Latest / Sober Readings / Came To Believe - Closing Out Ch 9
Transcript
- Scott Hayes: Came to Believe, the spiritual adventure of AA as experienced by individual members. Welcome back to Sober Readings, the Sunday edition, where I read a chapter out of Came to Believe. This week, we're gonna finish chapter nine. Chapter nine is titled Spiritual Progress, and I'll read the intro again. We are not saints. The point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection. And that was written by Bill W. it's in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous, page 60. But before I get into the readings, let's begin with the Serenity Prayer. God, grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change. Courage to change the things we can and the wisdom to know the difference. Alright, so today's first story is titled, The Central Experience. I make no claim that I know God in all his fullness, and I certainly don't feel that I understand God to any extent. But that there is a power beyond my personal will which can do wonderful, friendly things for me that I cannot do for myself, this I know beyond all question. I have felt this marvelous healing power at work in my own being, and I have seen the miraculous effects of this mysterious, indefinable power in the lives of thousands of recovering addicts. who are my friends in Alcoholics Anonymous. For over 20 years, I was an atheist or an agnostic. During that time, I became a helpless alcoholic and an amphetamine addict and a complete failure in all areas of my life. All of my horrible sufferings was self-induced. And during those proud years, I often said, if God exists, let him give me a sign. I had quite forgotten that I was the one who had broken off communication. when I became very clever during my 17th year. At that time, I set out to prove that there was no God, and for over 20 years, confirmations of my opinion kept pouring in. So the first thing I came to understand about God is that He is very cooperative. It took me 20 years of suffering to learn this. The second thing I learned is that God is love. One of the saints says, every man that loveth is born of God. It was my good fortune to spend my first day in AA with such a man. He attended three meetings with me that day and took me to his home for both lunch and dinner. I was bewildered and confused. I felt that if he had really known me, he would not have had me in his home. His love and acceptance alone did not bring me into the program. I had been offered love and encouragement and advice and understanding many times before. But this time I responded. We are not healed by love alone, but by our response to love. Our understanding of God grows through our willing response to Him. My sponsor said, pray if you can. Having no faith whatever, thinking that prayer must be a kind of auto-hypnotic play acting, alone in my apartment I got down on my knees like a little child and prayed to the unknown God. I said, God, take away my compulsion to drink. and my compulsion to drink was removed, and it has not returned from that day to this. Without knowing how I had done it, I had surrendered to the power, and the power did for me what I could not do of my own will. I went to an AA meeting every night, and every night I prayed, and every night I had long, wonderful dream conversations with God. The central experience, as I now often call it, was enfolding me and drawing me in as perfectly as my disordered mind would permit. I had been given great gifts, the gift of faith and the confirmation of faith, and I became so excited that I couldn't make up my mind whether to found a new religion or run for pope. For about three months, I went to meetings and prayed and dreamed and procrastinated. The pink cloud faded and I began to feel very uncomfortable at times, and I was told that I was ready to do something about tidying up the refutes from my past. The next thing I learned about God is that faith without works is dead. Gradually, I began applying myself to steps four through nine. And after about four years, the power of the past to hurt me was largely removed. I came to believe in God who was merciful and forgiving, but not forgetting. And I have no desire to forget the past. My memories no longer fill me with shame and remorse. On the contrary, they fill me with gratitude and joy. My whole story is a sort of divine mystery to me. I don't know how an intelligent human being ever could have got into such a mess, and the more firmly established insanity I become, the more amazed I am that I ever got out of the mess. Very early in my AA life, I realized that the experience of God and the concept of God had not been invented by AAs. For me, it was not enough merely to rely upon my own experiences and continued to repeat the words, God as I understand him, at meetings. I rediscovered the God of the Bible largely through the practice of techniques described by Norman Vincent Peale in his The Power of Positive Thinking. I became confirmed in the church of my choice and made my peace with the God of my childhood. I learned that the fearful God I had imagined as a child was really a God of love. But the record of religious institutions generally began to appear to me more and more like my own, very high in promise and very low in performance. So I became interested in Christian mysticism, which led me into the study of techniques of deep meditation and of cooperative religions. I began to realize that the so-called mystics of whatever tradition, Christian, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist, or Mohammedan, all ultimately talk the same language. In one way or another, they all described the same blissful one behind the many, who could be directly known in deep prayer and meditation. I began to meditate morning and evening, and the results were so startling that I felt the need for personal guidance. Vivid waking dreams and strange inner experiences made me a bit anxious about proceeding alone. I investigated the organizations in Toronto, which taught meditation techniques, and I chose the society which appealed to me most. What opinions I may hold, what techniques I may use one year or five years from now, I have no way of knowing. But I have noticed during the past seven years that I have always been happiest when my commitment to AA and its 12 steps has been greater than my involvement in any other activity or group. In my present life from day to day, I attempt to improve my understanding of God by responding to Him in three basic ways. By moving outwards into positive action, by exercising my ability to choose positive thoughts, and by allowing myself to be drawn inwards to positive being. For me, positive action means consciously trying to act towards other people in accordance with the spiritual teachings in which I believe, whether I feel like acting that way or not. I have found that it is much easier to act my way toward belief than it is to believe my way toward action. One of my daily action paths toward God is the path of fellowship in AA. The great tragedy of the addict is that, of all the personality types, he is probably most in need of love, but gradually, through his addiction, he becomes totally unlovable. The loving fellowship of AA began my recovery and I maintained daily contact with those who love me and understand me, for I need it almost as much now as when I attended my first meeting. Another sort of path toward God which I try to follow every day is the process of positive thinking. AA taught me that it is actually possible, though not always easy, to stop a negative or despairing train of thought and, by the use of a repeated slogan, recover a sense of gratitude which permits me to begin a positive train of thought. The ultimate positive thought, of course, is God, the word which affirms our faith that the universe is friendly to our being. Through prayer, I take the path of faith toward God. Every morning, I turn my will and my life over to the care of my God as I understand him. His integrating power within me has gradually led me into a state of serenity and happiness, which I had always considered impossible. Through deep meditation, I take the effortless path toward God. I meditate for half an hour every morning and evening. The purpose of transcendental deep meditation is to allow the attention to be led deep within the mind to the source of thought, which is experienced as blissful being, and to bring the blissful nature of that state out into normal waking consciousness for enjoyment throughout the day. I have become more more aware of the infinite expansion of happiness which is accessible within. The Upanishad, part of the Hindu scriptures, concludes, From joy all things are born, by joy all things are sustained. To joy all things return. The more thoroughly I can surrender to this proposition, the more thoroughly I enjoy my life. Ultimately, my God, as I understand him, is joy and the expansion of joy. Toronto, Ontario. And this next story is very short, it's only one paragraph, it's titled, Another Helmsman. For years, my favorite literature was Homer, The Odyssey, because all life is a journey. The Iliad, because all life is a battle. Now I ask myself, but need life be as Homer seems to have seen it? Why should I be constantly journeying, running away from myself? Constantly battling myself and resisting or resenting this life that God has granted me? Why not relax and let someone who is far more capable than I do the steering and planning? Seattle, Washington. Next up is, I must learn. Many in our fellowship express our three stages of learning and growth this way. I came, I came to, I came to believe. In my case, it was about three years before the third stage began. Over the years, I believe I have experienced gradual strengthening and growth of frequency in my communication with God as I understand him. Man is ready to die for an idea. provided that idea is not quite clear to him. Paul Eldridge wrote, That is the way the spiritual side of the AA program appears to me. I'm in trouble if I attempt to parse it. I don't attempt to understand it. These random notes represent the best I can do to put it into words. Cardinal Newman said, It is thy very energy of thought which keeps thee from thy God. So it was with me, I think. The saying, let go and let God, must have been written just for me. For me, God is that still, quiet voice I hear so many times each day, saying, Roy, that wasn't good enough. I live alone, and once I was lonely, but now I can enjoy the rewards that come only in moments of solitude. I often protest against things that I look on as limitations and obstructions. But these could be the very things I need most. For what I call hindrances, obstacles, and discouragements are probably God's opportunities. As I try to grow in this AA program, I must occasionally remember when, but not in order to brood about the past. AA taught me how to deal with it, how to put it in its proper place and perspective. I believe that I must learn and that I must let God teach me that the only way to get rid of my past is to get a future out of it. God will waste nothing. Now that I am sober and have tried to turn my will and life over to the care of God, I believe that the greatest gift I can bestow upon the world or upon any one group of persons or upon any person in the world is my own self. I think God gave each of us a unique personality so that we in turn might give it to others. Now I can give it with joy in life, warm, friendly, happy, sober. I believe that God made us all different for another reason. I am convinced that there is some one thing that I can do better than anyone else in the world. God thinks so. And he wants me to do it. Through the 12 steps, good many AA members have found out what their assigned chores on Earth are. And they are doing them. Thus, the 12 steps must continue to be more compelling to me or more binding on me than anything else that I encounter in life. For only through working on these steps can I get closer and closer to finding out God's intention for me. Perhaps God thinks that a very modest task in my community is all that I'm capable of. But it is there. It is real. And so with the help of my friends in AA, I must search out what this task is. Then with their help, I must do it. That's also written in Toronto, Ontario. Source of Strength A few years before coming to AA, I knew I was going crazy. I do remember crying out to God to help me. Somehow, I got the strength to leave my husband. I was afraid that, on one of my violent drunks, I would kill him or be killed by him. It was a long road from that moment to the time that I was able to get help and to know that God was in my life. I had the first glimmer of hope at my first AA meeting. My fear was that I might not have the disease of alcoholism. If I didn't, I knew I would never make it. Life had ceased to function for me in any normal way. My depressions were paralyzing. AA seemed to present to me the direction and structure I had longed for. I began to have just the slightest motivation and just the slightest will to live. Through months of painful withdrawalness and hostility, I slowly began to find a voice within me that had to be heard. I forced myself to speak up at a meeting so I could prove to myself that I existed. Then I began to get some freedom, but I was not really connecting. I had found friends in AA and it became a family for me, but after a while this wasn't enough. In facing life for the first time I was full of fear. I could discuss problems with these friends and with doctors, but there was an ingredient missing in my life. Always before, I had put myself in the hands of a man and made him the sole reason for my existence and my will to live. I knew that if I did this again, my disillusionment would be hard to bear. I had to have my own will to live. And this perhaps is when I began to rely on God, someone to protect me, someone who wouldn't possess me, someone I could silently talk to and pray to. perhaps I became willing to believe. I would tell a friend of mine who was having the same problems that I prayed to God not to take a drink today and not to get married today. It was a sort of pact. I was very serious about this. I couldn't seem to handle romance and God too well at the same time. And God did start to give me strength that I had always thought would come from the man in my life. I need power each day because I get weary. But with AA as my structure and God as my source of strength, I can face life without taking a drink. I don't have to stare out my window in total despair anymore. The ocean and the sun and the trees and all the fantastic beauty that God has created have finally become very real to me. I crave and need the presence of nature. But I must also bear in mind that it is the spirit within me which comes from God that is going to be the healing force. I can turn to it wherever I am. I want very much to share myself with another human being now. I am afraid of taking that step, but then I have been afraid of everything else too, and now I know that it is possible to overcome fear. New York, New York. Changing Beliefs When I arrived, trembling and terrified at my first meeting, I thought I no longer believed in anything. What a miracle that, after one talk with my sponsor and one meeting, I could have hope in AA. This hope kept me coming to meetings and gradually grew into a true belief that AA had all the answers for me, that if I would be willing and try, I could stay sober one day at a time. However, I found that this involved the effort to practice the program. Once my belief in AA had been established, it became apparent that all twelve steps were important to my continuing sobriety. But I was stymied on the third step with its reference to the care of God. So I went around it, knowing I must return to it, and tackled the fourth step. Slowly and painfully, I became aware of myself. I began to see it wasn't true that I didn't believe in anything. Rather, I had believed in the wrong things. I had believed I needed a drink for confidence. I had believed I was unattractive. I had believed I was unworthy. I had believed no one loved me. I had believed I never had a break. Someone said at a closed meeting, there is good in all of us. Seek it out, nurture it, tend it, and it will flourish. So I began searching for the positives within me. I realized that my feeling of inferiority was just one aspect of ego, and the arrogance I projected was the other. I must find the center median. So I tried to act as if AA was giving me confidence, I had an attractive personality even though I was not beautiful, I was worthy like all others, I loved myself and could therefore love others. Faith was freeing me from the fear that had always gripped me. Now I believed at least that I could become whole with the tools of the AA program, pursuing the steps, reading AA literature, asking questions at closed meetings, latching on to older AAs who had that mysterious quality of serenity. I discovered that all those whom I had emulated and admired had put the third step into their lives. I knew I wanted to do likewise. This necessitated my finding a god of my understanding plus a willingness to let go. I realized that I must say, thy will be done. But who or what was this thy to me? I began to go back to review. What had I come to believe? I had come to believe in the AA program. I had come to believe that a power, AA, greater than myself could restore me to sanity. I had come to believe that I no longer needed a drink. I had come to believe that I could grow to be a whole person. I had come to believe that faith could eliminate fear. I had come to believe that I could love myself and so love others. I had come to believe that love was the key. With an open heart, I returned to the third step and turned my will and my life over to the care of God of my understanding. Fort Lauderdale, Florida And that brings us to the end of chapter 9 in Came to Believe. And so I hope you'll join me next Sunday for chapter 10, is titled, In All Our Affairs. And I'll read the intro now. Service gladly rendered, obligations squarely met, troubles well accepted or solved with God's help, the knowledge that at home or in the world outside we are partners in a common effort. The fact that in God's sight all human beings are important The proof that love freely given brings a full return. The certainty that we are no longer isolated and alone in self-constructed prisons. The surety that we can fit and belong in God's scheme of things. These are the satisfactions of right living for which no pomp and circumstance, no heap of material possessions could possibly be substitutes. Bill W. and that's from the 12 and 12 page 124. And I believe that for next Sunday's reading, I will have a special guest reader. So please join me for that. And so that brings us to the end of today's episode of Sober Readings. Thank you all for listening. If you enjoyed the show, please do me a huge favor and hit that like button and share this episode. If you'd like to drop a dollar in today's virtual donation basket for the reading, please go to sober readings dot com and click the donate button. again, thank you so much for listening, everyone. Stay sober. Keep reading. and I'll catch you in the next episode. Until then, take care of yourselves and each other and remember just for today, don't drink, go to a meeting, and keep coming back. Have a great day. And as my friend Larry says, best day ever.