Daily Reprieve

From the Daily Reflections of February 9;

How often do we sit in AA meetings and hear the speaker declare, “But I haven’t yet got the spiritual angle.” Prior to this statement, he had described a miracle of transformation which had occurred in him — not only his release from alcohol, but a complete change in his whole attitude toward life and the living of it. It is apparent to nearly everyone else present that he has received a great gift; “. . . except that he doesn’t seem to know it yet!” We well know that this questioning individual will tell us six months or a year hence that he has found faith in God.  (Language of the Heart, page 275)

A spiritual experience can be the realization that a life which once seemed empty and devoid of meaning is now joyous and full. In my life today, daily prayer and meditation, coupled with living the Twelve Steps, has brought about an inner peace and feeling of belonging which was missing when I was drinking.

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The miracle of transformation is truly something to behold. Coming into the rooms I got to see people that seemed lost who stayed and transformed before my eyes. The interesting thing is that the denial that hides the reality of my alcoholism from me, can also blind me to the spiritual experience unfolding in my own life. It is an inevitability that my continued connection with a Power greater than myself and the Fellowship of those who are invested in my growth will cause me to transcend the bondage of self. So I just keep coming back.

Sculpture Credit: Cédric Le Borgne

From the Daily Reflections of February 8;

Even then, as we hew away, peace and joy may still elude us. That’s the place so many of us A.A. oldsters have come to. And it’s a hell of a spot, literally. How shall our unconscious — from which so many of our fears, compulsions, and phony aspirations still stream — be brought into line with what we actually believe, know, and want! How to convince our dumb, raging, and hidden “Mr. Hyde” becomes our main task.  (The Language of the Heart, page 237)

Regular attendance at meetings, serving and helping others is the recipe that many have tried and found to be successful. Whenever I stray from these basic principles, my old habits resurface and my old self also comes back with all its fears and defects. The ultimate goal of each A.A. member is permanent sobriety, achieved One Day at a Time.

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The Word of the God of my understanding (GOMU) comes to me by three primary paths. One path is the written word, because these are words that stay and stand for future review. I can reference them again and again. Every centralized religion has captured such words from the God of their understanding. The AA Fellowship has the Big Book, “Alcoholics Anonymous.” There are other collections of written words that also act to inspire me to live and connect.

Another path for this Word of Gomu to come to me is the spoken word of Intuitive Guidance. There are many methods in many spiritual pursuits that offer guidance in connecting with this most intimate form of Word. I make use of several different approaches with varying success.

“…we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely upon it.” (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 87)

Finally, the Word of Gomu is written in me. My birth was an expression of my Higher Power and the only way I gain access to this communication from the Universe is to truly know myself. To thine own self be true. When I use the tools of recovery for sanity-restoration, I can discover what my true heart’s desires are. This knowledge grows in connection with Gomu. These heart desires are the most relevant scripture in recreating my life.

“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.” (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 45)

This dilemma of powerlessness predated my active alcoholism. I began my life here dependent on greater powers to fulfill my basic desires, and as I grew into a man, the God-inscribed desires in my heart became a source of frustration when I was unable to fulfill them. My strategy was to eliminate whatever I viewed as weakness in me, to commit suicide on the installment plan. This process of exterminating my weakness is my Mr. Hyde. His domination of my life was greatly assisted in my alcoholism. Once Jekyll drinks the potion, there is no negotiating with Mr. Hyde.

The only way that I can convince Mr. Hyde to relent, to prevent him from coming back with miserable persistence until he wins the day, is to demonstrate that I have found a Power greater than myself that will help me give birth to the Word of God written within me. The 12 Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous has been pointing the way for me, and that is a big reason why I keep coming back to the rooms.

From the Daily Reflections of February 7;

True humility and an open mind can lead us to faith, and every A.A. meeting is an assurance that God will restore us to sanity if we rightly relate ourselves to Him.  (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 33).

My last drunk had landed me in the hospital, totally broken. It was then that I was able to see my past float in front of me. I realized that, through drinking, I had lived every nightmare I had ever had. My own self-will and obsession to drink had driven me into a dark pit of hallucinations, blackouts and despair. Finally beaten, I asked for God’s help. His presence told me to believe. My obsession for alcohol was taken away and my paranoia has since been lifted. I am no longer afraid. I know my life is healthy and sane.

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I have faced the reality that faith in alcohol or other mind altering substances will not answer the vast need in my being for a connection and place in this Universe. It cannot be answered with human relationships or stimulation. I need to find my Higher Power and it can only be done in my own personal path of courage. No one can manufacture a life-saving faith for me. It begins with a willingness to believe and a commitment to personal integrity and truth. It ends with an overwhelming surrender of this life to the God of my understanding.

From the Daily Reflections of February 6;

Therefore, Step Two is the rallying point for all of us. Whether agnostic, atheist, or former believer, we can stand together on this Step.  (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 33).

I feel that A.A. is a God-inspired program and that God is at every A.A. meeting. I see, believe, and have come to know that A.A. works, because I have stayed sober today. I am turning my life over to A.A. and to God by going to an A.A. meeting. If God is in my heart and everyone else’s, then I am a small part of a whole and I am not unique. If God is in my heart and He speaks to me through other people, then I must be a channel of God to other people. I should seek to do His will by living spiritual principles and my reward will be sanity and emotional sobriety.

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How drab it is to hear something like, “I am not unique.” I know that I need to connect and I need to find the ways that I am similar to those in the Fellowship rather than the ways that I am different. It is a difficult process when you have always felt odd and at odds with those around you, no matter what group you are in. I struggle with connecting and staying connected. And that problem does not seem to be unique to me as an alcoholic. Thus, maybe it is my problem and my solution that I share in common. That is where I work to connect in AA.

From the Daily Reflections of February 5;

“The minute I stopped arguing, I could begin to see and feel. Right there, Step Two gently and very gradually began to infiltrate my life. I can’t say upon what occasion or upon what day I came to believe in a Power greater than myself, but I certainly have that belief now. To acquire it, I had only to stop fighting and practice the rest of A.A.’s program as enthusiastically as I could.”  (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 27)

After years of indulging in a “self-will run riot,” Step Two became for me a glorious release from being all alone. Nothing is so painful or insurmountable in my journey now. Someone is always there to share life’s burdens with me. Step Two became a reinforcement with God, and I now realize that my insanity and ego were curiously linked. To rid myself of the former, I must give up the latter to one with far broader shoulders than my own.

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The link between ego and sanity does not surprise me. The ego is merely my sense of self. When it is buffeted in the interactive world, it is shaped into a form that works well in the community of humans. Trust and humility sharpen its ability to cooperate. The malleability of the ego in childhood and adolescence hardens in the furnace of adult life. When distrust severs the interaction of the ego, a shell of protective pride allows it to develop out of proportion to the individual life it was designed to guide and many internal mutations develop.

The process in the 12 Step Fellowship is the breaking of that shell and the rejection of the mutation in favor of something new. This psychic change defies an explanation that I am satisfied with. I have seen it happen in the rooms of AA, and I am surprised when I see that it has happened to me.

Image Credit: Human Metamorphosis by Taylor James

From the Daily Reflections of February 4;

Sometimes A.A. comes harder to those who have lost or rejected faith than to those who never had any faith at all, for they think they have tried faith and found it wanting. They have tried the way of faith and the way of no faith. (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 28)

I was so sure God had failed me that I became ultimately defiant, though I knew better, and plunged into a final drinking binge. My faith turned bitter and that was no coincidence. Those who once had great faith hit bottom harder. It took time to rekindle my faith, though I came to A.A. I was grateful intellectually to have survived such a great fall, but my heart felt callous. Still, I stuck with the A.A. program; the alternatives were too bleak! I kept coming back and gradually my faith was resurrected.

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How did I lose my faith in the vortex of a chaos storm? I thought it would stand the test of time, resistant to anything life could muster. The death of my sons, the feeling of betrayal and abandonment in my marital severance, and the fearful rejection of my fellowship of faith left me in a very bewildered state. I turned to alcohol and it quickly turned on me.

The worst time of my life was when I no longer had the faith to be angry with God. I looked into the darkness and understood that I was absolutely alone. At this moment I left behind old ways of thinking, but could find nothing to answer the call of my gaping wound. I served in the military, and when my problems with alcohol revealed themselves, I was volun-told to go to rehab and I began a quest for sobriety that led me to AA and that Fellowship introduced me to the Gomu (God of my understanding). I am grateful for my restored faith that actually grants me a source of spiritual power.

From the Daily Reflections of February 3;

We needed to ask ourselves but one short question. “Do I now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a Power greater than myself?” As soon as a man can say that he does believe, or is willing to believe, we emphatically assure him that he is on his way.  (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 47).

I was always fascinated with the study of scientific principles. I was emotionally and physically distant from people while I pursued Absolute Knowledge. God and spirituality were meaningless academic exercises. I was a modern man of science, knowledge was my Higher Power. Given the right set of equations, life was merely another problem to solve. Yet my inner self was dying from my outer man’s solution to life’s problems and the solution was alcohol. In spite of my intelligence, alcohol became my Higher Power. It was through the unconditional love which emanated from A.A. people and meetings that I was able to discard alcohol as my Higher Power. The great void was filled. I was no longer lonely and apart from life. I had found a true power greater than myself, I had found God’s love. There is only one equation which really matters to me now: God is in A.A.

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I see believing, as it is used in the 12 Steps, as having a knowing that something is in actual existence and is something I can invest my trust in. Participation in the program begins to provide evidence through personal experience and observation to strengthen that trust. I just have to keep coming back with a willingness to believe. This God of my understanding is a real entity that is loving and that ultimately, has to become infinite enough to counter any argument that my corrupted isolating ego might offer to re-assume charge of my life. As John Green wrote in “Fault in Our Stars,” some infinities are bigger than other infinities. I do not need GOMU to fulfill dogmatic demands of being omnipresent and omnipotent throughout the entire Universe. I just need It to be everything in my tight little universe. I have to be willing to believe that there is something out there that cares about me and can intuitively become everything in the creation of a connected ego.

From the Daily Reflections of February 2;

Characteristic of the so-called typical alcoholic is a narcissistic egocentric core, dominated by feelings of omnipotence, intent on maintaining at all costs its inner integrity. . . . Inwardly the alcoholic brooks no control from man or God. He, the alcoholic, is and must be the master of his destiny. He will fight to the end to preserve that position.  (A.A. Comes of Age, page 311)

The great mystery is: “Why do some of us die alcoholic deaths, fighting to preserve the ‘independence’ of our ego, while others seem to sober up effortlessly in A.A.?” Help from a Higher Power, the gift of sobriety, came to me when an otherwise unexplained desire to stop drinking coincided with my willingness to accept the suggestions of the men and women of A.A. I had to surrender, for only by reaching out to God and my fellows could I be rescued.

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I can remember fighting hard against the concept of surrender when I first sought help for my alcoholism. I preferred to assist in the planning of my rise from the ashes. This was a continuation of the persistent self-deception that if I carefully planned my consumption of my favorite intoxicates, I would know a powerful freedom and a renewed happiness. When I was forced to admit that this union was and would always be pathological for me, I still wanted to retain the ego that had bound me to this course of futility. It was the only ego formation I had invested my trust in.  This is what I had to surrender because this was the power generator of my alcoholism, the seed of my ultimate destruction. In order to recreate my life, I had to agree in the initial conspiracy to destroy the internal tyrant of my own ruin.

In order for me to do that, I was introduced to the prospect that I needed to develop an intuitive knowing that there is a Power greater than myself, a Power outside of my warped ego’s domain that can direct and strengthen me in the birth of a new ego that is catalyzed through connections of usefulness and compassion. I pray that my life not be the result of that old isolating, destructive self-will but a product of a will united to the loving and infinite God of my understanding.

From the Daily Reflections of February 1;

“. . . Step Two gently and very gradually began to infiltrate my life. I can’t say upon what occasion or upon what day I came to believe in a Power greater than myself, but I certainly have that belief now.”  (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 27).

“Came to believe!” I gave lip service to my belief when I felt like it or when I thought it would look good. I didn’t really trust God. I didn’t believe He cared for me. I kept trying to change things I couldn’t change. Gradually, in disgust, I began to turn it all over, saying: “You’re so omnipotent, you take care of it.” He did. I began to receive answers to my deepest problems, sometimes at the most unusual times: driving to work, eating lunch, or when I was sound asleep. I realized that I hadn’t thought of those solutions — a Power greater than myself had given them to me. I came to believe.

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2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Step two has a couple of bitter pills that I had to swallow when I started working the Steps. The first was the implication that on some level, I was insane, or if I desire to be more gentle with myself, I lacked sanity. The next bit of bad news to ingest was that my solution was wrapped up in recovering a trusting acknowledgement of a Power greater than myself.

My alcoholic insanity is different from the schizophrenic and his hallucinations.  Nevertheless, there is a disconnect from reality that I have constructed in order to keep using alcohol.  It is a necessary skill for me to learn to lie to myself in order to drink pathologically.  Further, I must believe my own self-deception to maintain my fatal attraction to the chemical alteration of my brain.  Then I must manipulate everyone around me to support this life of illusions.  As the consequences pile up the insanity becomes obvious to everyone, except me. I am usually the last to know how crazy my life has become.

For some people, finding and speaking the truth is a pretty good idea. For me, it is the path to sanity and it is easily lost. I have to fight to keep it every day, one day at a time.

The problem is compounded when I am dependent on my warped ego that is bent toward self-deception and so I need help that resides outside of my skull. The Power greater than me creates in me the ability to connect and thus delivers me from my isolating selfishness.  In that connection I can start the work of acquiring and keeping the truth. It is only necessary that I am willing to consider that there is something out there that is immensely and lovingly enveloping. For me, experiences begin to pile up to confirm the presence of something and these experiences have been outside of myself. That something takes a personal interest in my well-being.  The willingness to believe allowed me time to witness the appearance of that persistent presence.

“I believe the universe wants to be noticed. I think the universe is improbably biased toward the consciousness, that it rewards intelligence in part because the universe enjoys its elegance being observed. And who am I, living in the middle of history, to tell the universe that it-or my observation of it-is temporary?” ~ John Green (Fault in Our Stars)