Sober Resources

Every now and then I come across some very profound thoughts from our members of the various forums of Sober Sources. I couldn’t let this one just be allowed to drop down the list of “must reads”. Many thanks to Slow N Easy of the Sober N Clean forums for allowing me to republish his personal thoughts here.
“Selfishness, self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self, which later placed us in a position to be hurt. So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making”. ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, How It Works, pg. 62~

Selfishness and self-centeredness is the root of our problems. Wow! Selfishness is a noun that simply means: Stinginess resulting from a concern for your own welfare and a disregard of others. Fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, all things that stem from imagination drive this concern. We are acting from the imaginary. The self!

But what is a self? Here’s the kicker, the self is one’s consciousness of one’s own being or identity; the ego. It is what you believe you are. So when you imagine something that the self should be doing, you do it without regards of what that action is going to do in effecting other’s being. That’s what selfishness and self-centeredness is!
Follow this link to finish reading the article…