These Offices were written to learn to be reasonably comfortable in Chastity.
Mercy Offices 1
I will:
Laugh at myself
Believe that I will get better
Trust God
Serve others
Have a positive attitude
Smile
Forgive myself
Pray
Read spiritual literature
Exercise
Forgive others
Manage my money
Relax
Do nothing
Have fun
Be aware of my food
Be conscious of my sexual choices
Announce limits
Grieve losses
Set boundaries
Accept reality
Feel my feelings
Meet my needs
Be self-restrained
Enjoy my choices
Share with others
Persevere
Connect
Practice self-discipline
Rejoice
Mercy Offices 2
HP, help me to love myself today
Help me to
- Stay in touch with my feelings
- Set boundaries with those who are harmful
- Announce limits so as not to harm myself.
- Keep myself emotionally healthy by meeting my needs for:
- Safety
- Love and belonging
- Esteem of others
- Self-esteem
To fully actualize, or realize myself, help me meet my needs for
- Near constant Prayer
- Self-transcendence through Service
- Spirituality through connectedness, originally with God, then others, and finally, lastingly and constantly, with myself
- Contentment through realization of my highest, realistically attainable goal
- Creativity through creating beauty for the joy of it
- Peace of mind through knowing my soul
Mercy Offices 3
I will believe that God will help me heal, if I do my part.
I am content, without sex, love, romance or relationship.
I forgive myself for my mistakes, failures, losses, errors and weaknesses.
I will not give up on myself, even if I slip, relapse, act out, get drunk or have a break.
I will pray even if I do not believe there is a God.
I will pray even if I do not understand God.
I will read spiritual literature when I feel slippery.
I will call safe friends and share how I feel and why I feel that way.
I will offer my experience, strength and hope to my friends when they are hurt or struggling.
I will remember the paradox that it is God's grace that gets me well, but I must work to obtain and maintain it.
I will remember to live just for today, and that to do otherwise is to play God.
I will inventory my food, exercise and sleep to see if I am loving myself.
If I have a partner I will try to see her (his) positive attributes and be grateful for this gift.
I will, to the best of my ability, model healthy behavior for my children, whether they see it or not.
I will remember that sex is a gift from God, neither to be despised and loathed nor to be used lightly or selfishly.
I will take the next right action, but I will also Let Go And Let God.
I will practice, diligently, seeing the positive.
I will trust, or at least try to trust, that there is something smarter and more powerful than me in the Universe.
I will hope for health, and strive for it in every area of my life.
I will feel my feelings, set boundaries, announce limits and meet my needs...with God's help.
Even if I am legally married, I will be open to finite periods of chastity, negotiated with my partner, to bring purity and clarity into our love.
I will try to see where various legitimate religions, therapies and other types of programs can enhance my ability to love and be loved.
I will grieve when necessary by feeling hurt, needy, sad and lonely simultaneously and have a positive attitude about it.
I will watch my food so as not to be struck down spiritually by the disease of overeating.
I will be attentive to my income and spending as ways to nurture myself and to share with others.
If I am using prescription medications I will be honest with myself about if I am using them for a healthful purpose.
I will look at caffeine usage and be honest with myself about how it makes me feel.
I will rest and do nothing sometimes.
I will do fun stuff remembering that "God respects me when I work, but he loves me when I play".
Mercy Offices 4
Anger is the Backbone of Healing
The Big Book states that "Resentment is the number one offender."
Offender of what? The offender of healthy relationships.
- I believe that what I believe is important.
- I believe in anger, prayer, and written Step work.
- I believe that all addictions are principally motivated by the source of childhood abuse.
- I further believe that the salient characteristic of the abuse victim part of myself is a complete inability to take care of or protect myself.
Anger is the source of power that I, as a victim, need to become a survivor. Lack of power, that was our dilemma” (Big Book, page 45). I therefore encourage anger—not abuse—but healthy anger with all my heart, mind, body, and soul to free the victim within me, to become a responsible man.
When I feel depression (which is rare now) I know that I am angry about something. ‘Depression is anger turned inward,” (As Bill Sees It). Ernie Larsen says that when you get hurt, you feel angry and when you feel angry you want to get even. That’s simply human.
When I feel angry, I have four choices:
1. Turn the anger in on myself and go into depression.
2. Become passive/aggressive: “nice,” sweet, kind, considerate, forgiving, accepting, polite, modest, self-sacrificing, humble, gentle; and let my anger leak out onto inappropriate people in unsuspecting ways.
3. Use addiction to numb my feelings. In the past, I might have over-eaten, got drunk, taken pills, smoked a cigarette, drank coffee, masturbated, had sex with my wife, read the Bible and hope that Jesus would save me from my feelings, worked too hard, spent money that was not discretionary, gone into a fantasy about being somebody, or tried to “save” someone.
4. Get honest with someone about my anger.
Mercy Offices 5
I will have faith that God knows what He/She is doing.
If God doesn't give me what I want, I am sure there is a good reason why.
If there is any family of origin issue which is blocking me from loving God, I will pray for it to be removed.
I will remember that laughing is truly one of God's greatest graces.
I will pray today, a lot. Psalm 119 says seven times a day.
My prayers will be intimate, honest and open.
Some of my prayers will be recited, just to calm me down.
Today, I will reach out to other honest men and women through telephone, IM, text, email, posting ...and smoke signal if necessary.
When I am tired I will rest, remembering that, sometimes the most spiritual thing I can do...is take a nap.
I will pray to God to heal my most obvious wounds today.
Today, I recognize the limit of my power and reach for God's power.
God hasn't left me. He has allowed me to grow up.
I surrender my defects to you Lord, to do as you will with them.
Cling to the Lord and cry out for mercy.
Quit working...before you get tired.
Maybe this IS the way things are supposed to be.
Lie down in green pastures...before He makes you lie down.
Fight when necessary, but measure your force.
Remember that "God is Truth".
Remember that "God is Love".
Forgive those that deserve it quickly, forgive those that don't even quicker.
Mercy Offices 6
Guide to a Finite Period of Chastity
Warning:
I accept that I will be angry all my life as a celibate man.
Previous images of some cross-eyed, semi-present to the present, toga-wrapped, obscenely peaceful, mountain top-dwelling, advice-giving, patriarchally-smiling fool who does not have a political clue are as much a part of the problem as Penthouse Pets are!
The Celibate Promises:
We will be more available to our children
We will be more present and productive at work
We will become stronger and more supple
Our financial situations will clear up
Our artistic and “spiritual” aspirations will be realized
Self draining sexual/romantic relationships will suddenly wither and die
We will have more clarity, intuition and personal power
We will have more fun
We will finally...relax
The Seven Steps of Celibacy:
I accept that there is power in me
I sing, discipline my body, pray and meditate…everyday
I feel all my feelings...and share them where it is wise to
I am open to feedback from trustworthy people
I confront and set boundaries with others
I accept my limits
I laugh
Mercy Offices 7
Trust God…Even when he appears to have bad judgment
If I can hear multi-syllabic obscenity in anger, and be resilient, don't you think God can?
Trust God, even when you can't feel Him or hear Him.
Does God have a Principle as well as a Personality?
Spiritual comes from the Latin word "Spiritus" which means breath.
Radical does not mean extreme. It comes from the Latin word " Radicum", which means root.
The best way to create healthy relationships with rigid people is to make them laugh.
The safest, most beautiful, inviting sense of humor is to crack on oneself, without being self-deprecatory.
God gets blamed for a lot of stuff He didn't do.
The difference between Hitler and Gandhi is only 2%. Any more than that and you would be a different species.
It is not possible for an addict to live outside of today and be mentally well.
My health is the most important part of my wealth.
Let's make it to 12:01 tonight… And then we'll renegotiate.
Mercy Offices 8
While celibate (no masturbation or sex with others) I have tested every single sexual limit I can think of. There is a fury in me not to die sexually.
My bottom Lines are:
• No affairs
• No masturbation.
My Permanent Boundaries are:
• No intrigue
• No fantasy.
• No objectification.
• No sex in a committed monogamous relationship when I need to be staying abstinent.
• No sex without intimacy.
My Temporary Boundaries when I am not dating:
• No dating.
• No thoughts of dating.
I have found that if I maintain all my bottom lines and permanent boundaries and answer two questions honestly to myself about a prospective dating partner, then I can date:
1. Would I marry this person?
2. Would I wait until I was married to be sexual with her?
Otherwise, I may be using someone...
Mercy Offices 9
My soul yearns.
Body: Early 12 step is a program of action
Heart: Late 12 step is a program of feelings
Soul: But what of my soul, Lord?
I yearn for my soul, but it is perversely misdirected into love addiction.
I yearn for my soul, but it is distorted by romance addiction.
I yearn for my soul, but I try to satiate myself with relationship addiction.
Free me Lord, to know my soul.
We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that He may be found.
You were within, but I looked for you without...and could not find you.
I am joyous, oh my Soul, that I have found you.
Mercy Offices 10
Sex Addiction - Obsessive/compulsive sexual activity that negatively impacts other parts of the addicts’ life...or other people's lives. The compulsiveness can be expressed in many ways. Possibilities are through the use of masturbation, promiscuity, affairs, multiple partners, anonymous sex, sex in public places, strip clubs, lingerie parlors, prostitution, child molestation, rape, pornography, x-rated bookstores, voyeurism, exhibitionism, orgies and porn theaters... but are not limited to these.
Relationship Addiction - An expression of powerlessness in the inability to leave or stay out of self-destructive relationships. The sexual or romantic aspects of the relationship may not be highlighted. It is the clinging to stay in a current relationship or the clawing to get into a new relationship that characterizes this addiction. The solution here is 12-step recovery with an emphasis on multiple, healthy, non-sexual, intimate friendships to fill the unmet needs for family that the addict experiences.
Love addiction - An obsessive/compulsive need to satisfy the desire to feel whole or complete through using the presence of another person. When there is a feeling of “oceanic one-ness” in the beloved’s presence and a corresponding sense of doom, futility, pointlessness and despair at the prospect of never “having” the love object then love addiction is present. There may be no “relationship” in the conventional sense and there may not even be sexuality present. 12-step recovery works here, too, but the emphasis needs to be on learning how to love yourself thoroughly before you love others.
Romance Addiction - An obsessive/compulsive need to be excited by romantic, though not necessarily sexual or relational, activities. Endless series of brief relationships, inability to commit, self-destructive pursuit of the manic, fantastic and chaotic “relationships” as well as the demand that the “ideal perfect partner” be found characterize this addiction.
Mercy Offices 11
Lord, help me to feel my soul...
Socrates and Plato both believed that the soul was housed about the solar plexus.
If that is true, I will breathe in deeply and repeatedly, and try to locate my soul within me.
Lord, help me to feel my soul..
When I want to eat something I'm not supposed to eat...help me feel my soul within me.
When I want to drink something I'm not supposed to drink...help me feel my soul within me.
When I start to reach for 'sex, love, romance, or relationship', unhealthily...help me feel my soul within me.
"The kingdom of God is within" - Luke
If my soul is not the kingdom of God…Then what is?
Lord, help me, just for today, to feel my soul...
Amen
Mercy Offices 12
In order not to get relationally addicted while I am dating:
I take the next right action to take care of myself, even when I don’t feel like it. Especially when I don’t feel like it.
Three-excellent ways to cultivate serenity are physical exercise, meditation, and prayer.” (How to get out of Debt, etc.)
One of the things to do in “practicing a positive sobriety” (Sexaholics Anonymous, p. 205) is sing. I learned this in church. It’s the process of singing and the joy it brings, not necessarily the content, through the endorphins it releases that gives me what I need. (As an additional by-product, my experience is that singing is second only to prayer as a tool for intimacy in coupleship)
"We absolutely insist on enjoying life." (The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous) I had to learn to enjoy life. I had to find out what I like...Be specific. It wasn’t until I got relationally sober that I began to have so much extra time!
I find that when I surrender some behavior, if I do not pick up a new one, I will go back to the old one. Surrender, for me, is letting something go and picking something else up.
One of the best things about a relational sobriety is more money. Because I’m more available emotionally, not necessarily because I put more time into my work, I prosper, because people are more attracted to me. I am able to work on the financial part of my recovery-passionately.
I need meditation daily and to access frequent spontaneous use of prayer, both written and improvised.
I am willing to do written Step work, which I do daily. This changes me more fundamentally than any of the other 12-Step tools.
I am willing to read any conference-approved literature, in any 12-Step program, and any other spiritual literature I find useful. The Bible and psychological literature has been particularly useful.
Daily, I check in with other program buddies either live or by leaving voice messages.
I count my breaths or surrender each thought that comes into my head.
When I am triggered very hard. I sometimes take three stuffed animals and enroll one -as the adult part of me, one as the adolescent part of me, and one as the child part of me, and I dialogue. Honesty and Openness are the key principles here. I can usually find out what I need and what I need to do if I am honest and courageous.
There are times when it is necessary to set indefinite and sometimes permanent boundaries. That means no calling, writing, or coming by. My fear is that I will end up alone. This is a delusion. Actually, I find myself deluged by people. I surrender that fear. Each time I let go of someone, I love myself more. It’s always difficult, painful, and fearful...and I always feel better.
I am willing to feel any feeling.
I must have someone to share these feelings with who has a "common welfare” (Big Book, Tradition One) with me.
Invariably, when I feel a craving for sex, love, romance or relationship, what I need is to share my feelings with someone else.
I am willing to attend meetings and share my experiences and feelings with others in a safe, public forum.
One of the most potent spiritual actions I can take is changing my attitude. This changes my feelings. When I feel self-pity, I allow myself to feel this, discover what I'm feeling self-pity about, surrender it, and consciously choose an attitude of gratitude. I say mentally "I am grateful for___.“ My attitude changes and so do my feelings.
My workaholic mind believes that I should always be doing something. What I need is to be happy. How? LAUGH!!!
Mercy Offices 13
What's the problem with being a human?
There's not enough love…
What does real love look like?
Love is human warmth, compassionate, tender, humorous, open, wise, forgiving, self-sacrificing, boundaried , disciplined, funny, truthful, flexible, merciful, perseverant, courageous, dedicated, willing, humble, understanding, accepting limits, strong, faithful, hopeful, patient, prayerful, service-oriented, and non-violent physically, mentally, emotionally and verbally.
Why am I not that way? Why are you not that way?
Because I am disconnected from my soul…That's all.
There are a lot of things that we humans do that can disconnect us from our souls and death is a good, clear, concrete way to begin to measure the absence of soul.
So, let's say we have soulful on the one extreme and death on the other extreme…
Soulful-----------------------------------------------------Death
According to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta 300,000 of us Americans die each year from food related/overeating illnesses.
That's over 800 people a day, 30 an hour, or about one every two minutes.
A more frightening fact is that 67% are overweight.
And while those folks may not be at the extreme where we are going to die from heart attack, stroke, diabetes or cancer, they may be a lot farther down that line towards death, away from soulful, than they'd like to be.
You mean I can't be overweight and be soulful?
Food Addicts Anonymous says food addicts are typically selfish, resentful, emotionally dishonest, negative, obsessive, extreme and self pitying (Not really very soulful qualities when you think about it).
So, that overweight stuff, which is killing one of us every two minutes in the extreme and affecting 2 out of 3 of us in America all the time (including our children), is caused by the above character defects, which in turn separates us from our soul, which in turn prevents us from getting the love we need, which in turn keeps life from being great?
Yes…
God can change that...if I do my part.
Mercy Offices 14
For some of us, however, there is no passage to life, only from one stage of dying to another.
Too few lessons have been learned, too little wisdom has been gained for the wound to heal. There is nothing natural or guaranteed about a springtime of the spirit.
Behind every marvelous tale of death – left– behind is a common theme of peak moments. These peak moments may occur as long as we live. Or they may not. Perhaps we'd better make a decision someday sooner than tomorrow.
Healthy living demands enough of a central focus that something gets finished once it gets started. Lacking this we often return to fight the same battle once again.
Mercy Offices 15
I surrender sex, love, romance and relationship, just for today
I will use my sexual energy to serve others and take care of myself in an "enlightened self-interest" sort of way
I will be grateful for the things I have
I will pray often throughout the day
I will practice mercy and forgiveness, with myself and others
I will meditate and try to ascertain God's will for me
I will not take myself too seriously
I will be gentle with myself
When I objectify I will pray "Sister, may no harm come to you from me"
If I want to fantasize I will pray "Sister, may no harm come to you from me" to the object of my fantasy
When I want to intrigue I will pray "Sister, may no harm come to you from me"
I will call others on the phone and check in how I am feeling
I will relax
I will be grateful that my sexual energy is so strong and that I can channel it in positive, creative and useful ways
I will have a positive attitude
I will work on my cardio, strength, endurance and flexibility today. As Gandhi says "As with the body, so with the Universe".
I will practice being content with my soul
Mercy Offices 16
To achieve chastity, be prepared to lose everything. Chastity is a ravaging force to which nothing seems sacred or inviolate. It rips to shreds the structures and foundations I built in weakness and ignorance.
Chastity at any cost...talk doesn't cook rice
Control of the palate is the first essential in the observation of the vow
There are those who choose to live like eunuchs to know the kingdom of heaven. If you can accept it, accept it
Acceptance is being positive
I surrender my right to be sexual
Do not give your strength to women, your vigor to those who ruin kings
Keep a path far from her, lest you give your best strength to others
When should you have sex with a woman? When you want to lose the strength you have
A man dissipates his physical strength through ordinary incontinence
Life without celibacy appears to me to be insipid and animal like
We did not squander our energy on addictive acting out, in spite of severe temptations to do so
Breathe…Be positive
Mercy Offices 17
HP,
Just as an experiment, help me think of the group instead of trying to get my instincts for sex, love, romance and relationship met, just for today.
Help me to pray today and post my prayers so that my 11th step for myself becomes a 12th step for others.
...instead of trying to get my instincts for sex, love, romance and relationship met, just for today.
Help me to take a moral "spot check" inventory of my food, money, family of origin issues and sex life and to post that so that my 10th step becomes a 12th step for others.
...instead of trying to get my instincts for sex, love, romance and relationship met, just for today.
Help me to pray, and live with my recovery community, just for today.
...instead of trying to get my instincts for sex, love, romance and relationship met, just for today.
Help me to listen to prayers as I workout, clean my house, cook, shop and drive to work.
...instead of trying to get my instincts for sex, love, romance and relationship met, just for today.
Help me to call my fellows and check in with them how I am feeling and why, and to ask them how they are feeling and why.
...instead of trying to get my instincts for sex, love, romance and relationship met, just for today.
Tomorrow I can pursue sex, love, romance and relationship, if it is your will, but for today...Sabbath!
Mercy Offices 18
Psalm 21 Excerpts
1 O LORD, the king rejoices in your strength. How great is his joy in the victories you give!
2 You have granted him the desire of his heart and have not withheld the request of his lips. "Selah"
3 You welcomed him with rich blessings and placed a crown of pure gold on his head.
4 He asked you for life, and you gave it to him--length of days, for ever and ever.
5 Through the victories you gave, his glory is great; you have bestowed on him splendor and majesty.
6 Surely you have granted him eternal blessings and made him glad with the joy of your presence.
7 For the king trusts in the LORD; through the unfailing love of the Most High he will not be shaken.
Mercy Offices 19
Help me to be unselfish, just for today
Help me not to see women as objects of my sexual desire, just for today
Help me not to see women as possibilities to meet my own neediness for emotional safety, love and belonging or esteem (validation), just for today
Help me not see women as occasions for romantic or relational intrigue, just for today
Help me not see women as people who might meet my desire for affection or for company, just for today
Help me not see women as objects of love that may complete an emptiness within me, just for today
Help me see women, as I see men, as people to serve, just for today
Mercy Offices 20
Chastity gives me freedom from:
doubt and uncertainty
religion
sexaholism
relational objectification
romantic fantasies
romantic intrigue
love fantasies
love intrigue
sexual intrigue
sexual fantasies
writing, playing or listening to romantic music
fornication
sexual hangovers
grieving relationship endings
hurtful repercussions of ending of relationships with spurned women
dating sites
marriages
divorces
custody cases
But mostly...freedom from doubt and uncertainty
Mercy Offices 21
Help me to stay chaste today, to surrender all thoughts, words, actions, feelings, attitudes, and beliefs around sex, love, romance and relationship (SLRR) to you today.
If SLRR are to be in my life today, help me to be grateful for them as gifts from You.
Help me to have the wisdom to discern when SLRR are from You, and when they are self will on my part, or simply self will on someone else's part.
If SLRR in my life is self will today, help me to surrender it. If it is self will on someone else's part, help me set a firm, healthy boundary with them to protect myself.
If I am using SLRR to create chemicals in my head to make me feel better, feel more, feel less or not feel anything, help me to realize that this is addiction and seek help.
Help me to accept that SLRR is a mysterious combination of many, many things that no man or woman understands fully and that my best chance at being successful at this, whatever that my look like, is to seek your will and your help in this activity.
Help me to realize that often it is not getting what I want in SLRR, but being okay without it, that is called for.
Help me to realize that if I have SLRR in my life that I need to be grateful for what I do have.
Finally, help me to realize that SLRR is your idea, not mine...what a mind you must have!
Mercy Offices 22
What would I do differently if I accepted a vow of chastity, starting today?
Breath prayer
Positive attitude
PrayerCall
More exercise
Cleaner food
Music as healthy entertainment
Transmute all intrigue to prayer
Mercy Offices 23
HP,
Help me to beware of my potential for codependence as I create, that this need is to create for joy…for myself.
Help me to have my need for contentment met fully, not necessarily perfectly, before I approach this need, for creativity.
Help me remember that my need for prayer and service comes before my need for contentment.
Help me to have fun meeting this need.
Help me to remember that I look for fun, not peace, in this need being met.
Help me to remember that I have one yet higher need, that for peace, which can only be approached through my soul
Amen
Mercy Offices 24
Chastity Beliefs One
When I choose chastity, just for today:
I have attained my highest goal of self-love.
I am as close to myself as I can be.
I have a gift I can give God that brings me closer to him, personally.
I am fully realized, self-actualized, enlightened and mighty.
My whole life, up to this point, makes sense.
I can wear my recovery "Like a loose garment".
That...is good enough, for me.
Mercy Offices 25
The mind cannot do this
The body cannot do this
Not even the heart can do this
They are the wrong portals
It is only through the soul that I can know peace, although peace may shine forth in the other three.
How to access this portal?
Through the breath, the root of all spirituality, with the mind focusing (if Socrates is correct…and who knows , he may be wrong) on the solar plexus.
Concentrate, breathe and repeat...
Mercy Offices 26
I surrender to you. SLRR is an obsession. It is a mental illness.
Help me to be honest with myself that
A) A particular person is not a match
B) Having sex with someone who is not a match is using them
Help me to be grateful that while my losses are great, the obsession is also gone.
I am totally surrendered to you around SLRR. Help me to maintain only, if that is what you want, or to build, if that is your will.
I am grateful to you for the complete removal of my obsession. I am now, blessedly, normal, average, common, as well as healthy.
Help me to maintain the sanity of the perspective that while my losses are very real, there are many, many people with much greater losses.
Now that I have fully surrendered all self destructive illnesses that I am aware of, help me to build something positive, gentle and accepting.
I offer my actions, thoughts, beliefs, attitudes and feelings to you today.
Finally, if Matthew 19:11-12 is best for me, help me to accept it, one day at a time, just for today
Help me to lighten up and take care of myself...just for today.
Mercy Offices 27
Help me “Remember always that our sex powers are God given and therefore good neither to be used lightly or selfishly nor to be despised or loathed."
Help me to transmute my sexual energy into serving others and into enlightened self-care.
Help me to not ‘Make heavy going' of life.
Help me not be dependent on a partner's love, when I need to love myself.
Help me not to act on sexual fear, or rigidity, and become sexually anorexic.
Help me “Avoid hysterical thinking or advice" around sex.
Help me to act lovingly towards all.
Help me to develop, emotionally and physically, my relationship with myself.
Help me to remember what Saint Augustine said
"Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation", and to trust you, if it is your will, to be sexual, to pursue love, to pursue romance, or co-create or maintain relationship.
Help “Mold my ideals and help me live up to them."
Help me accept love, service, kindness, gentleness, positiveness and acceptance from others, as well as give it.
Help me to approach relationship from a position of overflow, not a position of neediness.
Help me to remember that, after the instinct for survival, the instinct to be sexual is the strongest...and that, in all humility, I might need a little help.
Help me to remember that if sex is “Very troublesome" I am to “Throw myself the harder into helping others".
Mercy Offices 28
As Lao Tze would say, “Help me on this journey of mightiness (health).”
Help me conquer myself, just for today.
Help me have a "springtime of the spirit"
“Mighty” is “healthy” on steroids.
Help me first, to be satisfied in conquering myself and secondly, to know peace, through experiencing my soul.
Help me to surrender my thoughts, to breathe in deeply and to experience my soul as often as I can today.
Now that I am free, help me build a new life, doing what you want me to do.
Help me to surrender anything that would distract me from my soul
Help me to remember that as I change myself, I change the world.
Help me to remember when Al-anon quotes Blaise Pascal "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.”
Today I will look for love within myself….gentle, positive, accepting
Give me courage to act and wisdom to know when to act.
Help me to be positive, gentle and accepting of myself all day long today.
Mercy Offices 29
"As we are, so are the times."
Augustine
"As with the body, so with the Universe"
Gandhi
Have Mercy on me Lord, a sinner (Penultimate Cry for Mercy)
Cling To The Lord and cry out for mercy (Ultimate Cry for Mercy)
Mercy Offices 30
Intrigue - The transmission of sexual information or energy to see if the other person is available sexually. Sexual innuendo, double entendre, sexual jokes or simply bringing the topic of sex to the conversation. In its more subtle forms intrigue can be accomplished with eye contact, body language or intentional contact with someone who ‘triggers’ you.
Objectifying - Viewing another person as the object of personal sexual gratification. Also called "body parting" or "rubbernecking".
Fantasy - The use of memories of previous sexual experiences or the use of imagination to create sexual fantasies for the stimulation of sexual arousal. It is frequently, but not always, accompanied by masturbation.
Healthy Sexuality – Most of us believe that a healthy sexuality is characterized by commitment, love and intimacy.
Intimacy - The ability to share feelings, desires, needs, thoughts, attitudes and beliefs honestly and openly with another person; with yourself; or with a Higher Power
Commitment - a willingness to stay with a partner and work through pain and problems regardless of how you may feel. There is a limit to this commitment and that is when staying with a partner is clearly detrimental to oneself spiritually.
Love - actions, words and thoughts that are characterized by gentleness, positiveness and acceptance.
Spirituality - We define this for ourselves but a temporary definition might be-actions, thoughts, attitudes and beliefs that create and sustain healthy relationships with ourselves, others and perhaps a higher power.
Higher Power - The belief that there is a “power greater than oneself”-if only the power of the collective wisdom of the group, which can be helpful when you are powerless.
Celibacy Period - a time of complete abstinence from all sexual behavior including masturbation and sex with a partner. This is initially designed to determine exactly what behaviors you are addicted to.
Chastity - Celibacy accompanied by no fanatisizing, objectifying, intriguing, or any other activity which would arouse one’s own or another’s lust.
The Twelve Steps - A program designed to replace the addiction by attaining a spiritual (not a religious) awakening brought on by:
• Admitting powerlessness, believing there is help and accepting it (Steps 1,2,3)
• Becoming aware of one’s inventory and sharing it (Steps 4&5)
• Becoming aware of and developing one’s character. (Steps 6&7)
• Becoming aware of one’s harms and rectifying them (Steps 8&9)
• Maintaining the spiritual awakening by personal inventory, prayer and service (Steps 10, 11,12)
Mercy Offices 31
When I came in to AA I learned how to be honest, unselfish, and to genuinely care about other people through the acts of unselfish service…And I laughed a lot.
NA taught me to take a look at those pills I used to steal from my Mama's medicine cabinet.
When I joined ACA, I found my heart. I learned about feelings, boundaries, limits, and later, needs.
When I joined OA and FA I solidified techniques to have a strong heart, a small, firm waist line, soft skin, clear lungs, and a more quiet mind.
I quit smoking pretty early on, as I couldn't breathe at night, and there was, as of yet, no program for that.
When I joined DA I found how to be free of the anxiety of debt, underearning, overspending and extrapolated their ideas to learn to save, invest and to buy things at a good price.
When I join SLAA I learned how to rid myself of the shame of masturbation, and the fear of being caught in affairs. I learned freedom from objectification, fantasy, and intrigue. I also learned the joys of intimate and committed sex.
When I join WA, Workaholic Anonymous, and told them "I can't quit working the steps" they were a little perplexed, but I knew I needed to learn to be OK without doing anything…And I learned to repose...
I joined Al-anon and Coda and learned not to be a people pleaser or a door mat, and not to shame, blame or control when I felt angry, from feeling hurt.
The GA folks, Gamblers Anonymous, taught me to keep an eye on day trading in the stock market.
In Oregon five years ago, they started caffeine anonymous, but it failed.
In the last 28 years it's the only recovery I have relapsed on. But, I kicked it to the curb a couple years back.
All along I felt like a merchant searching for spiritual jewels.
One day, I met a 5' 1" Columbian man with the worst English you have ever heard.
In him I saw a quality, or a combination of qualities I had never seen before in a human.
Clarity unlike anything I have ever seen. An astounding intuitive intelligence, tremendous power in personal relationships and, most useful to me, a resilience that instinctively protected him from the vicissitudes of life.
He was funny, deeply compassionate, brilliant, energetic, powerful, dynamic and humble to his God...If you could understand what he was saying.
I saw the pearl I was looking for, within him.
I knew it wasn't him. It was the kingdom of God within him, that he had purchased at a great price...and that price was chastity.
He had spent ten years in a Catholic monastery and could comfortably pay the price for the kingdom.
I was, honestly, much, much poorer than him spiritually and could not pay that price...
But I sold everything I had to buy it: A beautiful 2600 sq. foot, state of the art, home. I left a business I had had for 25 years, and I left a marriage to the prettiest woman you have ever seen, and one day at a time,
I try to purchase the pearl of great price, just for today...it gives me peace.
Mercy Offices 32
HP,
Help me to:
Celebrate
Revel in my new life
Embrace my freedom from illness
Enjoy my freedom from relational, health, legal, or moral problems
Do something fun today
Sing a song of joy
Clap my hands
"Celebrate, celebrate, dance to the music"
Mercy Offices 33
Help me to love myself as though there were no one else to do it.
Help me to laugh at myself
Help me to be grateful for the progress I have made
Help me to be merciful to myself
Help me to love myself as though there were no one else to do it.
Help me to be positive
Help me encourage myself
Help me enjoy my successes
Help me to love myself as though there were no one else to do it.
Help me to have hope
Help me to have faith
Help me to know peace
Help me to love myself as though there were no one else to do it.
Mercy Offices 34
As one of my highest order needs, the need for contentment comes from being what I want to be.
Help me to want something I can achieve, so that I will feel content.
Help what I want to be sane and attainable, so that I may feel content.
While service makes me feel happy, joyous and free, feeling content is different.
Help what I want to have, do, or be, be reasonable, just and sane, so that having attained it, I am content with myself
Help what I want to be modest, so that it is attainable, so that I may obtain contentment .
Mercy Offices 35
Help me to accept the fact that my relationship with myself, because I am more often with myself, time wise, than I am with God, or others, is thereby, logically and reasonably, my most important relationship.
If that is true, help me not do anything that would
1)lower my self esteem
2)numb my ability to love myself
3)make it hard for me to accept myself
Help me have the wisdom to distinguish, clearly, the difference between narcissism and self love.
Mercy Offices 36
When it's all done…
The kicking of:
Alcohol and drugs
Cigarettes and caffeine
Fatness and masturbation
Debting and Workaholism
Codependency, ACA, Victimhood
Even artistic pre-occupations
When all the service that brings happiness, joyousness and freedom is rendered and all the prayer and inventory of maintenance executed
When self care is mastered
And even chastity attained …
There is still peace to be had
Help me to know my soul…
Mercy Offices 37
HP,
Help me as I surrender all women to you, just for today
Help me as I fast and feel hungry for parts of this day
Help me as I pray assiduously to you throughout the day
Help me to forgive myself for my sins
Help me to give love instead of trying to get love
Help me to laugh as much as possible
Help me to eat healthy foods today
Help me to exercise some today
Help me to set boundaries, announce limits, feel my feelings, and meet my needs
Help me have a positive and grateful attitude
Help me to accept my life as it is by being
positive
Mercy Offices 38
Chastity is my personal highest spiritual goal today.
I have an attitude of gratitude around chastity.
I am humbly grateful to have received this gift.
I am grateful to have the wisdom to be alone.
I am grateful I no longer feel lonely or needy around being alone.
I am grateful to have developed the skills of being with myself.
I believe I am the very best I can be when I choose chastity.
When I empty my mind and body of lust, I become open to being filled with love...and that's kinda cool...
Mercy Offices 39
I don't know where you want me to go, but I know that the fastest way to get there is through chastity...
Help me to:
Surrender any opportunity to intrigue
Deflect any overtures, sexual or romantic
Be grateful that the wreckage of my unchasteness is so slight, comparatively
Pray as often as I can today to keep my mind pure
Remember that "As we are, so are the times"
Remember that "Conquering myself is not strong, but mighty"...Lao Tse
Remember that " Knowing others is wisdom, but knowing myself is enlightenment" Lao Tse
Remember that even enlightenment does not bring peace, only knowing my soul (or God's direct presence) brings peace
Mercy Offices 40
I will have mercy on myself
I have mercy on the child I was as a boy
I mercifully wash away the guilt I feel for what I did as a youth
I am cleansed of my sin as God's tenderness flows through my merciful heart
I am new
I will protect the new me, as I am tender
Guide me Lord in my new life
Amen
Mercy Offices 41
HP,
Help me when I am powerless
Help me to do your will
Help me to trust your will
Help me to breathe and relax
Help me to be grateful for my sobriety
Help me be grateful for the things for which I have no control
Help me to be satisfied with what I have
Help me be content with what I am
Mercy Offices 42
Ellen Bass, in the Courage to Heal, says that the whole book is about "Improving self-esteem".
If it is true that chosen chastity improves self-esteem more than any other activity, then chosen chastity would help survivors improve their self esteem more than any other activity.
That is my experience.
It is also my experience that the part of me that esteems myself is also the same part that intrigues, objectifies and fantasizes. And I can't do both things with that same part.
Therefore, lust (through intrigue, objectification, and fantasy) destroys my high self-esteem
Mercy Offices 43
HP,
To the best of my knowledge, I am fully surrendered to you today
As I am reasonably clear, help me access as often as possible my soul
When I start to workaholically ignore my soul, please help me to focus and concentrate
Help me to breathe slowly and deeply and focus on my solar plexus, as though it were a doorway
While I access my soul, let me stay fully ensconced in my group of friends, to stay grounded
Help me be grateful that I have escaped so terribly much wreckage, by the Grace of God
Help me stay solid with my food plan
Help me stay chaste, just for today
Help me, please, please, please...
Mercy Offices 44
When I am chaste:
I am as emotionally intimate, as I can possibly be, with other human beings.
I am most attentive to athletics.
I am most mentally, emotionally, spiritually and physically present for the creation of music as 'healthful entertainment'.
All the sexual abuse of my past becomes non-impactful.
All the sins of my youth, and the errors of my adulthood, feel washed away.
My prayer life soars.
My service life is joyous to the point of being downright giddy.
Coincidentally, I am in line with the religion I have chosen.
My business life is laser focused.
Mercy Offices 45
The highest self esteem possible
Peace with the Bible and religion
Continued respect from 12 steppers and PrayerCall people
Integrity with PrayerCall people
Belief that you are being obedient
The five traditional gifts of chastity
Knowing you fulfilled an incredible destiny
The "whole pattern" of SLAA would be addressed
Internet dating would not be an option
Could face yourself and wrestle your mind down...everyday
Openness with everyone all the time
Maintain retirement
Sleep a couple hours less a day
A lot of free time
Could enjoy the gift of music
Mercy Offices 46
The F Office first promise of clarity is "Efficient Perceptions of Reality"
Let's look at something dicey...
I have a strong reaction when my Mormon friends show me their literature claiming that sexual sin is second only to murder and that sexual sin begins with passionate kissing.
I have strong reaction when my conservative Christian friends quote Leviticus 20:10 and demanding the death of adulterers.
I have a strong reaction when the Sexaholics claim that gays are sick and are not within the will of God, even though that is now the law of the land of the U.S.
Ask yourself how you are feeling as you read these lines...
Often times the progenitors of 'no sex except within a marriage' presentation is so repugnant that it is hard to see past their personal social vileness to see if there is any value or health in this particular belief itself.
As a child, because of my mental obsession with sex, I interpreted 'no sex except within a marriage' as 'get married as soon as reasonably possible so I could have sex, as often as possible, without incurring negative consequences.'
The irrationality of that was obvious to me, even as a child, and I never did that.
But what about this interpretation?
"No sex except within marriage " means, at best, to learn to be really OK without sex for a good while...that sounds pretty healthy to me.
I personally find that enlivening.
It would logically follow that: It's about letting go of an attitude of self pity for not having what I want...and rather choosing an attitude of gratitude for what I do have.
It's also about getting along with women better, because, to quote Puccini, they, all women, do want love and relationship, and I may not want that with them, specifically, for any number of reasons, so it helps, relationally, to not have to say
You are too:
Ugly
Old
Fat
Or crazy
...just sayin’
Mercy Offices 47
What do I want from it?
A more novel, healthful and useful question might be what can I bring to it? But let's look at the first question, first.
When I did my first fifth step, with a sponsor, immediately after, he asked me " So, now go figure what you want out of life"
It took a few days but my answer was..."Sexual satisfaction"
If I am honest, that's the first thing on my list of things I would want from a marriage.
Being a fairly abstemious soul (I haven't masturbated in over 27 years) and having hundreds of very satisfying, non-sexual relationships with both men and women, that priority seems, if not reasonable, at least understandable.
Secondly, I would say not company, companionship or even simply friendship.
I am not sure there actually is a fully adequate word for what I, and most humans desire. It is more of a feeling of family crossed with friendship.
Someone to spend the holidays, Saturday night, go to movies with, have dinner with, vacation with and sleep together with each night...So, family/friends
Thirdly, money...simple as that. To share expenses and wealth with. If you think this is superfluous or shallow, know that 80% of divorces are because of money.
What can I bring to a relationship?
Tremendous ability to connect emotionally
Can commit.
Endless laughter.
I can carry heavy things.
Spiritual giftedness
Excellence in fathering.
Social grace.
Excellent financially.
Experienced and adept lover
Did I say sense of humor?
Romantic songs
The gift of music
Good looks
Dress well
Live in good neighborhood
Can negotiate relationships
Travel well
Well read
Educated
Forgiving
Enjoys the arts
You know, I don't want to receive what I want and I don't want to give what I have.
I want to help the sick get well...
Mercy Offices 48
I have found the "Pearl of great price"
I have found the "Kingdom of God"
I have found the "Kingdom of heaven"
I have found "Eternal life"
I am no longer a "House divided"
I am no longer a "Kingdom divided"
I am no longer "Serving two masters"
"Free at last, free at last…Thank God Almighty, I'm free at last!"
Mercy Offices 49
HP,
Help me to:
Surrender all SLRR to you today and pick up a sense of humor instead
Stay on my food plan
Exercise
Serve others
Read spiritual literature
Go to meetings
Pray
Meditate
Do written step work
...and have faith that "I will get better"
Not to worry about yesterday, or tomorrow, just to do these things today...
Amen
Mercy Offices 50
I have come for me
Help me to unbaffle and uncunn myself
Help me to walk like a King
Forgive my sins
Renew my youth like an eagle
Help me to breathe deeply today
Help me to exercise hard for my heart
Remove my character defect of lust, please
Help me to feel my soul so that I feel that I have enough
Mercy Offices 51
God,
I know I left you as a child
I want to get back to you
I don't know how to get back to you with this new thing
I find I am addicted to intrigue
Mercy Offices 52
I must:
Fight for my chastity, when necessary
Strive for absolute honesty
Strive for absolute purity
Strive for absolute love
Strive for absolute unselfishness
Be merciful and forgiving when I fall short of absolute perfection
Mercy Offices 53
I am free
I am chaste
I am a winner
I have loved God, now I can do as I please
I have no need to fear money, God will take care of me
I can play
Mercy Offices 54
I can relax
I am at peace
This is my way of living, my lifestyle, my home
I have achieved my greatest achievement...mastering myself
Mercy Offices 55
I am ready to ascend the mountain today
I will breathe and walk slowly and lovingly
I will rest and pray
I will laugh
I will enjoy this greatest journey
I forgive myself
Mercy Offices 56
I will have mercy on myself
I have mercy on the child I was as a boy
I mercifully wash away the guilt I feel for what I did as a youth
I am cleansed of my sin as God's tenderness flows through my merciful heart
I am new
I will protect the new me, as I am tender
Guide me Lord in my new life
Amen
Mercy Offices 57
HP,
Help me when I am powerless
Help me to do your will
Help me to trust your will
Help me to breathe and relax
Help me to be grateful for my sobriety
Help me be grateful for the things for which I have no control
Help me to be satisfied with what I have
Help me be content with what I am
Mercy Offices 58
Greatness...from within
Total and perfect chastity
Terrific body from living foods and exercise.
Much breath prayer
Lots of fun entertainment
Peace through knowing my soul
Mercy Offices 59
As with not drinking in AA, chastity is the only thing that is supremely important
Help relieve me of my workaholism around money
Help me to relax and know that I am enough, I do enough and I have enough
Mercy Offices 60
Help me to fully appreciate being with myself.
Help love of myself be enough.
Help me to accept that God is not going to help me anymore relationally, as he did 17 years ago. I am an emotional grown up now. I take full responsibility for myself.
Help health and freedom from disease be enough for me.
Help me be content striving to be chaste, no matter how falteringly.
Help me have mercy on myself.
Mercy Offices 61
My very highest goal is to take sexual energy and transmute it into service for others.
Help me not become confused or doubtful around this goal.
Mercy Offices 62
There is something about a truly great man...
I believe that in seeing something better than normal, average life, we get to experience something greater than ourselves. In that sense we get to experience God.
I need God, so I need great men:
Jesus
Gandhi
Bill Wilson ( I didn't say perfect, I said great)
Martin Luther King
Jack Kennedy
Bobby Kennedy
Malcolm X
Hendrix
Coltrane
John Cage
Beethoven
Mohammed Ali
Robert Plant
David Clayton Thomas
Elvis
Bob Dylan
BB King
Albert King
Robert Johnson
Patrick Carnes
Bukka White
Louis Armstrong
John Lennon/Paul McCartney (they really weren't great alone)
Bela Bartok
Susan Sarandon
The Apostle Paul
Tolstoy
Julius Caesar
Alexander the Great
Socrates
King David
Aristotle
Paul Newman
Little Richard
Thomas Jefferson
Ezekiel the Prophet
All 12 minor prophets
Shakespeare
Mozart
James Joyce
Oprah
Now that Muhammad Ali's gone there are very few great left in the world…
Mercy Offices 63
HP
I have done it. Through decades of self purification I have achieved chastity.
Thank you Lord. It is enough for me.
Mercy Offices 64
I just want to shout out about PrayerCall.
I've been in AA for 35 years.
Also:
ACA,
Al-Anon,
OA,
FA,
NA,
DA,
SLAA,
SAA,
SA,
SCA,
GA,
SIA,
ASCA,
ISA,
EA,
Nar-anon,
S-anon,
Co-SLAA,
COSA,
WA,
Coda,
UA,
G-anon,
OA-HOW,
SRA,
AAA
But nothing has provided the unparalleled emotional/spiritual support that PrayerCall provides.
Mercy Offices 65
HP,
Help me today to be completely free from the mental illness of obsession with sex.
Help me to be completely free from any and all childhood abuse issues
Help me to be completely free from SLRR...just for today
Mercy Offices 66
God,
I pray for you to help me at four areas of my life today:
food, sex, money and family of origin issues.
I pray to take actions to be solvent.
I pray to take actions that will keep me (or get me) thin.
I pray to take actions that will keep me free of acting out unresolved father or mother conflicts.
I pray to surrender all actions and thoughts around sex, love, romance and relationship to you.
Help me to remember what Saint Augustine said, "Love the Lord…and do as you please" so that as I surrender these four areas that I pick up something fun in their place.
Give me a light heart, that I do not "make heavy going of life".
Help me to unselfishly serve others and balance that with self care.
Help me live One Day At A Time, one event at a time, one moment at a time.
Mercy Offices 67
HP,
Help me to feel all my feelings today, but only to act on the loving ones.
Help me to be grateful for my feelings as my connective tissue with myself, others and You.
Help me to remember that feelings are like a pendulum. I can only feel the "good" (pleasant) feelings to the exact degree that I am willing to feel the 'bad' (painful) feelings.
Help me to realize and accept that sometimes love means not to act, but to simply feel how I feel.
Help me to remember that recovery is not about how I feel but how I feel about myself.
Help me not act on feelings that would lead me to being drunk, fat, high, poor, sexually pitifully and incomprehensibly demoralized, victimized, depressed or anxious.
Help me to balance taking the next right actions with feeling all my feelings, whatever they may be.
Give me courage to feel angry but not act violently or abusively.
Help me to remember that if I can't, or won't, feel my feelings, I will become an addict.
Help me to feel my soul.
Mercy Offices 68
Help me HP:
Help me to have mercy and forgiveness
Help me to not make unreasonable demands on myself
Help me find a way of reducing these demands
Help me find peace with myself and others through reducing this demanding attitude I have within me
Help me to forgive myself for my mistakes, failures, losses, slips and sins
Help me to see what is good in me
Help me to let myself off the hook...especially when I don't deserve it
Help me to let others off the hook, especially when they don't deserve it
Help me to be grateful for what I do have
Help me want what I have instead of trying to get what I want
After I surrender my attitude of demandingness, help me begin to inculcate an attitude of contentedness
Mercy Offices 69
Lord,
I surrender my obsession with sex, love, romance and relationship with women to you
Help me to use this energy and time for something else: prayer, service, inventory, laughter
Help me to pray when I have contact with women: in person, online, on the phone, in print ads, on movie screens, in billboards, in songs or in books, in my thoughts, memories or imagination "Sister may no harm come to you from me"
Help me not to use innuendo, double entendres, sexualized humor, romantic language, relational intrigue, sexual language, love intrigue or body language in my communications with women today.
Help me not to judge women, because when I objectify, I do
Help me to stay satisfied within myself so that I have no need to judge, but if I am to judge, help me to judge women with this standard: would this person make an appropriate wife?
And by the way Lord, help me not to take this too damned seriously.
Mercy Offices 70
Help me when I fail, sin or lose...when I fall short, am in error, make a mistake, or just intentionally do wrong.
As Theresa would say "Don't let my sins become bad habits”.
Help me to forgive myself.
Help me not to demand perfection from myself anymore than a good father would demand perfection of a child.
Help me to be merciful and tender.
Help me to remember the wisest of all adages "Just keep coming back”.
Help me to be satisfied within myself.
Help me change my attitude from self-demanding to self-accepting .
Mercy Offices 71
Help me to love myself the way you would love me or the way that you would have me love myself.
Have mercy on me Lord a sinner
Help me to have mercy on myself
Help me to laugh at myself
Help me to be gentle, positive and accepting with myself when I fail.
Help me never quit encouraging myself.
If it is your will for all people to be healthy, help me to do my part today.
Help me start by being honest with my sex, food, money and family life through inventorying.
Help me to be grateful for my fellows.
Thank you for my opportunity to serve this group.
Help me to remember that we are "Spearheads of God's ever advancing creation", be it ever so humble, one person at a time, beginning with ourselves.
Help me to serve you today through helping the willing.
Help me, heartbreaking though it may be, to let go of those who are unwilling, as an act of humility on my part, as their unwillingness separates me from you, and without you, I cannot be abstinent.
When I am struggling, help me get out of myself, by serving others as that restores my perspective and my need for esteem of others.
When I am experiencing neutrality, help me take care of myself.
If I want to change the world, help me start with me: my attitudes, actions, thoughts and beliefs.
I have faith in your will for me and I am grateful for the opportunity to carry that will out.
Mercy Offices 72
HP,
Help me to
Recognize that any day I am chaste I am a winner
Recognize that sometimes the very best I can do is be chaste
Accept that there will be times when I feel, needy, sad, hurt, and lonely without sex or love
Realize the importance of the work you are doing within me
Be willing to sacrifice my own desires for the health of others
Accept that I will need to develop my self care skills to previously unknown heights
Accept I am powerless to attain and/or maintain this state of being
Acknowledge that with your Grace and my effort we can do this
Mercy Offices 73
HP,
Help me to not only to acknowledge my failures, but to embrace them, so that I may let them go
Help me to want to be what I am, so that I may be content.
If I get contentment from being what I want to be, help me want to be, what I truly am
I am your servant...help that be enough for me, to be content
I am chaste...help that be enough for me, to be content
I am prayerful...help that be enough for me, to be content
Mercy Offices 74
Help me have mercy on me
Help me to forgive my mistakes, to be patient with myself, to have faith I will heal
Help me to exercise as though my life depended on it...because it does
Help me to accept chastity as the stairway to power within me and service to others
Help me have mercy on me
Mercy Offices 75
No sex until God says so…
Deal with the food!!!
Mercy Offices 76
God,
I have faith in your way.
Help me to forgive my failure.
Help me to have faith in myself that I will succeed in living your way.
Amen
Mercy Offices 77
HP,
I am willing:
to surrender my demand for more, to know peace
to care for my body, to know peace
to not listen to my mind, but to my soul, to know peace
to feel my feelings, which are transient, and to know that there is something more stable, consistent and eternal underneath, my soul, to know peace
To breathe and focus on my solar plexus (if Socrates is right...and who knows, he may be wrong) to know peace
Mercy Offices 78
Help me be gentle with myself when I fail.
Help me to be as merciful to myself as a great father would be to his child.
Help me to encourage myself.
Help me to have faith in myself.
Help me to be proud of my courage.
Help me to love myself today by taking the actions of love, having an attitude of gratitude and contentment, believing beliefs that are positive, gentle and accepting, thinking hopefully and feeling everything I feel.
Mercy Offices 79
A couple of chaste slogans:
Don't be like the horse or the mule..
No sex except within a marriage
I surrender my right to be sexual
A vow of chastity...just for today
No sex except to create children
Surrender!!!
Matt 19:11-12
Mercy Office 80
Control of the palate is the first essential in the observation of the vow
There are those who choose to live like eunuchs to know the kingdom of heaven. If you can accept it, accept it
Acceptance is being positive
Do not give your strength to women, your vigor to those who ruin kings
Keep a path far from her, lest you give your best strength to others
When should you have sex with a woman? When you want to lose the strength you have
A man dissipates his physical strength through ordinary incontinence
Life without celibacy appears to me to be insipid and animal like
Have mercy on me Lord, a sinner
Sister may no harm come to you from me
Cling to the Lord and cry out for mercy
Celibacy, service and laughter
Chastity is happiness
Chastity is contentment
Chastity is peace
Knowing your soul...brings peace
Mercy Office 81
HP,
Help me to let go of dishonest men
Help those around me to let go of dishonest men
Leave us with the sick and we will serve them
Help us to walk away from the dishonest, as an act humility, knowing there is nothing that we can do
Mercy Office 82
HP,
I would like to be with you, but I am not able to, so I am with me.
Adolescent "Speak to me...please"
Child "Speak to me...please"
Adult "Speak to me, please"
When "You do"...I am never alone
Mercy Office 83
Help me to appreciate the splendid wonder of love
Help me to recognize that it is your gift
It is clearly your gift, simply because it's complexity and subtlety is greater than any human mind can understand
Help me to acknowledge my limits and, as an act of humility…to enjoy the ride
Mercy Office 84
HP,
The Christians believe in no sex except within a marriage.
That makes me crazy…
I am powerless to do that.
John 14:15 says “If you love me, you will obey me”
Am I being rigid and foolish if I believe that?
And what of mercy?
Mercy Office 85
I have a mental illness, an obsession, with trying to do something I cannot do.
I cannot do “No sex except with in a marriage”
I am powerless to carry that out.
But I keep trying every several years.
It makes me me so much better.
I always fail.
But I always come back and try again.
Mercy Office 86
“We remembered always that our sex powers were God-given and therefore good, neither to be used lightly or selfishly nor to be despised and loathed
(Big Book p84).”
But what if I have the opportunity to co-create life, through having children?
What a splendid opportunity that would be to share my power and strength with my beloved.
Help me to know when it is the right time to do that.
Mercy Office 87
“Sex only within a marriage”.
Is that truly your will for me?
That is what the Christians say.
…but I do not see myself as a Christian, I see myself as an addict.
Does this apply to me…and am I in denial?
Solution:
“In other words, we treat sex as we would any other problem. In meditation, we ask God what we should do about each specific matter. The right answer will come, if we want it (Big Book p.69).
Mercy Office 88
Truthfully, sex only within a marriage is inextricably associated, in my mind, with Christianity.
Truthfully, though, the Jewish, Muslim, and Hindu traditions believe this also.
Truthfully, chastity makes my brain run clearer.
Mercy Office 89
Chastity makes my brain run clearer regardless of Christianity.
Why?
- Because I don’t allow myself to intrigue with or objectify my partner
- My seminal fluid is retained…Engines run better when the oil ain’t low, ya know, LOL
Mercy Office 90
It is my belief that being chaste, as a unilateral decision within a coupleship, without the consensual agreement of my partner, is at least neglectful, if not sexually abusive…
Mercy Office 91
What if my sexual commitment to my partner to be sexually responsive, as the instrument of his/her sexual joy, conflicts with my beliefs around religion?
For me, my sexual recovery program comes first.
Why? Because the God of Recovery brought me out of the “Iron-smelting furnace of Egypt” of my slaughtered childhood and because “Thou shalt have no other gods before me”….
I will obey the God of Recovery
The God of Recovery requires that I not masturbate or betray my partner…NOT that I be married before being sexual with my beloved.
Mercy Office 92
"'Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman; that is detestable.
Leviticus 18:22
What does detestable even mean?
Detestable means:
abhorrent
hateful
loathsome
despicable
abominable
execrable…(what does that word even mean, LOL?)
repellent
repugnant
repulsive
revolting
disgusting
distasteful
horrible
horrid
awful
heinous
reprehensible
obnoxious
odious
offensive
contemptible
Really??? Do those sweet gay guys really deserve all that hate?
Doesn’t that level of hate deserve to be reserved for mass murders and child molesters?
…but the gay guys? Really??
Mercy Office 93
"'If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death
Leviticus 20:13
Wow! That’s pretty intense, LOL
Do we evolve?
We have evolved in Christianity to not oppressing African Americans in 1865.
We have evolved in Christianity to not oppressing women in 1920.
Will we evolve in Christianity to not oppressing gays?
Mercy Office 94
What if my highest goal was not:
Firstly, “To love God with all your heart, mind, body and soul.”
Or secondly, “To love your neighbor as yourself”?
but more simply…
To feel my soul
To know my soul
To experience my soul
To be with my soul
To honor my soul
To express my soul
To be guided by my soul
To be comforted by my soul
That would be a total game changer…A new model!
Mercy Office 95
Even if the Christians are wrong,
Even if the Christians are spiritually-evolutionarily obsolete,
Even if the Christians are arrogant in their claim that the only way to God is through Jesus,
Even if the Christians historically oppress women, hate gays and support slavery
They do call me to chastity and I find that helpful
Wisdom dictates: Take what you can use and leave the rest…
Mercy Office 96
2/3 of Christians use porn (ChurchMilitant.com January 2016)
57% of Christian pastors use porn (Barna Update February 2016)
If you believe that every word in the Bible is literally true…you have a 91% chance of using porn
Shall we hate them…or shall we serve them?
Mercy Offices 97
Proposition:
It is God’s will not to use porn
It is God’s will to not masturbate
It is God’s will to not cheat on my partner
Rather, it is God’s will to commit to my sexual partner
It is God’s belief that do otherwise is sickness
It is further God’s will that we be compassionate towards the sick
Have mercy on us, your children, Lord.
Have mercy on us…
Mercy Offices 98
Sex with children is wrong…Always
Sex with animals is wrong…Always
Help me to be tolerant, flexible, merciful, kind, gentle, loving and humorous toward myself and others
But help me to remember that...there is right and wrong in the world
Mercy Offices 99
My religion says sex before marriage is sin
Finite periods of chastity are very healthful for me
I do NOT want to confuse these two things
Sex with emotional intimacy, commitment and love are fine…for me
Mercy Office 100
HP,
Give me strength, faith, hope and endurance as I enter this next chastity period.
Help me to trust that this is the very best thing for me
Help me to remember that no matter what challenges I may face in the next six months, that I will be better able to handle them with the gift of chastity that I give myself today.
Mercy Office 101
HP,
I am grateful for the clarity and strength and whatever modicum of wisdom you have given me, today.
I ask you humbly to remove my character defects of:
Narcissism
Impatience/demandingness
Grandiosity
Hypervigilance
and Controlling today
Amen
Mercy Office 102
HP,
I am grateful that I can use my sexual energy, transform it to work, and address challenges that create anxiousness in my life.
Mercy Office 103
Help me to use my transformed sexual strength to serve my:
family
friends
God
country
myself
…and all other human beinz on dis here planet of y’orn
Mercy Office 104
I am grateful to have two seemly opposing gifts from a period of chastity:
The capacity to work hard on financial issues and yet, the freedom and ability to address workaholism by relaxing, reading a book, and listening to music.
Mercy Office 105
I am grateful for my strength, clarity, humour, resilience and patience…brought on by my chastity
Thank you, thank you, thank you
Mercy Office 106
The Highest Jesus ever thought was the Sermon on the Mount.
The Highest Gandhi ever thought was non-violence.
The Highest I have ever thought is Celibacy, Service and Laughter.
Being in touch with my soul…is higher than anything I have ever thought.
Mercy Office 107
I humbled myself with fasting
Psalm 35:13
Declare a holy fast
Joel 1:14
Help me fast this morning to help my prayers, Amen.
Mercy Office 108
Not everyone is an alcoholic or a sex addict
But everyone must deal with money.
Help me surrender my anxiousness around money to you and look at money as a way to communicate and connect…
Amen
Mercy Office 109
Help me to take care of myself in chastity.
I will feel more.
Hurt is one of the feelings I will feel more.
When I feel hurt help me to remember that I need my anger more to protect me from feeling victimised, which is the number one addictive trigger to cause failure at chastity.
I am going to feel angry more…or I am not going to make it.
I commit to feel my anger…
Mercy Office 110
Higher Power,
Help me to have mercy on the: mentally ill, the liars and the emotionally abusive.
They are sick.
Help me to have mercy on these people.
Amen
Mercy Office 111
No:
Art
Woman
Child
Home
Wealth
Talent
Neighborhood
Automobile
Food
Jewelry
Drug
Land
Sex
Stock
Power
Fame
Fortune
Religion
Recovery
Health
Life
Nothing is as important as my soul…for from it spring all the things of my life.
Mercy Office 112
Higher Power,
I am truly grateful for the clarity and power of chastity.
I can now begin to discern the difference between when sickness crosses the ever moving, and ever changing line and becomes evil.
I have witnessed words that I now know to be the evil of hatred, vociferously exchanged, between my parents as a child.
Help me not do evil today by speaking evilly to others, particularly when they attack me.
I am grateful for the resilience of chastity.
Thank you for teaching me that.
Mercy Office 113
What does evil mean?
sinful
iniquitous
depraved
vicious
corrupt
base
vile
nefarious
pernicious
destructive
wicked
depraved
unrighteous
corrupt
disasterous
calamitious
woeful
miserable
sufferingful
sorrowful
Chastity protects me from all these because:
Wisdom is mobile beyond all motion and she penetrates and pervades all things by reason of her purity.
Mercy Office 114
I am grateful for you lifting my obsession with, and freeing me from the compulsion of:
Alcohol
Drugs
Cigarettes
Caffeine
Food
Sex
Love
Romance
Relationship
Work
Debt
Codependence
Adult Children of Alcoholics issues
Victimhood
Artistic and Mystical preoccupations
Gambling
And thank you for the greatest gift of all…chastity, which gives me the resilience to live in all the sickness in this world.
Mercy Office 115
HP,
Help me when I am announcing limits and setting boundaries left and right with people who are misnaming their out-of-control behaviour, as controlling on my part …and help me to cling to my soul with all my might.
Amen
Mercy Office 116
I am grateful to know how to successfully not only to stay sober during the holidays, but get better.
To work my program harder than normal.
Thank you for the wisdom I have seen in other men, in other programs, who have modelled that for me.
Mercy Office 117
HP,
Help me to love me when I am in conflict with someone else.
My need for esteem of others is not met when I am in conflict, by the other person.
My need for love and belonging is not met when I am in conflict, by the other person.
My need for safety is not met when I am in conflict, by the other person.
Help me to meet those needs for myself, when I am in conflict, with another person.
Mercy Office 118
Part of addiction is that it is fun.
It is fun to get drunk, get high, smoke cigarettes, drink coffee, eat too much, have carefree sex or use porn, spend too much money, not work…It’s fun.
When I surrender those things help me pick up something else fun
Like biking and reading…
Mercy Office 119
HP,
I humbly ask you to remove the defect of character of narcissism.
Help me meet my need for love and belonging, esteem of others and safety in ways that don’t harm others.
Help sharing my truth be tempered with love.
Mercy Office 120
When in conflict I will grieve…(I will feel needy, hurt, sad and lonely).
Help me to surrender any self-pity which might be “an evil and corrosive thread” (p.67 Big Book) when I grieve.
Help me to have a positive attitude around my grieving, e.g. “I am sober, can feel sustained grief and not act out, and I am grateful for that strength”.
Mercy Office 121
Please remove my character defects of:
narcissism
extreme thinking and acting
patronizing/being a victim
grandiosity
demanding/impatience
hyper-vigilance
taking myself too damned seriously
obsessiveness
dishonesty
selfishness
worrying
speaking evilly
controlling
When I am addressing money issues in my life that you have blessed me with
Mercy Office 122
Help me to remember with money that:
“Anger is the Backbone of Recovery” And that “Anger solves problems like a fan folds papers”
Mercy Office 123
I am grateful for Celibacy, Service and Laughter…
Help me to remember that Service has two parts:
Unselfish service to others and “Enlightened Self Interest”
Self Care today looks like:
Weighing and measuring my food/sticking with my food plan
Reading books for fun
Creating a Spending Plan
Prayer
Forgiveness
Listening to music
Vigorous exercise
Being grateful for God lifting my obsession…thank you, thank you
Mercy Office 124
Being in touch with my soul is the most important spiritual goal I have today.
If I do, I can feel peace no matter what the day may bring.
Mercy Office 125
I am so grateful for the power of chastity.
I am grateful to be able to give my partner the peace of mind of not fearing for her immortal soul.
Whether there is genuine cause for fear for her immortal soul doesn’t really matter. I give her peace of mind by surrendering my own selfishness.
That is pretty cool…
Mercy Office 126
HP,
I am as surrendered to you, in relationship, as I have ever been.
But, as Patrick Carnes says “Addiction is the disease that migrates ”.
Please help me not to simply let my sex addiction just move to food addiction.
I will do my part.
Amen
Mercy Offices 127
What if morality were not seen as resentment, fear and selfish sex as the Big Book outlines, or “Sex, security and society” as the AA 12x12 outlines, but simply as anything that keeps me from my soul?
Something new. Something simple. Something childlike.
Mercy Offices 128
The Two Step Program
- I suffer at my own hand and I can’t stop
- I find my soul
Mercy Offices 129
HP,
Please help me not let overeating food, compulsive eating or obsessing over food impact my capacity to feel my soul, just for today.
Mercy Offices 130
HP,
Help me to have mercy on those that I love who are in relapse.
Amen
Mercy Offices 131
HP,
Help me to take care of myself when those I love are in relapse.
Please
Mercy Offices 132
HP,
Help me to simply keep doing what I am doing as I am liking what I am getting.
Amen
Mercy Office 133
If Gandhi is right, and who knows he may be wrong, we get to live one more life, for fun, once we become enlightened.
Help me to make this life, that bad boy 
Mercy Office 134
What does enlightened mean?
Well informed
aware
sophisticated
advanced
developed
liberal
open-minded
broad-minded
educated
knowledgeable
wise
civilized
refined
cultured
cultivated
If chastity gave me all those things, would I do it?
Mercy Office 135
HP,
I am grateful for my professional failures in my life.
If I had gotten what I wanted I wouldn’t have had to look inside me to find satisfaction.
Mercy Office 136
HP,
With chastity as the engine that gives me the strength I need, help me to balance work, serving others and fun, just for today.
Amen
Mercy Office 137
Help me to keep my mind on my own business, to keep my eye on my own plate, and to keep my side of the street clean and…
To do one thing at a time, keep first things first, keep it simple and easy does it as I head into my Monday morning
( Monday, Monday heard wafting in the background)
Mercy Office 138
Help me, please, to practice humility and humour today
Mercy Office 139
You have chastened me severely but you have not given me over to death.
Psalm 118:18
Okay God, I asked for you to remove my character defect of controlling...and today you have made me “entirely ready”.
I feel shame, humiliation and hurt, but if that is the level of pain I need to feel, to recognize, and to be entirely ready to have the defect of character of control removed then I humbly ask you to do the necessary spiritual surgery...
I know, full well, that character defect removal is painful...bring it on, pour it on, do what you must...I am ready
Amen
Mercy Office 140
Help me to enjoy this life today by reading…for fun!
Mercy Offices 141
Detach with love.
How do I do that without appearing cold or disinterested.
How about this version: Detach with humor
Mercy Office 142
"After attaining freedom, one has one step further to go...To enjoy embodied existence as a consequence of one's good deeds as well."
Gandhi
Enjoy myself after enlightenment? How, for me?
Reading
Biking
Watching Opera
Watching Movies
Singing
Mercy Office 143
Help me to let go of my past.
I am no longer a musician.
I am getting to spend my life in prayer and service.
That is enough for me.
Mercy Office 144
HP,
Help me to detach with love and if possible with humor as I let go of the sick and unwilling.
Help me to live in Step Seven around controlling, impatience/demandingness, grandiosity, hypervigilance, speaking evilly, worrying, patronizing/being a victim.
And live in Step Nine today by making amends to myself by relaxing, not working, reading Dickens, doing pushups through the day, and having a new shirt made for myself, as an amends for the harm I have done myself.
Amen
Mercy Office 145
Help me to have mercy on myself as I head down the last two weeks of this chastity period.
I find that I really wanted it for 40 days, but that I do not feel that way now.
Help me stay faithful to myself.
Help me to remember that chosen chastity, for any reason, other than if I am a sexual anorexic (which I am not) is healthful, invigorating and life giving to myself,
…and I have lot’s to do today, that that conserved sexual energy will help “Give me an edge” as I face my challenges today.
Just for today, help me be faithful to myself.
Amen
Mercy Office 146
If I want to change my mind, in the middle of a chastity period help me to stay:
Clear
Unstained
Certain
Firm
Secure
Tranquil
Mercy Office 147
What about, not on the child’s perspective, but on the other end of life?
How is the best way to be old?
Laughter
Freedom from all addictions…enlightenment
Knowing my soul
Exercise
Reading
Inventorying
Prayer
Service
Mercy Office 148
HP,
Help me to fast 12 hours a day between my dinner meal and breakfast meal…
That is why they call it breakfast…I break my fast.
Mercy Office 149
If it is true that:
“As we are, so are the times”
Saint Augustine
“As with the body, so with the Universe”
Gandhi
Then why would I not put “Self Care” through exercise and diet, after my sobriety, as my number one priority?
Mercy Office 150
Pushups or addressing an account receivable, first?
Pushups!!!
Mercy Office 151
HP,
Help my prayers to raise my dopamine levels, and through the plasticity of our brains that you have created, heal me from my illness.
Amen
Mercy Office 152
What is enlightenment if not finding my soul and being able to access it instantly?
Mercy Office 153
What comes after enlightenment?
A fun life!
Mercy Office 154
I have recovered. I have become enlightened.
All I want to do now is just thank God all day long.
Mercy Office 155
I had a knowing, after morning prayers, that chastity helps my relationship with my Higher Power today.
It also helps my relationship with myself and others.
Mercy Office 156
“In many cases, our primary problem was not our acting-out behaviors themselves, but how they ultimately affected our lives.”
Not agreeing with the moral standards of my society has cost me dearly relationally.
Help me to have mercy on myself…for the beating I have taken, as I fought for my psychological life against my alcoholic parents.
Have mercy on me, Lord.
Mercy Office 157
I can see, now, that when my father said “Always improve” that I took that suggestion, so far, that I never was able to “Enjoy the journey”.
I humbly ask you to remove my character defect of perfectionism.
Mercy Office 158
As an act of commitment, help me to “Detach with humor”, when my partner becomes a tarantula under a dump truck.
Mercy Office 159
How do I want to live life, old?
Laugh as much as possible...
Accept instead of change…so it’s important to change everything I want to change before I get old, LOL.
I thought to emphasize reading. But that is a mistake…I need to emphasize exercise!
...and then read books
Mercy Office 160
As I have achieved within myself all that I ever dreamed of and more (though failing terribly without) help acceptance and mercy be the hallmarks of my life now.
Mercy Office 161
Chastity-Suffering and Character building
“But whenever we had to choose between character and comfort, the character-building was lost in the dust of our chase after what we thought was happiness.”
“Seldom did we look at character-building as something desirable in itself, something we would like to strive for whether our instinctual needs were met or not.”
“We never wanted to deal with the fact of suffering.”
“Character-building through suffering might be all right for saints, but it certainly didn't appeal to us.”
As a child, the suffering I experienced was at my parents hands, so I revolt at the injustice of that suffering.
But I am a man now.
I can choose to suffer (which simply means that I feel the meta-feeling of hurt, needy, sad and lonely).
When I surrender what I want (which is to be sexual right now) I can build my character…I can “Man up”…one day at a time
Mercy Office 162
Humility and Anonymity
My second AA sponsor Don S. said in 1988, “You have become famous in an essentially anonymous program”…
If that is true, intentional or non-intentional, cultivating it is not humility or anonymity, but it is the “Instinct for society” run riot… “Real or imagined”, intentional or not…I surrender it.
Amen
Mercy Office 163
I will always have pain and problems. If I wait until they are gone to find my soul…My soul will be lost in my lifetime.
Mercy Office 164
HP,
The “God the Father” model is scaring the young addicts I am trying to be of service to.
I need a new model to help them.
I like Gandhi’s “God is Truth” model but I need to temper it with “God is Love”
Kinda like two goalposts on a football field
The Gridiron of God…LOL
Mercy Office 165
Help me to treasure the gift of connectedness that I have with you my God.
Mercy Office #166
What a blessing it is to be chaste.
No more of the moral fighting back and forth around my childhood religion’s dictates.
My lifetime attitude of demandingness towards myself stops in it’s tracks.
All my strength remains inside my body.
My mind is silent.
I can just breathe in and out and feel my soul.
I “recreate” myself:
freshen
recharge
refresh
regenerate
rejuvenate
renew
repair
restore
resuscitate
revitalize
revive
Lovely peace…
Mercy Office #167
It’s coming up on 30 years that I am clean and sober.
I am in a lovely place with my Higher Power.
I can connect directly, instantly, with my soul, through old Buddhist breath prayer.
Daily inventory, prayer and service really work for me, everyday, one day at at time.
Thanks God
Thanks guys,
Steve D.
Mercy Office #168
The most important thing today is the food. Then to know my soul. Through humility, obedience, chastity and abstinence.
Mercy Office #169
While there are many, many things to do to become enlightened, to walk through that door, for me, with my mindset… I can only enter through chastity.
Take it or leave it...
Mercy Office #170
HP,
I am grateful for the last three years of PrayerCall.
I have found, through helping others to be chaste, my own chastity, and I am so grateful for that gift.
I have managed my money so that I did not have to work the last three years, to devote to PrayerCall.
I have very surprisingly found a beautiful partner.
And most importantly of all, I have found my immortal soul.
That is the gift, not of a lifetime…but 1000 lifetimes.
In humble gratitude,
Steve D.
Mercy Office #171
HP,
I am challenged in my life today.
Help me to remember that when I am challenged I have a tool which clarifies my mind, incites intuition, gives me personal power in relationships, and most preciously, resilience in relationship and that ultimate gift of self love is...chastity.
Gandhi said “Suffice it to say that with the gradual disappearance of the carnal appetite my domestic life became and is becoming more and more peaceful, sweet and happy”.
Chastity is also the key to my soul and in knowing my soul…I do not need anything else to fulfil me.
Mercy Office #172
My path is as a chaste living foodist.
After that...I accept life
Mercy Office #173
I am humbly grateful that I am chaste today and free to make other choices in my life.
Gandhi said “I shall content myself with merely an declaring my firm conviction that, for the seeker who would live in the fear of God and would see him face to face, restraint in diet, both as to quantity and quality, is as essential as restraint in thought and speech.”
So, I am truly grateful that I am conscious of my food choices.
Mercy Office # 174
HP,
First, let me thank you for lifting the obsession to drink 30 years ago today.
Nothing is more fundamental to my life than that.
Second, let me thank you for getting me sexually sober. This is where I have lived, moment to moment, for the last 30 years.
Third, let me thank you for letting me father. After sexual sobriety, this has been the most precious of gifts you have bestowed on me.
Fourth, let me thank you for the opportunity to serve others as a life goal.
Through this, I have found “Happiness, Joyousness and true Freedom.”
Also, I have found not the God of books or religions, but the living God...the God of unselfish action, which is available to anyone willing to try it.
Fifth, let me thank you for the opportunity to pray throughout each day.
Despite the prejudice associated with it, because of religion, it is a tremendous emotional relief...tremendous.
Sixth, let me thank you for the opportunity for PrayerCall...the salvation of my life.
Seventh, let me thank you for the opportunity to love a woman again...Wow!
Who would have thought that would happen again with such a beautiful woman, not only on the outside, but even more so on the inside.
Thanks HP
Steve D.
Mercy Offices 175
When I feel untethered, unmoored or disconnected I remember what what Gandhi said:
“Religion without sacrifice means nothing”.
Recovery is the same.
The healthiest posture, for me, in my life, is to be surrendering behaviours that are self-destructive to a power greater than myself.
Earlier in my life this meant things like alcohol, drugs, smoking, masturbation and affairs.
Now it means being overly sexual or over eating.
Saint Augustine said “Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation”.
This morning I surrender both sex and food to the Universe, that non-verbal void, that I feel no emotional connection with at the moment.
In humility, I know that this is the next right thing for me to do…just for today
Mercy Office 176
“As with the body so with the Universe”
Gandhi
Cardio respiratory exercise
Core/abdominal work
Yoga
Pushups
Weighing and measuring my food
Raw organic vegan living foods
And for my mind...prayer
Mercy Offices 177
Cardiovascular exercise makes me feel normal and healthy.
Trying to lose weight through exercise is a fool’s game.
Regardless of my food…I exercise
Mercy Office # 178
HP,
My very best relationship with you comes when I surrender my sex, love, romance and relationship to you just for today.
I surrender these things to you and transmute the remaining energy into inventory, prayer, service…and laughter...just for today.
Mercy Office #179
The Gift of Clarity
HP,
I have had mercy on myself today by surrendering all sex, love, romance and relationship to you.
My partner asked for a chastity period today and I readily agreed.
I am grateful to her for her open and pure heart that seeks only for knowledge of your will for her and thereby, because of our commitment, knowledge for us, as a couple.
I know that while the gifts of sexual love are your gifts, not to be used lightly or selfishly (Big Book p. 69), that it is my gift to myself when I surrender these things, to you, for a finite period, so that I can see more clearly, and through my commitment to her, my gift is to us.
Mercy Office #180
There is so terribly much more giftedness available to me than just not using porn and not masturbating…If I want it and know where to look.
I can have peace of mind, by simply surrendering my “Right” to sex, love, romance and relationship, just for today.
But, if I can just squeak in through that seemingly impossibly tiny doorway, I might, maybe get a look at my immortal soul.
If that is really true, can you imagine the impact that would have on my life once I got that piece about myself?
If all I want is NoFap success, that is like saying all I want from a marriage is woman whose last name is easy for me to remember.
Come on guys we can do better than that…let’s reach for the sky!
Mercy Office #181
Do you want to be thin?
Be self-restrained.
Mercy Offices #182
HP,
Help me to remember that I am powerless over the fantasy, anxiety and rage that the disease of codependency creates in others, and that to react to that disease would make me a…Codependent-Anon!
And Lord I have enough programs to attend to!
Mercy Offices #183
HP,
“As with the body so with the Universe”
…help me to take care of myself in an “Enlightened Self-Interest” sort of way and to “Mind my own business”
….by following my food plan and exercising
Mercy Offices #184
HP,
Help me be as tough as I have to be to be able to maintain my abstinence.
As Ma Joad said “The family must get across”.
Mercy Offices #185
Mercy Office #31 is about the most spiritually gifted man I have ever known, and my most gifted sponsor.
I lost track of him in his ascent to fame 20 years ago.
I caught up with him on Facebook two weeks ago (8/2018).
He was completely lost to the food and to Starbucks
…as was the most truly enlightened priest I have ever met, Rev. Gray T.
There but the Grace of God go I.
Have mercy on us all, Lord,
Help me to have mercy
Mercy Offices #186
HP,
Please help me to unselfishly support my partner in her colossal effort today and to use my energy, that is provided, by you…for her.
Amen
Mercy Offices #187
God,
Thank you for you gift of success today! We are headed back to the USA…Hallelujah!
Mercy Offices #188
HP,
The word matrimony comes from the Latin word Mater which means mother.
As I go into this next phase of SLRR help me to utilise my sexual energy in ways that will help create healthy children.
Amen
Mercy Offices #189
Help me to use my sexual energy for creating children, the initial, primary, but not the only thing, that you designed sex for out of your Unspeakable Wisdom…
Mercy Offices #190
HP,
Help me to transmute my sexual energy into creating income for my family.
Note: Result was splendid
Amen
Mercy Office #191
HP,
I am grateful for chastity today. It gave me the courage and strength to fight for good today. Even though I did not succeed twice….I fought good and pure and strong. Thank you for the super charge.
Mercy Office #192
HP,
As my fiancee and I begin to look at creating children, help me to be unselfish, knowing that I will be sacrificing a great deal of my energy, but that it will be sacrificed for another…literally
Mercy Offices #193
HP,
Help me to have mercy on the mentally ill, but first to protect myself from their insanity.
“Love always protects”.
Mercy Offices #194
HP,
Help me to use my sexual energy today to:
Pray
Bike
Enlightenedly exercise daily self-care
Practice the guitar
Take an Apple computer class
Mercy Offices #195
HP,
Help me to accept my life, as it is, by being positive…and to enjoy the peace that that brings.
Mercy Offices #196
HP,
I am grateful to be emotionally present enough and financially perspicacious enough to seek out improvements for my wife’s wedding dress.
Thank God for simple sexual sobriety.
Mercy Offices #197
HP,
I understand that I cannot attain the state of holiness that is possible through chastity....but, having sex today sure was fun, LOL
I did not “despise or loath” sex, nor did I use it “selfishly or lightly”…just as you direct in the Big Book.
Mercy Offices #198
HP,
I am grateful for the strength to take care of myself today. To do the difficult, the unpleasant, the necessary.
Mercy Offices #199
HP,
I have compassion on myself as a 19 to 25 year old.
I admire my courage and I have mercy on my efforts.
I see now that what I really wanted was to be loved as a young man, 19-25.
I am grateful that I can provide that love now at 63, amply, easily, freely, contentedly.
Mercy Offices #200
HP,
Help me to remember that I have achieved peace of mind , that rarest of states, and to be grateful and thankful for that everyday.
Mercy Offices #201
HP,
Our bikes got stolen last night, but I choose gratitude today.
Especially for 60 days, today, of my new Food Plan.
As Gandhi said “The extinction of the sexual passion is as a rule impossible without fasting.” And “At that time I did not understand, or nor did I believe in, the efficacy of fasting.”
I wanted a spiritual food plan, and I didn’t like the spirituality in FA, so I researched the old Jewish texts and I found:
Declare a holy fast”
Joel 1:14
“I humbled my self with fasting”
Psalm 35:10
Ezekiel 4:10
“The food you eat will be eight ounces a day by weight, to be consumed daily at regular intervals.
From the book of Daniel:
1:8
But Daniel resolved not to defile himself with the royal food and wine, and he asked the chief official for permission not to defile himself this way.
1:12
"Please test your servants for ten days: Give us nothing but vegetables to eat and water to drink.
1:13
Then compare our appearance with that of the young men who eat the royal food, and treat your servants in accordance with what you see."
1:15
At the end of the ten days they looked healthier and better nourished than any of the young men who ate the royal food.
1:17
To these four young men God gave knowledge and understanding of all kinds of literature and learning. And Daniel could understand visions and dreams of all kinds.
Those who make light of dietetic restrictions and fasting are as much in error as those who stake their all on them.
Mercy Offices 202
HP,
I am grateful for the ease of Sunday afternoons. Practicing the ancient Jewish tradition of Sabbath the last year and a half has been very good for me.
Mercy Offices 203
HP,
“Complete abstinence is easier than perfect moderation”, Saint Augustine
I like physical intimacy on Sunday mornings and afternoons.
Mercy Offices 204
HP,
I feel anxious around my work tasks today. I turn my life over to your care and I seek your will.
Help me to “Lighten up”!
Mercy Offices 205
HP,
Help me to produce today, to take care of myself,
to share with others, and be grateful that you have restored me to sanity around sex addiction "permanently"...one day at a time
Mercy Offices 206
HP,
I want to work for my money, as a middle class man.
Class determined by money is kinda like beer:
“Foamy and frothy at the top, bitter draught at the bottom, full bodied and robust in the middle”
Mercy Offices 207
“It’s the same thing, singin’ an’ prayin’, jus’ the same thing.”
John Steinbeck. “The Grapes of Wrath.” .
Mercy Offices 208
HP,
Sex addiction recovery has given me the opportunity to live a normal simple life, loving a wife and creating a family and working as a "useful member of society".
I am unabshedly grateful...
Mercy Offices 209
Chastity periods are always available to me as an energy resource. It's ironic that abstinence from sex...helps my sex life.
As my sponsor would say "It is a paradoxical perplexity".
Mercy Offices 210
HP,
I am grateful that I have:
“Fully surrendered to you”, as the 12 steppers would say,
“Acknowledged you in all my ways”, as the ancient Jews would say,
“Sought the Kingdom of God and his righteousness”, as the Christians would say,
“Trusted the process” as the therapy folks would say.
I start a new life today and the first thing on the to-do list is financial self-care.
Help me to do it your way…with a sense of humor, being positive, and being grateful.
Mercy Offices 211
HP,
Help me deal with tarantulian clients today.
Mercy Offices 212
HP,
Have mercy on my brother who was robbed today. Help me help him.
Mercy Offices 213
HP,
I pray for humility today.
I pray that I do not exceed my limits, because if I do I will act out.
Help me to be honest, with myself, as to what my limits are, as an act of humility.
Mercy Offices 214
“ People mutht be amuthed, Thquire, thomehow,”
Charles Dickens. “Hard Times.”
(Just a literary version of slogan-Lighten Up!)
Mercy Offices 215
Pregnancy is the joy of life, literally, but it brings on physical challenges.
As previously, one of the ways to get energy to meet those challenges is through chastity.
My wife and I are practicing that, finitely...by agreement.
Mercy Offices 216
HP,
“Praise be to the LORD my Rock, who trains my hands for war, my fingers for battle".
Psalm 144
Mercy Offices 217
HP,
Help me do war with whatever addiction, compulsion, obsession, personal character defect, institution, person, principle, energy, mistake, sin, evil, accident, vengefulness, stupidity, ignorance, foolishness, naivety, error, miscalculation or just plain dumbness that would stop me from being abstinent.
No excuses…
No excuses…
Mercy Offices 218
HP,
I am thankful for my enemies as they keep me strong.
Help me to seek your guidance as I go out to war.
Mercy Offices 219
HP,
I want to stay sober around alcohol, so I can stay sober around sex/masturbation, so I can stay abstinent around food, so I can act and think soberly around work and money today.
Mercy Offices 220
HP,
I can find you through unselfish service to others.
I can find you through meditation.
If I am spiritually developed enough, I can find you within.
But help me to be humble enough to find you…so that I will succeed financially today.
Mercy Offices 221
“Tell me what company you keep...and I’ll tell you who you are”
Cervantes
I reject the sexually addicted narcissism of
Hendrix.
I reject the food addiction and smoking of
Segovia
I reject the alcoholic madness of Beethoven
I reject the alcoholism of John Cage
I reject the drug addiction of Michael Jackson and Prince
I reject the food and drug addiction of Elvis
I reject the food addiction of B.B. King
I reject the food addiction/drug addiction of Louis Armstrong
I reject food addiction and sex addiction of Coltrane
I reject the gambling of Mozart
I reject the narcissism of Wagner and Miles Davis
I reject the self-pity of Mahler
I reject the neuroticism of Schoenberg, Webern, Bartok, Stravinsky and Varese
I reject the intellectualism of Bach
I reject the sentimentalism of Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Schubert
Mercy Offices 222
HP,
Thank you for giving me the strength, from the group, to do what I needed to do today to love you, my fellows, myself and my family...time to relax
Mercy Offices 223
HP,
When I feel fearful and anxious around money help me to remember “Do not fret…it only leads to evil” (Ps 37:8)
Mercy Offices 224
HP,
Help me to smile. Help me to laugh...when it comes to my working day.
Mercy Offices 225
HP,
Help me to trust you as I do my part to serve others unselfishly and take care of myself enlightendly, that you are aware of my needs and that I am in your care,…even if it doesn’t feel like it.
Mercy Offices 226
HP,
Help me to be grateful that I am free from
- Alcohol
- Drugs
- Cigarettes
- Coffee
- Masturbation/Affairs
- Fat
- ACA
- Coda
- Narcissism
- Alanon
- Anon-anonism
- Victimhood
- Workaholism
- Debting
- Underearning
- Gambling
- Artistic and Mystical Preoccupations
- Love Addiction
- Romance Addiction
- Relationship Addiction
- Sexaholism
Mercy Offices 227
HP,
As I cannot make direct contact with you today, for guidance, I will access my memory of your love and wisdom...and hope I don’t botch it up too bad.
Mercy Offices 228
HP,
When someone takes the following actions, help me to remember that this person is being violently, and most merciful God, help me not act in kind.
- hitting or violence
- shaming, blaming or controlling
- yelling, name calling
- use of obscenity or profanity while expressing anger
- abandoning through coldness or silence
- choosing depression
- making small things big
- ignoring limits
- passive aggression
- fighting after 11:00pm…when we are tired, LOL
Mercy Offices 229
HP,
Help me to use my chastity to create emotional non-violence to improve my relationships, including financial ones.
Mercy Offices 230
I agree with Rousseau, Stravinsky and Oscar Wilde: “You either have giant talent or you don’t.”
God gives tremendous talent unerringly and unequally.
When people buy tickets for a concert they’re going to see something above and beyond their ordinary life. In that sense, they’re going to hear God, simply defined as something “Greater than themselves”.
God gifts us...not us.
If that’s true, then trying to compete, through education and arduous practice,to be the
best
most creative
fastest
most expressive
flashiest
most popular
most original
most innovative
most technically proficient
the most of anything...is a matter of pure narcissistic insanity.
Plain mental illness.
At that point, you don’t need a music teacher at that point…You need a therapist.
Mercy Offices 231
HP,
Help me keep a sense of humor and help me to detach from crazy people on this day of rest.
Mercy Offices 232
HP,
I have trusted you for 30 years in my “Seeking first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these shall be added to you”, and I have gratefully acquired 20 sobrieties.
Whatever your is will for me at this point, I gratefully accept.
Mercy Offices 233
HP,
Food Abstinence leads to Chastity.
Chastity leads to Non-Violence.
Non-violence leads to Laughter.
Mercy Offices 234
HP,
Help me to announce limits on income, so that I don’t become obsessed with money.
Mercy Offices 235
HP,
Help me, personally, to teach one young person music for free today, not just to sell all my time to the highest bidder.
Mercy Offices 236
“In brahmacharya lies the protection of the body the mind and the soul”
Gandhi
It is true. I feel:
More resilient socially,
More energetic
More athletic
Have a purer, more serene mind
Am more attentive to business
More intuitively in touch with my Higher Power
Stronger
More artistic
More fun loving
Mercy Offices 237
HP,
I have been abstinent, prayed six times, served others, balanced that with “Enlightened self-interest” all day and worked out.
I am grateful for the strength to do these things.
Now to relax..,
Mercy Offices 238
HP,
Help me to be grateful for:
my hygienic circumstances
the “Air-con”
the refrigeration
the solid floor
the “Inside plumbing”
the hot water
and the Internet.
Mercy Offices 239
HP,
Not Jesus, Bill W., Inner Child or Gandhi.
Something higher than that guides me.
I accept my own personal limits.
Guide me, please
Mercy Offices 240
HP,
The good news about money, made through work, is that any fantasies that would led to delusional beliefs are eradicated…by immediate financial failure.
Mercy Offices 241
Step Four...Part Two
What did I do, or what did others do to me, that caused me from being cut off from my soul, the genesis of all addiction?
Childhood sexual, physical, emotional and verbal abuse
Emotional neglect
Alcoholism
Prescription drug addiction
Smoking
Caffeine
Overweight
Masturbation and affairs
Overwork
Codependency
ACA
Victimhood
Gambling
Debting
Under earning
Love Addiction
Romance Addiction
Relationship Addiction
Artistic and Mystical Preoccupations
Narcissism
(Posting Step Four constitutes Step Five, digitally)
Mercy Offices 242
HP,
I have been challenged to rise to the sober occasion of normal “Life on life’s terms”.
I have done four sets of breath prayer totalling 1200 breaths, attended three PrayerCalls, stayed abstinent…and it ain’t 1:00pm yet
Mercy Offices 243
HP
As I battle against evil, versus sickness, help me be aware that all those around me may not understand the techniques used.
With a sick man you can confront.
With an evil man...you must love through being consistently positive.
Help me be aware of innocent bystanders
Mercy Offices 244
HP,
Help me to remember that having more money does not necessarily mean I am healthier or “better” with money.
Mercy Offices 245
Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and he will give you everything you need.
Matthew 6:33
Mercy Offices 246
HP,
Help me to be merciful but wise…and smart
Mercy Offices 247
HP,
I am so grateful for my successes today with money.
Thank you for my friends who helped me
I am glad many people showed me how to ask for help.
It is humbling…but I feel safe and comforted afterwards.
Mercy Offices 248
Step Six in Artistic Preoccupations:
What defects of character cause my addiction to artistic preoccupations?
Gluttony-yes
Pride-yes
Greed-yes
Envy-yes
Sloth-no
Lust-no
Wrath-no
But, by far, by far....Neediness for love
Which is completely immoral, especially now, since I have to capacity to meet these needs thoroughly without ever playing music ever again.
Step Seven in Artistic PreOccupations:
HP,
Please help me meet my own needs for love.
Amen
Mercy Offices 249
Step Eight in Artistic PreOccupations
I have made direct amends to everyone I have harmed except me with this illness
Step Nine in Artistic PreOccupations
I play for fun and health
Mercy Offices 250
HP,
Chastity periods have been extremely helpful to me in my sobriety. As I am married now, help me to stay balanced in what Saint Augustine calls "Perfect moderation".
Amen
Mercy Offices 251
According to Werner Herzog's 2016 movie " Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World :
“If the information that passes through the internet in one day were stored on a CD-Rom and stacked up...they would reach to Mars and back”
Mars is 57 million miles away.
A CD-ROM is .05 inches thick so there are 1.3 million CD ROMs in a mile.
A CD rom is 74 minutes long.
Multiply that by the 57 million miles to Mars and you have 89 quadrillion hours of internet information per day.
Divide that by the 7.4 billion people in the world and you have over 12,000 hours day of internet information per person.
The most conservative estimates are that 4% of internet traffic is porn
That means that there are 500 hours of porn per day for every person in the world each day.
That’s a lotta porn…
Mercy Offices 252
HP,
Getting money is a form of being esteemed by others. Being esteemed, I can then translate that into esteeming myself.
Mercy Offices 253
Morning Benediction:
As we go out into the world, let's remember that it's God's will for us to be "Happy, joyous and free." And the way that we do that is to be of "Maximum service to God and our fellows", and to balance that with "Enlightened self-interest", manifesting as self-care.
Mercy Offices 254
HP,
Since I do not use sex for masturbation or affairs, I have the opportunity to use it for other purposes, like pleasing my partner and to create children. Thank you for healing me, so that I have that opportunity.
Mercy Offices 255
HP,
As I transition to a new life help me to pray, copiously, for those whose behavior might cause me resentment .
Please help keep my soul clean, Lord.
Mercy Offices 256
HP,
Help me to employ Gandhi’s techniques of non-violence, but to apply them to feelings as well, so that when someone tries to hurt me verbally/emotionally in financial conflicts, I do not react in kind.
Mercy Offices 257
(Thursday October 4, 2018)
Humility:
Last night I watched nine young classical guitar players perform.
Two of them were pretty talented.
All of them were missing notes
I thought about what Carl Czerny, Beethoven’s student, said
“In music, nothing is worse than playing wrong notes”.
Why were they missing notes, if that is so bad ?
Simple…They were playing things that were beyond their limits.
Help me to be honest about what my limits are, so that I have the opportunity to act humbly.
Without self-honesty…there is no humility.
Mercy Offices 258
HP,
Sexual sobriety is the most pervasive thing in my life. It colors every thought, feeling and action that I take.
Thank you for making me healthy in this area of my life...so that I could begin to look at other areas.
"First things first"
Mercy Offices 259
HP,
As it is your will for me to be balanced, help me to balance taking care of myself financially with serving people unselfishly.
Mercy Offices 260
What if I didn’t have to serve people to get well sexually? Would I do it?
I would miss the love and belonging, esteem of others, spirituality, fullness of creativity and contentment that comes from it.
Can I integrate these into my work?
Mercy Offices 261
HP,
I am grateful for the freedom not to objectify women as I walk through my life, the freedom to be able to talk to women deeply and freely without intrigue, and to be able to sit quietly and not have my mind wander to sexual fantasy around women.
Mercy Offices 262
HP,
Help me to remember that purveyors and employees have needs for financial safety, love and belonging, and other-esteem, too.
Mercy Offices 263
HP,
Help me to protect myself from the mentally ill.
Help me to protect myself from blaming, shaming and controlling.
Help me to protect myself from Evil.
Help me to not take the rantings of the mentally ill seriously.
Help me to feel my honest anger from the abuse, and then have mercy, but only after I express the anger…Only then.
Mercy Offices 264
HP,
Help me to accept that I am not poor- that other people’s money supports me
Help me to accept that I am not rich-that my money works for me.
Help me to accept that I am middle class-that I work for my money
Mercy Offices 265
Evening Benediction:
As we head towards the balance of the day, let's remember the right we've been given on page twelve of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous to “Choose our own conception of God".
May your conception of God be with you tonight and help you stay abstinent from whatever addiction, or constellation of addictions, you may have, until 12:01 tonight...and then we will renegotiate.
Mercy Offices 266
“Selfishness - self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.”
(Big Book Page 62)
This is the very first causative explanation of addictions.
It is a spiritual explanation, having to do with relationships.
Being self-centered around relationships is fundamentally unspiritual.
How does that translate sexually?
Ask yourself, “When I am using porn, is that being selfish?
Am I using porn to help my friends, family, wife, girlfriend, my children, my faith community, my country or the world?
The answer is a resounding “No”.
There is a spiritual antidote to this poison and it works in two ways:
- Unselfish service to others who are struggling with this addiction will stop my own self-destruction
- It will give me something useful and beautiful to replace the void that is created by the absence of porn.
Unselfish service to other is simply better than porn...
Mercy Offices 267
HP,
After I take care of myself in an “enlightened self interest” sort of way, help me to use my power to share with others.
Mercy Offices 268
HP,
Once I surrender masturbation, affairs, objectification, fantasy and intrigue
Once I codify daily inventory, prayer and unselfish service to other sex addicts
Help me to simply enjoy the life you have given me.
Mercy Offices 269
HP,
Why do I feel anxious round money?
Because I fear there will not be enough.
And what would happen if there were not enough?
I would feel needy.
And that...is what I am trying to avoid.
Mercy Offices 270
HP,
The only revolution I can start…is in me.
Revolution in a 64 year old man?
Revolution in cardio-vascular exercise...will do very nicely.
Mercy Offices 271
"Now comes the biggest question yet. Can we love the whole pattern of living as eagerly as we do the small segment of it we discover when we try to help other alcoholics achieve sobriety?
AA 12x12 p.112
I love:
Praying in a group six times per day
Running, biking, yoga, core and free weight work
Doing private breath prayer many times each day
Reading, walking and cuddling with my wife
Watching opera on HD Simulcast
Teaching music
Daily watching our money
Weighing and measuring my food
Being thin
Wearing well-fitted clothes
Fasting 18 hours a day
Taking my wife to dinner
Changing my attitude to being positive
Writing prayers
Being fully recovered and exploring that new life
Being an expectant Dad
Connecting with my soul
Mercy Offices 272
The acoustic guitar is the perfect instrument for a poor man...
I mean what are you going to do with an oboe?
Mercy Offices 273
Would I rather have a home on Pacific and Broadway…or be thin?
Would I rather have 200 million dollars…or have a healthy athletic heart?
Would I rather have a law degree…or have the capacity for emotional honesty?
Would I rather perform for 85,000 people at a time…or have a wife that trusts me?
Would I rather have many properties…or to not smoke?
Would I rather be on television, radio and in newspapers…or not use caffeine?
Mercy Offices 274
Healing Pain…
“It brought a measure of humility, which we soon discovered to be a healer of pain”
Page 75 AA 12 x12 , Step Seven
This line has baffled, but intrigued me for 30 years.
How could humility heal pain?
It never healed lower back pain, a headache, a bruise, or a cut.
But…I finally got it.
There is pain in self-demandingness:
To be someone, going somewhere, doing something.
To have more, to do more, to be more.
To accomplish, to achieve, to compete, to be better than someone else, to be the best.
To be someone important (The “Instinct for Society” run riot).
To strive for excellence is excellent in itself…
but to shame, or abuse myself, for failure or imperfection…to not be able to accept myself, or love myself (defined as being “Gentle, positive and accepting”) towards myself when I fail, make a mistake, err or fall short…and here is the key 'To have an attitude of demandingness towards myself”…is pain. Abject pain.
“I am not only my worst enemy…I am the only real enemy that I’ve got”.
SA White Book
“The enemy was US”.
SLAA Big Book
When I am my own worst enemy, and shame myself, there is an internal hunter within me that follows me, wherever I go, as my own shadow.
But…if I have humility, if I accept who I am, and where I am at…then that self-demandingness, that “Lust for more”, which is just addiction turned inward…evaporates.
I am then free. The pain is healed…through my own self-appraisal (moral inventory) of who I honestly am.
Note: This does not mean that I accept acting out…it means that I have the opportunity, when I accept myself, to then say “I need help”.
Then the pain is gone…and I can begin to get the help I need from those who have it to offer.
Mercy Offices 275
If sex addiction is a mental illness then, once I have stopped I can fill my mind with good, healthy things like reading classic books by:
Dickens, Steinberg, Austen, Bronte, Cervantes, Fielding, Faulkner, Mark Twain, Dostoevsky, Chekov, Tolstoy, Hermann Hesse, Tolkien, Shakespeare, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Joyce, Gabriel García Márquez, Hemingway, C.S. Lewis, Euripides, Sophocles, Aeschylus, Vonnegut, F. Scott Fitzgerald, George Orwell, Flannery O'Conner, Oscar Wilde, Thoreau, Voltaire, Henry Miller, Tomas Paine, Garcia Lorca, Thackery, Somerset Maugham, William Blake, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Margaret Mitchell, Edgar Lee Masters, John Cage, Earnie Larsen, Gandhi, Patrick Carnes, Bill Wilson, Alice Miller, Moses, Martin Luther King,
Mercy Offices 276
(From the AA 12x12 p.120)
Where the possession of money and material things was concerned, our outlook underwent the same revolutionary change.
We forgot that most alcoholics in A.A. have an earning power considerably above average;
We forgot the immense goodwill of our brother A.A.’s who were only too eager to help us to better jobs when we deserved them;
We forgot the actual or potential financial insecurity of every human being in the world.
And, worst of all, we forgot God.
In money matters we had faith only in ourselves, and not too much of that.
This all meant, of course, that we were still far off balance.
When a job still looked like a mere means of getting money rather than an opportunity for service, when the acquisition of money for financial independence looked more important than a right dependence upon God, we were still the victims of unreasonable fears.
And these were fears which would make a serene and useful existence, at any financial level, quite impossible.
But, as time passed we found that with the help of A.A.’s Twelve Steps we could lose those fears, no matter what our material prospects were.
We could cheerfully perform humble labor without worrying about tomorrow.
It did not matter too much what our material condition was, but it did matter what our spiritual condition was.
Money gradually became our servant and not our master.
It became a means of exchanging love and service with those about us.
When, with God’s help, we calmly accepted our lot, then we found we could live at peace with ourselves and show others who still suffered the same fears that they could get over them, too.
We found that freedom from fear was more important than freedom from want.
Mercy Office 277
HP,
Help me maintain 20 addictions…just for today:
The four “Basic food” groups:
- Drinking
- Drugs
- Smoking
- Caffeine
The Six Types of SLRR
- Masturbation or Affairs
- Love
- Romance
- Relationship
- Al-anon
- Anon-anonism
Four types of Money Recoveries
- Debt
- Workaholism
- Underearning
- Gambling
Four Types of Self-Relationships
- ACA
- Codependency
- Victimhood
- Narcissism
The most abstruse recovery
- Artistic preoccupations
The most obvious, but yet denial ridden recovery
- Fat
Mercy Offices 278
HP,
If I hadn't given up masturbation, I wouldn't have been fully available to mate, marry and then father again.
Thanks for connecting the dots before I could see them.
Mercy Offices 279
Sex, Money and Genius
(Excerpts from Think And Grow Rich)
The men of greatest achievement are men with highly developed sex natures; men who have learned the art of sex transmutation.
The transformation of mediocrity into genius is through transmutation (of sex).
Sex energy is the creative energy of all genius.
There never has been, and never will be a great leader, builder, or artist lacking in this driving force of sex.
The road to genius consists of the development, control, and use of sex, love, and romance.
Far from becoming a genius, because of great sex desires, the majority of men lower themselves, through misunderstanding and misuse of this great force, to the status of the lower animals.
The public speaker, orator, preacher, lawyer, or salesman who is lacking in sex energy is a "flop," as far as being able to influence others is concerned.
The factor of personality known as "personal magnetism" is nothing more nor less than sex energy. Highly sexed people always have a plentiful supply of magnetism.
When (sex is) harnessed, and redirected along other lines, this motivating force maintains all of its attributes of keenness of imagination, courage, etc., which may be used as powerful creative forces in literature, art, or in any other profession or calling, including, of course, the accumulation of riches.
The mere possession of this energy is not sufficient to produce a genius. The energy must be transmuted from desire for physical contact, into some other form of desire and action, before it will lift one to the status of a genius.
Transmutation of sex energy calls for more will power than the average person cares to use for this purpose.
Highly sexed successful men:
GEORGE WASHINGTON
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
THOMAS JEFFERSON
Mercy Offices… 280
Gandhi says food affects sexuality.
Healthy Food Benefits:
Lust diminishes
Sexual shame from negative body image disappears
Clothes fit
Feel muscular curvature in abdomen
Mind is more relaxed, harmonious
Thoughts more integrated and quicker
Breath more deeply, easily and smoothly
Headaches, pinpointed, and full cranial, vanish
Skin clears up
Joints stop aching
Mercy Offices… 281
HP,
My mother and father both held artists to occupy the highest place in society.
My father failed at his attempt.
I failed, too.
My mother succeeded.
I am not an artist. I am a teacher.
I accept who I am.
Help me to have the serenity to accept, rather than the courage to try to change….who I am most fundamentally.
Mercy Offices… 282
One of the things that really helps me to get along with people is recovery from Anon-Anon-ism..
That means recognizing my powerlessness over other people who do not recognize their own powerlessness over their own craziness...
Mercy Office 283
HP,
I know you are not talking right now, but I know that you hear me.
I sense I need to prioritize my abstinence now, so that during this rocky, silent time I have something spiritually substantial to hold onto.
As Gandhi said, “Religion without sacrifice means nothing”...
Mercy Office 284
HP,
Believing that my thoughts are the true me, I move from one obsession to another, in an endless sequence, like standing by a highway listening interminably to the cars going by, unless I can reach my soul somehow…and thereby know peace of mind.
Mercy Offices 285
HP,
I am grateful that I have surrendered every addiction that I am aware of.
I have sought the “Kingdom of God and his righteousness” in every area of my life.
Maintenance is the only thing that counts…just for today.
Mercy Office 286
Mental hygiene-Be positive
Mercy Office 287
HP,
When I die nothing…
Not my money, home, car, stocks, career, degrees, titles, nothing will continue.
The only thing that will last after I am gone is the love I have left other people.
Knowing that truth, help me devote myself to service.
Mercy Office 288
With resounding defeats from the San Francisco Chronicle and Kevin S.,
I have been angry at myself for failing to make PrayerCall a non-profit.
I am going to have to rethink how to finance PrayerCall.
I will find a way to continue this work because...without it, I perish.
I will have mercy on me.
This work keeps me more sober than any other recovery action I take...and I am truly grateful for it.
Mercy Office 289
HP,
I only want to maintain my food abstinence, just for today, one day at a time...for the rest of my life.
I love the freedom of being reliably, consistently thin.
Mercy Office 290
HP,
I turn my life and my will over to you today.
I still have to do my part and take care of myself, but I will do what you direct, and I will find those directions through meditation.
Mercy Office 291
“ And it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.”
Saint Francis
Only when my mind stops do I hear my soul.
Mercy Office 292
HP,
What if the cost of genuine, heartfelt, long-lasting humility was utter and complete failure. Would that be acceptable to me?
Mercy Office 293
HP,
I know you are there, but I also know you are being still and silent.
I am feeling stress, and while I would really like your imprimatur,
...I can trust myself.
Mercy Office 294
All my challenges around relationships, money, food, family of origin I get to experience only because I am sexually sober.
In AA we call that ..."High class problems".
Mercy Office 295
HP,
I am so grateful to have my work successfully restarted, so that I can refocus on developing my relationship with my soul.
Mercy Office 296
HP,
I just made up my mind to stop worrying about money…
No more worried thoughts.
Just funny thoughts.
Mercy Office 297
HP,
Okay, while I know there is a God, it certainly feels like God has abandoned us.
So, we are going to act on principles, since there is no personality of God present at the moment that is perceptible to us.
Mercy Offices 298
HP,
New outlook.
I am as healed as I am going to get.
The struggle with food is finally gone and all the losses associated with that struggle were worth it.
I will do and live as directed.
Consolidate wins and be kinda normal…
Mercy Office 299
HP, Yoga means, literally, connecting the God within with the God without.
There has been desuetude of my human life in the intense pursuit of my soul.
I need to remember that I am a survivor of childhood abuse and have compassion on myself to balance my life and my soul.
Mercy Office 300
HP, Around the topic of working hard for profit:
“Act as if” there is no God, and yet...be grateful for the strength to produce income.
Mercy Office 301
HP, I am grateful I can join the rest of humanity in the common cause of meeting our own needs through “The exchange of love and service” (ie. making money).
…I believe in the purity I strive for and the economy that it provides.
Help me to leave the rest up to You.
Mercy Office 302
HP, I cling to my soul when I feel hurt, needy, sad, lonely.
When I need comfort, when I feel unsafe...I cling to my soul.
Mercy Office 303
HP, trying to locate my soul while being actively sexual is like a fish trying to swim through motor oil.
Mercy Office 304
HP, Even if I was wrong, or even if Jesus was wrong about this, I tricked my mind into putting abstinence first because of it:
Matthew 6:25-34
25 “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?
26 Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?
27 Can any one of you by worrying add a single hour to your life[a]?
28 “And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin.
29 Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these.
30 If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will he not much more clothe you—you of little faith?
31 So do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’
32 For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them.
33 But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.
34 Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own
Mercy Office 305
Pregnancy is the joy of life, literally, but it brings on physical challenges.
As previously, one of the ways to get energy to meet those challenges is through chastity.
My wife and I are on day 16, by agreement.
Mercy Office 306
“In brahmacharya lies the protection of the body the mind and the soul”
Gandhi
It is true. I feel: More resilient socially
More energetic
More athletic
Have a purer, more serene mind
Am more attentive to business
More intuitively in touch with my Higher Power
Stronger
More artistic
More fun loving
Mercy Office 307
What makes me feel and look old?
Being fat
Caffeine
Tobacco
Meat and Dairy
Orgasmic sexuality
Under exercising
I will have mercy on myself...
Mercy Office 307
The things I need cannot be bought with money but only meditation on my soul, chastity and exercise.
Mercy Office 308
HP, help me to stay abstinent on my food and perfectly chaste during this new celibacy period and to gently revel in my normal day in-and-out life
Mercy Office 309
HP, help me, like the prophet Hosea, to prioritize mercy in my relationship to myself and my relationships with others.
Mercy Office 310
During pregnancy my sexual desire diminishes. It is winter. That is appropriate.
Mercy Office 311
Having failed all my life on the outside, at my unrealistic overweening goals, I am grateful I have succeeded on the inside...hell, that’s better than nothing.
Mercy Office 312
Recovery Reformation:
Coffee...June 6, 2018
Tea...July 25, 2018
Gracias Madre...December 22, 2018
Cigars...December 25, 2018
Aspirin, Ibuprofen, Antacids...February 10, 2019
Cacao...June 1, 2019
Mercy Office 313
HP, I give myself attitudinal peace...by not taking myself too seriously
Mercy Office 314
Chastity period
Start June 2...Day 16
82 days till birth
42 days more till active
= 140 days
I have gotten my business going.
Take your time, build it slowly
Mercy Office 315
Total, perfect chastity in mind and body to garner strength, courage, endurance and humor to vitalize my start up.
Mercy Office 316
AIANSTI = And I’m not saying there is
What if there were a cure for addiction?
I would:
Inventory daily
Meditate
Serve others who asked for help
Workout
Read
Sing with my wife
Make some money
Mercy Office 317
“How would you know if there was a cure?”
A better question is, “How you would know if there was not a cure?”
If any of these addictions are present…a cure is not present:
- Alcohol
- Drugs
- Cigarettes
- Coffee
- Masturbation/Affairs
- Fat
- ACA
- Coda
- Narcissism
- Alanon
- Anon-anonism
- Victimhood
- Workaholism
- Debting
- Underearning
- Gambling
- Love Addiction
- Romance Addiction
- Relationship Addiction
- Sexaholism
- Artistic and Mystical Preoccupations
Mercy Office 318
What if there were a cure for addiction?…AIANSTI
I would laugh. “And why shouldn’t we laugh? We have recovered”
Big Book
No more face to face meetings…only PrayerCall
No more confronting people, only acceptance of others
I would not try to change myself anymore. I would accept myself.
I would “Easy does it”
Mercy Office 319
Not directing children what to do, until the age of majority, can be construed as “Reckless abandonment” and even “Criminal neglect”. However, upon the age of majority, tellin’ kids what to do…is just “Controlling”.
Similarly, while getting sober, the very best means to achieve that goal, is unselfish service to others, but if there really were a cure, would that render service “controlling” thereby placing Step Eleven , prayer and meditation, as the highest prioritized spiritual action?
Mercy Office 320
What if there were a cure for addiction?…AIANSTI
For me, perfect food abstinence would define it for me.
How would that look, for me?
Weighed and measured food only
No flour, no sugar
No individual binge foods
Typically, three meals per day, 8 ounces per meal
Nothing in between meals
Fasting 18 hours per day between 6:00pm and noon
Fruits and nuts
Wheatgrass daily
Living Foods
Meat when there is iron or B12 shortfall
No restaurants
Whew!…That’s a lot!
Mercy Office 321
Fully, unlimited self-satiation is the opposite of spirituality, for me.
Sometimes, I am, in many and varied areas, powerless, and am thereby, unspiritual.
Therefore, for me, to be spiritual, I need a power greater than myself to help me stop.
The relationship with a HP is not what defines what makes a spiritual life, but rather it’s power is what helps facilitate a life of self-restraint, which is, for me, the defining experience of spirituality.
Therefore, God gives me the power to be spiritual, when I don’t have the power inherently in me, to live a spiritual life.
Mercy Office 322
As Gandhi said “I greatly value those who abuse me….For they are candid”
If I have an ongoing addiction, in anyone of the 21 areas that we deal with at ActWithCourage.com, then my boundaries are permeable, thereby leaving me more vulnerable to hurtful words or actions.
If I am feeling hurt by someone else’s words or actions, I can ask myself:
“What am I doing that is destroying my own personal internal boundaries, so that when someone harms me, intentionally or unintentionally, I am more likely to feel hurt, because I am less resilient?
So called “Enemies”, people who wish me harm, can actually be quite helpful to my recovery.
Mercy Office 323
When I am failing, when I am in the throes of powerlessness and the depths of the disease and cannot stop, there is still something I can do...when I am ready.
Spiritual does not mean having a relationship with God, it comes from the Latin word “Spiritus” which means “Breath”.
When the disease is on me fully and I want to stop, but can’t stop...I can begin to count my breaths.
This is an old Buddhist means of prayer, and this very small effort on my part can begin to turn the tide towards recovery during a relapse...
Mercy Office 324
Newton’s first law of motion: “Every object in a state of uniform motion will remain in that state of motion unless an external force acts on it.”
That is just as true spiritually as it is physically.
If I am in relapse and do nothing, I will stay in relapse. But if another force, say the mental force of prayer, is applied.
I can start to move out.
It’s just physics, nothing more...
Mercy Office 325
Hell is not acting out when you first relapse...the first relapse is often actually fun.
Hell is trying to control the uncontrollable.
Hell is the time, after you relapse, when you think you can manage the addiction.
Hell is: Slip, control, slip, control, slip-slip, control-control, etc.
Surrender, when you know you are beat... then becomes paradisiacal.
Mercy Office 326
Relapse always leads to the same place...always: Same old hangover, same pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization, same despair, negativity and fear.
It feels familiar and doable...it feels manageable.
Recovery leads to some new place, doing something new, with new somebodies, somewhere new.
It feels hopeful and out of control...
Mercy Office 327
Recovery can be experienced three hours at a time:
1/2 day’s work
A meal
Working out
Reading a book
A social event
Mercy Office 328
HP, I want to do your will.
I know that it is not your will to live a life that is powerlessly driven by addiction and to have to feel the subsequent pain after each relapse.
Help me to do your will, just for today, three hours at a time.
Amen
Mercy Offices 329
Prayer for humility:
I am grateful for the last three days.
I have worked as hard as I can…5 hours per day.
That is as hard as I can work at the moment. But I have remained completely recovered…and that is a miracle.
Mercy Office 330
Prayer for peace of mind:
I am grateful I am free from disease today.
Everything is in me now.
I have only to reach inside me for peace.
Mercy Office 331
HP, people may not believe in you.
Some people can live their lives without you.
I want no part of that.
I want to know as much of you as I can humbly know of you in this life.
You have privileged me to be your servant for over 30 years, and that is how I have known you.
That appears to be changing.
You seem to want less service and more meditation at this time.
Mercy Office 332
HP, Why is the instinct for society so dominate in my personality?
Is it because I am not satisfied being with myself?
What can I do about that?
I can ask God, humbly, to remove my defect of character of self-demandingness.
Mercy Office 333
HP,
If I were to create a personality “randomly” I would:
Laugh at everything
Be ever prayerful with myself
Be of service
Exercise
Be lean
Love my wife
Live well and simply
Teach
Read
Be frugal
Be well dressed
Sing with my wife
Be content
Mercy Office 334
Peace of mind, satisfaction, contentment and serenity are not possible with caffeine.
Joyousness and happiness, maybe...but how can you be peaceful with a double Latte coursing through your brain?
Mercy Office 335
I feel complete in my journey of recovery today. I feel satisfied with my life and it’s work. I feel content with myself and my accomplishments.
Mercy Office 336
Yes...if I were to stay abstinent I would exercise, pray and read...
Read to have great minds as friends.
Mercy Offices 337
What attitude accompanies hitting bottom?
Self-pity and rage (or if unexpressed…depression)
What belief accompanies hitting bottom?
This silly thought...”I will never have fun again!”
Mercy Offices 338
Addiction is only 2% compulsion, but that compulsion must be dealt with first...before the 98% mental illness addiction is addressed.
The very best solution to stop compulsions...is Meetings.
Mercy Offices 339
All the money in the world won’t bring me peace of mind.
Actually, peace of mind can’t be found through the mind. It has to be found through the soul.
Unfortunately...addiction blocks access to the soul.
To get to peace of mind, I first have to stop addiction.
Mercy Offices 340
I know where the mental illness of addiction leads.
I don’t know where complete recovery from mental illness leads.
I suspect to something simple...like peace of mind and family.
Mercy Offices 341
What heals the mental illness of addiction?
Abstinence
Meetings
Prayer
Meditation
Reading spiritual literature
Exercise
Fasting
Having fun
Laughing
Mercy Offices 342
Peace of mind is almost always alloyed with some measure of grief.
Mercy Offices 343
If I can stay abstinent, I can be:
Satisfied
Content
Peaceful
Happy
Serene
Even if I felt doubtful, unsure, grief, frustrated or angry.
All I have to do is stay abstinent, exercise…and pray with my friends.
Mercy Offices 344
Peace of mind is my highest need.
This is my way out of suffering, remembering this need.
Mercy Offices 345
Even in terrible personal conflict...I feel peaceful and serene.
I accept “hardship as a pathway to peace”
Mercy Office 346
In AA I learned that every moment of my life I have an attitude that filters my perception of my life.
Didn’t know that when I came in.
When I examined that I found that my default attitude was self-pity.
I learned to change that to an “Attitude of gratitude”.
Through the years I have found that I have an attitude much more pervasive and more deeply rooted than that..the attitude of self-demandingness.
The antidote for that fierce attitude is mercy, and I hope to cultivate that, one day at a time, first with myself and then with others.
HP, help me to cultivate that attitude.
Amen
Mercy Office 347
When I get “sick and tired of being sick and tired” I have the tools to stop anything.
Mercy Office 348
HP,
I am so grateful for the tools you have given us, so that, when we are ready, we can have “permanent sobriety” as the Doctor’s Opinion states...one day at a time, just for today, three hours at a time
Mercy Office 349
In 6 months it will be 40 years I have been in 12 step.
Today I was able to contact my soul three times.
It was worth 40 years of work to do that.
Mercy Office 350
I am grateful to PrayerCall for keeping me on the right track, especially mentally, throughout the day.
Mercy Office 351
If I have multiple recoveries, it might be wise, in a 12 step meeting, to utilize the First Tradition “Our common welfare comes first”...so I don’t get my ass kicked over the moon, again and again.
Mercy Office 352
“We absolutely insist upon enjoying life”
Big Book p.132
I enjoy reading a lot, watching movies with my wife, singing with my wife, looking at my newborn son.
Mercy Office 353
A constant prayer of mine is “God, what should I do?”.
Sometimes…It is absolutely nothing.
Mercy Office 354
Postpartum is an excellent time for chastity.
Glad I have those chops...
Mercy Office 355
HP, I want to thank you for guiding me, so compassionately and patiently, all through the recovery process...so that I could eventually reach my soul.
Really, thanks
Mercy Office 356
The practical goal of 12 step is to become healthy, normal, balanced and moderate.
Three out of four of those I had absolutely no interest in, in my youth.
Mercy Office 357
HP, Help me to not be lost in my “Little plans and designs” (Big Book) today and to seek your will in every area of my life.
Things seem to go better that way.
The fact is I’m not “management material”.
I’m better off as a servant.
Mercy Office 358
I trust myself that I will completely recover and discover what is beyond that.
It is probably something insanely simple and blindingly obvious.
Mercy Offices 359
HP, Help me to stay as recovered as I can be today. I am aiming for peace of mind, just for today.
Mercy Offices 360
Abstinence and peace of mind, while becoming sober/abstinence...requires mercy.
Mercy Office 361
Today I will strive for peace of mind.
Mercy Office 362
Marriage is good...very, very good.
But chastity is still King.
“Finite chosen chastity” is always available to me.
Mercy Office 363
HP, I felt you tonight, within me.
Just like Saint Augustine said...
Mercy Office 364
Courage
Strength
Faith
Humor
Hope
Honesty
“My life is my message”
Gandhi
Mercy Office 365
The Plague (the pandemic of overeating) has throttled me.
The Plague has beaten me absolutely senseless.
If I beat the Plague, I will never “preach, teach and sell” anymore.
I will practice anonymity.
Mercy Office 366
HP,
Help me as I deal with the mentally ill. I need mercy.
I need compassion, but also help me express my anger in a healthy way, to another healthy person, when the mentally ill hurt me, so that I do not obsess, because, then I become ill…and I will not do that to myself today.
Mercy Office 367
Sitting to this generation is what smoking was to my generation.
“Digital Death” is forever sitting down.
Keep moving...
Mercy Office 368
In food abstinence:
Reading soars
Exercise soars
Business soars
Sex life soars
Mercy Office 369
What if there were a cure for addiction?
I would eat sunflower sprouts, drink wheatgrass, swim, take B12 and iron supplements (or eat meat).
I would read and work “in moderate demand”.
I would forget about my past (now that I have done my inner work) and I would laugh my ass off.
I would eat three meals a day to insure a cure…and lock it up.
I would re-order life…to friends in books.
I would accept.
Mercy Office 370
Seven weeks after delivering a baby my wife and I are beginning to approach physical intimacy again.
Gently, tenderly, compassionately and patiently.
I am so grateful for the tool of abstinence and not being driven by neediness.
...think my wife is grateful, too.
Mercy Office 371
Downsides of Caffeinated Foods:
Acid reflux
My body starts to stink
Gain weight
Heart hurts
Congestion
Headaches
Burping
Gas
Itching
Red blotches on my legs
Feel heavy, torpid
That doesn’t sound to sexy to me...
Mercy Office 372
I don’t want to be:
Mentally ill
A “mental defective”
A fuck up
“Of the inferior type”
Flawed
Corrupt
A loser
A failure
Now that there is a cure, I have no choice but to surrender...or fall into depression.
Prayer, exercise and reading will be my life.
Mercy Office 373
For me:
not drinking is first
not masturbating is second
and not overeating is third
After doing those three things, I like to read.
As Saint Augustine said “Love the Lord and do as you please”
Mercy Office 374
On his deathbed, the wisest man who ever lived, Socrates, uttered his last words, “Cultivate music”.
Imagine that...
Mercy Office 375
HP,
Thank you.
Steve D.
Mercy Office 376
There is an old joke, “If you can keep your head while others around you are losing theirs...you are probably not aware of the situation”.
If I am not feeling the feelings of frustration and disappointment...I am probably not sober.
Mercy Office 377
All my life I have tried to have peace of mind through solving problems.
But that is using my mind to calm my mind.
That is simply the wrong organ.
I need my soul to calm my mind.
Otherwise, it’s kinda like trying to hear a painting...or trying see a symphony.
Mercy Office 378
Yoga is from the Sanskrit word meaning “To yoke”.
Yoga was not originally designed to make my body sexy while I sipped Lattes and listened to iTunes blaring over a PA with my friends.
It was created to keep my body still long enough to connect to my soul and, having done that, to connect my soul to the God outside my skin line.
Mercy Office 379
Humans have on average 42 thoughts per minute. 33 of those thoughts are negative. 98% of them are the very same ones as we had the day before.
Every single thought has an associated feeling.
Statistically, unmonitored, we feel negative 80% of the time.
Prayer, seen in a new light as “positive, gentle, accepting mental statements”, changes that.
I am NOT powerless over that...
Mercy Office 380
At 33, I was living rent-free in my mother’s basement apartment, sharing a twin bed with my first wife.
I had a glass of stolen red wine in my left hand, balanced a massive sandwich in my right, while smoking a cigarette...and was wondering how I could masturbate into the trash can…
And it occurred to me, at that moment...that my life might be unmanageable.
Sex addiction is NOT pretty...
Mercy Offices 381
Step 3 in Artistic Preoccupations:
Slightly suspicious motives for playing music:
To: “Make it”
Get girls
Get famous
Get rich
Be the best
Get the love from the masses that I did not get from my father
To assuage heartbreak over a woman
To break up the loneliness of dysfunctional family
All of these motives have to do with someone else and they all lead to frustration and failure.
Saner motives are to:Discover myself
Join in a group activity
Cause it’s damned fun
I prefer to look at playing music the way I look at working out:
Something I do every day, as much as I can, as well as I can...because it is healthful.
It is self-care...
Mercy Office 382
I will have mercy on others as a way to love them. Perhaps one day I may need mercy...
Mercy Offices 383
Step 4 in Artistic Preoccupation: Part One
What did I do that was immoral around music ?
I was selfish, in that, I thought only of what I wanted when it came to music.
I was extreme. What I presented, for three years, was: noisy, random, silent and chaotic.
I was dishonest with myself by often insisting on original songs that were not as strong as the songs people wanted to hear and, in my arrogance, I believed that they were.
I wanted to do instrumental music, instead of having predominantly vocals, which people simply don’t like as much.
I smoked a lot of pot, and drank even more beer, so that I wasn’t emotionally present at my work, often.
My sexual/love behavior drove off at least two very important musical clients.
I was obsessed with my pursuit of success and was not sensitive to other people’s feelings.
I was controlling: always wanting to do the material that I wanted to do, or the way I wanted to do it.
I was envious of other people’s success.
I “played the big shot” like I was “Somebody going somewhere”.
I was self-pitying, believing that I deserved more success than I had achieved.
I had no limits and I asked other people to do the same...playing for nothing, or close to nothing, thereby harming others financially with my obsession.
I neglected my needs for safety, both financial and emotional, saying that those needs would be met when I became successful.
I forestalled my need for love and belonging, saying that those needs would be met when I became successful
I denied my need for esteem of others, saying that those needs would be met when I became successful.
Mercy Office 384
HP, Thank you for teaching me to transmute my sexual energy into fraternal love, so that I could buy a card, a cake, a gift and host a party for my wife on our first wedding anniversary.
Mercy Office 385
I will have mercy on myself and choose to believe that there is a cure for addiction.
When I act like there isn’t, I harm myself and I begin to feel the slightest depression.
That has happened three times since I first publicly talked about the possibility of a cure at SAA in San Francisco on May 4, 2019
Mercy Office 386
Just for this moment, I surrender my appetite. I am grateful and I count my breaths as a meditation.
Mercy Office 387
Not the obsessed problem solving Al-anonism of my mother.
Not the desperately mad workaholism of my father.
In the moment...cured and singing with my wife.
Mercy Office 388
HP, I have been angry at myself for failing to make PrayerCall a legitimate non-profit.
I will have mercy on me.
I will find a way to continue this work...
Without it, I perish.
Mercy Office 389
I am grateful for today that I am free from all disease, am galvanized by chastity, breathing deeply, am very worked out and reading. I am humbly grateful to be at rest from my work.
Mercy Office 390
What did I do, or what did others do to me, that caused me from being cut off from my soul, the genesis of all addiction?
I experienced childhood sexual, physical, emotional, verbal abuse and emotional neglect.
Then, at my own hands, I reacted with:
Alcoholism
Prescription drug addiction
Smoking
Caffeine
Overweight
Masturbation and affairs
Overwork
Codependency
ACA
Victimhood
Gambling
Debting
Under earning
Love Addiction
Romance Addiction
Relationship Addiction
Artistic and Mystical Preoccupations
Narcissism
Mercy Office 391
I am right on the verge of a cure and the disease is fighting for it’s life.
I will not stop…
Mercy Office 392
What if there were a cure for addiction?…AIANSTI
I would spend time with my soul.
Mercy Offices 393
On a healthy use of music:
Hendrix changed guitar playing.
The guitar became as important as the vocals for the first time in American popular music.
Unless you’re Jimi…that is a musical mistake.
Help me keep my mind on financially productive musical ideas as an act of mental health…
Mercy Office 394
I will have mercy on myself today, even if I don’t need it, just to stay in practice.
...I just may need it in the future
Mercy Office 395
HP,
If I don’t maintain my abstinence, I might have to go back to FA.
It is funny. Not wanting to go to FA might drive me to do your will.
Mercy Office 396
“When this strain of music sounded, he softened more and thought that if he could have listened to it years ago he might have cultivated happiness with his own hands”.
Charles Dickens.
Mercy Office 397
HP, Help me to balance, my instinct for security and my instinct for society (p.50 AA 12x12).
Help me avoid the extremities of Under-earning or Workaholism
and at all costs…the mental illness of Artist Preoccupation
Mercy Office 398
HP, What are you doing?
I am so grateful for you getting me sober...so, so grateful.
I am grateful that I am abstinent...thank you, thank you, thank you
Mercy Office 399
I am so grateful to have learned that if I work on “S” recovery, AA takes care of itself.
I believe that to be true of food/exercise recovery in relation to sex addiction.
Mercy Office 400
There is nothing I can do about anyone but me.
That makes me feel healthy, free safe and it feels fun.
Mercy Office 401
Would you do it, Steve?
Would you give up every last trace of addictive pleasure if you could really the solve addiction problem…for yourself? For others?
Mercy Office 402
I was given a box of cigars for my son’s birth (by an Ear, Nose and Throat surgeon of all things!)
I really enjoyed them, but I noticed I felt:
weak and my body feels heavy
my chest feels tarred in
I have smokers’ cough
Have a sore throat like little knives sticking in the back of my throat
Have to have an extra shower after a cigar to get rid of the stench
I don’t sing, play guitar, pray, or work out as much.
Mercy Office 403
HP,
I do not wish to be a financial burden to anyone or, as Dickens would say, the “Father of the Marshalsea”.
Mercy Office 404
What if I did attain full freedom from all addiction?
In relation to other people? Meekness
In relationship to myself? Joy
Mercy Office 405
I am completely free.
I miss my recovery friends, but I have to keep moving.
God bless ‘em...
Mercy Office 406
Total freedom from addiction has been good: work, read, travel, physical intimacy with my wife, singing, listening to music, breath prayer, mat work, being in touch with my soul.
Mercy Office 407
I am extremely tender right now and must protect myself.
Mercy Office 408
“Why shouldn’t we laugh...we have recovered”
Big Book p.132
What now?
Apparently...I will administrate
Mercy Office 409
I feel great peace this morning.
No addiction coursing through my brain.
I feel relaxed and appreciative: my mind quiet, body relaxed and soul at peace.
Freedom is so simple, so difficult, but so worth the effort.
Mercy Office 410
“Love always protects”
My brother is diagnosed as mentally ill.
He has savagely attacked all the members of our family.
Today, I defended myself, with measured force.
“Love always protects”
Mercy Office 411
“There is a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing”
Ecclesiastes
After 9 months of pregnancy and two months of recovery, my wife and I are blessed with the opportunity again of physical intimacy...
Mercy Office 412
It is shocking how people’s mental illness becomes so starkly, unrestrainedly observable...once I have dealt with my own.
Mercy Office 413
I am grateful for learning how to be self-restrained, so that, now that my partner and I are active again, I can be non-orgasmic and thereby be more repeatedly available to her to her delight.
Mercy Office 414
HP,
I have, since I was 13, given you all the credit for my gifts, especially for the gift of my recoveries.
For just a moment, I want to say something to myself, “Nice job”...
Mercy Office 415
HP, I have done it...I have cured addiction.
I want to keep quiet about it.
Practice anonymity and humility
Mercy Office 416
HP, Having stopped all physical compulsion, the mental health needs to change.
Prayer and reading will work very nicely here.
Mercy Office 417
“And each wished he could pick a guitar, because it is a gracious thing.”
John Steinbeck. “The Grapes of Wrath.”
There are 30 million guitar players in America.
There can only be one best.
It ain’t you...
The national mental illness of it all is the belief that if you don’t have giant talent that there’s no reason to pursue music.
I believe what Gandhi says:
“Religion and art serve the same purpose…moral elevation”
So can we use music for moral elevation instead of narcissistic comparison with others ?
Yes…we can. And why would we?
Because it brings joy…
And that makes us feel good, content, satisfied, happy and playful...sometimes even holy.
And that...is a very sane goal
HP, please keep me restored to this level of sanity every moment of everyday.
Amen
Mercy Offices 418
One of the great advantages of being sober is the capacity to feel more clearly.
There is a responsibility, though.
People that are hurtful, through their own untreated addictions, will become clearer, too, and I will need to set boundaries with them to protect myself.
Mercy Office 419
If there were a cure for addiction...And I’m not saying there is:
I somehow deludedly imagined I would never feel tired or frustrated or disappointed again.
Isn’t that just like an addict?...Imagining someway to feel good all the time.
Mercy Office 420
If there were a cure for addiction (and I’m not saying there is) I have not been able to imagine what it would be like.
I thought it would be like something big, something grand, something magnificent...like having “superpowers”.
Today, it was simply praying four times, reading books in bed and spending time with my family.
It was nice. It was simple...
Mercy Office 421
Note for leaders:
“If there were a cure for addiction...and I’m not saying there is” = ITWACFA...AINSTI
That acronym is pretty arcane...so how about “I...A” stands for:
“If there were a cure for addiction...and I’m not saying there is“
Why all this pendantry?
- Because there is absolutely no scientific evidence to back this up observation up.
- It may be appear, as Gandhi was sometimes accused of, as quackery.
- We might be taking ourselves “Too, damned seriously”
So...all future Mercy Offices that allude to a cure for addiction will start out with: “I...A”
Just like the book of Psalms has the word “Selah” peppered throughout all 150 of them...And no one has any idea what that really means today.
Mercy Offices 422
“I...A”
I am completely free today.
I feel pleasant and light,
a thing I made fun of all my life as being mamby-pamby, lightweight and not serious enough.
I turn my life over to God today as it usually works out the best when I don’t have my hands on the steering wheel, driving life like Mr. Magoo.
Mercy Office 423
When I was 20 years old I used to have sex with ugly girls.
There were a couple of reasons:
- Mainly, I had such low self-esteem that I was too afraid to approach a pretty girl
- “Not-pretty” girls knew they were not pretty and were much more malleable in reaction to my dastardly selfishness
- They were plentiful
This sounds so evil when I read it, it’s hard to believe...But, it is the truth.
Once, the most spiritually gifted man I’ve ever met said to me:
“You could be the most evil man of the 20th century”.
In typical addict, needy-for-attention style, I replied, “Really! The most evil?”
Mercy Office 424
“I...A”
My first thought, being recovered this morning was, “I gotta”.
That is pure workaholism, unadulterated.
Workaholism was very big in my life because I had to scramble and hustle to meet my genuine needs to make up for all the lost time I incurred while acting out.
What a relief to do absolutely nothing...
Mercy Offices 425
In 1988 a woman introduced me to codependency recovery with this phrase: “You can be codependent on God”.,
I had never wanted to hit a woman, until that moment, in my life.
When I was in seventh grade I met a “Jesus freak” who invited me to his house for a prayer meeting.
He was in ninth grade and therefore appeared much wiser and more mature than me.
He never took one bit of credit for anything good in his life. He gave all the glory to God.
That looked pretty good to me compared to the way I was living, which was with two practicing alcoholics.
So I signed up to be co-dependent on God.
“ I...A”
This morning, as I started shaving, I started giving all the glory to God.
That, like workaholism, it’s just another reaction to active addiction.
So, I shut up and just went on shaving.
Mercy Office 426
“I...A”
If I were to slip, my friends would say “Steve is ill, what can I do to help him get well?”.
My enemies would say, “That arrogant so-and-so...he had it coming.”
One of the multifarious complaints raised against me over the years has been:
“He is obsessed with recovery.”
“He is addicted to the steps.”
Not true.
People only get as much recovery as they want.
I wanted complete freedom not only from all addictions, but from the mental illness that is the gestalt of all addiction...
Feeling like I am moseying in on it...and normality is lookin’ kind of attractive.
Mercy Office 427
According to the WHO (World Health Organization), mental health is:
"... a state of well-being in which the individual realizes his or her own abilities, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to his or her community."
So, to be mentally healthy I need to:
- Realize my potential
- Cope with stress
- Be Productive
- Contribute to community
Yeah, I can do that, three hours at a time
Mercy Office 428
“Normality is a behavior that is consistent with the most common behavior for that person.”
Really?
My interpersonal normality used to be getting drunk, smoking cigarettes, chasing females and being fat.
I think I need a more objective definition, for my own good…and for everyone else around me.
Mercy Office 429
“There are four general criteria that psychologists use to identify abnormal behavior:
- violation of social norms
- statistical rarity
- personal distress
- and maladaptive behavior
That’s what I used to claim when I was doing something weird….I’m a “statistical rarity”!
Mercy Office 430
I believed, as a child, that normal meant dressing up and commuting a long way to a job you hate to make money for a family that you hate.
To hate your family is abnormal.
To hate your job, is at least attitudinally unhealthy, if not abnormal
Driving a long way to work just isn’t smart.
But I do like dressing up…
I guess I was 25% normal
Mercy Office 431
“Normal is also used to describe individual behavior that conforms to the most common behavior in society…known as conformity
I never wanted to conform as a teenager:
It was morally outrageous.
It was indecent use of power.
It was cowardly and horrifying to me morally.
It was doing what my Daddy said…and that would never do.
Mercy Office 432
HP, I humbly ask you to remove my defects of character of being:
narcissistic
controlling
grandiose
and workaholic.
Mercy Office 433
“When I was a child I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child”.
When I was 20 years old I believed that success, for me, was simply making a humane living performing and/or writing music.
With the exception of some very bleak, spotty, dramatic and extremely fun musical-economic pastiches...I could not sustain this.
I therefore believed, patient with myself as I was (to the point of complete obsession)...that I was a failure.
Success, for me, changed dramatically at 33 years old.
My new idea of success was to recover.
Not surprisingly, with my character defect of extremity, I found I really really really wanted to recover from all my addictions.
That took another 32 years...
Now, within me, I feel, and believe, I am successful.
It’s a low bar...but, I am happy with it.
Mercy Office 434
When I was just turned 21 years old I wrote: “Living is hard and I need some release, so I drink. The thing that makes living harder on me than all other things combined…is people”.
If you let go of the stench of reeking self-pity and the ridiculous blaming of others, there is a discovering kernel of truth here; “It is our twisted relationships with others that cause us to drink."
Yeah…codependency was at nearer the root of the problem, for me.
Mercy Office 434
I am grateful for my courage in my youth.
I feel sad that I had this illness and did not know it.
I feel good that I am past that.
Mercy Office 435
HP, help me not be a temporal idiot.
I have a tendency to think of media addiction as: Young males, in a terrible leaning posture furtively huddled and scrunched over their IPhones, glancing transfixedly down at a 70 degree angle, oblivious to traffic at crosswalks, oncoming baby carriages and inexperienced Uber drivers, engaged in what would have been considered totally psychotic behavior 10 years ago (that of talking into outer space to no perceivable person).
How can you tell what is addictive or not?
Try letting someone interrupt you when you are engaged with media.
Do you feel rage or self pity when they do that to you?
I remember how I felt with when people interrupted me as I was watching “Mash” and ‘Kung Fu” in the 70”s…
We had media addiction back then but it was a rectangular box with rabbit ears on it, pouring out detergent commercials in between content that was focused in on a 12 years old’s psychological development.
Mercy Office 436
Nothing, nothing but simply staying with my soul.
Not:
Doing step work
Exercising
Reading books
Posting
Praying
Being with my three month old child
Singing
Playing the guitar
Writing music
Cleaning the house
Studying
Booking the students
Going to the gym
Making 12 step calls
Inventorying
Watching movies
Shopping
Cooking food
Nothing, nothing but simply staying with my so-so-so soul (cue Phil Collins).
Mercy Office 437
Step Six
Assets:
Courageous
Honest
Militantly willing
Funny
Strong
Defects:
Self-demanding
Narcissistic
Controlling
Workaholic
Eat too fast
HP, help me not work so hard, while I am screaming at somebody, that I don’t choke to death, while I am telling someone else what to do, while being furious with myself for not being able to do more.
Amen
Mercy Office 438
I had a bass player who wouldn’t practice.
The drummer said to me “I can’t play with this guy”.
I asked him, “Can’t you be great with others around you aren’t?”
He looked at me, kinda funny, and said “No”.
HP, When those around me are hurting themselves with their food choices and not exercising, help me to mind my own business and tend to myself.
Amen
Mercy Office 439
HP,
I have worked furiously for 31 years serving others, button holing every addict I could find to help, so that I could get well.
It is not time to rest on my laurels, but it is time to smell the roses (God, I hate flora metaphors).
Mercy Office 440
HP,
I am grateful for my like minded friends who strive for freedom from this illness.
Their honesty, faith, willingness and courage are inspiring to me.
Mercy Office 441
The five weeks from Thanksgiving until New Years is when most people relapse. (The pressure of seeing your infinitely more successful brother-in-law is more than most addicts can endure).
HP, help me be diligent enough to stay sober this holiday season, yet loose enough to enjoy the days of celebration.
Mercy Office 442
Mental Illness:
I first became aware of the mental illness aspect of addiction 31 years ago from a line in the AA 12x12 Second Step, page 33: “Some will be willing to term themselves “problem drinkers” but cannot endure the suggestion that they are in fact mentally ill”.
I felt great fear and shame when I read this. Stopping drinking was one thing, but being mentally ill was too frightening to consider, for me, at the time.
Next, I became aware of the annual US Surgeon General’s Report which listed not only depression, but addiction as a form of mental illness. Once again, I denied this to myself.
As my sobrieties deepened and gained breadth over the years I began to notice something: While I had stopped the compulsion, I still sometimes had cravings, obsessions or just simple pre-occupations.
It occurred to me that if I were using my mental energy, in self-combat, to not think about women, or to try to not masturbate, that I was still engaged in the disease, mentally. I wasn’t free to live my life.
I want to distinguish something: At AWC we do not address forms of serious mental illness that require a professional therapist and or medication. That would be arrogant, ignorant, foolish and dangerous on our part.
The three types mental illness that we directly deal with:
1. “Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results” (AA canon).
2. “Lack of perspective” (Big Book’s definition of insanity) which causes anxiety, due to not having an appropriate, sane, dynamic, meaningful and accessible relationship with a Higher Power (like the group) that can directly help the addict stop his own specific form of addiction.
3. The mental obsession of addiction, caused by an undisciplined mind, which we address with prayer (Big Book p. 164).
Mercy Office 443
Healthy Limits:
There are two types of sex addiction which we used to address at AWC, but that we have stopped for political reasons: Child molestation and Beastiality.
It was decided, by the then Board of Directors, that the legal ramifications of these specific forms of sex addiction were beyond the scope of help that we could offer without putting ourselves in potential legal jeopardy.
Mercy Office 444
On Prayer:
When I noticed I had stopped all the addictive behaviors but still had no peace of mind prayer became more important to me.
Not necessarily Christian supplicatory prayer, which I then used often, but also other much more general forms of prayer: “Repeated positive mental statements”. I learned this from my Hindu friends.
“Words that I read to create health” (eg. The Readings in AWC).
This comes from the AA direction to simply “Read the literature” and the corresponding decline in anxiety that accompanies said spiritual reading.
Positive self-talk…This comes from ACA work, particularly “Inner Child” work that was so in style when 12 step was at her peak in the late 80’s.
One of my personal favorites, introduced to me by my third AA sponsor, is the Buddhist form of prayer of simply counting my breaths. I love this because of the physical aspect of the prayer engages my body. And as Gandhi says “As with the body…so with the Universe”.
Singing…As John Steinbeck would say, in the Grapes of Wrath “Singin’ and Prayin’…it’s the same thing”.
Listening. This I learned from John Cage, my teacher. Simply stop and listen to the environment, without judgement. This admonition would later successfully be promulgated by Allan Watts.
Also, Meditations where, as directed on page 69 of the Big Book, I sit and listen directly for God’s word, on a specific topic, something I had seen the Quakers do with great skill.
The frequency of prayer was suggested to me by my Muslim friends and by my two monk sponsors from a Catholic monastery in Atlanta Georgia for over 20 years…pray five times a day.
Mercy Office 445
Something in me has changed.
I have grown impatient with people who are dishonest.
Before, I needed the sick to serve, so that I could get well. That is the magical, mystical, spiritual dynamic of the 12 Step community, “Helping heal others heals you”.
But, I have gotten to a new place in my recovery where I don’t want additional recovery. I have all the recovery that I want.
Unselfish service to others is the most certain way to find God that I know of, but, I know there are other ways to God...
HP, help me to approach this with humility, gratitude, caution and humor.
Mercy Office 446
“Be Content”
(B Office in Act With Courage)
“…content is the wealth of nature”
Socrates (Light Hearted Offices in Act With Courage)
Being content has been a two stage process, for me.
What brings my initial contentment is obtaining and maintaining sobrieties?
I first got sober, clean, stopped smoking and lost 60 pounds 31 years ago.
I have relapsed with coffee/tea half dozen times in 30 years, but I am free both now for 18 months.
I stopped masturbating and having affairs in 29 years, 4 months and 5 days ago….That had been causing me great distress from the consequent “pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization”.
Also, I firmly addressed the love, romance, relationship addiction and Sexaholism which are various painful offshoots of sex addiction.
I stopped debting over 30 years ago.
Not having enough money was extremely stressful, humiliating and debilitating.
I have faced, dealt with, and put to rest, issues of codependency, Al-anonism, ACA issues arising from growing up with two alcoholics, and from the victimhood that arises from childhood abuse. These “software” issues were driving the ‘hardware’ issues of the above physical addictions.
I have faced workaholism, narcissism, under-earning, gambling (from day trading) and buried those suckers.
Even the self-hurt from the ridiculously obscure Artistic pre-occupations (the only addiction I intentionally tried to do as hard as I could) and the, as of yet undiscovered, Anon-anonism, having to do with relational pain from Anon’s who are in denial that they need to be in recovery.
These twenty one addictions blocked me from my soul.
The second step to be content was to take positive action after stopping all the self-destruction.
Accessing my soul, through meditation, specifically, leaves me feeling very content and satisfied.
The second part is kinda simple and has to be done repetitively to really become integrated in my life, where I can reach for it any time I feel anxious.
“…content is the wealth of nature”_Socrates
(Light Hearted Offices in Act With Courage)
Mercy Office 447
A Christmas Carol by Steve D.
Once upon a time, at the crossroads of Anglo and Saxon there was a Magical Spiritual Kingdom overseen by a loving, shapeshifting God that could appear anyway that the Subjects needed to feel safe and loved.
This God let them know, in ways that weren’t too scary, that they needed to surrender their self-destructive sexual habits to Him, because, honestly, they were not doing too good a job managing that part of their lives.
And so they did.
And they all got better.
They stopped using hookers, masturbating or even trying persuade their wives to be hotter than they really were...
They grew strong and there were 10,000 of them in the Kingdom.
The Subjects had 12 rules, made by their first King, which were inspired and gave life, love, strength and freedom to all who believed in the Kingdom.
As the King got older he made 12 more New rules, but by then their King was overworked, depressed, had gotten a hot girlfriend (that the Queen was not too happy with) and finally the King died from smoking cigarettes.
The Subjects tried to live by the New rules and bad things began to happen, especially the Third and Fifth Rule, which said they were not supposed to talk about other problems that they might be having in their lives.
Seven out of Ten of them got fat. That was alarming to them at first…but, they quickly denied it.
Many, like the Old King, got depressed and didn’t have much verve or vitality to dance and sing for joy as they used to do when the original 12 rules governed them.
Also, the Kingdom was filled with some of the richest men in the world and they each gave a big two dollars a week to maintain the Kingdom.
But the seventh New rule said you had to pay your own way, so the financially sick and the old could not get ready access to the Kingdom where they kept the Shapeshifting God who loved them...because they were poor.
Weekly the Subjects sat in their rooms, serene that they were free from their sexual compulsion, but staying very, very ill because they were obedient to the third and fifth New rule, and being silent, because they didn’t feel safe talking about their other problems.
Gradually the Subjects began to die off from strokes, heart attacks, diabetes and cancer, because they were fat.
And the poor? They stayed in darkness all their lives because they could not be “Self-supporting”.
And finally, the shapeshifting, loving God went somewhere else, where they would listen to Him…fully.
Mercy Office 448
Resentment come from the French verb “Sentir” which means to feel.
So ‘Re-sentir” means to “Re-feel”.
It doesn’t necessarily mean to feel anger, though it often does, but it could mean neediness or love or grief…
Anything that I re-feel.
But the anger caused by hurt are good places to start a spiritual inventory.
Who do I resent?
Mercy Office 449
With all compulsion and obsession completely gone, I am still responsible for my attitude.
I choose gratitude over self-pity and acceptance over self-demandingness.
Acceptance means being positive.
Example:
I have a beautiful young wife, a powerful recovery, a 15 week old son, a booming new business, vibrant health, peace of mind, contentment with what I have
and I get to exercise and read all I want.
I am grateful to God for leading me here.
Mercy Office 450
HP, I am very, very sensitive now that I am successful with this new stage of food recovery.
Help me to get along with others through the use of:
Feelings
Boundaries
Limits
And Needs
So, I don’t end up completely recovered…and completely alone!
Mercy Office 451
Sanity:
To succeed in sex addiction recovery we must replace our addiction with something positive, healthful and fun.
Do we accept that we cannot stop by ourselves, that willpower, guts and self-discipline will not suffice to be successful?
Are we willing to consider that that there may be something more powerful than ourselves in the Universe?
Are we willing to go one step farther and to consider that that Power may care about us?
If we keep looking at porn and thinking we can not masturbate, that is not sane.
If we keep looking at sexually titillating social media and thinking that that it will not lead us to porn, that is not sane.
If we believe that if we were just married, or just had the right partner, or could get our partners to behave in just the right way, that we would be okay, that is not sane.
If we feel afraid of the word Higher Power or God, we inventory, honestly, why we feel that way
We have the right to choose any conception that works for us to stop masturbating, but to use a form of God that does not, honestly, help us stop masturbating, specifically , is not sane.
Mercy Office 452
HP,
When I am feeling very tired and frustrated help me to:
Rise above the situation, so that I can act lovingly.
Be ultra-resilient, so as not to “act in kind”.
Be forgiving, and if humanly possible…merciful.
Mercy Office 453
“Why shouldn’t we laugh…we have recovered”
I have completely recovered from all addictions and childhood abuse and even the generations of bad blood.
I have lost everything, but I not only have recovered…I have recreated myself.
I just laugh now 
Mercy Office 454
Even if I stop all my compulsion, I am still responsible for my mental health:
My attitudes, thoughts, beliefs and feelings.
I choose a positive attitude
I choose positive thoughts
I chooses honest, loving beliefs
Let my feelings run where they may
Mercy Office 455
My father said he ate food so that he wouldn’t waste it…but truthfully, he ate to feed his bulimia.
Have mercy on my family, Lord
Mercy Office 456
I am not a religious man.
I am a spiritual man.
What does that mean?
It means that I sacrifice to God.
Some big ticket things that I sacrifice are:
Alcohol
Drugs
Tobacco
Caffeine
Gluttony resulting in being fat
Masturbation
Sex without commitment
Intriguing with women
Objectifying women
Fantasizing about women
Debting
Overworking
Religious preoccupation
Codependency
Narcissim
Being a victim
But I also surrender working on Sundays the last 2.5 years.
The ancient Jews called it the “Sabbath”.
That temporal boundary has been surprisingly helpful to me.
Business has grown so much that I will worked on Sabbath for the first time two weeks ago…at a 30% overtime charge, LOL
Mercy Office 457
When I wake up I start to think about my problems and I feel worried.
This is because, at 12 years old, when my mother ran away from my father and took me, I decided that I wanted to be like her instead of him.
She was artistic, very high verbal, read books and could talk to anybody about anything. I liked and admired her.
But she “constantly dwelt on her pain and problems” as the Al-anon 12x12 describes, due to living with my alcoholic, sexually addicted, workaholic father.
So I worry… That is my natural, default-to, emotional state of affairs.
It can be about money, health, my crazy landlord, Covid 19, politics or the fate of the icebergs and their effects on polar bears…anything will suffice.
The problem with defaulting to this “attitude and outlook on life” (Big Book) is that I want to get away. I hate my life. It is misery…endless misery.
Now the good thing about masturbation is that the drug tetrahydroisoquinoline, which is produced in my brain when I am aroused (Patrick Carnes Phd) completely overwhelms any feelings I may have of worry.
Actually, just the fantasy that precedes masturbation, engages that drug release into my blood system.
With the all-or-nothing, black and white, extreme thinking, that I learned as a child, I see only two choices: Worry my life away…or masturbate.
That might be an okay temporary solution, but as an addict, I very quickly become dependent on this solution to all my worry.
But, now I have two problems: worry and masturbation.
So, first I have to stop masturbating and you guys know the drill: meetings, a sponsor, meetings, step work, meetings, prayer, meetings, phone calls, meetings, service (Rinse and repeat).
But…that will stop, but not solve the problem. I have to “get down to causes and conditions” as the Big Book says.
So, back to Mama…
Mama was scared that Dad would leave her and she would have no money….which he did.
She was scared that her children would not obey her and wouldn’t become doctors and lawyers…which they didn’t.
She was scared that she would die from smoking…which she did.
I learned to face life…but to be very fearful.
This attitude towards life is so entrenched in me that only an act of God will remove it.
This is where steps 6 and 7 come in very handily.
The problem with “removal of character defects” is that it is not magic.
It is painful and takes a lot of persistence.
What God does not do is magically remove my defects.
He allows me to be in the same, or similar, situations that my Mama was in...and then extends me the opportunity to reach out to Him when I feel my fearfulness coming on and to “Humbly ask for help.”
I wish it were more like the Tooth Fairy, Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny, but the truth is that “God is the hardest taskmaster there is” (Gandhi).
I find it useful to “Cling to the Lord...and cry out for mercy”.
Sometimes he will be merciful...
Mercy Office 458
There is a quote in “Talledega Nights”: “Yep, I guess things are just about perfect... it's making me feel kind of itchy.”
There have been times in the last 40 years when I have surrendered every single thing I know to be addictive, self-destructive, selfish or dishonest.
After a while I would get “itchy”.
I am simply not used to a peaceful, contented life.
My father’s American Dream, like most of the post World War II men, was simply to own a house, two cars and have 2-3 children.
My American Dream, in my youth, was to be a rockstar.
At 65, my American Dream is to simply be fully recovered and enjoy my life with my family.
Mercy Office 459
There’s a wonderful document delineating three things: sick sex, sane sex, sacred sex.
In our literature, we designate those terms: addiction, healthy sex and Holiness.
Sacred sex is divided into two categories, according to this document. Chastity and non-orgasmic sexuality.
In 2002, a disease was discovered called post orgasmic illness syndrome, or POIS. (search internet for history).
There is a very tiny subset of people who are afflicted with this illness.
When it was discovered by Dr. Waldinger, it was originally determined that the onset of the symptoms occurred immediately after orgasm.
After extensive research, I contacted Dr. Waldinger, neurosexologist, who revised his definition to include the onset of symptoms, at the point of arousal, when the semen begins to descend the urethra, rather than upon completion of male orgasm.
So, for me, non-orgasmic sexuality is part of healthy sex...not Holiness.
It is difficult, if not impossible, to imagine God having sex to feel blissful, please a partner or even be emotionally intimate.
It is easy, however, to imagine God, sacrificing his energy...to create life.
That is holy...
Mercy Office 460
Lord,
Help me when I sin.
Help me to take responsibility for my mistakes and be honest about them.
Help me to be willing to change, and if I am honestly not willing, help me to be willing.
Help me to allow myself to be angry with myself but not beat myself up for my errors.
Help me to forgive myself.
Help me to have mercy on myself.
Mercy Office 461
HP,
Help me to pray for my enemies.
If nothing else for the reason that, without my own resentment, I can think more clearly how to respond to them.
But, even more than that, to be truly grateful for them, because you have built us, as your children, potentially, “To be at our best when things are at their worst”.
God bless my enemies.
Mercy Office 462
HP,
Thank you for my difficulties.
Thank you for the opportunity to protect my wife, children and myself.
Amen
Mercy Office 463
HP,
Have mercy on the old, sick and weak that are now dying, if it is your will.
Help me stay strong to take care of my family by doing what I know, obviously, or instinctively, to be healthy.
Help me not be “as the horse or the mule” when it comes to choices to be healthy.
Help me not act as a child waiting for “Precise instructions”.
Help me to be intelligent.
Mercy Office 464
HP,
Help me to balance my life with my wife so that I remain completely transparent with her, but yet keep boundaries around duties you have assigned to me, so that she is not burdened with the concerns of my labors.
Lord knows she’s got her hands full with Gummy, who we now call Magellan or Huck Finn, for his inquisitiveness...What a cutie!
Thank you for the “joy of our hearts”.
Mercy Office 465
“All by himself, and in the light of his own circumstances, he needs to develop the quality of willingness”
Page 40 AA 12x12
For me, this is probably the most spiritually enlightening sentence in the entire 12x12.
Everyone needs to try to stop addiction by themselves at first. It’s the most natural thing in the world. If I have a problem I want to solve it. So I try, and I try, and I try.
But at some point, I have to be honest with myself, “I am failing at trying to stop”.
A failure is the most terrible thing you can be in the American consciousness as a man...That word strikes shame at the very core of self-esteem.
But it is absolutely necessary, critically necessary, to “develop the quality of willingness“.
I have to “hit bottom”, as the AA first step says.
It may take months. It may take years to accept powerlessness.
But, at last...with that self-honesty, I have an opportunity to develop something I have known very little about in my life...humility.
“I admit that I am powerless over masturbation-that my life has become unmanageable”.
Without this willingness there will never be success.
The crucial point is...am I willing to try something different and to let go of my old ideas?
It’s scary...Why?
Because my body is pumping tetrahydrosequinoline, the chemical that makes me feel good when I am orgasmic, when I am aroused, when I intrigue, objectify or fantasize.
The craving for more is on me and is too strong for me.
In fairness and truth, there are people for whom masturbation is an annoying little habit and they can stop with some “Blood, sweat and tears”.
Those are not the people we serve.
If you think that you can stop addiction with a Tony Robbins self-help program, your religion, or a YouTube video…Stop reading the this now. This is not for you.
For us, those are “old ideas”.
But, if you really want to stop masturbating and honestly can’t stop...we know how to do that.
Mercy Office 466
I feel reduced in size when I have the humility to accept that I cannot stop...but I have the opportunity to do something different.
I see other men who are successful at stopping masturbation and that is the only real hope that I have at that point...that is, if I believe that they are being honest.
Then there is a cliff I have to jump off...I have to ask them how they did it.
This is a point in my recovery which requires tremendous courage.
None of us has had perfect childhoods and there may be some reluctance to ask for help.
Some people say that the unwillingness to ask for help is just Pride.
But Pride comes from not wanting to be hurt again...and that is a learned behavior.
Sometimes I am so afraid to be willing to ask for help that I have to pray to be willing to be willing.
If I am too afraid to ask people to help me, I can simply start praying the Second Step (my personal favorite) “ I came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity”...and I am on my way.
Mercy Office 467
Higher Power,
Help me to be free of masturbation, affairs and pornography...as they make me feel “pitifully and incomprehensibly demoralized”.
Help me to be free of objectification, fantasy and intrigue as these boundary-less behaviors lead me to masturbation, affairs and pornography.
Help me be willing to do a “finite period of chastity”, minimally 60 days, to just get the disease out of my system.
Help replace the hurt that is within me, that I now surrender to you, to find the grace, serenity, happiness, joy and finally peace of mind that You offer.
...with all my heart, mind and soul.
_Anonymous
Mercy Office 468
HP,
Help me to be merciful to the alcoholic who is hungover, paranoid with fear and obsessed with not being alone. That was me once...except my disease was turned on 11, instead of 6.
Help me to be merciful, compassionate and forgiving to those with deep childhood wounds...my own childhood wounds are as wide as the sky.
Mercy Office 469
HP,
I am feeling scared, hurt, sad, needy and lonely, but faithful.
I am in a war for my home.
I believe it is your will for me to fight for it, for my son, for my wife and for myself.
I surrender my fear to you today...as it is the Sabbath.
And I will continue with my prayers, fasting and chastity.
I pray only for knowledge of your will for me and the power to carry that out.
Amen
Mercy Office 470
Dear Whatever-Power-there-may-be-in-the-Sky-that-I-hope-is-listening-to-me,
I am hanging around on Sunday fasting, praying and even practicing chastity, hoping that I can get a word in with you.
I am feeling really scared and if you wouldn’t mind sending me a flash of intuition, a hunch, or a nudge of some sort to let me know what your will is I would really appreciate it.
I know it’s Sunday and a big work day for you...but “Just a touch”, would really help...
Mercy Office 471
Mark Twain from age 13 to 32 would be:
a print typesetter
a would-be merchant transporting cocaine from Brazil
a Mississippi River Boat pilot for four years (the rock stars of the the 1850’s)
a short lived Confederate soldier...two weeks!
a failed silver prospector
a newspaper reporter,
and a failed gold prospector...all by 32 years old
Then he found his calling...writing and lecturing
I played guitar, bass, drums, trumpet, sang, wrote songs, arranged, produced, engineered, did part-time comedy, musical sales, entertained and taught music from 13 to 33 years old and then I found my calling...12 Step.
Mercy Office 472
For Jason:
My wife and I have to come up with a great deal of cash for legal fees to defend against my landlord, or we are going to lose my home of 17 1/2 years.
I feel very anxious about this and, as a codependent, I find myself “constantly dwelling on pain and problems” as the Al-anon 12x12 states in the 6th Step.
The most beautiful prayer ever written to relieve anxiety is this one, Jesus’s most tender and loving words to a wounded man-and-womankind:
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
This is the gentlest, kindest most inclusive invitation to God ever written.
As I repeat this prayer “over and over again” as the AA 12x12 says in Step Eleven, my fear disappears and I...feel the presence of the Living God.
It feels almost like magic.
But, if I want to quit masturbating or using porn that is not the right tool to use.
I go to meetings every day, keep a day count, get a sponsor and call daily for direction...and follow it, do a moral inventory and help other sex addicts every day.
One tool is surgery, one is therapy.
Both are beautiful tools, but I must not insist that a saw be a hammer or a hammer be a saw.
I must chose the right tool for the right job.
"Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
I have been writing prayers for 12 steppers since 1992, but that’s better than anything I’ve got...or ever hope to do.
Thanks Lord...really, thanks.
Mercy Office 473
New simplified “Needs”:
HP,
Help me to love myself today...
After meeting my physical needs for air, water, food, exercise and sleep help me to fully actualize by meeting my needs for:
•Safety (physical, emotional and financial)
•Love and belonging
•Esteem of others/Self-esteem
•Spirituality through connectedness, originally with God, then others, and finally...lastingly and constantly with myself, through prayer and service
•Contentment through realization of my highest, realistically attainable goal
•Creativity through creating beauty for the joy of it
•Peace of mind through knowing my soul
Mercy Office 474...Sometimes I simply need God’s mercy
Psalm 32
1 Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.
2 Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit.
3 When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long.
4 For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. "Selah"
5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, "I will confess my transgressions to the LORD"-- and you forgave the guilt of my sin. "Selah"
6 Therefore let everyone who is godly pray to you while you may be found; surely when the mighty waters rise, they will not reach him.
7 You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance. "Selah"
8 I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you.
9 Do not be like the horse or the mule, which have no understanding but must be controlled by bit and bridle or they will not come to you.
10 Many are the woes of the wicked, but the LORD's unfailing love surrounds the man who trusts in him.
11 Rejoice in the LORD and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in heart!
Psalm 51
1 Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin.
3 For I know my transgressions, and my sin is always before me.
4 Against you, you only, have I sinned and done what is evil in your sight, so that you are proved right when you speak and justified when you judge.
5 Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.
6 Surely you desire truth in the inner parts; you teach me wisdom in the inmost place.
7 Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.
8 Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.
9 Hide your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquity.
10 Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me.
12 Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
13 Then I will teach transgressors your ways, and sinners will turn back to you.
14 Save me from bloodguilt, O God, the God who saves me, and my tongue will sing of your righteousness.
15 O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.
16 You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
18 In your good pleasure make Zion prosper; build up the walls of Jerusalem.
19 Then there will be righteous sacrifices, whole burnt offerings to delight you; then bulls will be offered on your altar.
Psalm 102
1 Hear my prayer, O LORD; let my cry for help come to you.
2 Do not hide your face from me when I am in distress. Turn your ear to me; when I call, answer me quickly.
3 For my days vanish like smoke; my bones burn like glowing embers.
4 My heart is blighted and withered like grass; I forget to eat my food.
5 Because of my loud groaning I am reduced to skin and bones.
6 I am like a desert owl, like an owl among the ruins.
7 I lie awake; I have become like a bird alone on a roof.
8 All day long my enemies taunt me; those who rail against me use my name as a curse.
9 For I eat ashes as my food and mingle my drink with tears
10 because of your great wrath, for you have taken me up and thrown me aside.
11 My days are like the evening shadow; I wither away like grass.
12 But you, O LORD, sit enthroned forever; your renown endures through all generations.
13 You will arise and have compassion on Zion, for it is time to show favor to her; the appointed time has come.
14 For her stones are dear to your servants; her very dust moves them to pity.
15 The nations will fear the name of the LORD, all the kings of the earth will revere your glory.
16 For the LORD will rebuild Zion and appear in his glory.
17 He will respond to the prayer of the destitute; he will not despise their plea.
18 Let this be written for a future generation, that a people not yet created may praise the LORD:
19 "The LORD looked down from his sanctuary on high, from heaven he viewed the earth,
20 to hear the groans of the prisoners and release those condemned to death."
21 So the name of the LORD will be declared in Zion and his praise in Jerusalem
22 when the peoples and the kingdoms assemble to worship the LORD.
23 In the course of my life he broke my strength; he cut short my days.
24 So I said: "Do not take me away, O my God, in the midst of my days; your years go on through all generations.
25 In the beginning you laid the foundations of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands.
26 They will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like a garment. Like clothing you will change them and they will be discarded.
27 But you remain the same, and your years will never end.
28 The children of your servants will live in your presence; their descendants will be established before you."
Mercy Office 475
If I can accept God’s mercy, I might be able to have mercy on myself.
If I can have mercy on myself, I might be able to have mercy on others.
That would make me a lot easier to get along with...