Check Your Motives

Flail: To thrash.
Thrash: To beat mercilessly; to defeat utterly.

To make sure that my flailing about is normal flailing - acceptable flailing - and not wild flailing I check in with my two sponsors.  I like to check in although I don't always like the results of the checking in.  Calling my sponsor is like a pee test for my mouth.  That doesn't sound right.  It's like a pee test where I don't have to pee into anything.  Maybe it's more like being hooked up to a lie detector test.

Anyway, my Old City sponsor is a very religious, very conventional man.  I'm frequently reminded to spend some solid time in prayer and meditation, taking my questions and concerns to my Higher Power, listening carefully, trying to discern the small signs and small nudges to go in this direction or that direction.  He puts a lot of stake in the consequences of behaving selfishly.  The world has rules and when I break them I get consequences.  It's not that I'm being screwed or punished or picked on, but that my actions lead to results, good or bad.  It reminds me of the story of the mother telling the child not to put his hand on a hot stove; the kid (me - I'm the kid) puts his hand on the stove and gets the $#!! shit burned out of his hand; the kid gets mad at the mother, for chrissake.  It took me a long time to understand that I didn't break my mother's rules - I broke the rules of life.  

Anyway, the point here is that my Higher Power is a good source of advice.

Coming at things from a totally different direction, is my New City sponsor, a bit of a hippie.  I'm a good church boy so I frequently battle feelings of guilt when I'm pursuing happiness or something that brings me pleasure.  It's the old Heaven vs. Hell battle - am I doing something that will get me to Heaven or am I doing something to avoid Hell?  There was a lot of black and white shit in my church, as you can see.  New City guy isn't big on guilt.  He asks me this: "Are you hurting anyone else with your actions?"  It's a good question.  Today I believe that when I pursue my own interests at the expense of others then I'm applying my will improperly and nothing good will come of it, even if I get my way.  It totally harshes my buzz when I get what I want after walking up and down the backs of my fellows.

Don't try to do this stuff alone.