href="#ulink_f4a6b08e-13d9-58d0-bdbe-cd2a7cd59ee8">How I Found Alcoholics Anonymous In Perambur December 2002
The Transformation October 2004
An HP for the Present July 2007
Spiritual Breakthrough December 1961
I Can't Fly that Kite Today April 2002
Spiritual Honesty December 2007
Sk8ing Through Life September 2005
The Sanest I've Ever Been July 2008
A Program of Action March 1989
If You Don't Like It, You Can Love It! July 1963
Welcome
As usual, our AA co-founder Bill W. did not mince words when writing about the subject of this book. With his own white light experience one of the classics of written history, he referred to a spiritual awakening as “the greatest gift that can come to anybody,” but he also made it clear that a spiritual awakening is not just a lovely possibility, not merely an option. In the December 1957 issue of AA Grapevine he put it this way:
“We must awake or we die.”
“So we do awake, and we are sober. Then what? Is sobriety all that we are to expect of a spiritual awakening? Again, the voice of AA speaks up. No, sobriety is only a bare beginning, it is only the first gift of the first awakening ... a new life of endless possibilities can be lived if we are willing to continue our awakening.”
It is commonly acknowledged that we drank in a futile search for spirit, so it’s no surprise that alcohol also goes by the name of “spirits,” with some package stores even named “spirit shops.” But alcohol took away our spirits, and it’s only when we find the real thing through the liberating program of Alcoholics Anonymous that we realize we have come home.
Let one of the writers in this book describe what that feels like:
“You, too, can live—really live. There will be love and laughter and a delicious sense of well-being down deep inside if you will abandon yourself to the business of recovery—not just recovery from the disease of active alcoholism, but deeper than that, recovery from a former self. Such thorough recovery can be realized, I believe, only through the fearless application of spiritual principles to our daily lives.”
Written by men and women made new in spirit, these are stories that will light our way home.
SECTION ONE
A Daily Reprieve
Alcoholics may be granted, as we are told in our literature, not a cure, but a temporary reprieve, contingent on our spiritual condition.
Funny about that word “reprieve.” Official definitions range from an offhand “to give relief for a time” to the more chilling “a temporary suspension of the execution of a sentence, esp. of death.”
A death sentence. This is always a shock to read, yet all of us who have suffered, who have seen others die at the hands of our rapacious creditor, know how dangerous it is to shrink from that reality—our reality. We are spared daily, however, given twenty-four hours worth of grace, most often by doing a few significant things and joining others at our simple gatherings.
These are stories of power only gained by acknowledging our powerlessness. “I felt myself move with a new power, courage, and faith that, by the grace of God, I have acquired as a result of working the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous,” says one alcoholic, as she finds the courage to make financial amends to the government. Here’s a man on the run, twelfth-stepped by a cab driver, another who found his wife in AA on Thanksgiving, another who only started drinking when he lost his wife, and a woman who drank to celebrate her decision to go with “AA all the way!”
Here’s an inmate who woke up from drinking shaving lotion to cry, “Lord God, if you are there, take this life of mine and run it.” Here’s a woman who, after twelve years of sobriety, is still looking outside of herself for a reward. “Meditation has become a daily gift of self-love,” a former inmate reports. And more than one of us has found great cyber-fellowship: “The greetings and cheerfulness on the screen made me feel safe,” one young girl says.
Enjoy these stories of spiritual reprieve, as varied, colorful—and powerful—as what takes place in our precious “rooms of AA.”
Life and Taxes
June 2005
Last November, I began working the Steps in order to take responsibility for my past—and especially to make amends to the Internal Revenue Service for twenty-three years of failing to file income tax returns. Yesterday, I signed, sealed, and mailed the final four years of my taxes. I went to my accountant, with a conscious contact of my Higher Power, ready to take whatever was coming to me. I felt myself move with a new power, courage, and faith that, by the grace of God, I have acquired as a result of working the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.
The attorneys tell me that I am open to possible criminal charges. The accountants tell me that the government may say I owe up to thirty thousand dollars more in back taxes. And yet, at this moment, I am at ease. There are no fears or anxieties, no doubts or insecurities, and no trepidation about what might happen in the future.
Furthermore, I'm not judging myself for being irresponsible. I am simply doing this with an attitude of self-compassion, kind of what I imagine a loving parent would feel toward a child who just wasn't able to do any better at the time. It's a big step for a fellow who had lost all faith in God and his life.
The malignant doubt that had poisoned my life for forty-two years (including ten years of sobriety) is gone, thanks to God and the AA program. I am incredibly happy and joyous, and free of the restless, irritable, and discontented life I used to know. I only want to do God's will to the best of my ability. And each day, my life just gets better and better.
J.B.
Connecticut
