Part 1 - When My Serenity Flies Away, I Know I’m Believing What I Think About Myself.

I always try to remember the miracle encapsulated in that anonymous saying: “When you change the way you see things, the things you see change”… including myself.

At first blush this message may seem to contradict last week’s message [Msg-2-August 2012; “When My Serenity Flies Away, I Know I’ve Taken The Focus Off Me.”] Today’s message is about what happens when I put the focus on me, forget what A Course in Miracles (ACIM) teaches, and actually begin believing what I think about me.

It took me a long time to understand the humor and laughter in AA meetings. They’d actually laugh out loud as someone shared their intimate experience, strength and hope, talking about how it was, what happened, and how it is now. The whole group would have a good belly laugh at the more truly embarrassing moments or situations.

Following an almost tearful confession of the loneliness and sense of failure/loss that a newcomer just shared, a group member, looking at the newcomer, shared: “I know that empty feeling you’re feeling. I had that, too, when I got home and all my belongings were in the front yard. As it ended up, my wife got the bank accounts, the house, the kids, and the dog. But, it took all that to get me into these rooms. Thinking about it, though, I really do miss that dog.”

The room would erupt into raucous laughter. “How irreverent!” I’d scoff to myself. “These people are really emotional bullies. They’re insensitive and boorish.“ But that was not it at all.

Members of the Fellowship have come up with some of the most spiritual (and funny) one-liners I have ever heard:

• ·        Most of the time you’re in a funk it’s because “You are comparing [aka: judging] your insides to what you think you are perceiving about someone’s outsides.”
• ·      “I may not be very much, but I’m all I think about.”
• ·      “If you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”

All those laughing in that room were acknowledging they had been exactly where the speaker had been. They had experienced the same story albeit with totally different circumstances and totally different details. But underneath these insignificant differences it was the same story! They were laughing at themselves and with each other – all the while remembering what is was really like for them and how grateful they are for what it is like now.

“I may not be very much, but I’m all I think about.” That’s another way of admonishing: Don’t take myself too seriously. The games my way of thinking played produced a drunk, which is what got me into these rooms.

Continued in Part 2