62. Read Chapter Seven,. “Working with Others” in the “Big Book.” Did you have a
spiritual awakening? Was it vital to your recovery? When did it take place? Can you
define it?
I have worked only tangentially with other addicts - talking after meetings, outreaches. In AA I have gone to rehab clinics and spoken to the addicts there, but I've never had a sponsee.
Because of how SLAA/HOW structures and addresses sponsorsship, and declares everyone a sponsor after the first 3 steps - SLAA pushes people into sponshorship in a more effective way than AA does. I actually think I'll be a SLAA sponsor before I am an AA one, as AA seems more pre-occupied with "time up" whereas SLAA considers you a sponsor after 30 days.
My spritual awakening has been long and slow. And I've fallen asleep again numerous times. As I've intimated elsewhere in my answers to these questions it is synonymous with my recovery. The first inkling was in the early 90's in my first exposure to 12-step and I got the message from AA that God was not "owned" by the religions, but that I could seek him on my own. The God that I didn't believe in was the wrathful judgmental God of the American south, and I'm still an atheist, as far as that God is concerned.
The god I've slowly begun to sense and connect with is almost exactly that described in Appendix II of the big book. An unsuspected spiritual resource that requires me to maintain a spiritual condition of honesty, acceptance, willingness, and courage.
It's not so much the spiritual awakening that is of note here. More critical are the tools and behaviours I need to adopt in order to stay awake. I've learned to my chagrin what happens if I lose my touchpoint with my higher power.
Perhaps my awakening is not so much a dramatic change of state as is commonly understood by the phrase. I think more accurately it's the simple awareness of the dynamics of spirituality and the thing I call God.
Actually, God is not a thing, it's a process.
63. Read pages 196 and 263 in “As Bill Sees It.” Reflect on and discuss the idea that the basic anecdote for fear is a spiritual awakening.
196 Antidote for Fear
When our failings generate fear, we then have soul-sickness. This sickness, in turn, generates still more character defects.
Unreasonable fear that our instincts will not be satisfied drives us to covet the possessions of others, to lust for sex and power, to become angry when our instinctive demands are threatened, to be envious when the ambitions of others seem to be realized while ours are not. We eat, drink, and grab for more of everything than we need, fearing we shall never have enough. And, with genuine alarm at the prospect at work, we stay lazy. We loaf and procrastinate, or at best work grudgingly and under half steam.
These fears are the termites that ceaselessly devour the foundations of whatever sort of life we try to build.
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As faith grows, so does inner security. The vast underlying fear of nothingness commences to subside. We of A.A. find that our basic antidote for fear is a spiritual awakening.
263 Fear and Faith
The achievement of freedom from fear is a lifetime undertaking, one that can never be wholly completed.
When under heavy attack, acute illness, or in other conditions of serious insecurity, we shall all react to this emotion -- well or badly, as the case may be. Only the self-deceived will claim perfect freedom from fear.
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We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of our make-up. Sometimes we had to search persistently, but He was there. He was as much a fact as we were. We found the Great Reality deep down within us.
This statement seems pretty sound. I've had fear and anxiety all my life. It's still difficult for me to put aside the substances and behaviours that I've used my whole life to cope with my fear. To put them aside means that I have found faith in God - faith in God's ability to guide me through life and accept its consequences on life's terms. And I have a lifetime of running from fear by overloading my natural human drives until they turn around and control me.
It occurred to me in a meeting today, that to "use" (anything, anyone) - you are really just using yourself. It *is* abuse of yourself - your ego is forcing you to perform some selfish, destructive, unhealthful act in order to run from fear. You are far from God in these moments.
64. Read pages 449-451 in the "Big Book.' Discuss and reflect on how “acceptance is the answer to all of our problems.”
Acceptance is the opposite of Fear, not courage. Courage is merely the ability to face fear. Fear means that you don't accept your imaginary fantasies of outcomes that don't meet your expectations.
You aren't in control of life. Your role is to be the best person you can be no matter what happens.
When you fully accept yourself as you are, defects and all, you see that the defects aren't going anywhere unless you put in work.
If you were born with only 1 leg, you'd use a crutch. If you were born hard of hearing you'd use a hearing aid. With the defects I was born with (or learned) I need to use rigorous honesty and compensate for my natural tendencies by retraining myself, seeking help, and emulating God in every way I can.
In this way I change the trajectory of my life from an orbit around myself to something that faces and seeks to help my fellow man.
But until I accept myself and reality the way it is, I'm going to be putting myself in the driver's seat and trying to control everything. And in the selfish, short-sighted way I attempt that, disaster is sure to follow.
65. Read in "As Bill Sees It," pages 3, 5 and 163. Write about how working the program has brought joy to your life.
3 Pain and Progress
"Years ago I used to commiserate with all people who suffered. Now I commiserate only with those who suffer in ignorance, who do not understand the purpose and ultimate utility of pain."
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Someone once remarked that pain is the touchstone of spiritual progress. How heartily we A.A.'s can agree with him, for we know that the pains of alcoholism had to come before sobriety, and emotional turmoil before serenity.
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"Believe more deeply. Hold your face up to the Light, even though for the moment you do not see."
5 Maintenance and Growth
It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while. But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die.
If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are poison.
163 Release and Joy
Who can render an account of all the miseries that once were ours, and who can estimate the release and joy that the later years have brought to us? Who can possibly tell the vast consequences of what God's work through A.A. has already set in motion?
And who can penetrate the deeper mystery of our wholesale deliverance from slavery, a bondage to a most hopeless and fatal obsession which for centuries possessed the minds and bodies of men and women like ourselves?
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We think cheerfulness and laughter make for usefulness. Outsiders are sometimes shocked when we burst into merriment over a seemingly tragic experience out of the past. But why shouldn't we laugh? We have recovered, and have helped others to recover. What greater cause could there be for rejoicing than this?
The program, to me, is a simple and basic way to structure and realise a god-oriented life. There are probably other ways to do this, but I'm not aware of them.
As I said above, I equate my "spiritual awakening" and my recovery, and both are made possible by having "worked the program" and the people I've encountered along this journey.
After a lifetime of compulsive behaviours and substance abuse, I've had years now free of them - with only a few slips - and a growing maturity and emotional equilibrium. I've discovered something I'm happy to call God. My experiences with prayer and meditation have brought experiences of pure love, bliss and serenity into my life. I've felt the joy of working with and helping other people through the dark places in their lives.
66. Read in 'Came to Believe,' pages 46, 47 and 48, 'The Belief will come' and in "As Bill Sees It,' page 331. Discuss what needs to be done to be most effective in helping those who still suffer.
331 The Great Fact
We realize we know only a little. God will constantly disclose more to you and to us. Ask Him in your morning meditation what you can do each day for the man who is still sick. The answers will come, if your own house is in order.
But obviously you cannot transmit something you haven't got. See to it that your relationship with Him is right, and great events will come to pass for you and countless others. This is the great fact for us.
To the Newcomer:
Abandon yourself to God as you understand God. Admit your faults to Him and to your fellows. Clear away the wreckage of your past. Give freely of what you find and join us. We shall be with you in the fellowship of the spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the road of happy destiny.
May God bless you and keep you -- until then
To be the most effective in helping those who still suffer: I think of the third step prayer where we ask God to remove our difficulties so we can bear witness to those we would help. The most effective thing I could do would be to focus on my recovery and opening myself to God so that the message of recovery is strong.
Coming to meetings, sharing my recovery, approaching newcomers, making outreach calls. Participating in my new life and fellowship.
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