Part 1:The Spiritual Malady...

"Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves."
 page 45 The Anonymous Press Study Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous

Alcoholism is a Soul Sickness and it is only fitting that the crux of the problem is where we begin our discussion. Suffering from a spiritual malady, the active alcoholic is cut off from the very thing they need in order to sustain life, the energy and grace that comes from our creator. Pride, selfishness, and self-centeredness are the very things that block us from this sunlight of the spirit.

It can be well established that we drink because we are alcoholics, we suffer from an internal condition that makes it nearly impossible to live with-in our bodies without some form of distraction, such as alcohol. However, our founders stumbled upon something that until that point had been widely ignored or overlooked by both the religious and medical fields. They found that a spiritual solution which removed those things which blocked us from God would in point of  fact treat the internal condition and in doing so allow us to live comfortably with ourselves.

Where we had once been powerless, power flowed in, we had become channels of God's power, testaments to his mercy and grace and doers of his will. All of these things remain possible as long as we are able to remain in the sunlight of the spirit and not dwell beneath the shade of doubt, pride and self.

"Whether such a person can quit upon a nonspiritual basis depends upon the extent to which he has already lost the power to choose whether he will drink or not."
page 34 The Anonymous Press Study Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous

I was not prepared for a spiritual solution when I was brought to the fellowship, nor was I willing to immediately accept that the only hope there was for me was to admit defeat, surrender my life to God and start doing his work. However, I was told early on and have since come to understand that the program of Alcoholics Anonymous that we know is designed to do primarily one thing...take a suffering alcoholic who is walking away from God and pick him up, turn he/she 180 degrees so that they now walk towards him.

Lastly I wish to say this, while it is not my place to diagnose anyone with alcoholism, I know today unequivocally that if you do not need the spiritual solution we have to offer, in other words you can stop on your own...you are not an alcoholic. If you can change your lifestyle, get a new set of friends, buy a fancy car or get slapped with enough probation and one of these things makes you stop...you are NOT one of us...

"There was a tremendous urge to cease forever. Yet we found it impossible. This is the baffling feature of alcoholism as we know it - this utter inability to leave it alone, no matter how great the necessity or the wish."
page 34 The Anonymous Press Study Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous


There is it...If you have passed into the realm in which there was no return through human aid...you need God...

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Posted in acoholism, alcoholic, alcoholics anonymous, aloholics, fellowship, powerless, pride, self-centeredness, selfishness, soul, spiritual, spiritual malady

Why they go...

There will be much speculation surrounding this post, and I expect to draw more than a little bit of criticism too, but why not.

I want to take a moment to discuss with you in detail the very things that either drive the old-timers from AA or pull them to a drink.

There are two issues which I will be sharing:

1. The Return of the Alcoholic Ego
2. The Subject Matter of our Meetings

So the old dog just packed his crap up in his even older truck and took off? We sit in our meetings and spend a great deal of time discussing why we think John took a drink or why Phil hung himself, we blame the lack of meetings, we blame the divorce, the loss of a job or a child...sometimes we blame each other...I could have done more? However, the arrow often misses the mark. The return of the alcoholic ego kills more of us than alcohol does.

When we were brought to the rooms of AA we underwent a period of ego-deflation that left us humble and teachable. Some years go by and through sacrifice and charity we remain in a place of humility, a servant of God, do his trusted work...then something happens, we cut back on our meetings or there is an event that pulls us into another area of our lives and away from AA...(notice, that while before I mentioned us believing this was the cause, it is not...) Rather than returning to our place in the trench, a bit of self-righteousness sets in and we begin to say to ourselves, "can't someone else answer that phone." Now the once removed alcoholic ego has again stuck it's foot in the door of our spiritual life. It begins to manifest itself in all manners of selfishness and self centeredness. The end result is always this, we become convinced that AA doesn't need us and that we don't have anything more to gain from "those people". The separation has now occurred and while the drink hasn't yet come, it is not far around the corner.

They are not lost yet, but soon to be...make certain that we keep an eye out for this...
Stay tuned for part 2...Subject Matter in Meetings

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Posted in AA, alcoholic, drink, ego, God, humble, self-centeredness, self-rightousness, selfishness

Slow Down...

Time is no commodity here, in fact, unlike much of world, time has very little meaning here...

Ice cream, now that of all things is a precious. Having awoken to a predawn chill in the air a subtle mist is slowly rising and revealing a gently cleansed surrounding. Everyone needs a chance to slow down a little and take a few deep breaths. We all need a reason to get out of bed in the morning and head into work. Today is that reason.

Despite the heartache and struggles that have come with this latest passing year I have among all things remained most richly blessed. Today I will spend my birthday with my wife and children on a distant beach, where despite the hopelessness of the plight, my eldest son will spend the whole day throwing sand into the sea. I suppose that if all the children stopped throwing sand in the ocean it might finally encroach upon us and swallow us whole. Thank you to the children, theirs is a tireless and thankless job.

It is important to point out that my life has become, in sobriety, something that I could have never imagined. Through staying sober a day at a time, giving my life to the God of my understanding, and remaining willing to practice our principles, I have been given a chance to have some real joy in my life. This is the vision of hope with which we are to pull the new comer. My life was once a darkness that lay as a tattered blanket over my helpless mass. Stripped of all that I knew, I was reached to and pulled from this muck. Feeling the breath of life rush into my lungs with a soft whoosh, I was pointed (by the folks in Alcoholics Anonymous) in this new direction.

It is an amazing life, though I spend much of it running as hard and as fast as I can, trying desperately to get ahead of the rest of the rats in the race. Today, a hard run takes me from one end of the island to the other in six minutes. It's time to slow down. it's time to take a look around, it's time to take stock of those things in my life that are often ignored and sometimes taken for granted! And though it's 7am and I have only been up for an hour, I think it is time for a nap...

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Posted in alcoholics anonymous, direction, God, principles, sober, struggles

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