Made a Decision

(82)

                                           Letting God In

I arrived in AA with all my insanity intact. I had no idea who I was or what my life was supposed to look like. Recovery has been all about my staying sober while being given the tools to get those answers.

I was told right away to turn my life over to "the God of my understanding." I was so miserable and so desperate I was willing to do that, but what did that mean? It took a long old time for me to even have a concept of God take root in my head.

In earlier blogs I have outlined my search for God having taken me down many paths - from Goddess worship to Christianity and to many other concepts in between. I went to various places of worship.  I read a lot of stuff. I prayed a lot. And I tried hard to meditate, even though I was pretty crap at it for a very long time.

Alcoholics in general, and I am no exception, tend to want to know what life is all about. We want to know if there is a system of cosmic justice, and, if there really is a God, does that God truly care about us? All the spiritual books assure us of that truth. Even so, we want to KNOW for sure!

Getting that assurance is up to us. We have to do the seeking and the finding. We have to reach our own conclusions based on the results we find in our own prayers and meditative times. And we have to find it by giving AA our service to help other alcoholics find and keep sobriety.

As our Big Book states:

We try not to indulge in cynicism over the state of the nations, nor do we carry the world's troubles on our shoulders. When we see a man sinking into the mire that is alcoholism, we give him first aid and place what we have at his disposal.

I've come to the conclusion I needed every bit of that exploration to find a God of my understanding, one I can hang out with, believe in, and trust that He/She is looking out for me. I have absolute faith in that God of mine today, but it sure didn't happen overnight.

What did happen was I stayed sober and I believe my willingness to keep looking for my personal God had a hand in that. That's my story and I sticking to it, but it's not everyone's story. Some in AA never find a personal God, yet they stay sober by living the principles of our program.

I take no one's inventory about these things. The winners we're supposed to hang out with in AA are those we see living lives that are joyous, happy and free. They're the ones who smile a lot and I enjoy their company. I don't care if they have a personal God or not, or if they do what their God looks like. It's none of my business anyway. Besides, I stay busy enough trying to decipher my own God's guidance for me.

Here's what prayer alone can do for us, according to an article in the AA Grapevine,

As the doubter tries the process of prayer, he should begin to add up the results. If he persists, he will almost surely find more serenity, more tolerance, less fear, and less anger.

He will acquire a quiet courage, the kind that isn't tension-ridden. He can look at "failure" and "success" for what these really are. Problems and calamity will begin to mean his instruction, instead of his destruction.

 He will feel freer and saner. The idea that he may have been hypnotizing himself by auto-suggestion will become laughable.

 His sense of purpose and of direction will increase. His anxieties will commence to fade. His physical health will be likely to improve.

Wonderful and unaccountable things will start to happen. Twisted relations in his family and on the outside will improve surprisingly.


One of the things I had to learn first was about my dark side. When we do that, when we start to see ourselves more clearly, we are then able to stop our darker impulses before they get us into trouble - again!

(As my first sponsor often advised me, "When in doubt - don't.")

My learning to be honest has been a help, too. The more honest we are with others, and with ourselves, the healthier we become.

When we first start our walk along the spiritual path we often want to just stay there, up in the spiritual treetops, where it feels safe and protected. Over time we learn, that while we can get a pink cloud ride anytime we really need one, our proper place is right here at ground zero helping other suffering alcoholics. 

As long as we keep on doing-that-doing God will be right there with us. 

I've come to believe our trying to carry out God's guidance as best we can is the secret of personal power. We do our best to follow the directions and then we leave the results to Him.

I spend a lot more time these days thinking about my Higher Power maybe because I expect to meet Him in person in the not too distant future. I'm trying to think, act and live (to the best of my very limited ability) as if we were already in one another's presence.

Today I know for sure that the God of my understanding knows my circumstances better than I do and always comes up with far more creative solutions to my problems than I can. My God often appears disguised in amazing "gifts," or as "luck" or "happenstance" or "coincidence." He knows all my needs, wants, strengths and weaknesses and, when I let Him, always takes me along a smoother path to a better outcome.

We have to remember the God who calls us into the unknown is right there traveling with us to make the way easier. Getting to know Him is our job, all the rest is up to Him. The key - as we learn in AA - is to pray for guidance, look for its arrival, and then to just keep it simple.

Can I get an Amen?

    

 

Made a Decision

(81)

               Carrying the message is our job! 

What does it mean to carry the message?

It means a lot more than just showing up at a meeting from time to time.

It means being ready to help the still suffering alcoholic at every opportunity - even when it's inconvenient for us. 

We accept this responsibility for three reasons:

(1) It keeps us sober. (2) It is the basic service the AA Fellowship offers others.

 (3) It will bring us joy beyond anything we have ever known.

AA is more than a bunch of principles learned from dusty books. We are a society of

action. We carry the message so that we may ourselves grow and change - and we

carry the message so that others might live.

We do what it takes - whatever it takes - to help those still suffering from our cunning,

baffling and powerful disease.

. We go with more seasoned members on 12-Step Calls; 

. We work the steps and share the steps with others in sponsorship;

. We meet our AA friends for coffee when they need us; 

. We make our financial contributions at meetings or online; 

. We have a home group and we're then whenever they meet; 

. We do service in our home group - from making the tea or coffee to holding office;

 . We help with group workshops and local AA conventions; 

. We Do-the-Doing!

All the above - and much more - make up AA's Third Legacy of Service. 

On page 77 in our Big Book is states: 

Our real purpose is to fit ourselves to be of maximum service to God and the people about us.

And, of course, our primary purpose is to stay sober

and help other alcoholics to achieve sobriety.

Those of us who are business or social minded can serve at AA's highest levels, including in our

intergroup offices; doing phone service to connect troubled drinkers with information

about AA; carrying our message into schools and prisons; working on AA committees;

and serving as delegates and trustees.

Our opportunities to be of service to AA  are limitless.

We can invite our doctor and nurses to our open meetings so they can see AA in action

first hand; we can leave AA brochures at our local clinic;

we can tell our medical friends we are a resource and will be happy to share our

experience, strength and hope with any of their patients having a problem with alcohol.

We can talk with our children about addiction. What it is and how it often shows up in

families. We can let them know there will be strong societal pressure from their peers

to drink, but they don't have to drink if they choose not to. We can let them know that

alcohol is one of the five leading causes of death in young people. 

And we can accept that all our information might not make a damned bit of difference in the choices our children later make regarding drinking. But at least they will have good

information and they will know that AA is in place for anyone who needs it at any time.

At AA's International Convention in St. Louis, Missouri in 1955 the members saw a banner overhead carrying a new symbol for AA - a circle enclosed in a triangle.

The circle represented AA as a worldwide fellowship and the three sides of the triangle represented Recovery, Unity, and Service - our three legacies.

(It is also interesting to know our symbol has elsewhere been used since antiquity as a

means of warding off evil spirits.)

My journey in AA has been one of service because, like it or not, I was put to work at my very first meeting when asked to put AA brochures and ashtrays (usual in those days) on all

the tables in the room.

Much later in my recovery I amused my Higher Power by asking to be shown my real

purpose in life. The reply was: "Help the still suffering alcoholic."

My ongoing response to that was, "Yeah, yeah, I get all that, but what is my real purpose

in life?"

 

HP's reply remained the same until finally the fog lifted and I realized my primary purpose

in life is truly to help others suffering from alcoholism. To do so requires me to live a life

based on AA's principles (to the best of my ability) in order to be fit for purpose for that task.

Alcoholics have been carrying our message to still suffering alcoholics for almost 90 years.

I'm nearly 80 years old myself and know first hand that older members of my own family

died of our disease because there was no AA around to help them recover. 

I'm fairly certain that was probably also true within your own family around the time of your grandparents, great-grandparents or great-great grandparents. 

I share that thought because in the great scheme of things in world history, AA hasn't been

with us all that long.

 Consider where YOU would be right now without it! 

Now consider what you can do for AA right now - TODAY. 

 

Made a Decision

(80)

    "Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps ... "

The Spiritual Experience, or Spiritual Awakening, is said in our literature to be critical to our ongoing sobriety. So how do I know if my spiritual experience is real? The short answer is: Are you sober today? It's real.

A spiritual Experience is basically a radical change in our life direction via a connection to a power greater than ourselves. It can be sudden - (1) as was the case with AA's co-founder Bill W. - or (2) it can take place over time, one day at a time, as we put spiritual ideas into practice. 

Most spiritual experiences in AA (and probably elsewhere) are of the type 2 variety, a combination of a slow awakening, but one having clear guidepost experiences along the way.

We see it in newcomers when they suddenly start to see the wonders of nature all around them and when they take real delight in helping a fellow member of the fellowship. We often don't immediately see spiritual growth happening in ourselves, but we can see it happening in others around us in the program.

 
One Big Book story illustrates that perfectly:

     Yet I had a spiritual experience the night I called A.A., though I didn't realize it until later. Two angels came, carrying a real message of hope, and told me about A.A. My sponsor laughed when I denied that I had prayed for help. I told him that the only time I had mentioned God was when, in my despair at being unable to get either drunk or sober, I had cried out, 'God! What am I going to do?'
    He replied, 'I believe that prayer was a pretty good one for a first one from an atheist. It got an answer, too . . .

A few of the signs someone is experiencing spiritual growth is they start having an increased empathy with others, while becomes more intuitive about themselves and the events happening around them. 

("We will intuitively know.")

They feel a stronger connection with nature and realize that all life is sacred, not just human life. 

They are uncomfortable around negative people or those behaving badly. 

Spirit-guided people live in the moment and generally bring peace to those around them.

The effects of a spiritual experience are long-lasting and ever-evolving. Critics of Bill W.'s immediate life-changing awakening suggested he had hallucinated God's presence, but the results of his experience were both long-lasting and world-changing. Those who hallucinate simply don't reap those kinds of lasting benefits!

Dr. Bob, on the other hand, suffered strong cravings for alcohol for a long time in his recovery. He only found relief through helping others which probably helped with that rapid growth of Akron's AA Group Number One.

In an early letter between AA's founders, one wrote: 

Though it may seem a paradox, we must believe in spiritual forces which we cannot see more than in material things which we can see, if we are going to truly live. In the last analysis, the universe consists more of thought or mathematical formulas than it does of matter as we understand it. Between one human being and another only spiritual forces will suffice to keep them in harmony. These spiritual forces we know, because we can see their results although we cannot see them. A changed life - a new personality - results from the power of unseen spiritual forces working in us and through us.

I once heard a speaker give four reasons that people change for the better, but he was talking about non-alcoholics so only one of his reasons applied to us -

 "People change when they hurt enough and they have to."

Even then many AA members seem content to achieve sobriety while essentially not seeking the true spiritual experience that changes them into entirely different people. We've all met them in the rooms, old timers who share the same story every time. They talk a lot about their drinking days, but not a lot about how they've stayed sober or what's going on in their life right now. One is always left wondering who they really are. What I know for sure is I don't want what they have. 

I was once envious of Bill W.'s immediate spiritual transformation, but the Big Book promised me I could have one of my own no matter how long it took, as long as I stayed sober and kept trying. 

I stayed sober and I kept trying, but I will admit it took a long old time before I understood even the basics of God's will for me. ("Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.")

We - WE - are God's worker bees, both in AA and in society.  Any spiritual power we may manifest is God in action. We don't change others, but God working through us can bring change in the lives of others. 

AA gives us a tool kit for living so that we can become God's "tool kit." 

Our founders understood this, and they understood their (our) limitations. As Bill W. wrote in a letter in 1967: 

Day by day, we try to move a little toward God's perfection. So we need not be consumed by maudlin guilt for failure to achieve His likeness and image by Thursday next. Progress is our aim, and His perfection is the beacon, light-years away, that draws us on. 

Well all this might sound very uplifting, but where's the fun in it? Is there any?

Look around you in the rooms. Look for the people working a good program and reaping its rewards. Have you noticed they smile a lot? That they seem to find the fun in everything they do? Spiritual people tend to be joyful people.

As the Rabbi Rebbe Nachman noted, Joy is the highest expression of love. Joy is not incidental to the spiritual quest. It is vital.

And the spiritual guru whose writings inspired AA's founders (and AA members ever since), Emmet Fox, wrote this about smiling: 

A smile affects your whole body from the skin right in to the skeleton, including all blood vessels, nerves, and muscles. It affects the functioning of every organ. It influences every gland. Even one smile often relaxes a number of muscles, and when the thing becomes a habit you can easily see how the effect will mount up. Last year's smiles are paying you dividends today.

The effect of a smile on other people is no less remarkable. It disarms suspicion, melts away fear and anger and brings forth the best in the other person - which best he immediately proceeds to give back to you. A smile is to personal contacts what oil is to machinery, and no intelligent engineer ever neglects lubrication.

Spiritual seekers also tend to have a lot of gratitude for their lives and their life lessons. They pray for others and they meditate to discover the will of their Higher Power for themselves. When we pray it changes our attitude toward God. When we meditate we feel God's presence and know that all is well. 

When we stop being grateful our negativity stops the flow of good into our lives. 

AA's 12 & 12 book has a lot to say about the benefits of prayer and meditation, including this: 

Meditation is something which can always be further developed. It has no boundaries, either of width or height. Aided by such instruction and example as we can find, it is essentially an individual adventure, something which each one of us works out in his own way. 

Daily prayer and meditation, laughter, friendship, meetings and all the other things that make up our doing-the-doing of AA bring us to the discovery of our own true wonderful inner self. From them we gain strength and experience a sense of well-being. We become open to all that life has to offer and we become filled with gratitude at knowing God is doing for us all those things which we would otherwise be unable to do for ourselves.

My first waking thought before becoming an active and contributing member of Alcoholics Anonymous was not I arise, O God, to do Thy will. My thoughts then were frantic with worry about just getting through another day of a life on a toboggan to hell. 

But one sober day at a time, using the tools of recovery, that morning prayer has become my mantra to a happy fulfilled life where laughter and miracles are the soundtrack. 

If AA could do that for me, a one time fear-filled miserable drunk woman, it can do it for you, too. Just follow the instructions. AA is your shortcut to your spiritual awakening.

And don't forget to smile.

 

Made a Decision

(79) 

                                                  AA History 101

It's so easy for us to take AA for granted and forget that it's one of the most amazing societies ever established. 

There's a political axiom that states, "Those who don't know their history are doomed to repeat it," and without an understanding of what AA's founders did for us we could still so easily lose it.

What? 

AA is a worldwide organization. Everyone, even non-members, know that it works and works well. How could it ever come to an end? AA could end the same way our bodies, groups, religions, or democracies end - when people ignore the signs that dis-ease is setting in and do nothing to try and save it.

In my children's lifetime the women of Iran could go to the beach wearing the modern one-piece and two-piece bathing suits of that time. None on those carefree beach days could have imagined they would soon legally not be able to go anywhere unless covered from head to toe; that their secular country would become an extremist Islamic state.

How easily - and quickly - freedom can be lost!

When I don't vote in an election I disrespect all the women who suffered, even died, that I might be able to vote. And when I am not willing to give back what was so freely given to me by those who pioneered our fellowship, the same applies.

When enough of us let others do all group and 12-step work, or can't be bothered to accept any service positions, or don't take time to study our literature, or work the steps, or sponsor others ... we not only put our sobriety at risk, we threaten AA's very survival.

There are some terrific books out there about AA's history beyond what's in our Big Book, including "Dr. Bob and the Good Oldtimers;" "Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age;" "Not God: a History of Alcoholics Anonymous;" the "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions," and many more. 

Have a google. You're sure to find a title to interest you. You'll also get more than a few chuckles and lots of identification with our earliest members when you read any of them. 

You'll learn that our personal escape hatch from hell began in June, 1935, when two late-stage alcoholics first met and shared their drinking experiences with one another. One was the New York stockbroker we know as Bill W. The other, Dr. Bob, was a physician in Akron Ohio.

Six months before that fateful meeting, Bill W., sobering up from yet another near-fatal binge, had a sudden spiritual experience following a conversation with a one-time drinking buddy who had become sober after joining The Oxford Group. 

Many alcoholics before AA began had been helped in that Christian fellowship which offered a pattern for living similar to the 12-steps. Bill and his wife, Lois, soon became members, but broke with the group in 1937. (Or as Lois put it, they were "kicked out" for focusing too much on alcoholism and not enough on Christ.).

Bill was also helped by Dr. William D. Silkworth, a New York doctor who was able to convince Bill of the deadly nature of Bill's alcoholic obsession for drink, and then for urging him to rely on a spiritual force to help him. 

Silkworth wasn't part of the Oxford Group, but he was convinced they were right about a need for a moral inventory, confession of past wrongs, making amends to those harmed, service to others, and the need for a belief and reliance in God.

When just a few months sober Bill was stricken with a powerful urge to drink while on a business trip in Ohio. While struggling to not give into that craving he had the sudden thought that he needed another alcoholic to talk with - and that the other alcoholic also needed him! 

A series of rapid Godshots later found him talking with Dr. Bob, who had himself been trying desperately to stop drinking. Bill shared with him his experience, strength and hope seated at the doctor's kitchen table and AA was born. So AA actually began with sponsorship when Bill carried the message to Dr. Bob.

The doctor in turn sponsored countless other drunks in his effort to safeguard his own sobriety. He found his only relief from his obsessive drinking-thoughts (they lasted for several years after his putting "the plug in the jug") came when he was carrying the message of recovery to others.

Our two founders - fearful that what they had so wonderfully found might just as easily easily slip away, threw themselves day and night into building a fellowship of other drunks around them. 

They took detoxing boozers into their own homes to dry them out. They held meetings in their living rooms. They made calls on alcoholics in hospitals or locked in mental hospitals and jails. They non-stop walked the walk and talked the talk of apostles to anyone in need of AA's message. Their wives helped the partners and children of the alcoholics they helped, so the program of AlAnon grew right along with AA. 

Medical help was on their side, too. Dr. Bob had hospital access and a friendship there with a nurse who became another early influence in the growing AA program, the Catholic nun Sister Ignatia. Although neither of our founders were Roman Catholic, both were Christians with an ever-strengthening faith in God as they saw the many miracles daily happening around them. 

Sister Ignatia supported their efforts with her own practical faith. She also knew Dr. Bob shared her reliance on God, noting, "Some people who were on the program for a length of time would come up to him and say, 'I don't get the spiritual angle.' And I heard him say time and again, 'There is no spiritual angle. It's a spiritual program'."

But Bill W. and Dr. Bob also knew their audience. They knew the resistance many alcoholics had to believing there even was a God, much less a God who would help and not condemn them. Many of those early members were dead set against religion of any kind, although most were open (with reservations and suspicions) to the concept of spirituality.  

The "God idea" became a real struggle between AA earliest members during the writing of our Big Book. The problem, they said, was that even those with faith also had backgrounds in differing theologies, so how could everyone in AA possibly agree regarding religion?

Then Bill proposed to them the concept spoken by his old drinking-buddy-turned-sober during their own earlier life-changing conversation: "Why don't you choose your own conception of God?" Slowly, the heads around the table nodded.

That phrase became "God as you understand Him," and AA's key sales pitch for seeking a spiritual life to stop drinking was soon adopted. 

The word God (or words meaning God) is found 281 times in the first 164 pages of the Big Book. Our Founders gave God full credit for their own recovery. They were strongly influenced in this by the teachings of an Episcopal clergyman, Sam Shoemaker. 

It was Dr. Silkworth who gave AA important knowledge about alcoholism as an illness, but it was Shoemaker who offered our Founders knowledge of what could be done to recover from it. His teachings helped form AA's core program as embodied in our 12 steps.

Or, as it was expressed in the book Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age (pgs 38 & 39) - One showed us the mysteries of the lock that held us in prison; the other passed on the spiritual keys by which we were liberated.

There were money struggles in the beginning, too. While some members dreamed big dreams of establishing AA treatment centers, hospitals and even AA communities. Others, suffering from regret over money they had once wasted on booze, fought to keep expenditures and ambitions to the minimum.

Many upheavals over money attended AA's early days until eventually our Traditions got hammered out and adopted. For those interested, just read the section about the Traditions in our 12 & 12, and then go on to some of the other books listed earlier.

During and right after World War II, Dr. Bob and Bill W. continued their virtually non-stop work to keep AA going and growing. They wrote many letters to one another during that time with messages like this one: 

We must think deeply of all those sick ones still to come to A.A. As they try to make their return to faith and to life, we want them to find everything in A.A. that we have found, and yet more, if that be possible. 

No care, no vigilance, no effort to preserve A.A.'s constant effectiveness and spiritual strength will ever be too great to hold us in full readiness for the day of their homecoming.

AA's founders finally started to relax a bit about AA's ability to survive in the 1950s. In a letter at that time one wrote: 

It seems proved that A.A. can stand on its own feet anywhere and under any conditions. It has outgrown any dependence it might once have had upon the personalities or efforts of a few of the older members like me. New, able, and vigorous people keep coming to the surface, turning up where they are needed. Besides, A.A. has reached enough spiritual maturity to know that its final dependence is upon God.

AA has since survived many challenges and changes like its influx of women and drug addicts in the 1970s and 1980s, people sentenced to attend meetings by the courts in the 1980s and 1990s, younger and younger members arriving in the early 2000 years, and the rapid leap from in-person to Zoom meetings during the recent (continuing) worldwide Covid pandemic. 

All these have rocked AA's boat, some quite violently, but our  adherence to our Traditions has kept us safe. Unity and service keep AA together. Without it we lose our focus and our ability to fulfill our primary purpose of helping those still suffering alcoholics. 

Or as Bill W. himself once said: 

 The Oxford group wanted to save the world and I only wanted to save drunks.

Long may Bill's goal continue. 

Do your part!