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#16 |
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Join Date: Aug 2013
Posts: 72,599
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![]() "We, who have recovered from serious drinking, are miracles of mental health." ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, The Family Afterward, pg. 133~ A lot of people take the word miracle for granted. They say ?It is a miracle that I am still around after all of the crazy things I did?. But what does miracle really mean. Well if we look at the definition of the word, it means: a marvelous event manifesting a supernatural act of God (dictionary.com). So we that have recovered from serious drinking have had a marvelous event happen because of a supernatural act of God. This marvelous event has happen in the mind! Oh yeah! That is where we were messed up! Our mental health was probably as poor as health can be. But see unlike any other chronic health problem, chronic mental health is not looked as something as serious as cancer, hepatitis C, or AIDS. Especially if the one who suffers from it seems to be normal in every other way. See us alcoholics seem to be normal people who have episodes of mental incapability. To some effect that is true, but to me it seems as though the mental illness goes a lot deeper than that. See the inability to differentiate true and false could immediately be construed as mental illness. In fact you actually might be able to use that as a viable definition of insanity. Einstein coined the definition of "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Let's take a look at what he was talking about. We alcoholics not only picked up the drink over and over again and expected something other than the undignified results we got almost every time we touched it, but we pretty much tried to do everything with that type of thinking. How many of us lied and lied and expected people to believe us? How many of us cheated and cheated on a loved one and expected them to still be in love with us? How many of us got behind the wheel of a car and expected not to get a DUI? How many of us did completely asinine things and expected the people around us to be accepting of our actions? How many of us did all of this and had not one care of how our actions effected anyone other than ourselves? A little story about how I used this insanity as a tool. People knew I was crazy even when I was a teenager. In fact one of my girlfriends called me ?Crazy Eddie?. That name stuck with me and as I grew older it seemed to fit more and more. I even had the name tattooed on my shoulder as a memento of how insane I really was. So here I was this crazy person drinking and drugging. A person who really believed that he was a badass. I scared people with this mirage and expected them to act exactly the way I wanted them to. A lot of people bought the act, but I kept on wondering why it was that no one ever wanted to hang out with me. Oh yeah, there were the ones who tolerated my bad boy act, but they too were using a fa?ade to cover up who they really were. In fact they acted just as crazy as I did, some even more! This act became so routine that it started to be normal for the cops to be waiting for me to stumble out of the bar just to cart me off to jail for public intoxication. Oh I knew it was going to happen, but blamed the cops for harassing me. Heck now that I think about it they were not only protecting the neighborhood, but also me from hurting myself. But see I expected something different to happen and it never did! My mental illness went a lot further than just drinking and drugging! It wasn't until I finally read the words of step two: "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." ("How It Works" pg.59 Alcoholics Anonymous) that I started to understand that the problem I suffered from was insanity. Yeah I knew I was crazy, but didn't know why. Well folks the why of it stands in knowing that this Power greater than ourselves has given us tools to survive in this world. If one uses those tools only to benefit himself/ herself, then they are being used for purposes they were not intended for. This causes extreme confusion in the mind and the results become what I have explained in the previous paragraphs. Only God is capable of returning people like us to a state of mind that is relatively thought of as sane. That is if we are willing to let him! Then and only then do we become miracles of mental health!!! --Ed C.
__________________
![]() "No matter what you have done up to this moment, you get 24 brand-new hours to spend every single day." --Brian Tracy
AA gives us an opportunity to recreate ourselves, with God's help, one day at a time. --Rufus K. When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. --Franklin D. Roosevelt We stay sober and clean together - one day at a time! God says that each of us is worth loving. |
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#17 |
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"In God's Hands"
"When we look back, we realize that the things which came to us when we put ourselves in God's hands were better than anything we could have planned." ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Working With Others pg. 100~ This is a very profound statement. Just think about it for a second. We surrendered our "selves" to God and life became better. This intertwined with the fact that we no longer planned the things we did and let God show us the way. Is that the way you do things??? Well it seems to me that it has to be that way if one is to find the necessary psychic change that will catapult them into a new dimension of existence. If not we have not given ourselves fully to God, it doesn't seem to me that anything else will work!!! We wonder why it is that we have certain problems and worries. It is pretty simple in reasoning. It is because we are still thinking using the image of self. In the KJV of the Bible it says in Romans 12:2 And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God. If we use the image of self we have created in our mind we are conforming to this world!!!! Conforming to this world is simply put, CHAOTIC!!! It seems to me that the God I understand meant things to be a lot simpler. He meant for us to all get along and had no vision of there being divided groups of people who used prejudice to make their decisions. Oh sure you might be asking why I use the word prejudice, well it is because when we use self to think about what we are going to do, we leave out all other possibilities. We make decisions without weighing all possibilities. This is exactly why it is that we have so many problems. Life wasn't set-up to be that way. Life was set-up for us human beings to function with one another to survive. It was exactly when we met up with things we did not understand, that we used prejudice to explain those things. That even went as far as using preconceived ideas about other human beings. Of course this caused turmoil, and that is the way it has been ever since. So let's take a look at the reasoning behind things becoming better after we put ourselves in God's hands. We stop trying to make reality and start living God's reality!!! Sure we have to make certain plans about the very close future (Like working, and paying our bills), but we no longer plan things. We go with the flow of life. It is when we make the great expectations we set ourselves up for disappointment. When we surrender we start to live for today, not tomorrow or yesterday. That is the way God set up life. That is to survive it day by day, and Oh yeah, those short time plans don?t necessarily apply to us either. We could live life a lot simpler and still survive. It is when we start to walk away from the material things that we believe make up our life and move towards the spiritual aspects, things just get better. They just get better!!! --Ed C.
__________________
![]() "No matter what you have done up to this moment, you get 24 brand-new hours to spend every single day." --Brian Tracy
AA gives us an opportunity to recreate ourselves, with God's help, one day at a time. --Rufus K. When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. --Franklin D. Roosevelt We stay sober and clean together - one day at a time! God says that each of us is worth loving. |
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#18 |
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Join Date: Aug 2013
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"Contempt Prior To Investigation"
"'There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance" that principle is contempt prior to investigation.'" - Herbert Spencer- Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Appendice II, Spiritual Experience, pg. 568~ There is a lot being said in that quote, but we must focus our attentions to the idea of contempt prior to investigation being a principle. First of all we must understand what contempt is. Contempt is defined as: The feeling or attitude of regarding someone or something as inferior, base, or worthless; scorn. I can think of nothing better that defines contempt prior to investigation than prejudice. As I have written many times before, the word prejudice brings on the idea of racial situations, where people of one race judge another. The reality is that racial prejudice is only a very small part of this ignorance we use as a principle. The whole idea of using this quote at the end of "Spiritual Experience" is to bring one's attention to the fact of using contempt prior to investigation on spiritual matters. What they are saying is we tend to already have our minds made up on certain matters and refuse to give any other possibilities any thought. This is prejudice of fact!!! Spirituality is of course a private issue to most of us, and we all have our own ideas of what spirit means to each of us, but some of us have made up our minds that material possessions are more important than recognition of spirit. This is, we believe that all that exists is what we can see and believe it to be true. Yet there are those who have become conscious of the incorporeal and have made major strides in their life. This while those who are struggling through life with major problems refuse to believe that something so easy to believe could work for them. When someone uses the word "God" people immediately relate the word to religion. Even though religions use the word God as the name of the entity they have chosen to worship, they all have different concepts of what that entity actually is. The pioneers that wrote the words in the steps carefully chose the phrase "God as we understood Him." This opens up all possibilities of spiritual enlightenment to each and every one of us, without prejudice. Yet we refuse to recognize the possibilities and remain in the vicious cycle of ignorance. This even after the fact that we see people who were impossibly addicted to certain vices that have used a God they understood to recover from the same thing we are suffering from. It is pretty plain and simple where this answer lays, but we refuse to follow the path because we are afraid of what others might think of us. This where the problem is in the alcoholic type, it is in the mind. We have been conditioned to paint pretty pictures to other people in hopes that they will accept us. We have stood behind this facade to the point that our own lives are now in jeopardy. All of this training in ignorance has pretty much made our lives unmanageable. So much so that we made it a principle to act this way, and expect our actions to produce different results. All it takes is a small shift in our thinking to change this loop of insanity. That shift is willingness, honesty, and open mindedness. These are the keys to open up the door to a new found freedom. All it takes is picking up the text of Alcoholics Anonymous doing a little bit of investigation. --Ed C.
__________________
![]() "No matter what you have done up to this moment, you get 24 brand-new hours to spend every single day." --Brian Tracy
AA gives us an opportunity to recreate ourselves, with God's help, one day at a time. --Rufus K. When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. --Franklin D. Roosevelt We stay sober and clean together - one day at a time! God says that each of us is worth loving. |
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#19 |
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Join Date: Aug 2013
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"Monopoly"
"We have no monopoly on God; we merely have an approach that worked with us." ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Working With Others, pg. 95~ Monopoly is best defined for this correspondence as: Exclusive possession or control. We have no exclusive possession or control over God, or at least the God each and every one of us understands. That is the beauty of what this program provides for the alcoholic. Your are not told you must believe in this God, or that God, only a God you understand. This is where it gets dicey for those who think religion is the only way for those that practice this program have to view a God. It is not so!!!! That is why the use of the words ?Higher Power? have made their way into more and more conversations about the entity named God in the text. It is in fear that a personal God might not be understood. It doesn't have to be! It's personal!!!! It is very true that the pioneers of this program of recovery used the God in the Christian Bible as the God they used in talking about a God that they understood, but were very careful not to say that a Christian God was the key to recovery. They emphasized the need to "soul search" as stated in "We Agnostics" page 55 "We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of our make up, just as much as the feeling we have for a friend. Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but He was there." That "some kind of God" makes it possible for anyone to heal spiritually. All they have to do is "search fearlessly" for Him. So for some of us the searching didn't go very far, but for the rest, we had to venture into a realm that virtually unknown to us. For some of us growing up in religion had left a bad taste in our mouths. We were told this and that about a God that we had to understand or not be relegated to the sanctity of the paradise He had waiting for us after this life. For others there was the idea that certain tragic events that had happened certainly proved that a loving God could not exist. And still for others they put self before everything else, including any God. Yet if we only put fear aside we found something that we could put our faith in. In the wisdom of the pioneers, they understood that just the slightest idea of a God (No matter what that idea might be), gave us enough strength to pull out of the insanity we knew as alcoholic thinking. In "There Is A Solution" page 28 it states - "What seemed at first a flimsy reed, has proved to be the loving and powerful hand of God. A new life has been given us or, if you prefer, "a design for living" that really works." and later on that same page: "We have no desire to convince anyone that there is only one way by which faith can be acquired. If what we have learned and felt and seen means anything at all, it means that all of us, whatever our race, creed, or color are the children of a living Creator with whom we may form a relationship upon simple and understandable terms as soon as we are willing and honest enough to try." It's up to each and every one of us to figure out what that relationship must be. It seems to me that this is possibly one of the biggest stepping stones in the recovery process. That is establishing a faith in some kind of God. If only one is to put aside the prejudice of others and themselves, and search deep with-in their soul, they will find that they do have an idea that will work. It is a very simple idea. One that has proven as an approach that has worked for millions and millions of people who have became and stayed sober. --Ed C.
__________________
![]() "No matter what you have done up to this moment, you get 24 brand-new hours to spend every single day." --Brian Tracy
AA gives us an opportunity to recreate ourselves, with God's help, one day at a time. --Rufus K. When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. --Franklin D. Roosevelt We stay sober and clean together - one day at a time! God says that each of us is worth loving. |
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#20 |
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Join Date: Aug 2013
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"Journey To The Center Of Your Mind"
"...the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind, rather than in his body." ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, There Is A Solution, Page 23~ There is a little bit of a discrepancy in the Big Book about this very subject. The above quote in "There Is A Solution" focuses on the main problem of the alcoholic, but it also states in "The Doctor's Opinion" page xxiv that "In this statement he confirms what we who have suffered alcoholic torture must believe that the body of the alcoholic is quite as abnormal as his mind. It did not satisfy us to be told that we could not control our drinking just because we were maladjusted to life, that we were in full flight from reality, or were outright mental defectives. These things were true to some extent, in fact, to a considerable extent with some of us. But we are sure that our bodies were sickened as well. In our belief, any picture of the alcoholic which leaves out this physical factor is incomplete." What we do not understanding is the mind problem comes way before the physical aspects of alcoholism. The main problem is the mind of the alcoholic!!! Of course to leave out the physical factor would make talking about alcoholism incomplete, but we seem to focus our attention on the physical factor and not the main problem. Let's face it we are messed up in the mind, and if we do not find a way around that problem we are condemned to a miserable existence. I don?t care if you drink, do drugs, have uncontrollable sex, gamble all of your money, or eat so much that you explode. If you quit those thing and still keep on using the same type of thinking you are not going to find the necessary peace in the soul that one needs to call themselves sober. We have all heard about the dry drunk! That is exactly what I am talking about here. Sure he quits drinking and possibly changes a few things about the way he thinks, but he sticks to the same old thought that some how he controls his destiny in life. He will keep on trying and trying to find happiness in the things that he does, but has no luck. Again, like the actor he tries to control the flow of life instead of going with it. It not only goes against the grain of reality, but pisses everyone off including himself. Yeah, if he quits drinking the bodily problem goes away, but it is that mind problem that keeps on getting him down. I studied the physical aspect of alcohol and drug addiction. It is very true that our bodies produce various chemicals that in effect make us feel certain things. Yet what we are not realizing is that to fire these chemicals off, it takes the brain to do it. Things like alcohol and drugs alter the brain into reacting a certain way, but what we are not realizing is our mind is what is firing off the signals for our bodies to produce those chemicals. That is why you can become addicted to about anything. If you make the brain produce these chemicals enough, the body tends to expect the feeling to happen all of the time. I hear people who really and truly believe that they have a problem with anxiety and depression. I am not saying that these ailments are not real, in fact they are very real to the people who feel them, but it is exactly what these people are feeding their mind that produces the effects of the ailment. Just a slight change in the way they are thinking can produce different results! In the Big Book it says the way around this problem of the mind is to have a complete psychic change. Again the "Doctor's Opinion" page xxvii, "After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery." This problem isn't specific to just those who drink, it covers a variety of people who cannot find any happiness in life. Happiness is not found in the bottom of a can or a glass bottle. Nor is it found by hoarding tons of money away. It isn't found in a prescription drug container, or in a plastic baggie. Those are all just ways we synthetically produce the feeling of pleasure. They all some way or another help us find a sure way sooner or later (most of the time sooner) to some type of despair. Happiness is found by experiencing life as it comes to you !!!! It is by letting a God of your understanding change the way that you think. If you keep on grasping on to the same old ideas happiness will never come. I like what a very good friend of mine says in meetings almost every time I see him. "Now that I no longer am trying to drive the bus, I am happier, longer, for longer periods of time." When I asked him what he meant by that, he stated "Ed, There are still times after all these years of sobriety that I still find myself trying to get back in that driver?s seat. It is when I do that the happiness goes away." We must let go and let God. If you refuse to do that the same old problems will still be there. It is really hard for someone to get depressed if they make the decision to notice the beauty that surrounds them. You can?t really feel anxious over watching the world work in all it's mysterious ways. It is only when we try to manipulate how those things work for us, that we find problems. Not only for ourselves, but for anyone or anything that comes in contact with that type of selfish behavior. It is the high expectations of the self that creates these problems of the mind, and the only way out of it is to change the way we are thinking!!!!! --Ed C.
__________________
![]() "No matter what you have done up to this moment, you get 24 brand-new hours to spend every single day." --Brian Tracy
AA gives us an opportunity to recreate ourselves, with God's help, one day at a time. --Rufus K. When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. --Franklin D. Roosevelt We stay sober and clean together - one day at a time! God says that each of us is worth loving. |
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#21 |
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"Seriously Alcoholic"
"If you are as seriously alcoholic as we were, we believe there is no middle-of-the-road solution. We were in a position where life was becoming impossible, and if we had passed into the region from which there is no return through human aid, we had but two alternatives: One was to go on to the bitter end, blotting out the consciousness of our intolerable situation as best we could; and the other, to accept spiritual help. This we did because we honestly wanted to, and were willing to make the effort." ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, We Agnostics, pg. 46~ Being seriously alcoholic is something that can only be classified by the person who suffers from it. For those who have classified themselves as serious alcoholics, there is no middle-of-the-road solution. What that means is we have no alternative other than continuing with the same old behavior and probably dying an alcoholic death, or we had to accept help from a source other than what human beings could provide. I have found it rather strange, but there are those who know this and want to get the help, but they will not accept that the problem is a problem of the spirit. They believe that if some how they can half heartedly do things such as admit their lives being unmanageable, and that alcohol is part of that problem, but they will not get any more honest than that. It?s pretty easy to understand what the people who wrote the Big Book meant when they said that those who are seriously alcoholic need spiritual help. The book is riddled with the word God, but some how there is a problem when it comes to accepting that they have to surrender themselves to that God to be relieved from the vicious loop of insanity. The people who have accepted this road to recovery have a message they carry to those people. If you want what we have and are willing to go to any lengths to get it, you are ready to take certain steps. These steps have to be done in complete and utter honesty, and one must be willing to make the effort to understand what those steps represent. It has been my experience that once we have given up and turned over our situation to a God of our understanding, that a certain peace settles in and the rest of the process becomes much easier after that. What is needed to come to this understanding is to realize how futile trying to hold onto our old ideals is. We think that it is possible to not drink and be sober. This is the first mistake that one makes when they walk into the rooms of A.A. and proclaim themselves to be alcoholic. As it is said in the Big Book that drinking is only a symptom over the over all problem. It is true that we need to stay away from the booze to think with a clear mind, but I contend that it goes a lot further than that. To be sober one has to feel the peace with-in themselves before the rest of the process will work. Another problem that I have seen is that there are those that believe they can achieve this inner peace through something other than a God of their understanding. Believe me when I say that understanding a God is the basis of the solution of recovery. I say call that God anything you want, but if you want to become sober you must be willing to turn your will and your life over to this entity for it to work!!! There are many people who claim that they have found ways to achieve this sobriety through other avenues other than the steps of A.A. If that is so, my hat is off to them. It is just when I look back at how I used to act, and the way I act now, that I understand that being willing and honest enough to accept spiritual help was the only way it could be for me. It has been that way for millions of other people who accepted this, and it will work for you if you are seriously alcoholic like we were?. --Ed C.
__________________
![]() "No matter what you have done up to this moment, you get 24 brand-new hours to spend every single day." --Brian Tracy
AA gives us an opportunity to recreate ourselves, with God's help, one day at a time. --Rufus K. When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. --Franklin D. Roosevelt We stay sober and clean together - one day at a time! God says that each of us is worth loving. |
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#22 |
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"Chip Of A Book"
"Our hope is that when this chip of a book is launched on the world tide of alcoholism, defeated drinkers will seize upon it, to follow its suggestions. Many, we are sure, will rise to their feet and march on. They will approach still other sick ones and fellowships of Alcoholics Anonymous may spring up in each city and hamlet, havens for those who must find a way out." ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, A Vision For You, Page 153~ Just think for a moment. The people who wrote the Big Book had visions for it to be a useful tool for other alcoholics to come. It was their hope that others like themselves would take the book and use the helpful information contained with-in it?s binders. They were confident that the book would be used by other defeated alcoholics and in turn that would spur them on to create a fellowship in which other alcoholics would be able to meet and be able to talk about their problems. To find a way out!!!! What vision these people had. Their dreams came true. We have Alcoholics Anonymous groups not only in every nook and cranny of America, but in all different countries of the world. The book even spurred on and helped other avenues of recovery for different types of obsessive behavior. This all started by the book the first few people decided to share with the rest of the world. Yet there is a problem I see with all of this glory. That problem is that we have a fellowship in which many people gather seeking a way out of their addiction, yet there are many who refuse to recognize where the suggested program lies. The suggested program of recovery is found with-in the pages of the "Chip Of A Book." Each week I share with you an insight of what I get out reading the contents of that book. It is my hopes and dreams that even if one of the words that I write can help someone, that my purpose for doing it will be fore filled. Maybe you could say that it is my hope that this chip of a column might be able to help others like myself in focusing their attention to where the answer lies. Is the suggested program of recovery for everyone? No!!! It certainly doesn't seem that way to me, but if someone seriously considers themselves an alcoholic, then it is a very good place to start. Yet it is very hard to point someone in the direction of something if they refuse to see it. You can ask about anyone that ever knew me previous to picking up the book and you will get the answer that there seemed to be absolutely no hope for me. I was in a hopeless state of mind. Not only was I hopelessly addicted to alcohol, but I used everything a person could imagine to get high. That and the fact that I was so selfish and self-centered that I used everyone and everything that I could to get that high. It certainly was a problem that seemed insurmountable. Yeah I went to A.A. meetings! I went in there with the idea that that I had all the answers and refused to listen to anyone. I looked up on the wall at the 12 steps and the 12 traditions and all I saw were words. I certainly had no place for God, so when I heard other people telling me that was where I needed to look, I just blew them off as someone who was too weak-willed and needed to use God as a crutch. That type of thinking got me pretty far, I was in the bar not more than 30 minutes after the meeting. This went on and on for years and finally the day came that I pushed the envelope just a little bit too far. In a drunken and doped up black out, I hopped in my truck and smashed into another car less than a block away from my house. Again! I was in jail, but this time it was a lot different. Something had come over me. I realized that life had become completely unmanageable. It was that day that I got down on my knees and prayed to the God that I had been doubting. I prayed for Him to help me get a grip on things! I went to rehab and it was there that I found out what the first three steps had to say. It was the first time in many years that I actually was willing to understand something. Sure I knew that my life was unmanageable and I was powerless over alcohol, but I also knew that I was powerless over a lot of things. I knew that if I were going to make anything out of being serious about becoming sober that I was going to need help. That was the day I went to the A.A. meeting (still in rehab) and stood up and asked for a sponsor. It was my fortune that the man who took my hand and said that he was willing to help was someone who understood the vision of the first few. He handed me a copy of Alcoholics Anonymous and said "Start at the beginning and read the first 164 pages, we will talk about it after you do that." So I did! Man did I have a million questions!!! Yet some how I related to this book. It was because I became willing to take on suggestions (such as reading the first 164 pages) that I caught on to what it was saying. From that day on I rose up to my feet and marched on, SOBER!!! --Ed C.
__________________
![]() "No matter what you have done up to this moment, you get 24 brand-new hours to spend every single day." --Brian Tracy
AA gives us an opportunity to recreate ourselves, with God's help, one day at a time. --Rufus K. When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. --Franklin D. Roosevelt We stay sober and clean together - one day at a time! God says that each of us is worth loving. |
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#23 |
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Join Date: Aug 2013
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Changes…..
“In the first few chapters a number of sudden revolutionary changes are described. Though it was not our intention to create such an impression, many alcoholics have nevertheless concluded that in order to recover they must acquire an immediate and overwhelming "God-consciousness" followed at once by a vast change in feeling and outlook”. “Alcoholics Anonymous” Fourth Edition “Spiritual Experience” pg. 569. Recent discussion on this very topic has spurred me on to write about it. It seems to me that there might just be a sense that the change that we are talking about has something to do with the way we once acted. These “sudden revolutionary changes” are just brought on by the want to change something in our life. It has been my experience that this can’t be further from the truth. Sure we have to want to change, but just wanting to change does absolutely nothing in changing what is going on. For years previous to me actually stopping the drink, I wanted to stop very badly at certain points in my life. It just didn’t happen. I was hopelessly addicted to what I was thinking and doing. Even though it seemed like I had a choice to not take a drink, or do a drug, the insane idea that I had to do it won out. It wasn’t until I became willing to try something absolutely different that change became possible. Up until the time of that change it seems to me that I had lost control over pretty much every aspect of managing my life. I certainly did not want to be thrown in jail every couple of weeks, I didn’t want to come home bloodied and bruised from fighting, and under no circumstances did I wish to shun all of the people who loved me, but I did! I kept on doing the same thing over and over again and expected something different to result from that. It didn’t! So I had to become willing to change! I had to be pointed in the direction of the truth and be willing to follow it. So the key to this change became willingness. Once I became willing to change it happened rapidly! I believe that if this immediate and overwhelming acquisition of “God Consciousness” did not happen for me that change would not have happened. Believe me there were plenty of people who tried showing me the way, but I didn’t want to listen. I guess what it took was a real sense of desperation before it became evident that change had to happen. Sure there had been plenty of opportunities for me to see with clarity, but it wasn’t until the day that I really hurt someone the thought of me having a real problem came to light. It was while kneeling down in the jail cell, asking a God in whom I had abandoned to help me stop the insanity, that I finally saw clearly what I had to do. So it took a moment of clarity to come to my senses. It was in that clarity that all the years of people trying to point me in the direction of the truth finally started to make sense. What was needed now was guidance. I prayed to God with regularity in trying to find the guidance I needed to make sense of all the information that started to pour into my mind. Luckily all it took was listening to others on what to do and finding someone in whom I could trust. All I can say is God provided me with the sense of trust that I needed in picking out the people to listen to. When I walked through the doors of A.A. and asked for a sponsor there was no hesitation on who it was going to be. A man stood up and told me to meet him after the meeting. I was lucky enough that this man in whom I immediately felt that I could trust, would hand me a copy of Alcoholics Anonymous. He knew that it contained to exact thing I needed in the sense of direction I needed to become and stay sober. It was! I don’t know of any other way to explain it other than as soon as I started reading the pages of the book, I knew that I was one of the people in whom the first one hundred were talking about. The book talked about willingness being the key to making the necessary psychic that was needed to start on the road to recovery. As soon as I started making the moves in working the steps, there was an immediate and overwhelming change in the way I was thinking. So as soon as I became willing to change the way I was thinking, the rest of the stuff followed. I did not have to change my actions, I had to change my mind! What did I have to change my mind about? The book suggested that I come to understand a God. In that understanding I had to give all of myself to Him and be willing to not try to outthink Him. Instead of believing that I had all of the answers I had to come to an understanding that I had a lot to learn. So in essence the idea was I had to stop with all of the material thinking and start to believe in the spiritual aspects of life. It was at that exact time that I not only saw, but felt a sudden revolutionary change in my life. What caused this change? GOD!!! (I now had Good Orderly Direction) Ed C.
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![]() "No matter what you have done up to this moment, you get 24 brand-new hours to spend every single day." --Brian Tracy
AA gives us an opportunity to recreate ourselves, with God's help, one day at a time. --Rufus K. When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. --Franklin D. Roosevelt We stay sober and clean together - one day at a time! God says that each of us is worth loving. |
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