style="font-size:15px;"> the result was nil until we let go absolutely."– Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 58
Old-timers sometimes say, "Staying sober is simple: Don't drink and change your whole life." The willingness to let go of old ways of thinking and behaving seems to be what emotional sobriety is all about. Once sober, we begin to let go of resentments and fears, self-pity and anger. We try to replace regrets about the past and worries about the future with faith in AA and AA's Twelve Steps and a power greater than ourselves. We used to see problems as insurmountable; now we take responsibility for finding solutions. And we find that, slowly, we can claim moments of real peace — "a quiet place in bright sunshine," as Bill W. puts it in the essay that gave the impetus to this book. For alcoholics, this is a true spiritual awakening.
Growth
June 1976
A NEW THOUGHT has been forming in my mind (now that the AA program has put it in working order). I believe that an element most important in building our sober lives is what is left out.
Several months ago, my husband and I enrolled in a beginners' art course. We didn't become great painters, but both of us now see things, such as leaves and blades of grass and shadings of color, that we weren't aware of before. One day, the instructor showed us a Picasso drawing of the artist's daughter. It pictured her in profile, and it consisted of only three lines. What was left out dramatized what was there. We learned also that in shading a tree, what is left out is as important as the pencil lines, for the blanks create sunlight on the leaves.
It seems to me that I achieve growth by leaving things out — when I don't say the cross word, when I don't answer sarcastically. If I can delay only one second, maybe two, I have time to ask myself, "Do I really want to say that?"
When I wrote down my list of people to make amends to, it was made up mostly of family. I wasn't just thinking of the things I had done. I also remembered the many things I should have, would have, might have done had I not been drinking! The things I had left out ranged from the nice bouquets I could have given, and didn't, all the way to downright neglect.
I used to tell all! To anybody who would listen! And things were going to be my way, too. "Self-will run riot!" Now it's becoming easier to spot ego, and I work at getting the big Me out of the way.
I have discovered a new way to learn — by shutting my mouth and listening. Again, it's not so much what I'm doing as what I'm not doing. I'm not talking. So I'm open; I'm teachable.
I used to like to direct my children's affairs, offering advice when it wasn't wanted and commanding activities and behavior. I'm more secure now. I've thrown out my director's chair. Now, when I see one of my children heading on a certain course and I question the outcome, I keep my mouth shut and practice the Third Step. Whenever there's a problem and I'm involved, I look to see what part of the problem I am causing (as one of my sponsors advised). I'm usually about eighty percent of the problem — well, maybe sixty percent, but the major part, you can bet on that. If I leave out the largest percent (me), there is hardly any problem at all!
I'm becoming so secure in AA, I've even discarded the cute, funny, phony me my civilian friends used to know. I don't have to dance with a rose in my teeth; I can just dance. And I don't have to be the only girl at the picnic who can swing Tarzan-style from a rope into the river. I can swim calmly, like the forty-year-old mother of four I am.
I don't have to show off long legs in a miniskirt anymore. I can just sit on them and be happy. And I can say no to a lot of things I'm not interested in. All the people-pleasing activities I used to engage in, I can cut out now. That gives me time to do the truly helpful, gut-warming little things, just because they need doing and I truly care. I have time to work my program.
I can sit quietly and really listen to people trying to communicate with me. My mind is no longer racing to find just the perfect quip to say or story to top theirs.
The eternal internal war I can do without, too. The fighting inside me is over, and am I glad!
And the most important item of all to leave out is the old, familiar foe, alcohol. Without it, life is just plain wonderful!
Tricia J.
Houston, Texas
In All Our Affairs
July 1956
WORDS HAVE A WAY of taking on an entirely new significance when we enter into the new world opened up to us by AA sobriety. We all know how the first apparent clichés of our simple formulas change and become a vital part of our daily life. We discover after a time, for example, that we never really had an inkling of how practically useful "think" is until we accept how very long it has been since we really understood it. "Humility" came, with a bit more sobriety, to take its place as a lovely, living word, a quality of acceptance of our limitations, most devoutly to be searched for; the most desirable member of our family of words — humility.
"Gratitude," that much abused sister, also altered her face and was transformed into a joyful appreciation of our miraculous recovery. We grew to know that without daily gratitude our personal miracle would lose its lustre, and in time it could cover our shiny new world with a-dull-for-granted-taking that would lead us inevitably away from the fellowship and equally inevitably to our most welcoming enemy. We might drink if we became careless with our "gratitude."
"Pride" by a peculiar shift in syntax became the most active and omnipotent devil of a word, perhaps the most dangerous of all, and yet, while unresolved pride can lead us quickly to the bottle, we are tremendously proud that we are a part of AA.
"Honesty — " I heard an AA friend say at a meeting that he had heard a dictionary definition of honesty given by a rural postman at a country meeting in the middle-west. This old boy was sick of hearing this sensible word kicked around so he had gone to the County Court House and looked it up in "that big old dictionary there." It was good enough for him, it's good in any man's life. "Honesty — is the absence of the intent to deceive." Only what does "intent" mean?
Now I find that with all my new-found confidence in the validity and importance of semantics, I have been retarded and stifled by periodic waves of doubt and despair because of my blindness concerning the meaning of the key word to our entire program.
It occurs with perfect rightness in the Twelfth Step: "awakening."
Some hidden closet in my mind had failed to open. To me spiritual awakening meant an absolute conviction of and close relationship to a God everyone seemed to understand but me. I felt, in this untidy recess of my brain, that, without this revelation of spiritual grace, I couldn't begin to "carry the message" adequately and, of even greater importance, I was continually unsuccessful in handling "all my affairs."
I finally looked up the definition of awakening. It means to quicken, to stir, to wake up. It doesn't say anything about a great white light or an aura of divinity, in my dictionary.
Well, now I know without any more fuss or feathers, that I, like every other member of AA, have had a very tangible spiritual awakening. My belief in a Higher Power is as strong as it was when I went to my first AA meeting and accepted the first and second steps as simply and trustfully as a child accepts its mother's milk. And certainly AA with its never ending procession of miracles, has deepened and made tangible the evidence of the workings of that Higher Power. So what on earth was I looking for? I just don't know. I guess I wanted a little Tinker Bell all my own to show me the right and only way out of every situation.
In my peculiarly alcoholic way
