Chapter 7: Best by Test!
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Navigator’s Note: How do you respond to the perception that you have lost the Power of Choice (in drink)? —that you are acting a manner contrary to your imagined intentions. Ironically, you have a choice in how you respond, and each response creates even more choices, sculpting out very different frameworks of reality for the chooser. In this new walk though the Steps as an allegory for a progressive, evolving relationship with Power, we will ultimately learn how to close the gap between knowing what to do and being able to do it.
RESPONDING TO THE CHALLENGE OF LOST POWER:
“Why the Steps were written down in the order in which they appear today and just why they were worded as they are, I have no idea.” Bill Wilson 1960
FIRST RESPONSE: Acquiring Power (Chapter 4, What Works Poorly)
(Study Crossover: Steps 1-3)
SECOND RESPONSE: Transmuting Emotions into Usable Power (Chapter 5, What Works Better)
(Study Crossover: Steps 4-9)
THIRD RESPONSE: Neutralizing the Power of Alcoholism (Chapter 7, Best by Test!)
(Study Crossover: Steps 10 & 11)
Given a perceived absence of Power in Choice—and the difficulties in just looking for More Power, and the limitations of Transmuting (perpetually occurring) Emotions into Usable Power—the Stepper comes to understand that a more powerful opponent can best be defeated by separating it from its Power source, by Neutralizing Power. In a final act of perception, they see that their alcoholism was powered, not by craving, but by their own opposing to desires to drink and not drink—the War within Self. This is the ultimate act of Self-Knowledge: to know that they are their alcoholism, they have always been their alcoholism, they have always had the freedom to choose in drink. This is one of the many great Research Lessons brought to us by the long-time sober who started drinking again, then returned to A.A. and were finally allowed by the AA Power-Brokers to talk honestly about the new way out that they discovered. We do do have to repeat their experiment in choice in order to benefit from it.
VIDEO HIGHLIGHT: One-Step-Sobriety (Currently Inactive)
FINISHING WHAT BILL WILSON STARTED
1: You Can’t Go Home Again
2. A Sponsor’s Lament
3. Higher and Lower Powers
4: What Works Poorly
5: What Works Better
6: Relapse or Research?
7: Best by Test!
8: To Alcoholism Professionals
9: The Fellowships Afterward
10: To The Chronically Human
11: A New Vision for a New Generation
Chapter 6
INTO ACTION
“There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation, and prayer. Taken separately, these practices can bring much relief and benefit. But when they are logically related and interwoven, the result is an unshakable foundation for life.” Twelve Steps & Twelve Traditions
Public Domain
“We are only operating a spiritual kindergarten in which people are enabled to get over their drinking and find the grace to go on living to better effect.” Each man’s theology has to be his own quest, his own affair.” (Letter 1954)
Chapter 7
BEST BY TEST!
Excerpt:
…7.49 The primary purpose of Self-Examination is not to rid ourselves of emotional disturbances or character defects. The primary purpose of Self-Examination is to learn to transmute the energy of simple emotions into a usable power that is always available and never dissipates.
Self-examination approached in this manner neutralizes the Mental Obsession.
7.48 The primary purpose of Prayer is not to greedily seek Knowledge of God’s Will for us and the Power to carry it out. The primary purpose of Prayer is to expose the discontinuity of human will and the paradoxical force with which the momentum of past choices persist.
Prayer approached in this manner neutralizes the Phenomenon of Craving.
7.49 The primary purpose of Meditation is not to become self-indulgently calm or reach a higher level of awareness. The primary purpose of Meditation is to expose our lack of immediate, continual self-consciousness and the paradoxical ferocity with which distorting echoes of that consciousness persist.
Meditation approached in this manner neutralizes the Mental Blank Spot…
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© 2019 Michael V. Cossette
Chapter 6
Public Domain
Chapter 7
© 2019 Michael V. Cossette
Chapter 6
Public Domain
Chapter 7
© 2019 Michael V. Cossette