As I look across the circle of our A.A. fellowship at the end of each meeting at all the friends who with LOVE have given us their hand and helped us rise from the smouldering tattered ruins of the life we had been living, I thought I would share with you the fundamentals of truth and the "knowingness" that the DOING of the 12 Steps of A.A. has brought to me over the years. . . .

1. The Higher Power is absolute good, everywhere present. Wherever we are, Higher Power IS. The opportunity given us is in recognizing this in the midst of challenging circumstances.
2. All human beings, all things, have a spark of divinity within them, each is a bit of "localized divinity", and it is this spark deep down within ourselves that we are searching for, with which we make that most necessary conscious contact. . . BigBook, page 55
3. Each of us, individually and collectively, are the Higher Power's Beloved Child, and wonderfully made to express the very Life and Love of God as we each understand it.
4. Human beings create their experiences in life by the activity of their thinking. . . As a man/woman thinks, so it is for them. Everything in the manifest realm has its beginnings in thought. Thoughts held in mind produce after their kind. If we want to change things in our lives, we must change our thoughts.
5. Prayer is Creative Thinking, that heightens and broadens our connection with God-Mind, and therefore brings forth knowledge, knowingness, wisdom, healing, prosperity, LOVE, Peace and everything good. Prayer does not change God, it changes us. It brings us into a conscious awareness of and contact with God's presence, gaining us a knowingness that God's will for us is absolute good.
6. Knowing and understanding the Laws of Life, given to us in our 12 Steps and Traditions, and the Truth that we learn is not enough. We must also LIVE the TRUTH that we know by doing the work that leads in the direction we want to go. All the knowledge in the world produces nothing until action is taken.

Like so many of us coming into the program, I thought I knew all about Love, but in truth I knew zip about Love. . . Like so many others in the world I had to have LOVE properly defined, so that I could begin to learn to live life doing all things with LOVE. . . so that LOVE could be returned to me.

7. LOVE is not a feeling word, it is an action word. . . as my sponsors very pointedly said, "We really don't care what you think about it, or believe about it, or feel about it, the only thing that counts from here on out is what you DO."
8. The word LOVE was best defined (for me) by my sponsors as follows. . .
   "Honest Interest In and Concern For, without any sticky emotional strings attached, just simply Honest Interest In and Concern For, period..!!"

Love and Peace, Barefoot

Index of AA History Pages on Barefoot's Domain

As in so many things, especially with we alcoholics, our History is our Greatest Asset!.. We each arrived at the doors of AA with an intensive and lengthy "History of Things That Do Not Work" .. Today, In AA and In Recovery, Our History has added an intensive and lengthy "History of Things That DO Work!!" and We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it!!

ABC Page 60 from the Big Book

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Barefoot's World

On the Web September 28, 2002 in the Spirit of Cooperation

Three mighty important things, Pardn'r, LOVE And PEACE and SOBRIETY