Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Personal Manifesto V1.01

http://innerpilgrimage.wordpress.com/2012/08/22/the-journey-continues-i-found-a-trailhead-at-the-heart-of-these-dark-woods/

Jess got me thinking. I need to tweak these a bit more to fit my beliefs:

1. We admitted we were powerless over compulsive urge to eat and food—that our lives had become unmanageable in this respect. We recognise that sugar and carbohydrates are chemical addictions, and compulsive eating is a behavioural addiction. This is my first time through life, and I am still learning.  All we have is now and today.
2. Came to believe and to accept that we needed strengths and knowledge beyond our current awareness and resources to restore us to sanity. There is likely a set of rules, concepts or the like that can be followed and define as sanity. Evolution of ideas that can be followed, just as evolution of the steam tractor in history.
3. Made a decision to entrust our will and our lives to the care of the collective wisdom and resources of those who have searched before us, both inside the program and out, accepting that there may be a better way than current raw AA/OA program. Evolution of ideas, OK.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Add to that belief's inventory, growth of knowledge.
5. Admitted to ourselves without reservation, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs, strength, weakness, beliefs, disbeliefs, and any other thing we need to talk about.
6. Were ready to accept help in letting go of all our defects of character. We recognise that the mind created the ego, and as such the ego is impermanent and impersonal, as it is the reflection of other egos. It's original purpose was to protect us in the face of discord, indecision, uncertainty, lack of knowledge,and the like, aka situational dissonance.  To prevent/reduce second guessing of self.
7. With humility and openness sought to overcome our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all. This recognizes the importance of relationships of all forms, but also recognizes they must have utility to be worth maintaining. One sided relationships must be recognized as such and accepted as one sided, limited, or even abusive.
9. Made direct amends, where amends are owed, to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. We own a living amends to ourselves, living right into the future.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it. Abandon self doubt.
11. Sought through thinking, analysis, discussion and meditation to improve our spiritual awareness and our understanding of the growth and the Overeaters Anonymous (OA) way of life and to discover the power to carry out that way of life. Evolution of concepts, OK.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to compulsive overeaters, bulimics, and anorexics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh, gosh. I am humbled and grateful that despite this time of struggle (and it is), somehow I am still doing service in program. It gives me hope that despite learning to recover without a deity's will and guidance (by choosing a secular Higher Power--which I know others do), I am still reaching out and hands are still grabbing to mine.

Together we get better. Thank you for your service, and I look forward to walking beside you on this journey of recovery. :-)