AA Thought for the Day
(courtesy AA-Alive.net)

April 11, 2021

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Pride and Fear
So when A.A. suggests a fearless moral inventory, it must seem to every
newcomer that more is being asked of him than he can do. Both his pride
and his fear beat him back every time he tries to look within himself. Pride
says, "You need not pass this way," and Fear says, "You dare not look!"
But the testimony of A.A.'s who have really tried a moral inventory is that
pride and fear of this sort turn out to be bogeymen, nothing else. 
- Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, (Step Four) p. 49 

Thought to Ponder
Swallowing my pride will not get me drunk. 

AA-related 'Alconym'
P R I D E  =  Pretty Ridiculous Individual Directing Everything.

A Member Shares:
My name is Mike and I'm an alcoholic. Fear and pride, well false pride, ah, the eternal siblings. The false pride I carried, at times still carry, is what stirred the fear that I wasn't really what others thought I was. Not realizing most never thought about me at all. But writing the 4th Step, that was, at least for me, a purging. It was an emotionally awful exercise and discipline, yet it was also a revelation of healthy fear. I had heard, and I believed, not to leave anything out or I'd drink again.....I was afraid of that. I should have been. The 5th Step was a walk in the park in comparison. I was finally telling the truth to the one I'd lied to most effectively while drinking, me. And when this was over, real freedom began to re-emerge. That's Steps 5 - 9 in concrete ways. And then stepping through the door into the vast vista of the Eternal, which comes, as I experience it, in Steps 10 - 12. But I HAD to do Step 4 first. There's a scene in one of my favorite movies, A River Runs Through It. In it, Norman is writing, again and again, for his father, and getting rejected, "Again, half as long." But then he gets it, the work is clear, honest, straight forward. And his father says, "Good, now throw it away." After that Norman is released to go into the Montana wild to live. That feels to me like the 4th Step. Good, now throw it away and live. Thanks for being here because you're all part of my sobriety and I appreciate it.

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(All shares are reproduced with the kind permission of the person sharing)

Thanks to all of you for sharing so generously of your experience, strength and hope in carrying the AA message.
Grateful to serve,
peyton

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