Understanding

"We have entered the world of the Spirit. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness."  

Alcoholics Anonymous  page 84

The above statement makes the bold assumption that the reader has in fact rigorously adhered to our stringent spiritual way of life and has had, as a result, an experience which has placed them in the realm of the spirit. If the reader has not reached said point then you missed something along the way.

How many times have you heard this little statement at a meeting?

"The longer I am sober, the less I know."

Don't you wonder about those people? My sober experience increases, nearly exponentially, with each passing day. I know things today that I didn't know 5 years ago that have made it possible to help others in a way I never could have imagined. This again is an extreme example of false pride and eludes to the idea that we can easily level the playing field in AA to allow everyone to be liked, understood and ultimately respected. But this idea of a level playing field is counter to the way our fellowship was designed in which new people followed us down the path, doing what we did to get what we got.  It is vastly important that someone have gone before us and that the path be laid out and we cannot snub our noses at sober time.

Take this for example:

Let's pretend for a moment that a loved one is sick, they are suffering from a congenital heart defect that is going to require open heart surgery. They come to you for advice on where to seek treatment and which doctor they should choose. Do you advise them to go to the local community college and volunteer to allow some surgical techs to open them up? Absolutely not, you point them in the direction of the best treatment they can get from the surgeon with the most experience. 

So let me ask you this, why is it that when a guy with 20+ years of sobriety shares in a meeting we allow another member with 2 years to argue with them?

Now I will leave you with this...in the spiritual world there exists a paradox in which the closer one draws to God the smaller they see themselves before him and as one's knowledge grows so does the understanding of just how little they know. However the amount they didn't know is always decreasing, the awareness of how much that is should always be increasing.

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Posted in AA, alcoholics anonymous, effectiveness, life, path, pride, sober, spiritual, understanding

Absolute Truth

"Humility is knowing the absolute truth about one's self" -Mother Teresa

Humility is a very difficult subject, one that by it's very nature seems rather counter-intuitive. As one increases in understanding and knowledge they become more of an expert on the subject. By common belief in Alcoholics Anonymous this leads to a less humble individual. Wrong!

I stand to argue the point that we should make every effort to increase in understanding and effectiveness through the practice of these principles in our affairs we become masters in the art of knowing the truth about ourselves. We practice daily maintenance of a spiritual program of action in which we invite God into our lives to mold us into the beings he desires, we ask him to remove those things which block us from him and to strengthen those attributes which we will need to help those we should meet along the way. 

In the early days of my sober life and near the end of active addiction I experienced the type of humiliation that only we can understand. I was devastated, the result was that I learned to seek God in my life for the comfort and support I longed for. We must not confuse humiliation with the act of being humble. While it was certainly my experience to first be humiliated and then to become humble, it was not a cause and effect scenario. 

Take for example the above quote, it would suggest that our first experience with humility should come near the fifth step where we take a personal inventory of all that is good and bad and place it before God and another, in doing so we survey the wreckage and take stock of the salvageable.  We come to know the truth about ourselves such as we never had before. All the while placing ourselves before God. It stands to reason that some humiliation would come before this as we admit powerlessness or complete defeat, internalize that we are truly alcoholic and begin to see a need for a power greater than ourselves. 

Out of this weakness is born strength to discover the absolute truth about ourselves, some of us are great writers and other masterful musicians, while others still are incredible orators. We become fully aware, in God's presence, of the gifts we have been given and of the mission we are to set forth on. The man who is most humble is he who takes the gifts that have been given to him and uses them for the most good. 

Are you using your gifts for maximum goodness?

My new iMac will be here in just a couple of days and with it my new keyboard, which has an "L" key, something that I have been missing for a couple of months now, something which I thought to be very insignificant. To the contrary I have missed every keystroke in that time.

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Posted in alcoholic, alcoholics anonymous, effectiveness, experience, God, humble, humiliation, humility, power, powerless, understanding

Road to Recovery

"God has given me the ability to walk through trials with grace and dignity."

I am very grateful for the strength I have been given, the perspective I have, and the foundation that has been laid. This post will be less about my opinion and more about my experience. 

I have, throughout my sober life had trials laid before me that I believe have been designed to bring me closer to God. I am, in hindsight, able to see his hand in all of the details leading up to and including the very trial I have to pass through.

I have not always had this faith, in fact I have spent much of my life, sober and before, believing that I was controlling it all. Today, this faith I share with those around me is like the warmth of a familiar blanket when there is a chill in the air. It brings comfort from the presence of God in my life when all around me is pain and suffering. Much the same way a small child clings to their favorite blanket or stuffed bear, this is not immediately instinctual but rather a learned behavior that has come from pain or fear and then relief or comfort. You do that enough times and you develop a faith.

Perhaps that is all very childish, perhaps I should reach into the very premise that we are engaged here and now in all out spiritual warfare, that our sober struggle, and yes it is from time to time a struggle, is a battle on an spiritual plane. We have to die a death to self and in doing so we are in a sense "reborn" to bring comfort to the sick, food to the hungry, and shelter to those in the cold. We have ultimately been saved so that we can do God's work. If you believe in the presence of God in our lives, then you cannot deny the existence of  a competing force or power, that in sobriety pulls us from God's will and away from the work that has been laid before us. We struggle daily with the removal of selfishness in an effort to become better aligned with His will, but when we are misaligned the battle begins.

But what you might ask does this have to do with staying sober? Well, our daily reprieve is based upon the maintenance of our spiritual program. We are also called to grow along spiritual lines, increasing in faith and understanding of this faith allows for us to remain continuously sober.

Coming up....I will be inviting some of our readers to share their story, short inspiring bits about lives spared and souls saved!

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Posted in AA, death, faith, God, perspective, sober, spiritual, suicide, understanding