Accountability
As I take a look around, I see invariably that not everyone in AA is doing the “work” necessary to initiate recovery or to become ‘recovered’ in the fellowship by following the set of guides set forth in the big book to gain the essential freedom it has to offer, freedom from bondage of self.
Many times I sit and listen to a miriad of excuses that encompass all sorts of angles and levels designed specifically to overt the responcability of sitting down and becoming “ACCOUNTABLE” for our own selves.
Accountability is probably the number one character defect of all alcoholics presently decided by myself, that causes many or all of the ‘harms to others’ that we can cause. We duck, and dodge, procrastinate and delude ourselves into a state of innocense so profound, we ultimately drown in it.
The ISM is somewhat jokingly reffered to as an acrnym for ‘I sponsor myself’ not all that funny if you are doing this, and I should know, since I once did, it didn’t work out for me, I hope that you have better luck with it, or not.
But if you are sponsoring yourself, the reason that you are could either be, that you are smarter than anyone you know, or anyone in AA, or that you don’t trust anyone in AA, and with the worngs that you’ve committed, no one could have possibly have been as bad or evil as yourself… or, very simply, that you are unwilling to become accountable.
The later is usually the case. Because Alcoholics are incredibly self centered and being accountable to any person means, to an extent, I will not be able to be self-centered, or that I will have to lioe to them, or that I will experience a leveling of my pride, and that will hurt.
A leveling of our pride, the smashing of our ego, the necessity of humility, in the recovery process is paramount to it’s success. If I am to take a short cut through this process, I will ultimately be living my life on page 52, feeling restless, irritable and discontent. Not enjoying a personable freedom never know before, not experiencing any one of the over 225 promises the Big Book says I can have by doing this work.
That, for myself, having had experienced much of this fourth dimension of existance, is much more than I can risk, today I choose to be accountable. In this process of accountablity I must be very careful. I have to know the character of the people I am being accountable to, know that they are people of integrity, good judgement, fair, honest and are well versed in the work of the Big Book.
How do I go about becoming Accountable? There is a new movement for advanced AA’s to remain accountable to each other and to stay in touch while working with others. We cannot be giving all of the time, a firm balance is the key to everlasting hapiness in AA. Working on ourselves as well as with others is essential at every level of AA. It is Vital that you are in touch and continuously enlarging upon your spiritual life on a daily basis.
A program called Steel on Steel does just this. Visit: www.SteelonSteel.org to get the facts about the Steel on Steel movement for advanced AA’s who’ve been through the work (12 steps out of the Big Book) and have been taking others through the 12 Steps out of the Big Book. This website will show you how a group of four well versed AA’s can help each other to continually enlarge on their spiritual growth.