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From the books ... Alcoholics Anonymous (Big Book) and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (12 & 12)
Click the page number or the book cover icon
to view that page in the literature.1.
In spite of the great increase in the size and the span of this Fellowship, at
its core it remains simple and personal.
2.
Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to
the agnostic, and our personal adventures before and after make clear three pertinent ideas:
3.
This should be an entirely personal affair which each one decides for himself in the light of past associations, or his present choice.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
The Foundation(*) wrote
letters to practically
every news outlet in North America, setting forth our public relations policy of attraction rather than promotion, and emphasizing personal anonymity as A.A.'s greatest protection.
10.
Eleven -- Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films.
11.
Tradition Eleven -- "Our
public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio and films."
12.
"Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films."
13.
14.
It is important that we remain anonymous because we are too few, at present to handle the overwhelming number of
personal appeals which may result from this publication.
15.
Its foreword made this revealing statement: "It is important that we remain anonymous because we are
too few, at present, to handle the overwhelming
number of personal appeals which may result from
this publication.
16.
Because of the employee's
special ability, or of his
own strong personal attachment to him, the
employer has sometimes
kept such a man at work long beyond a reasonable period.
17.
Why is it, they ask, that in A.A. no member
can be set in personal authority over another, that nothing like a central government can anywhere
be seen?
18.
There was, they said, no such thing as the personal conquest of this compulsion by the unaided
will.
19.
Reminding ourselves
that we have decided to go to
any lengths to find a spiritual experience, we ask that we be
given strength and direction to do the right thing, no matter what the personal consequences may be.
20.
There will be other cases where action ought to be deferred, and still others in which by the very nature of the situation we shall never be able to make direct personal contact at all.
21.
As our work spreads and our
numbers increase, we hope your employees may be put in personal contact with some of us.
22.
In the radiance of such a miraculous discovery, any doctor would set his other ambitions aside, at whatever personal cost.
23.
Because A.A.'s Twelve Traditions repeatedly ask us to give up personal desires for the common good, we realize that the sacrificial spirit -- well symbolized by anonymity -- is the foundation of them all.
24.
By now, though, the chances are that he has become
convinced that he has more
problems than alcohol,
and that some of these refuse to be solved by all the sheer personal determination and courage he can muster.
25.
His drunkenness and dissolution are not penalties inflicted by people in authority; they result from his personal disobedience to spiritual principles.
26.
Moved by the spirit of anonymity, we try to give up our natural desires for personal distinction as A.A. members both among fellow alcoholics and before the general public.
27.
28.
All of the Twelve Steps require sustained and personal exertion to conform to their principles and so, we trust,
to God's will.
29.
30.
31.
We have seen A.A.'s ask with much earnestness and faith for
God's explicit guidance on matters ranging all the way from a shattering domestic or financial crisis to correcting a minor personal fault, like tardiness.
32.
Since Step Four is but the beginning of a lifetime practice, it can be suggested that he first have
a look at those personal flaws which are acutely troublesome and
fairly obvious.
33.
All of us saw, for example,
that we lacked honesty and
tolerance, that we were beset at times by attacks of self-pity or delusions of personal grandeur.
34.
... personal grievances
receive careful consideration.
BB
Appendix VII, Twelve Concepts (Short Form), p.574
V. Throughout our structure, a traditional "Right of Appeal" ought to prevail, so that minority opinion will be heard and personal grievances receive careful consideration.
35.
"Bill's Story," "Doctor Bob's Nightmare," and one other personal history from the first edition were retained intact; three were edited and one of these was retitled; new versions of two stories were written, with new titles; thirty completely new stories were added; and the story section was divided into three parts, under the same headings that are used now.
36.
Next we launched out on a course of vigorous action, the first step of which is a personal housecleaning, which
many of us had never attempted.
37.
38.
Let's here take note of our improved outlook upon the problems of personal importance, power, ambition, and leadership.
39.
40.
41.
We have admitted certain
defects; we have ascertained in a rough way what the trouble is; we have
put our finger on the weak items in our personal inventory.
42.
This thought brings us to
Step Ten, which suggests we continue to take personal inventory and continue to
set right any new mistakes as we go along.
43.
By this time, at Step Ten, we had begun to get a basis for daily living, and we keenly realized that we would
need to continue taking personal inventory, and that when we were in the wrong we ought to admit it promptly.
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
While on the subject of confidence, can you adopt
the attitude that so far as
you are concerned this will
be a strictly personal matter, that his alcoholic
derelictions, the treatment about to be undertaken, will never be discussed without his consent?
50.
When writing or speaking
publicly about alcoholism, we urge each of our Fellowship to omit his personal name, designating himself instead as "a member of Alcoholics Anonymous."
51.
Was it our self-esteem, our security, our ambitions,
our personal, or sex relations, which had been interfered with?
52.
53.
Our admissions of personal
powerlessness finally turn out to be firm bedrock upon which happy and purposeful lives may be built.
54.
Our desires for emotional security and wealth, for personal prestige and power, for romance, and for family satisfactions -- all these have to be tempered and redirected.
55.
I reasoned I was not so far
advanced as most of you fellows, that I had been usually successful in licking my other personal problems, and that I
would therefore be successful where you men failed.
56.
57.
Therefore, ask yourself on each occasion, "Have I any good social, business, or personal reason for going to this place?
58.
59.
60.
61.
Tradition One -- "Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends upon A.A. unity." Without unity, A.A. dies. Individual liberty, yet great unity. Key to paradox: each A.A.'s life depends on obedience to spiritual principles.
The group must survive or the individual
will not. Common welfare comes first. How best to live and work together as groups.
62.
63.
64.
65.
While the purpose of making restitution to others is paramount, it is
equally necessary that
we extricate from an examination of our personal
relations every bit of information about ourselves and our fundamental difficulties that we can.
66.
Everywhere there arose threatening questions
of membership, money,
personal relations, public relations, management of groups, clubs, and scores of other perplexities.
67.
Mrs. Jones -- she's a nut, she snubbed me; she committed her husband for
drinking; he's my friend;
she's a gossip -- personal relationship; self esteem (fear).
68.
In most cases it was found
that our self-esteem, our pocketbooks, our ambitions, our personal relationships (including sex) were hurt or threatened.
69.
We were having trouble with personal relationships, we
couldn't control our emotional natures, we were
a prey to misery and depression, we couldn't make
a living, we had a feeling
of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn't seem to be
of real help to other people -- was not a basic solution of these bedevilments more important than whether we
should see newsreels of lunar flight?
70.
To take inventory in this
respect we ought to consider carefully all
personal relationships
which bring continuous or
recurring trouble.
71.
... personal religious
affiliation, we include Catholics, Protestants, ...
BB
Foreword to Second Edition, p.xx
By personal religious affiliation, we include
Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Hindus, and a sprinkling of
Moslems and Buddhists.
72.
Realization dawns that
he is but a small part of a great whole; that no personal sacrifice is too great for preservation of the Fellowship.
73.
Poverty will disappear, and there will be
such abundance that everybody can have all the security and personal satisfactions he desires.
74.
My wife -- misunderstands and nags;
likes Brown; wants the house put in her name -- pride; personal sex relations; security (fear).
75.
Just as the aim of each A.A. member is personal sobriety, the aim of our services is to bring sobriety within reach of all who want it.
76.
If you have a drinking problem, we hope that you may pause in reading one of the forty-two personal stories and think: "Yes, that happened to me"; or,
more important, "Yes, I've felt like that"; or, most important, "Yes, I believe this program can work for me too."
77.
This fourth edition includes the Twelve Concepts for World Service and revises the three sections of personal stories as follows.
78.
Each individual, in the
personal stories, describes in his own language and from his own point of view the way he established his relationship with God.
79.
But the chief change was in
the section of personal stories, which was expanded
to reflect the Fellowship's growth.
80.
In our personal stories you
will find a wide variation in the way each teller approaches and conceives of the Power which
is greater than himself.
81.
82.
When the thought was expressed that there might be a God personal to me this feeling was intensified.
83.
When they talked of a God personal to me, who was love, superhuman strength and
direction, I became irritated and my mind snapped shut against such a theory.
84.
For no people have ever loved personal triumphs more than we have loved them; we
drank of success as of a wine which could never fail to make us feel elated.
85.
We may still have no very high opinion of humility as a desirable personal virtue, but we do recognize
it as a necessary aid to our
survival.
The 164 and More™ Book, eBook, and Web Site
are all CONCORDANCES which display passages from the Big Book
Alcoholics Anonymous, the
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,
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164 and More concordance does not in any way imply
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Inc., or the A.A. Grapevine, Inc. Further A.A.W.S. Inc. and the A.A.
Grapevine Inc. have no objection to the use of this material in the
164 and More concordance.
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