Step Two

[bluidkiti]

AA Step Two

"Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."
The moment they read Step Two, most A.A. newcomers are confronted with a dilemma,
sometimes a serious one. How often have we heard them cry out, "Look what you people have done to us! You have convinced us that we are alcoholics and that our lives are unmanageable. Having reduced us to a state of absolute helplessness, you now declare that none but a Higher Power can remove our obsession. Some of us won't believe in God, others can't, and still others who do believe that God exists have no faith whatever He will perform this miracle. Yes, you've got us over the barrel, all right--but where do we go from here?" Let's look first at the case of the one who says he won't believe--the belligerent one. He is in a state of mind which can be described only as savage. His whole philosophy of life, in which he so gloried, is threatened. It's bad enough, he thinks, to admit alcohol has him down for keeps. But now, still smarting from that admission, he is faced with something really impossible. How he does cherish the thought that man, risen so majestically from a single cell in the primordial ooze, is the spearhead of evolution and therefore the only god that his universe knows! Must he renounce all this to save himself? At this juncture, his A.A., sponsor usually laughs. This, the newcomer thinks, is just about the last straw. This is the beginning of the end. And so it is: the beginning of the end of his old life, and the beginning of his emergence into a new one. His sponsor probably says, "Take it easy. The hoop you have to jump through is a lot wider than you think. At least I've found it so. So did a friend of mine who was a one-time vice-president of the American Atheist Society, but he got through with room to spare." "Well," says the newcomer, "I know you're telling me the truth. It's no doubt a fact that A.A., is full of people who once believed as I do. But just how, in these circumstances, does a fellow `take it easy'? That's what I want to know." "That," agrees the sponsor, "is a very good question indeed. I think I can tell you exactly how to relax. You won't have to work at it very hard, either. Listen, if you will, to these three statements. First, Alcoholics Anonymous does not demand that you believe anything. All of its Twelve Steps are but suggestions. Second, to get sober and to stay sober, you don't have to swallow all of Step Two right now. Looking back, I find that I took it piecemeal myself. Third, all you really need is a truly open mind. Just resign from the debating society and quit bothering yourself with such deep questions as whether it was the hen or the egg that came first. Again I say, all you need is the open mind." The sponsor continues, "Take, for example, my own case. I had a scientific schooling. Naturally I respected, venerated, even worshipped science. As a matter of fact, I still do--all except the worship part. Time after time, my instructors held up to me the basic principle of all scientific progress: search and research, again and again, always with the open mind. When I first looked at A.A., my reaction was just like yours. This A.A., business, I thought, is totally unscientific. This I can't swallow. I simply won't consider such nonsense. "Then I woke up. I had to admit that A.A., showed results, prodigious results. I saw that my attitude regarding these had been anything but scientific. It wasn't A.A., that had the closed mind, it was me. 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. "This is only one man's opinion based on his own experience, of course. I must quickly assure you that A.A.'s tread innumerable paths in their quest for faith. If you don't care for the one I've suggested, you'll be sure to discover one that suits if only you look and listen. Many a man like you has begun to solve the problem by the method of substitution. You can, if you wish, make A.A., itself your `higher power.' Here's a very large group of people who have solved their alcohol problem. In this respect they are certainly a power greater than you, who have not even come close to a solution. Surely you can have faith in them. Even this minimum of faith will be enough. You will find many members who have crossed the threshold just this way. All of them will tell you that, once across, their faith broadened and deepened. Relieved of the alcohol obsession, their lives unaccountably transformed, they came to believe in a Higher Power, and most of them began to talk of God." Consider next the plight of those who once had faith, but have lost it. There will be those who have drifted into indifference, those filled with self-sufficiency who have cut themselves off, those who have become prejudiced against religion, and those who are downright defiant because God has failed to fulfill their demands. Can A.A., experience tell all these they may still find a faith that works? 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. Since both ways have proved bitterly disappointing, they have concluded there is no place whatever for them to go. The roadblocks of indifference, fancied self-sufficiency, prejudice, and defiance often prove more solid and formidable for these people than any erected by the unconvinced agnostic or even the militant atheist. Religion says the existence of God can be proved; the agnostic says it can't be proved; and the atheist claims proof of the nonexistence of God. Obviously, the dilemma of the wanderer from faith is that of profound confusion. He thinks himself lost to the comfort of any conviction at all. He cannot attain in even a small degree the assurance of the believer, the agnostic, or the atheist. He is the bewildered one. Any number of A.A.'s can say to the drifter, "Yes, we were diverted from our childhood faith, too. The overconfidence of youth was too much for us. Of course, we were glad that good home and religious training had given us certain values. We were still sure that we ought to be fairly honest, tolerant, and just, that we ought to be ambitious and hardworking. We became convinced that such simple rules of fair play and decency would be enough. "As material success founded upon no more than these ordinary attributes began to come to us, we felt we were winning at the game of life. This was exhilarating, and it made us happy. Why should we be bothered with theological abstractions and religious duties, or with the state of our souls here or hereafter? The here and now was good enough for us. The will to win would carry us through. But then alcohol began to have its way with us. Finally, when all our score cards read `zero,' and we saw that one more strike would put us out of the game forever, we had to look for our lost faith. It was in A.A., that we rediscovered it. And so can you." Now we come to another kind of problem: the intellectually self-sufficient man or woman. To these, many A.A.'s can say, "Yes, we were like you--far too smart for our own good. We loved to have people call us precocious. We used our education to blow ourselves up into prideful balloons, though we were careful to hide this from others. Secretly, we felt we could float above the rest of the folks on our brainpower alone. Scientific progress told us there was nothing man couldn't do. Knowledge was all-powerful. Intellect could conquer nature. Since we were brighter than most folks (so we thought), the spoils of victory would be ours for the thinking. The god of intellect displaced the God of our fathers. But again John Barleycorn had other ideas. We who had won so handsomely in a walk turned into all-time losers. We saw that we had to reconsider or die. We found many in A.A., who once thought as we did. They helped us to get down to our right size. By their example they showed us that humility and intellect could be compatible, provided we placed humility first. When we began to do that, we received the gift of faith, a faith which works. This faith is for you, too." Another crowd of A.A.'s says: "We were plumb disgusted with religion and all its works. The Bible, we said, was full of nonsense; we could cite it chapter and verse, and we couldn't see the Beatitudes for the `begats.' In spots its morality was impossibly good; in others it seemed impossibly bad. But it was the morality of the religionists themselves that really got us down. We gloated over the hypocrisy, bigotry, and crushing self-righteousness that clung to so many `believers' even in their Sunday best. How we loved to shout the damaging fact that millions of the `good men of religion' were still killing one another off in the name of God. This all meant, of course, that we had substituted negative for positive thinking. After we came to A.A.,, we had to recognize that this trait had been an ego feeding proposition. In belaboring the sins of some religious people, we could feel superior to all of them. Moreover, we could avoid looking at some of our own shortcomings. Self-righteousness, the very thing that we had contemptuously condemned in others, was our own besetting evil. This phony form of respectability was our undoing, so far as faith was concerned. But finally, driven to A.A., we learned better. "As psychiatrists have often observed, defiance is the outstanding characteristic of many an alcoholic. So it's not strange that lots of us have had our day at defying God Himself. Sometimes it's because God has not delivered us the good things of life which we specified, as a greedy child makes an impossible list for Santa Claus. More often, though, we had met up with some major calamity, and to our way of thinking lost out because God deserted us. The girl we wanted to marry had other notions; we prayed God that she'd change her mind, but she didn't. We prayed for healthy children, and were presented with sick ones, or none at all. We prayed for promotions at business, and none came. Loved ones, upon whom we heartily depended, were taken from us by so-called acts of God. Then we became drunkards, and asked God to stop that. But nothing happened. This was the unkindest cut of all. `**** this faith business!' we said. "When we encountered A.A., the fallacy of our defiance was revealed. At no time had we asked what God's will was for us; instead we had been telling Him what it ought to be. No man, we saw, could believe in God and defy Him, too. Belief meant reliance, not; defiance. In A.A., we saw the fruits of this belief: men and women spared from alcohol's final catastrophe. We saw them meet and transcend their other pains and trials. We saw them calmly accept impossible situations, seeking neither to run nor to recriminate. This was not only faith; it was faith that worked under all conditions. We soon concluded that whatever price in humility we must pay, we would pay." Now let's take the guy full of faith, but still reeking of alcohol. He believes he is devout. His religious observance is scrupulous. He's sure he still believes in God, but suspects that God doesn't believe in him. He takes pledges and more pledges. Following each, he not only drinks again, but acts worse than the last time. Valiantly he tries to fight alcohol, imploring God's help, but the help doesn't come. What, then, can be the matter? To clergymen, doctors, friends, and families, the alcoholic who means well and tries hard is a heartbreaking riddle. To most A.A.'s, he is not. There are too many of us who have been just like him, and have found the riddle's answer. This answer has to do with the quality of faith rather than its quantity. This has been our blind spot. We supposed we had humility when really we hadn't. We supposed we had been serious about religious practices when, upon honest appraisal, we found we had been only superficial. Or, going to the other extreme, we had wallowed in emotionalism and had mistaken it for true religious feeling. In both cases, we had been asking something for nothing. The fact was we really hadn't cleaned house so that the grace of God could enter us and expel the obsession. In no deep or meaningful sense had we ever taken stock of ourselves, made amends to those we had harmed, or freely given to any other human being without any demand for reward. We had not even prayed rightly. We had always said, "Grant me my wishes" instead of "Thy will be done." The love of God and man we understood not at all. Therefore we remained self-deceived, and so incapable of receiving enough grace to restore us to sanity. Few indeed are the practicing alcoholics who have any idea how irrational they are, or seeing their irrationality, can bear to face it. Some will be willing to term themselves "problem drinkers," but cannot endure the suggestion that they are in fact mentally ill. They are abetted in this blindness by a world which does not understand the difference between sane drinking and alcoholism. "Sanity" is defined as "soundness of mind." Yet no alcoholic, soberly analyzing his destructive behavior, whether the destruction fell on the dining-room furniture or his own moral fiber, can claim "soundness of mind" for himself. Therefore, Step Two is the rallying point for all of us. Whether agnostic, atheist, or former believer, we can stand together on this Step. 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.

[bluidkiti]

NA STEP TWO

"We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."

The inability to recognize the millions of blessings in our lives is characteristic of our addiction. We can stare at one area that does not measure up to ‘our standards,’ but the reverse is also true. We can become so enthralled with counting ‘our lucky stars’ that we may ignore the cliff’s edge that is right beneath our feet. We addicts seem to view life through one of three types of spectacles. Rose-colored shades distort our vision toward the positive that can be harmful unless we remain vigilant. Dark-colored glasses tint our world and cause it to appear dismal. Our disease bombards us with other negative senses that insure our misery. When we wear clear lenses, we can look at reality and see what it is without our diseased perceptions causing us additional discomfort. Clear glasses allow us to see and seek balance. They allow us to see both good and bad and we learn to respond accordingly. ‘Seeing things as they are’ is truly a gift. We learn that we can choose our footing without that paralyzing fear of disaster with which we were so familiar. We find that living either the gaily colored or dull-plodding existence is not how life actually is.

‘Repeating old patterns while expecting different results’ is a hallmark of the disease of addiction. Until we consciously change our old behaviors in the attempt to obtain new results, the insanity of our disease will remain in control. It is by ‘trusting the process’ of recovery enough to simply try something different that we come to trust that overall change is possible. We do something different and we get different results. The power of this process of our recovery experience is that we are finally moving in a forward direction. Learning what ‘real’ life has to offer us allows us to move towards sanity.

Our disease would have us obsess over everything, one-way or the other. The process of ‘coming to believe’ gives us the ability to see for ourselves what is real. Our logical minds can only take us so far on this spiritual journey. Our inward telling, that we call our intelligence, requires adjusting so that it will match our outward experience. When this match-up isn’t in proper working order, we suffer for it. Therefore, it becomes important to do daily maintenance in this area of recovery. Belief is the result of trusted experiences.

Faith is trusting without the benefit of experience. Belief can include the results of experience alone or a combination of faith that is tied to experience. In olden times, people who were subjects of a king used the phrase ‘By your leave’ to indicate their submission to a person of importance. Sometimes we might use a phrase like, ‘If you don’t mind’ or, ‘If it’s okay with you,’ but the fact that we submit to others is still part of life. We each have many people and things that we submit to. Since we regularly submit to those people and things in which we believe, we want to examine and re-examine our belief, now and throughout the process of recovery.

This is one area where ‘choice’ as referred to in recovery becomes clearly visible. We realize early in the recovery process that we can choose not to submit rather than continuing to submit to things that make us feel more negatively about ourselves. We learn to define sanity for ourselves. Utilizing this choice takes some practice. Many of us never thought of our submission as something we could change. Indeed, it never occurred to us to even try to resist. Submission seemed unavoidable.

‘Believing something’ is an act of surrendering to a proposition or attitude expressed as a statement. We expand our viewpoints by finding out more about how others feel and react to life. We compare notes with others about how we live. Isolation kept us apart and prevented us from doing this. Clean, we become students in a school called ‘life’. We don’t have to do it alone. We compare notes (share experiences) and we can use our books to pass our examinations (survive situations) without using. Coming to believe allows us to shift away from certain people or things that we used to habitually submit to, give-in to, or allow to dominate our lives. We continue to ask ourselves, "Is this the best results we can get?" Taking a good look at who we are, where we are, and what we do on a daily basis may help us awaken to reality. Somehow, we begin to forget to consciously worry about yesterday and tomorrow. The parts that you don’t like are usually not sane. We would not choose to do them today. We can find ourselves involved in losing relationships with life whenever we fail to be satisfied with what we receive in return for what we give.

The ‘sanity’ that we seek in recovery must satisfy our real needs on a daily basis. The confusion that we feel is simply a natural part of personality change. When we feel disorientated or emotionally upset for no apparent reason, it is only an indicator that we have succeeded in altering our relationship to life in some way. Other members, sponsors and our Higher Power can help us adjust to these changes even if we haven’t worked all the Steps yet or haven’t progressed very far in recovery. One of the things we discover about recovery is that we have people in our lives today that are able to be here for us as we are for them. An exception to these general truths occurs when we slip into our old ways and try to get over on our program or other members. We must remain vigilant and not barter our ‘being clean’ for better treatment. We don’t have a right to be offended when people don’t treat us with extra consideration in light of our ‘condition’. We may demonstrate this type of consideration for one another at times and that is fine. The key is that we do so by choice expecting no reward because we only want to help, be considerate, or be useful. What we do willingly by choice is different from doing the same thing under the influence of compulsion, social or otherwise. Membership, being ‘a part of’ requires the mutual respect of one member for another.

Some say, "Religion is for people who are afraid of hell. Spirituality is for people who have been there." Most of us define faith as the gift we receive for the price of acceptance. If we have trouble with the Second Step, we may need to take a closer look at what we consider important or valuable. If we feel like we’re ‘doing without’ some of these things or we get poor results in general. We want to change. Finding and using some extra power to improve our results is what the Steps are all about. Belief grows as we come to recognize the things that we most value, as well as those that we despise. Belief helps us obtain what we hope for in the future. Powerlessness and desperation drives us to set values to escape pain and avoid negative issues. We begin to value love, caring and doing God’s will but may continue getting negative results because we remain focused on our old values. Changing our value systems and developing new ones in accordance with the positive changes that God offers, helps us ‘come to believe’.

One way that many use to get in touch with our hidden, inner self is to try to verbalize or write about what we would like to see in the future. It helps us acquire a belief system that will lead to the ends that we would hope for ourselves. It changes our entire perspective just to realize that we have an unlimited potential future, clean. Many find it extremely helpful to keep a journal or a clear set of memories of whatever visions we have had for ourselves in recovery. It helps us to recall what we wanted when we first got clean, and we may be delighted later on to find that many of our dreams have come true. As we grow in recovery, other visions come to us. When we share these visions with one another, we strengthen our spirit and accelerate our growth. Sometimes our visions will help others even when they don’t seem to apply to us.

We expand our perceptions of the world by acquiring the benefit of what others have learned through personal experience. We broaden our freedom to be an effective part of the world around us by adding to what we know by training, study and application. A part of internal change is being able to enjoy the effects of these changes as they reflect themselves in all parts of our daily lives. It helps when we can surrender again, this time to our ‘lack of a belief’ in God or a Higher Power that is strong enough to give us what we need. These ideas may be incomplete, unconsidered or out of date. Most of us are at least mildly surprised to learn that we can change in this way. The wreckage of our past is much more than the obvious scars, severe legal, medical, or social problems. One of the biggest difficulties with our thought processes is that our information is faulty. This reflects a computer-age saying "Garbage in, garbage out." Running scared has prevented many of us from feeling that we were free to carefully review these basics of thinking. We became accustomed to thinking certain ways and expecting outcomes that may have no basis in reality.

This projection, based on our old thought processes, builds up from those experiences we had when we were loaded or simply because we look at life from an addict’s viewpoint. Healthy relationships are a major structure on the pathway of life. These structures allow us to have relationships with people, places, and things that are stable and lasting. As we change, we may feel overwhelmed and disconcerted by the way these relationships change. Remember that our evaluation of uncomfortable may not be an accurate indicator that something is ‘wrong’. We must continue to bounce our stuff off of other recovering addicts to make these evaluations. There is no way for us to get the ‘personality change’ that we need without a shift in these structures. Discomfort usually occurs during the interval between our perception of the change and our adaptation to it. Belief is the word we use to describe the structures that are ‘real’ to us. These structures change as our beliefs change. A reverent and sensitive attitude helps us identify the new viewpoints and insights that our insufficient beliefs obscured.

Sometimes creation is merely discovering what we felt to be true all along but unable to act on in any real sense. Addicts seem to be sensitive to truth no matter how often we abuse and deny it. Spiritual growth lets us see that we are creatures of our own creation and shows us how this affects others and ourselves. Spiritual maintenance is holding us in line with our new beliefs; allowing them to firm up and work themselves into our new way of life.

Those things that didn’t work for us have to be given time to go away but simply sitting idle and waiting for this to happen may not work. It is much easier to go looking for a belief that may have interested us for some time. We can try to find something that we can feel good about and try to learn more about it. Many of us will find that the belief of our childhood suddenly works for us. We realize the confusion brought on by our using may have prevented us from giving our belief an honest try. We find that our new belief is not only worth going after but that it is far easier since we will begin to get the results we want. The need for a working belief that we understand and feel good about becomes more important than the fears that hold us back. Once we find what works for us, it will tend to last and we won’t have to go back and redo this Step in every situation. Our obsessions were merely efforts to get what we felt we needed regardless of the cost. Major problems occurred once our need had become too great for us to meet. Unfortunately, our obsessions were more about supplying a feeling than with actually meeting needs. This is where much of our insanity becomes visible. Every time we loosen an old fear, our freedom and responsibility increase. As we let go of old fears that no longer apply to us, we find our faith growing. This state of faith gives us more energy and allows us to take maximum advantage of available resources. We are clear-headed and emotionally relaxed.

The acronym F.E.A.R., False Evidence Appearing Real or **** Everything And Run, was a real important lesson for many of us. We may have heard it at a convention or at a meeting. Fear prevents us from acting in a manner that we feel goes against our best interest or that we feel will cause pain. When we are in our right minds, fear simply helps us establish boundaries that we can live within without discomfort or feelings of being in jeopardy. As addicts, much of what we knew was only figments of a deranged mind. In many other cases, what we think we know is actually incorrect, yet this fact apparently makes little difference. Many things are in the middle between these extremes and make a difference some of the time. Sorting all this out is quite tedious and troublesome; therefore, it requires daily attention. Freedom in recovery is what we gain that we compare against what our addiction took from us. The longer we are clean the more these things will matter to us, and this is the reason we keep working the Program no matter how long we have been clean. While using, we lived in constant fear of discovery and may feel the same way in the beginning of recovery. What was our real secret? Could it be that we each built our own cages of fear? The principle with which we want to replace fear is faith. We begin to work the Steps and this process teaches us how to go through the pain without using. When we see the insanity of the old, too familiar, paralyzing fear, we develop a healthy F.E.A.R., Face Everything And Recover.

As we grow into this new way of life, we test our feelings and share what is going on in our minds with our sponsor, home group members and other members with whom we have become close in NA. When we drift away from good sense and the general recovery path, we will hear about it from our friends. We must practice something before we can get results. Repetition allows us to gain faith in ourselves and our beliefs through getting what we feel to be positive results repeatedly. If we are having trouble in this process, we may be able to locate the parts of our belief system that are not working for us. Once we have found our belief and gotten adjusted to it, we settle into it in a reasonable time. Confirmation of our belief is another way that we express our adoption of a belief or a system of beliefs.

Of course, energy is what it takes to live and experience life to any degree. One of the problems that we encounter from a lack of a positive belief is that we can be very active with little or no noticeable achievement. Time and energy seem to mysteriously disappear as our needs become greater. When we start learning how to live, we have less wasted motion and we begin to gain the ability to work towards several goals simultaneously. Accessing parts of our minds that had become dormant in our active addiction, we find ourselves able to do things easily that had seemed impossible before. Belief in a loving, spiritual power is not something that only relates to one part of our life. It is a wrap-around, through and through kind of experience. In truth, most who have experienced this kind of spiritual breakthrough agree that it goes beyond what words can express. We feel somewhat restricted in sharing in this area, because we can only make comparisons. We try to share what it has been like for us, but we know that each one of us has come to a place where we have to find what works for us personally. Change is noticeable almost immediately when we gain a working belief. Release from our insanity guarantees results in the areas that are important to us. We make goals of what we care about and can achieve while learning to identify and let go of obsessions that we thought were goals. If we don’t believe that there is a power that will help us, we are imprisoned in the classic trap of addiction.

There is a saying that goes, "If you argue for your limitations, they are yours forever." Our potential and capacity to respond will expand only if we want them to and give ourselves permission to do so. We will always be capable of messing-up things by not trying. The concept of a Higher Power involves having faith in something that will take us beyond what we can do on our own. Recovery restores to us many of the things that our disease took away.

We work the Steps in order to recondition ourselves so that we will be able to enjoy some of these benefits. Otherwise, we begin to feel the inadequacy that comes with the restoration of responsibilities and duties that we cannot easily accomplish. The further our addiction has progressed, the less we recall that sanity is the ‘natural’ state for most people. It doesn’t mean greater, superior, better, or less than others. It is our healthy state of being alive and free.

Sanity is also acting in a reasonable manner. When we first notice that our feelings are out of line with reality, we begin to change. The First Step is a catalyst that instigates an initial instability. The shift towards change pushes us to sort out the rest. In this Step, we get to the level of beliefs. We realize that the beliefs we operated under were faulty as well as life threatening. These beliefs were insidious and spread throughout our personality. We have no choice but to reach out for help to overcome the structure of our self-created, self-destructive, and self-centered old beliefs. We finally realized that we couldn’t keep doing the things that we chose to do and call it sane. We felt that we became one with the things that used to seem so separate to us. Our experiences and perceptions of reality change. We feel ourselves more as part of what is happening and no longer need absolute control over everything.

Just as in learning to surf, we quickly learn that we and the wave can come crashing down together. The energy is still there; we have just learned how to stay on top of it more often. Exploring our options allows us to choose the one that will work for us rather than feeling lost in a maze of pathways. Our ‘oneness’ takes less energy, and that means we have more energy left over with which to improve the other areas of our lives.

Step Two is about belief. We come to believe in a loving, caring power, greater than ourselves that can restore us to sanity. We never believed that we could live free from our obsession and compulsion to control people and situations around us, because we feared that if we just went with the flow, we would be seriously injured or killed. The pain of the unknown had been too much for us to manage. Realizing that we, in and of ourselves, are not the source of our pain, we are open to letting life go on around us. The knowledge of our powerlessness, trust that we can change, and walking through the pain can help us with this realization. When we stop denying our addiction and gain a belief that a power, greater than ourselves, can help us, we begin to relax. Our ability to believe in a Higher Power that can restore us to sanity makes us feel at one with the forces of that power and the process of spiritual growth.

We also need to allow others to develop their own beliefs so that when the going gets tough they can survive on the faith achieved by their own development system to survive in ongoing recovery. For the first time, we have a vision of a sane life through the example of others who are just like us and who have benefited from taking the leap of faith. We learn that our reality is made up of what we believe, and that when we change our beliefs, we ourselves will change. We grow to love ourselves enough to believe that good things are possible for us and perhaps more importantly that we deserve them. We owe it to ourselves to do the footwork that will lead us to the life that we have always wanted for ourselves but were unable to believe was possible for us.

[MajestyJo]

Step Two

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

The moment they read Step Two, most A.A. newcomers are confronted with a dilemma, sometimes a serious one. How often have we heard them cry out, "Look what you people have done to us! You have convinced us that we are alcoholics and that our lives are unmanageable. Having reduced us to a state of absolute helplessness, you now declare that none but a Higher Power can remove our obsession. Some of us won't believe in God, others can't, and still others who do believe that God exists have no faith whatever He will perform this miracle.

In Step One, I came to the doors of recovery, in Step Two, I come to and start to be aware of life around me. I have started to have hope that the program just might work for me. I see others with not only months, but years of recovery and I am praying that whatever they have found, I can too and it will work for me.

I had believed in God most of my life, I knew there was one but wasn't too sure of what He thought of me. I didn't think He had too high of an opinion of me according to what I had been told about Him. I really didn't think I could place too much trust in that area. AA as a whole was my Higher Power when I first came in, then it became the Woman's Discussion Group that I joined. From there, my concept and relationship with a Higher Power grew.

To be continued...

[MajestyJo]

Yes, you've got us over the barrel, all right--but where do we go from here?" Let's look first at the case of the one who says he won't believe--the belligerent one. He is in a state of mind which can be described only as savage. His whole philosophy of life, in which he so gloried, is threatened.

It's bad enough, he thinks, to admit alcohol has him down for keeps. But now, still smarting from that admission, he is faced with something really impossible. How he does cherish the thought that man, risen so majestically from a single cell in the primordial ooze, is the spearhead of evolution and therefore the only god that his universe knows! Must he renounce all this to save himself?

There was an emptiness within me, the loss of what was, and I needed something of a spiritual nature to fill up that void. I was told it was a spiritual program not a religious one and all I had known was religion. What I knew of it in some ways, I could accept and in other areas I could not. I started to religiously go to meetings.

When I got a year sober, I found out I didn't know who God was. I started my spiritual journey. I don't believe I came to a full understanding of my God until I was seven years sober.

I had believed in God, but didn't believe He believed in me. I was told that "Thou shall not..." all my life and I had tried to prove everyone wrong, so therefore I felt that I had been rejected by God and He didn't want a part of me." If He wanted me to act the way I had been told I should, I wasn't too sure I wanted a part of Him.

I didn't like the concept of just picking and choosing the things I liked and reject the rest, just because I didn't like it. That had me back playing God with my life. I liked the concept of practicing the principles of the Steps in my life. Walking my talk, surrendering to a Power that was working in my life and in those of the people I saw around me. I had to learn to respect other people's choices and their beliefs.

I went looking for God and everywhere I looked He was there. Then I realized like when I was using and moved from place to place, I took me. I was the problem. When I moved from place to place, I took me with me too. The difference was that I had surrendered to that Power and it was going with me.

It wasn't so much my concept of who God was, I don't really want to know, because then I might stop looking for Him. If I know who God is, I figure I will have passed from this earthly realm.

...a single cell in the primordial ooze

This is how I felt when I came into recovery. The lowest of the low. Through working this Step, a little as a time as it says, my God raised me up to a Higher level of consciousness and awareness and allowed me to be me and loved me for who I am, not as He would have me be.

I had to renouce the past. What brought me here would take me back out if I didn't work on it and change it. I couldn't continue to act out in my disease if I wanted to heal and recover. No more "I'm an alcoholic you know!" No more "I'm an addict you know!" No more, "I am married to an alcoholic addict, I am the mother of ..., I am a friend of...." I was now responsible for my own recovery and my own well being. I had to stop looking for people, places and things to make me feel better. In today, my Higher Power utilizes people, places and things to show me a better way of living.

To be continued...

[MajestyJo]

At this juncture, his A.A, sponsor usually laughs. This, the newcomer thinks, is just about the last straw. This is the beginning of the end. And so it is: the beginning of the end of his old life, and the beginning of his emergence into a new one. His sponsor probably says, "Take it easy. The hoop you have to jump through is a lot wider than you think. At least I've found it so. So did a friend of mine who was a one-time vice-president of the American Atheist Society, but he got through with room to spare."

"Well," says the newcomer, "I know you're telling me the truth. It's no doubt a fact that A.A, is full of people who once believed as I do. But just how, in these circumstances, does a fellow `take it easy'? That's what I want to know."

"That," agrees the sponsor, "is a very good question indeed. I think I can tell you exactly how to relax. You won't have to work at it very hard, either.

When I came in, it was suggested that I get a group, get a sponsor, and get active. Active in service in the group, setting it up, putting chairs away, making coffee, doing dishes, standing at the door as a greeter. My sponsor said, "You are only half a hand shake you know." This Step is one of the reasons I needed a sponsor. I thought I knew who God was and didn't have much faith. My sponsor shared at a meeting that she was 18 years sober and her Higher Power was a leprechaun sitting on her shoulder. I figured if anyone could stay sober with a Higher Power like that, then maybe she could help me. She ended up firing me and said that I was too sick, and she wasn't well enough to give me the attention I needed. I later went back to her and asked her again when I had about three years. She made me aware that a Higher Power wasn't this preconceived idea that I had form childhood and that I had to make God personal. My service sponsor told me that I could believe in any HP as long as it wasn't me. For me it was a process and as I healed I gained new awareness. God was doing for me what I hadn't been able to do for myself. I didn't put a face on God, it was a Power that worked in my life that allowed me to stay clean and sober, that guided and directed me one day at a time. God had always been that distant being out there busy making the world go round. My Higher Power for me was the Spirit of God that came to me when I surrendered and asked for Help. I like to think of it as my Higher Self or Inner Self or the (W)Holy Spirit. That same sponsor told me that she thought that my Higher Power spoke to me through music. I learned to look at nature and became aware of the power and majesty of it and knowing that if a blade of grass, a small leaf bud, a tiny guppy, etc. could all get just what they need (the right amount of sun, air, water, etc.) then why shouldn't my needs be met. I became a part of the whole. As I read one time, "A stone doesn't have legs because it has people to move it from where it is to where it need to go." I got very involved in crystals and the healing properties of them. I look at them as God's gift to me and each has a message for me if I am open to receive it. I carried an Amethyst for many years because of the following information:

Amethyst
Amethyst has long been called the "sobriety stone." In ancient Rome, crushed amethyst was added to wine cups to prevent drunkenness. It is said to assist with healing alcoholism, compulsive behaviors, and addictions of all kinds. Amethyst brings energies in mystical realms of stability, peace, calm, balance, courage and inner strength. It is often used in metaphysics and crystal healing to protect against psychic attacks. On the spiritual level, amethyst is said to help open to communication with angels, telepathy and other psychic abilities. It is thus an excellent stone for meditation or dream work, past life work, and to help you see your path. It has also been used to help ease the pain of grief, and promote happiness. Amethyst is reputed to be beneficial when dealing with legal problems, and money issues, which can lead to prosperity and abundance. Amethyst is also used as protection for travelers. Physically amethyst is said by spiritual healers and mystical lore to heal the withdrawal symptoms of any sort of addiction, help with headaches, insomnia, arthritis, pain relief, circulatory system issues, endocrine system problems, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, immune system deficiencies, and general healing. Amethyst is associated with the brow and the crown chakras.

Metaphysical & Mystical Healing Properties Lore

There were many people who told me God meant "Good Orderly Direction" and "Group of Drunks/Drug Addicts" showing me a better way to live. I know a woman who says, "My Parents" instead of God when she says the Lord's Prayer.

A lot of things I didn't know, but I learned to open my mind and listen to others and their beliefs and concepts and decide for myself, what God meant to me. I co-sponsored a fellow who belonged to S.O.S. <http://www.okcsos.com/> who was an atheist and he stayed sober for a year, relapsed and then got sober again and now does Bible Study with a church organization.

I believe in miracles. I am one.

To be continued...

[MajestyJo]

This program is suggested. If you want to stay clean and sober, then it is suggested that you do certain things: Don't pick up, go to meetings, listen to learn and learn to listen, get a sponsor (someone you can identify and connect with or a person who has something you want), work the Steps, learn to apply them to your life, and get active in service within your group. I found these to be 'darn well betters' or you will go back out and use. I am grateful to a friend who did my research for me. I didn't have to go back out, he showed me it wasn't any better out there. He use to say, "Sit in the front row, you can hear better." I said, "When if you hear you don't seem to listen, I'll sit farther back and listen harder." It took me a long time to move away from the back row.

The whole picture is very overwhelming. I didn't get this way overnight, I couldn't expect myself to heal overnight. It wasn't a quick fix program, it took time, and all I had to do was take it one day at a time. I just had to deal with one day feelings, one days thoughts, one days actions, and when something from the past came into today, I dealt with it or left it there until such a times as I felt up to handling it. I tried to live in the day and not project into tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes, when it gets here, it is today!

I had to have an open mind. My best thinking got me to the doors of recovery. I had to learn to be open to other people's ideas and concepts. They said, "Take what you need and leave the rest on the shelf." As a friend of mine use to say, "If you can't use it, perhaps you can pass it on to someone who can."

My sponsor told me to quit analizing everythng. I want to know the whys and wherefores of everything. She said, "You can't intellectualize this program, just know it is and that it works."

My experience had been a religious background. It hadn't stopped me from becoming an addict or an alcoholic. I found that I had to find what worked for me. I saw AA working for other people, and had to have faith that it would work for me. There were so many ideas of who God was I was confused and didn't know what I believed. I had to make God personal. Slowly things changed in my life and I could see the results of the program working. AA itself became my Higher Power until such a time as I could find out who God was to me. It was my understanding of God, not someone else's that I had to discover. I ended up taking some of my old ways of thinking and beliefs and bringing in the new ideas and concepts which made my God bigger than anything that I had to face on this recovery journey.

They talk of God in Steps Two and Three and yet it wasn't until I finished the other Steps that I had true knowledge of what and who God was to me.

To be continued...

[MajestyJo]

"This is only one man's opinion based on his own experience, of course. I must quickly assure you that A.A.'s tread innumerable paths in their quest for faith. If you don't care for the one I've suggested, you'll be sure to discover one that suits if only you look and listen. Many a man like you has begun to solve the problem by the method of substitution. You can, if you wish, make A.A., itself your `higher power.' Here's a very large group of people who have solved their alcohol problem. In this respect they are certainly a power greater than you, who have not even come close to a solution. Surely you can have faith in them. Even this minimum of faith will be enough.

You will find many members who have crossed the threshold just this way. All of them will tell you that, once across, their faith broadened and deepened. Relieved of the alcohol obsession, their lives unaccountably transformed, they came to believe in a Higher Power, and most of them began to talk of God."

As I stated earlier, I found faith in AA and in one sense it became my Higher Power. I heard the phrase "Good Orderly Direction" and came up with my own "Divine Orderly Good." I called it the God/Dog syndrome. It doesn't matter if your concept of God is different than anyone else's. What was important was finding my own personal belief. When I saw the program working in my life, I developed a deeper faith and was able to tap into the power that I found in the rooms. I call a meeting a "God Village." When I surrendered and asked for help, it is my belief that I was connected to the Spirit of God and the same is true for everyone who is at a meeting. Whether they choose to tap into that Power, acknowledge it, and utilize it is up to them. I believe it is there and when I surrender, I am empowered to do what I need to stay clean and sober in today.

To be continued...

[MajestyJo]

Consider next the plight of those who once had faith, but have lost it. There will be those who have drifted into indifference, those filled with
self-sufficiency who have cut themselves off, those who have become prejudiced against religion, and those who are downright defiant because God has failed to fulfill their demands. Can A.A, experience tell all these they may still find a faith that works?

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.

Since both ways have proved bitterly disappointing, they have concluded there is no place whatever for them to go. The roadblocks of indifference, fancied self-sufficiency, prejudice, and defiance often prove more solid and formidable for these people than any erected by the unconvinced agnostic or even the militant atheist. Religion says the existence of God can be proved; the agnostic says it can't be proved; and the atheist claims proof of the nonexistence of God. Obviously, the dilemma of the wanderer from faith is that of profound confusion. He thinks himself lost to the comfort of any conviction at all. He cannot attain in even a small degree the assurance of the believer, the agnostic, or the atheist. He is the bewildered one.

This was very true for me. I didn't have much faith in my religious beliefs in fact I had a lot of resentments. It seemed like I had missed out of a lot of things in life as a result of the strict structure I was brought up in. Because I rebelled against the church and the ideas, I shut myself off from anything to do with it. I took my son to Sunday School and he rebelled and didn't' want to go. Said he didn't like it and wouldn't say why. He was only five. When we went to my husband's church when I remarried, he said he didn't like that church and if we had to go, let us go back to our own. When I remarried the church said I had to raise him in that faith and they asked me to join too. I said, "In the Bible it says 'Make a joyful noise onto the Lord' and your music is anything but joyful, it is down right mournful. Thanks but no thanks." My son went up to visit with his father when he was 15. He had him help to build his church and then had him baptized in his church. My son came home and said, "Mom if dad calls and wants me to go to visit tell him I am working." He didn't even have a job. I was furious. I believe faith is a personal thing and he had a right to choose or not choose for himself. Today he has his own belief and he doesn't go to church. I have mine, and I choose not to go to church either although I have thought of going back again. My only reason for going though is the social aspect of the church community. I can be open to their teachings and for the most part I agree. I just get hung up on the 'sinner' and the thought of good and bad. For me it is needy souls searching for something outside of themselves to make themselves feel good. I was a sick person trying to get well. Not a bad person trying to get good. The goodness was already inside of me. The problem was I set it aside in order to fit in or because I didn't feel worthy.

I have gone back to church, left and went back again, only to leave again. I related the pastors messages to those I have heard in AA. I love the music, grew up on Gospel music and still love to hear and sing it. I find strength and comfort through it.

A part of me found it difficult to see people in church and not walking their talk. I saw a lot of them as hypocrites who went there with their Sunday best, and then left to be their other self when they walked out the door. I didn't see a lot of Whole people. I found them very judgmental on the whole and if you didn't believe in there way, you were in the wrong and they had very closed minds. I saw a lot of people trying to be Holy but like they say in the program, it is a 24 hour a day program, not a 2-4 hour a program. My Higher Power is the (W)Holy Spirit.

To be continued...

[MajestyJo]

Any number of A.A.'s can say to the drifter, "Yes, we were diverted from our childhood faith, too. The overconfidence of youth was too much for us. Of course, we were glad that good home and religious training had given us certain values. We were still sure that we ought to be fairly honest, tolerant, and just, that we ought to be ambitious and hardworking. We became convinced that such simple rules of fair play and decency would be enough."As material success founded upon no more than these ordinary attributes began to come to us, we felt we were winning at the game of life. This was exhilarating, and it made us happy. Why should we be bothered with theological abstractions and religious duties, or with the state of our souls here or hereafter? The here and now was good enough for us.

The will to win would carry us through. But then alcohol began to have its way with us. Finally, when all our score cards read `zero,' and we saw that one more strike would put us out of the game forever, we had to look for our lost faith. It was in A.A, that we rediscovered it. And so can you."

My religious experience was very strict. No dancing, no playing cards, no playing anything on Sunday. I got hit if I said 'heck' because it meant hell. I got hit if I said darn because it mean da*n and it wasn't always the action, it was the thought behind it. We went to church three times on Sunday, Wednesday was prayer meeting and if my dad was obliging or around, he drove us to Young People's on Friday if we couldn't arrange a ride.

Being the preacher's son's daughter gave me the excuse to use for years. I was raised to be a lady and spent most of my years trying to disprove the fact. I resented the lady I think because she represented rules and regulations that I hadn't been willing to follow. I always felt like I was being put in a box and always felt like I had to break out. A 200 acre farm is a big box. I couldn't wait to leave it. Two institutions of marriage were boxes that were boxes that isolated me from being myself. I lived my life through these people and through the addiction that was to follow, I lost my identity, my integrity and my sense of self and well being. My whole life was filled with 'thou shall not!' and for most of my life I rebelled. As a result of that rebellion, I figured I might as well be hung as a sheep as a lamb and justified my very existence, using, and choice by the fact that I was going to be struck down at any time in my life so I might as well live my life my way and make the best of it before God punished me.

It was such a great spiritual experience for me to learn that everything wasn't black and white and that there were shades of gray. It was freeing to know that everything wasn't died in stone or that I would be stoned if I didn't believe what other people believed. I didn't have to follow other people's beliefs, I could find my own truth, my own God, and my own freedom from bondage. That was the gift that AA gave me.

[MajestyJo]

Now we come to another kind of problem: the intellectually self-sufficient man or woman. To these, many A.A.'s can say, "Yes, we were like you--far too smart for our own good. We loved to have people call us precocious. We used our education to blow ourselves up into prideful balloons, though we were careful to hide this from others. Secretly, we felt we could float above the rest of the folks on our brainpower alone. Scientific progress told us there was nothing man couldn't do. Knowledge was all-powerful. Intellect could conquer nature. Since we were brighter than most folks (so we thought), the spoils of victory would be ours for the thinking.

The god of intellect displaced the God of our fathers. But again John Barleycorn had other ideas. We who had won so handsomely in a walk turned into all-time losers. We saw that we had to reconsider or die. We found many in A.A, who once thought as we did. They helped us to get down to our right size. By their example they showed us that humility and intellect could be compatible, provided we placed humility first.
When we began to do that, we received the gift of faith, a faith which works.

This faith is for you, too.

"

This was like mirror, mirror on the wall, and yet I didn't have a lot of education and didn't do a lot of college until I came into recovery, I had read a lot, had advanced in my field and there wasn't a department in an office that I hadn't worked in so the great I am thought she knew it all.

One of my sponsors use to say, "Are you still intellectualizing? Stop it!" I wanted to know the whys and wherefore of everything. I wanted to figure it out and I was still trying to play God with my life.

Hearing a long-timer share on humilty helped me to to understand that I had to remain teachable. That I had to open my mind to other ideas and concepts and that my best thinking and ideas got me to where I was and doing the same thing over and over again, was the insanity of my disease not my intelligence.

My control was an illusion. Control doesn't work it only makes enemies and isolates the spirit and leaves me standing alone blocked from the goodness of God's blessings. I couldn't organize my life and make everything fit, I had to take down the walls, open the windows and doors and let the Spirit of God come in. It wasn't until I put the word control in place of powerless that I could truly understand how little power I had and that when I surrendered, I was empowered to help myself. There is a big difference.

I developed a faith in the program. I saw it working in the lives of others and slowly but surely, it began to infiltrate into my life and I was able to build on it in the next Step.

To be continued...

[MajestyJo]

Another crowd of A.A.'s says: "We were plumb disgusted with religion and all its works. The Bible, we said, was full of nonsense; we could cite it chapter and verse, and we couldn't see the Beatitudes for the `begets.' In spots its morality was impossibly good; in others it seemed impossibly bad. But it was the morality of the religionists themselves that really got us down. We gloated over the hypocrisy, bigotry, and crushing self-righteousness that clung to so many `believers' even in their Sunday best.

How we loved to shout the damaging fact that millions of the `good men of religion' were still killing one another off in the name of God. This all meant, of course, that we had substituted negative for positive thinking. After we came to A.A,, we had to recognize that this trait had been an ego feeding proposition. In belabouring the sins of some religious people, we could feel superior to all of them. Moreover, we could avoid looking at some of our own shortcomings. Self-righteousness, the very thing that we had contemptuously condemned in others, was our own besetting evil. This phony form of respectability was our undoing, so far as faith was concerned. But finally, driven to A.A,, we learned better.

Like everything else in my life, I compared instead of identifying. I was brought up in a very strict religion and yet it teachings were simple. There were no pews, just wooden chairs. No stain glassed windows, just opaque glass, a pot bellied stove that stood near the back of the church, wainscoting around the bottom of the walls, very simple and very plain and there was no minister, just lay ministers, people who felt the spirit of God who got up and shared. I don't know how the person was chosen to share on Sunday. It was seldom that it was the same man twice in a row unless he was doing what I called a mini series. There was a group of elders who made decisions for the church and the whole structure was a lot like the rooms of recovery.

The main difference with that church was filled with thou shall not and this is what you should believe and do. In AA things were suggested but there were some darn well betters or you would go back out and drink again.

When I went to other churches, I had a problems with the rituals, the decor, the 'read' prayers and as much as some of them were very nice and quite touching, they didn't come from the heart of the person sharing them. It was like a meeting I went to once and a woman and written out her story and shared more from the paper than from the spirit of the moment.

So many things are repetitive and we get annoyed and think, I have heard this before and often tend to shut it off and yet, how easily we forget. It amazes me when I go to a meeting and people have to look at the page to quote the 12 Steps. Yet the words mean nothing if you don't know them and apply them to your life. The spiritual principles are there for application not for my education. It is easy to talk the walk, but much easier said than done.

I had trouble with the robes and the fancy churches feeling that they were trimmings and money ill spent that could be given helping the people and the glory of God not the glory of the Church. It didn't attract me and didn't promote religion to me. Especially when I saw people going on Sunday to church and then leaving their principles at the door on the way out. Doing penance for something you did only to go out and do it again didn't sit well with me and yet how many times did I do the same thing over and over again expecting different results. This time it will be different. Yeah! Sure! I would have remorse and guilt but seldom did I ask for forgiveness, certainly not for myself.

I am not sure that resented the people so much as the teachings of the church. Who died and made them God. A sponsee would phone me and say she was going to mass. She would ask, "Would you like to say a prayer for you." I would respond, "You don't need to bother, I have a direct line." There came a time, I would ask for prayers and figured I need all the help I could get. I figured an extra word now and then could only help the cause instead of hinder it. I heard a speaker who became a priest in recovery say, "It is a wonder God doesn't lean over the edge of heaven and shout, "Will you all just shut up!" We tend to keep asking for help and not having the faith that the first one will work and we send up a deluge of words and many forms asking for the same thing over and over again instead of being quiet and listening for the answers.

It is amazing how we can surround ourselves with that self-righteous cloak and think that we are so much better than others. I will never forget hearing many people say, "But that is a street meeting, I can't relate to them...." I did it one night at a group called "The Thunderbird Group." Then I looked around the room and said, "Oh good to see he has come back. I wonder how she is doing, good to see her here. That person is new I wonder if it is his first meeting. Then I heard myself and realized the insanity of my thinking. We are all alcoholics, what makes me different. Do I forget where I come from. A woman, who had 16 years in recover wouldn't come to share for a one year anniversary because she had come to my group to hear me share my story for a three year anniversary and had made the comment about it being a street meeting. We may have not gone all the way to the bottom like some people and yet if we had continued on our path, there is a good chance we might have ended up there. I know I was only one step away. It may not be a physical thing but a mental, emotional and spiritual thing.

Just because I go to church doesn't make me spiritual. Being brought up in the church for 22 years didn't stop me from becoming an alcoholic and an addict. For me, spirituality is a personal thing. Church can't give it to me. It is a God given gift.

To be continued...

[MajestyJo]

"As psychiatrists have often observed, defiance is the outstanding
characteristic of many an alcoholic. So it's not strange that lots of us have had our day at defying God Himself. Sometimes it's because God has not delivered us the good things of life which we specified, as a greedy child makes an impossible list for Santa Claus. More often, though, we had met up with some major calamity, and to our way of thinking lost out because God deserted us. The girl we wanted to marry had other notions; we prayed God that she'd change her mind, but she didn't. We prayed for healthy children, and were presented with sick ones, or none at all. We prayed for promotions at business, and none came. Loved ones, upon whom we heartily depended, were taken from us by so-called acts of God. Then we became drunkards, and asked God to stop that.

But nothing happened. This was the unkindest cut of all. `d**n this faith
business!' we said."When we encountered A.A,, the fallacy of our defiance was revealed. At no time had we asked what God's will was for us; instead we had been telling Him what it ought to be. No man, we saw, could believe in God and defy Him, too.

Defiance a good way to seperate myself from God. For so many years it was my way or the highway. I was raised with this belief. If it wasn't done my Mother's way, it wasn't good enough. If it wasn't done my husband's way, I was less than. If it was my way, I am selfish and self-centered. As I learned to have faith and trust my Higher Power, I grew to trust myself and the faith grew.

I certainly had things happen that made me think God was not on my side. Witnessing my brother's death, my mother's early death, our house struck by lightning, the abuse and the rapes, didn't give me much faith that God believed in me. I was given so many rules and regulations and over the years I was guilty of bending them if I didn't break them. My life was so full of 'thou shall nots' that I feared that I was going to hell in a hand basket. I was surprised that I lived to make recovery. Through the program I learned to have faith in myself through trusting a Higher Power who I came to believe would guide and direct me a day at a time. He was no longer that distant being but an intricate part of my life.

In today, I always say "Thy will not mine be done." Often I have had to pray for the willingness to be willing to have God's will be done. So many times I have changed direction only to be brought back until the lesson is learned. I don't believe God tests us. I believe we test God. How many times over the years I have said, "I didnt' want a part of God, but what I didn't want was the constriction of relgious beliefs and the self-righteous sinners.

I remember my first husband didn't want me to smoke. I had a small pack of Rothman's that I kept for coffee break and when I went out with the girls. He found it and said, "I told you not to smoke." He took the pack in his hand and crumpled it and threw it into the wastebasket. I picked out the butts. This is the man who use to smoke. This is the man who ran around on me with other women and left when his son was two months old.

My aunt called my sister an angel because she was Sunday School superintendant and I was according to her a 'sinner' saved by grace. SIN means l) Social Insurance Number - I am no longer a nobody, I am a somebody who matters. 2) I am a Soul In Need who always looked outside of herself to find happiness and contentment and didn't know she could go within and connect to a Higher Power. That is why I call myself a Godly Heathen. I shared this at an out of town meeting where I got asked to share my story ten minutes before the meeting started. A young fellow came up to me and thanked me for sharing, he too was having a problems with his religious upbringing. When things like that happens, I am sure that they are of the Spirit.

So many times, I sit down to share on the computer or when I am to speak or share at a meeting, I ask for the words, direction and the knowingness. I often have to read what has come out because it seems like the fingers did the walking. People have come up after me and said, "I like what you shared, but I have no memory of the words that have come out." For me I am a channel, and that is why I quit smoking. I wanted to be a clear and clean channel to carry the message of recovery.

To be continued...

[MajestyJo]

Belief meant reliance, not; defiance. In A.A, we saw the fruits of this belief: men and women spared from alcohol's final catastrophe. We saw them meet and transcend their other pains and trials. We saw them calmly accept impossible situations, seeking neither to run nor to recriminate. This was not only faith; it was faith that worked under all conditions. We soon concluded that whatever price in humility we must pay, we would pay." Now let's take the guy full of faith, but still reeking of alcohol. He believes he is devout. His religious observance is scrupulous. He's sure he still believes in God, but suspects that God doesn't believe in him. He takes pledges and more pledges. Following each, he not only drinks again, but acts worse than the last time. Valiantly he tries
to fight alcohol, imploring God's help, but the help doesn't come. What, then, can be the matter?

To clergymen, doctors, friends, and families, the alcoholic who means well and tries hard is a heartbreaking riddle. To most A.A.'s, he is not. There are too many of us who have been just like him, and have found the riddle's answer.

It was coming to meetings, coming to realize that these people had something that I didn't have. I had tried for eight years to quit my way and it hadn't worked. I came to believe that AA would work for me because I could see it working in others. I could stop, but I couldn't stay stopped. After coming to AA, I never found a good reason to go back out, a lot of excuses, but I didn't have to act on them. I slipped mentally and emotionally, but I never had to physically pick up a drink again. I had a spiritual bottom at one year sober. I had used my religious beliefs because that was all I knew. I came to realize it wasn't enough. I needed more. I went on a spiritual journey and as a result I found my religious beliefs enhanced my spiritual beliefs and my spiritual beliefs enhanced my religious beliefs. They were two separate entities joined by the Spirit of the God of my understanding.

This reminds me of a fellow I met in early recovery who shared with me that he relapsed every five years. He had repeated this pattern for many years. He blamed it on his Catholic faith and said it was because of guilt that he always picked up again. Shortly after he shared with me, he relapsed after celebrating five years and didn't make it back.

There was a lot of trauma in my life and yet I don't feel as though I doubted God. I had my beliefs. I just didn't believe God had much faith in me so therefore I didn't depend too much on Him to bail me out of where I was at. There were a few "God Help Me!" but they were more expletives than actual cries for help. It was I got myself in this corner now how the heck do I get myself out. Rather than show me the way out it was more like "Do it for me!"

I was at a group anniversary and the pastor of the church where the meeting was held came to speak and share. He said, "I wish the people upstairs had what you people downstairs have. It would make my job a lot easier."


To be continued...

[MajestyJo]

Growing up I had quantity for sure. I think when I was younger the quality was there but as I got out into the world and had to deal with life, I found it was diluted by resentment, disillusionment, fear, and lack of self-esteem and self-worth, mixed messages, guilt, and many other things that I let corrode my faith. I came to believe that God didn't believe in me.

So much of what I knew about God was done in rote and like I have shared before, so much of what I was taught was something I was told to believe and were old tapes like a lot of other things in my life, it was lived through other people. Whoever or whatever became my God, and I switched allegiance and God became distant and I lost contact. God became this distant being and no longer became an important force in my life. Someone who I called out to when I was in a corner and didn't know what to do. I would ask for help yet didn't have much faith that it would come. Soon I was looking for the quick fix, a short time solution to a long-time problem. Me!

It is hard to clean house when you think that your problems are all the fault of the people in your life. It is ironic that my second name means "God's gracious gift." I was always told to help others. I was a caretaker and caregiver all of my life. As a result, I lived through those people and found my value through them. Many times I was put on a pedestal, it is a long way down when you fall off. That generally happened when I became disillusioned by the 'god' in my life and what I didn't know was how to take care of myself. I allowed myself to be abused mentally, emotionally, and physically.

Through my addiction, I became selfish and self-centered and ended up becoming isolated and cut off from all spiritual things. My disease took over my life, and I became mental, emotionally, spiritually and physically bankrupt. When you shut down the negative, you also block the positive from coming in.

At first, I didn't think I was an alcoholic. A problem drinker seemed so much easier to accept. I just knew I didn't want to go back to where I came from. I knew I was an addict, and until I could accept that I used alcohol the same as I used everything else, the insanity still reigned in my life. I am powerless over people, places and things. When I surrender, I am empowered to do what I needed to do for myself. That empowerment had to come from a source outside of myself. As my sponsor said, "It doesn't matter what you believe in as long as your Higher Power isn't you. My concept of God and how He works in my life has taken many forms. I like the Higher Self, the Inner Self, which to me means that I learned to believe in me. I learned to quiet my mind and was able to listen to that still quiet voice within, I was able to take the journey from my head to my heart and find peace. Good orderly direction from a Group of drunks who filled me with Divine Orderly Good, and raised me to a level of being that is far above and beyond what I thought possible.

When I came in, I didn't think I was insane and I thought that I knew who God was. As I became clean and sober and my mind finally grew into a new state of awareness, I realized that I was totally insane and didn't have a clue as to who God was. I went on a Spiritual journey to find God and to make Him personal. The more I searched, the more I opened my mind, and was willing to learn, the chaos decreased and a new soundness of mind came into being. Learning to quiet my mind, to be open to all things, was a process in itself. That I didn't have to accept all things, and could take what I needed at the time, put the rest on the shelf, allowed me to find myself and believe that I could get better and I could heal. As I learned to believe more and more in this God of my understanding, my faith grew.

As someone once told me, God could, doesn't say He would, restore me to sanity. I found the assurance in meetings, I saw the program working in other people, and I came to believe it would work for me.

These words are my interruption of what I read and heard in meetings, have no association with AA or any other fellowship, although the basis of my recovery was AA, I went to NA, CoDA, ACoA, CA, GA, Al-Anon, and Nar-Anon.

[MajestyJo]

IF YOU ALWAYS DO
WHAT YOU ALWAYS DID
YOU WILL ALWAYS GET
WHAT YOU ALWAYS GOT



Step Two: The insanity of our disease. Doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.