Rereading the Big Book

Rereading the Big Book Audio Version Recently, I've been rereading the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous again. When I've done that on previous occasions I've found new thoughts come to mind as I'm reading so that it means different things to me each time I read it. One of my character defects is arrogance. Thanks to AA, the people, the power and the Programme, I can recognize it and moderate it so my behaviour isn't as bad as it was. I still have extremely arrogant thoughts but I don't act on them the way I used to. My sponsor is good at pulling me up when my ego and self-will get in the way of my recovery, something I definitely don't like when it happens and only appreciate afterwards. Whilst remaining aware of this arrogance and knowing it comes from my self-centered ego, when I'm reading the Big Book I have to change some of the words so that I don't reject it and its message completely. This doesn't mean that I think I should rewrite the Big Book. I'm not that arrogant! Take, for example the paragraph on page 62 'Selfishness, self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate.' I can wholeheartedly go along with all of that. My fear, my deluded thinking, my wanting everything my own way and my feeling that I've got it hard when other people have it easy, can result in my behaviour being unkind, in fact, often in my past, being nasty. The way I behaved could be explained as self-preservation but it was still bad behaviour, sometimes even criminal. That attitude and that reaction to life caused me trouble and still can. However, when the word 'invariably' is used later in the paragraph I change that to 'often' or 'very often' or even 'more often than not'. Often the decisions I made in the past which were based on self placed me in a position to be hurt. On those occasions my troubles - my unmanageable head, my resentments and the actions that I then took - were of my own making. But I can't use the word 'invariably' because as a child not all my troubles were of my own making. I don't live in a state of victimhood regarding my childhood but some things in my past were not my fault. As an adult in recovery though, if I continue to live in the past and keep it going in my head, that is my responsibility. If I keep long-standing resentments festering, nursing my wrath to keep them warm, even those childhood events that were not my fault, that continuation becomes 'my part in it'. In the next paragraph I can see I am 'an extreme example of self-will run riot' and agree it will kill me. My solution to my 'God' dilemma is to replace that name with a term I prefer. Being sometimes an atheist, sometimes an agnostic, I change it to 'goodness', 'the truth', the 'power of the Programme' or my conscience, whatever fits best depending on the context. I have no God in my life in the sense that seems to be suggested to me in the Big Book so when it comes to the Step Three Prayer, today, mine goes like this: May I be relieved of the bondage of self.May I be an example of recovery. May my resistance to and fear of change be removed. May I not shirk from working the Programme. May I be kind. Maybe when I reread this bit of the Big Book again in the future I'll have a different perspective but right now that's where I am. Wishing you sobriety and serenity. Liz Glasgow