may be complete, but it is not unwavering. I get mad at God, and when I am really down I feel he abandoned me.
When people abandon and reject me, I might feel that God did also. But he never abandons or rejects anyone who calls on him and asks for forgiveness and guidance.
Faith in my HP has given me more than I could have dreamed of. It might not seem like much to someone else, but for myself I know I have been given what I need.
Right now I am having a lot of stress at work and sometimes I ask my HP why he is making me go through this. I was starting to feel genuinely happy for the first time in my life, and then had to run into this road block.
But for reasons not known to me, things had to happen this way. My will is saying one thing, but that might not be God's will. I have to trust and LG&LG. When I talk to people, they make me feel worse.
I am like a crying child trying to get consolation from its mother. I don't get that from people. I can only get that kind of help from God.
But to clarify -- I am not saying we should never talk to people, and should only talk to God. Sometimes God speaks to us through other human beings. We can share our faith and experience with other human beings. What I mean is, we should be careful about giving and getting advice. People are complex with multiple motives, most of them hidden. People don't even know what they are thinking most of the time, especially on the deeper hidden levels.
If we want infinite truth and love, we have to ask our HP. If we ask people, they are on the same level as we are and they are just as confused and lost as we are. We can share with each other and encourage each other, but we can't really guide each other. When someone asks us for guidance we can point towards God.
Recently some people I asked tried to give me guidance about the problems I have at work. None of them mentioned God or anything supernatural. Their advice was empty and confusing. I have to be so careful to hide my faith, because there are a lot of people who would judge me negatively for it.
Not so long ago, religious people were considered the most stable and sensible. Now, at least in some areas, it is just the opposite. Some of my relatives decided I am mentally ill because I have mentioned God in their presence. At the company where I work, those of us who believe in God have to keep it secret.
When I was reading your posting I was reminded that when I arrived at the rooms of alanon I had NO Faith. I was angry at the Universe and that MY Plans had not worked out.
I slowly began to trust the rooms of this wonderful program, the meetings, the tools and when working step 2 I used alanon as my higher power. Slowly , painfully, working the Steps, I found my Higher Power This power was not part of any organized religion and was perfect, love wisdom, knowledge etc. This Higher Power was not here to DO my Will I was asked to conform myself to Life on life's terms. Hard difficult concepts for me to accept My HP ways were not my ways and trusting and doing the next right action was all I was asked to do.
Finding my HP and having complete trust in my HP was a gift of working all the steps. Step 12 states "Having had a Spiritual awakening" we practice these principles in all our affair. I found that awakening and each day I must maintain that spiritual connection or I could easily fall asleep and be again become so lost in the wilderness
Thanks for reminding me of the gifts this program has given me.
