Richmond Walker published the Twenty-Four Hours a Day book
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Richmond Walker was the second most published author in early A.A. His little black meditational book, Twenty-Four Hours a Day, was surpassed in importance only by the Big Book itself.
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FAIR USE
AA page 83-84
If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.
https://anonpress.org/bb/Page_83.htm
These pages are neither endorsed nor approved by Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.
https://www.aa.org/
* Alcoholics Anonymous, “Big Book” pdf
https://www.aa.org/the-big-book
* Alcoholics Anonymous, “Big Book” audio
https://www.aa.org/resources/media?terms=big+book&format=audio&items_per_page=24&sort_bef_combine=title_ASC
STEP 1
We admitted we were
powerless over alcohol - that
our lives had become
unmanageable.
STEP 2
Came to believe that a Power
greater than ourselves could
restore us to sanity
STEP 3
Made a decision to turn our
will and our lives over to the
care of God as we understood
Him.
STEP 4
Made a searching and fearless
moral inventory of ourselves.
STEP 5
Admitted to God, to ourselves,
and to another human being
the exact nature of our wrongs.
STEP 6
Were entirely ready to have
God remove all these defects
of character.
STEP 7
Humbly asked Him to remove
our shortcomings.
STEP 8
Made a list of all persons we
had harmed, and became
willing to make amends to
them all.
STEP 9
Made direct amends to such
people wherever possible,
except when to do so would
injure them or others.
STEP 10
Continued to take personal
inventory and when we were
wrong promptly admitted it.
STEP 11
Sought through prayer and
meditation to improve our
conscious contact with God as
we understood Him, praying
only for knowledge of
His will for us and the power
to carry that out.
STEP 12
Having had a spiritual
awakening as the result of
these steps, we tried to
carry this message to
alcoholics, and to practice
these principles in all
our affairs.
SURRENDER
SHARING
AMENDS
GUIDANCE
HONESTY
PURITY
UNSELFISHNESS
LOVE
TRUST GOD
CLEAN HOUSE
HELP OTHERS
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQTV3qiY-ho
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The start of Alcoholics Anonymous, a brief history
A seemingly unplanned meeting in Akron,
Ohio in 1935 between two men, Dr Bob Smith
and Bill Wilson, both of whom were termed
"hopeless" alcoholics, began a program of
recovery that has helped millions find sobriety
and serenity.
Bill Wilson was fighting his own battle against
drinking, he had already learned from the
Oxford Group that helping other alcoholics
was the key to maintaining his own sobriety,
the principle that would later become step
twelve in the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics
Anonymous.
The effect the meeting had on Dr. Bob was
immediate, as he tells it in his own words and
soon he too put down the bottle, June 10,
1935.
One alcoholic talking to another alcoholic, the
bond formed between these two men would
grow into a movement that would literally save
the lives of millions.
Starting in an upstairs room at Dr. Bob's home
at in Akron, the two men began helping
alcoholics one person at a time.
Here's a quote from Dr Bob's story in the
Big Book,
"The Doctor's Nightmare"
page 180 paragraph 2
The question which might naturally come into
your mind would be: "what did the man do or
say that was different from what others had
done or said?"
It must be remembered that I had read a great
deal and talked to everyone who knew, or
thought they knew, anything about the subject
of alcoholism.
This man was a man who had experienced
many years of frightful drinking, who had had
most all the drunkard's experience known to
man, but who had been cured by the very
means I had been trying to employ, that is to
say, the spiritual approach.
He gave me information about the subject of
alcoholism which was undoubtedly helpful.
Of far more importance was the fact that he
was the first living human with whom I had
ever talked, who knew what he was talking
about in regard to alcoholism from actual
experience.
In other words, be talked my language.
He knew all the answers, and certainly not
because he had picked them up in his
reading. It is a most wonderful blessing to be
relieved of the terrible curse with which I was
afflicted.
My health is good and I have regained my
self-respect and the respect of my colleagues.
My home life is ideal and my business is as
good as can be expected in these uncertain
times.
I spend a great deal of time passing on what I
learned to others who want and need it badly.
I do it for four reasons:
1. Sense of duty.
2. It is a pleasure
3. Because in so doing I am paying my debt to
the man who took time to pass it on to me.
4. Because every time I do it I take out a little
more insurance for myself against a possible
slip
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqORUQ5ahIs
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AA p 60-62 ----- "Bondage of self"
The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. On that basis we are almost always in collision with something or somebody, even though our motives are good. Most people try to live by self-propulsion. Each person is like an actor who wants to run the whole show; is forever trying to arrange the lights, the ballet, the scenery and the rest of the players in his own way. If his arrangements would only stay put, if only people would do as he wished, the show would be great. Everybody, including himself, would be pleased. Life would be wonderful. In trying to make these arrangements our actor may sometimes be quite virtuous. He may be kind, considerate, patient, generous; even modest and self-sacrificing. On the other hand, he may be mean, egotistical, selfish and dishonest. But, as with most humans, he is more likely to have varied traits.
What usually happens? The show doesn't come off very well. He begins to think life doesn't treat him right. He decides to exert himself more. He becomes, on the next occasion, still more demanding or gracious, as the case may be. Still the play does not suit him. Admitting he may be somewhat at fault, he is sure that other people are more to blame. He becomes angry, indignant, self-pitying. What is his basic trouble? Is he not really a self-seeker even when trying to be kind? Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well? Is it not evident to all the rest of the players that these are the things he wants? And do not his actions make each of them wish to retaliate, snatching all they can get out of the show? Is he not, even in his best moments, a producer of confusion rather than harmony?
Our actor is self-centered - ego-centric, as people like to call it nowadays. He is like the retired business man who lolls in the Florida sunshine in the winter complaining of the sad state of the nation; the minister who sighs over the sins of the twentieth century; politicians and reformers who are sure all would be Utopia if the rest of the world would only behave; the outlaw safe cracker who thinks society has wronged him; and the alcoholic who has lost all and is locked up. Whatever our protestations, are not most of us concerned with ourselves, our resentments, or our self-pity?
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. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7NYAtmoGiWw