The women's story, in the back of the book for identification purposes; she may have been talking about the book being open to the page that says "we cannot live with anger"-pg 66:
"It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while."
SO many hours went into seething, obsessing, strategizing, manipulating, rehearsing conversations that were never to be....when I could have been doing something worth while....but, back then I had nothing worth while to do really because my life was a reflection of that sort of thinking. I needed to have a complete overhaul in perception before I could be free to learn a new way to live and think.
"But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die."
My hope and quality of is contingent upon the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience...not resting on it, but a commitment to staying in the Sunlight of the Spirit. So all the hours I put into the inversion, in the disease, doing and thinking about all those I hated and resented, now I was gonna get to use that time to get well instead.
"If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison."
Most people don't obsess the way an alcoholic can. I mean we can nurse and nurture and resentment like no other. In fact, that psychic energy is super powerful and dangerous. I want nothing to do with it anymore. I will only hang out or associate with an alcoholic who wants to get well...otherwise, no thanks-I do NOT want to be in an untreated alcoholic's head...It's a REALLY horrific place there!!
"If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison."
Most people don't obsess the way an alcoholic can. I mean we can nurse and nurture and resentment like no other. In fact, that psychic energy is super powerful and dangerous. I want nothing to do with it anymore. I will only hang out or associate with an alcoholic who wants to get well...otherwise, no thanks-I do NOT want to be in an untreated alcoholic's head...It's a REALLY horrific place there!!
"We turned back to the list, for it held the key to the future. We were prepared to look at it from an entirely different angle. We began to see that the world and its people really dominated us. In that state, the wrong-doing of others, fancied or real, had power to actually kill. How could we escape? We saw that these resentments must be mastered, but how? We could not wish them away any more than alcohol."
No, I can't wish or positively think my resentments away. No human power, not even mine, could relieve me of the obsession of the mind with alcohol-or resentments. This had to involve God, inventory, a wise sponsor giving me alternate angles, and an overriding willingness to be free-and that is work.
I was told I had to pray for each of them every time they entered my into head-Bless them change me. I had to be consistent with it. The ego doesn't like when I do something outside of the prison of its suggestions. It gets louder before it's removed. I need to fight back with consistency and commitment to stay the course-or be tormented to death or driven to seek relief in something else but God. I don't give them the authority to destroy me anymore.
"This was our course: We realized that the people who wronged us were perhaps spiritually sick."
What a GAME CHANGER this line was for me! It didn't occur to me that anyone else was spiritually sick. I knew they sucked, but to extend the hand of compassion that, my God, they are sick, I am sick, we all have been infected in one way or another by this world-why do I give sick people dominion over my life?!?
So we become God's employee, not beholden to the dis-ease or the dis-eased people. We ask God to teach us from this angle so that we stop making everything they do about us. I begin to operate not from a place of anger that "they" hurt me-but instead from a place of, forgive them God, they do not know what they are doing, just as I didn't know what I was doing when I was doing the same things. Bless them, change me!!