2007-08-20 A Monday Night at AACA -- Repetition

2007-08-20 A Monday Night at AACA -- Repetition, originally uploaded by royblumenthal.

AACA tonight was pretty much about the value of repetition in learning new habits.

One of my hassles with the twelve step programs, though, is that the twelve steps themselves seem to promote a repetition of some pretty dangerous things.

The subconscious believes pretty much anything we tell it. So when we repeat things such as: 'Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character', we're opening ourselves to two key problems.

The first problem is that we keep 'doing' these steps, and thereby keep telling ourselves about our defects of character. We keep delving for these things. And the nature of such delving is that we'll keep finding them.

If we were to focus rather on the things about ourselves that are right, that are working, that are functional, that would be an entirely different story.

The other shortcoming for me in the repetition I've mentioned above is that it hands off the individual's power and responsibility to some outside force, the concept of 'god'.

I'm not interested in the theology of this statement. I'm interested in the neurolinguistics of it. If I keep repeating to myself (and more particularly, my un-critical subconscious) that I am unable to do anything about my shortcomings, and that only 'god' is able to deal with them, then I'm pretty much giving myself permission to continue with my so-called 'defects of character'.

So hey. To me, the repetitions must be approached with a pretty good dose of caution and awakeness.

The AACA group is working for me in that it normalises the way I grew up. I AM an adult child of abuse. And there's no escaping that as a fact. But I'm NOT powerless over this fact. I'm doing pretty hard work, and getting pretty good results, in overcoming my childhood.

This painting started out as a doodle in my Moleskine in tonight's AACA meeting. I then scanned it, popped it into ArtRage 2.5, painted out an unwanted character, and then spent three hours colouring.No need to repeat that. I'm sure you got it the first time.