Perhaps the best thing I’ve done for my recovery in a long time is to start to sponsor a practicing Buddhist. It has added a sense of urgency for me to revisit all that 2nd & 3rd step stuff that I’ve struggled with ever since my surgery.
You are currently browsing articles tagged 3rd Step.
My sobriety anniversary is very important to me and it’s coming up here soon, but it doesn’t quite move me the same way December 13th does. December 13th, today, happens also to be my birthday, but my God, I’m 44 years old. My “birthday” is not really a big deal anymore. No, the anniversary I celebrate tonight, the reason this day is important to me, is that on this night, three years ago, I suddenly saw myself clearly and suddenly had a little hope that recovery would be possible.
The first two years were easy. This last one has been a bitch. There have been times recently when I have wished that I had died back in May. It would have been so much easier. I’ve even, at times, tried to tell myself that if that illness had killed me that I would be a hero. I would have died sober. I would have died doing the things that I was supposed to be doing. My family and friends would mourn me, sure, but there would be something happy underneath the sorrow; the knowledge that they had known me and that in my last years I had been sober.
Lately things have been much, much harder. I’ve had to return to being medicated to stop the insanity that has been going through my mind. The medicines are working, so that is good, but I still have a ton of stuff to face.
Somehow, in spite of everything, I have remained sober. In fact I’ve been sober longer now than I have ever been since I was 14 years old and I attribute it to that moment at the corner of 6th and Pueblo, under the street lamp, in the snow, when I finally understood that the pain I was in then was the very best that I could hope for, unless I got sober, and when I suddenly believed that it would be possible.
” God, I offer myself to Thee to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love and Thy Way of Life. May I do Thy will always. Amen”
“Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.”
-Alcoholics Anonymous, page 58
Some of us have tried to hold on to them without even knowing that is what we’re doing, until it bites us.
I was thinking about my conversation with Chris Lawford a couple of years ago. The last question he asked was, “What does God look like?” He asked all of us the same set of questions and you can discern that from a close reading of the chapters in “Moments of Clarity”, and he has included the answers to that question from a few of the people he interviewed. I remember Susan Cheever’s being particularly moving, though at the moment I can’t remember what it was. Mine was not included, which killed me because I thought I had been so clever.
In the first place, I thought the question was kind of obtuse. How, really, can one know what God looks like? We can’t even agree on a definition of God, let alone agree on God’s existence, so how would I know what God looks like. And that is what I said. I said, “I don’t know, but when it is my time to go I hope He holds me in his arms and whispers something funny.”
It is a good thing it was not included, actually, because it is not even an original line. I stole it from William Finn; a line from the song “You’ve Got to Die Sometime” from Falsettoland. (None of my material is original. Go ahead and check. That’s not entirely true. I did coin the term Googlyize, meaning to glue googly eyes on to something, but I digress.)
The thing is, at that time and though I wasn’t even conscious of it, I was still in the grips of an old idea about what God is, and though intellectually I professed something more abstract, my spiritual experience in the early parts of my recovery had never been inconsistent with the ideas of God which I had been given as a child. I was taught to believe in God at approximately the same time I was taught about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, and he was given a personality and a face, the same way those other fairy tales had. (When my parents told me the truth about the Easter Bunny I proudly walked into class the following Monday and announced to everyone that, “My daddy is the Easter Bunny!”)
I guess this incredibly painful four month experience in letting go of that old idea, and the amazing relief I have at the moment having come through that and feeling again a spiritual wholeness, has me curious about what other old ideas I may be hanging on to that are standing in the way of my growth.
I suspect they will make themselves known when the time is right.
I don’t normally duplicate work I produce elsewhere, but there are only so many ways you can say the same thing. In this case, it’s something I need to say in every channel I write in.
Just like with drugs and alcohol, it seems to be a natural part of my character that until I have exhausted every other possible means of doing something, tried out every tiny, mad idea about how I can manage on my own power to get my life to work out the way I want it to, entertained every lurking notion my ego can generate, and laid waste to every reservation disguised by unwillingness, I am incapable of surrendering that part of my life to the Higher Power and the principles that got me sober. I simply do not surrender unless I have failed in every possible way I can think of. Read the rest of this entry »
I wrote a post over at the Second Road the other day about the hurdles we face in finding the Higher Power of 12 step programs. The idea for the post came from a conversation I had with a friend a few nights ago wherein he told me that the only ‘God’ he was willing to believe in, when he got to AA, was what he called “The God of Unintended Consequences”. The conversation was interesting enough to me that I immediately started researching the 2nd step observations of the early AAs and the neurobiology of belief.
I garnered some great knowledge in this, and I gained some really useful clarity about the roles of honesty, open mindedness, and willingness in having an effective spiritual experience. I understood, as I never had before, why it had been so important for me to cling to the alternate names of God we use; Higher Power, Creator, and Spirit of the Universe. Read the rest of this entry »
Tommy: Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Saviour?
Hedwig: No, but I… I love his work.
John Cameron Mitchell, Hedwig and the Angry Inch
I don’t want to make this about religion because it isn’t about religion. It’s about the same thing everything else here is about. Me. It’s what it was like, what happened (and what’s happening), and what it’s like now. For me. It is my experience, my strength and my hope. It is also a place where I can sit down, slow down, cool down and give the loving Creator of my own understanding room to go to work. It is part inventory, part meditation, all reaching out.
My story is not unique by any stretch. Young men from my home town have gone down similar, almost identical paths. I don’t know all the specifics of Troy’s story but I know he grew up in a similar environment, one fought with pressure to conform to the dominant culture. I can only hope that there was more tollerance in 2006 than in the 70′s and 80′s, when I was his age. In my own case, by the time I was 14 years old I had developed a concrete intellectual bias against every system of thinking which claimed to be the only truth. I carried that bias into every part of my life, judging things which I had never examined.
In my own experience, gaining hope in the second step that a “Power greater than myself” could restore me to sanity, and then gaining enough faith to turn my will and life over to the care of that power, as I understood it, was only possible because the message was delivered to me in a way that I could hear. The men who guided me left the specifics of their own conception of a Higher Power at the door, and instead shared what happened that made them willing to seek that relationship and what that relationship had done for them. At no point did they ever tell me that they had the one truth. They carried the message by strictly adhering to the instructions on page 93 of the book Alcoholics Anonymous which says, among other things, that I could choose any conception of a Higher Power I liked, as long as it made sense to me, and that there was no use arousing any prejudice I may have against theological terms. I was willing to believe in something, so long as you didn’t tell me what to believe.
The meetings I attend most regularly have now been completely invaded by a group of not very Christlike Jesus people who call on themselves to share at meeting level to watch out in the rooms of AA. “There are forces of darkness in these rooms that are marking Christians and taking them out of here.” If you point out to them that there is a way we do things in AA and a reason that we do it they just say, “Then we’ll disagree.” If you call attention to the fact that when they share the way they share, that newcomers and young people get up and leave the meeting, visibly upset; that the way they are sharing does not help to carry the message, they say that they are merely sharing the truth as they understand it.
The program, however, has nothing to do with looking at them, with judging them, and everything to do with looking at me. What part of me is so prideful that I need to be ‘right’ on this point? What within me makes me refuse to accept these people as they are? What is the origin of the blind spot in my faith that makes me think that as a group, the 2nd Tradition won’t see us through this or that the people being driven from the rooms won’t find their way back when the time is right? What am I so afraid of that I cannot seem to find it within myself to treat these people with the same pity, patience and tolerance with which I treat people who can’t stay sober or people to only identify as addicts or people who talk about taking steps they have never taken. Why do I only see that they are not helping the program rather than seeing that the program could help them?
In my 5th step my sponsor pointed out that he though I had a lot more work to do in the area of God and religion. I actually blew him off. “No. Really. I’m so completely OK with all that,” I told him.
No. Really I’m not.
“School and work are fine – and that is what we do between meetings”
Karl M., Covina, CA
“Why do we have to listen to the same people tell the same stories at every meeting?” Norman leaned over and asked me that at a meeting last night. He’s right, of course. We hear the same people share the same stories day after day after day. Particularly in a small city like mine where the fixtures at the meeting don’t really change. It is actually one of the things I like best about blogging. It gives me the opportunity to take a look at today and apply the lens of the solution offered in 12 step programs. It helps me see the present more clearly. It gives me new stories; new experience, new strength and new hope. It gives me a constant source of new stuff to share at meetings; stuff that is already developed and grounded in the solution. Sometimes, but not very often, it works the other way around; I find information about what I’m living by listening in meetings.
The collective experience, strength and hope shared by sober members of 12 step recovery is much bigger than I can avail myself of in local meetings, though, and my own answer to the problem at the root of Norman’s question has led me not only to the blogs my colleagues write, but to podcasts of AA speaker tapes. (You’ll find a link on the sidebar, or you can search for “AA speaker tapes” in the search field of iTunes.” I load my iPod up with these. At some point every day I’m listening to the experience, strength and hope of other people on this path; other people that I am unlikely to ever meet or hear otherwise.
The problem and the solution are the same, of course, so I’m probably simply hearing new information because the voice is different, and that is a great thing. Everything that I can add to my recovery is a great thing, and I’m grateful today to have been shown an answer to a couple of my questions about my recovery by Karl M. of Covina, CA in a speech he gave at the Denali Workshop. I’ve listened to that podcast three times in succession now.
I’ve decided I am absolutely returning to school and that I’m returning to learn a trade, rather than a profession. I just don’t think I have it in me at the moment to remain in a job that takes up all the psychic and emotional energy I have that I would rather commit to recovery. I need to double my income fast and I need it to leave my mind and spirit free to give to AA. Karl talks about how grateful he was that he visited AA before he visited the counselor at the school he was going to attend. “School and work are fine, but we live in Alcoholics Anonymous and we visit the world. We don’t live in the world and visit AA.” I felt that. I suspected that. But I didn’t have an adequate way of stating that so clearly and I didn’t have any validation of that in the recovery community around me, at least not so that I could understand.
The other thing I gleaned form this particular tape was the answer to a question that I didn’t even know I had. How do you know that you’ve given your will and your life over to the care of God. I’m not going to repeat the explanation Karl gave. You can learn that well enough on your own, and I would encourage you to, but the answer is absolutely yes. I have definitely turned my will and my life over to the care of God. That answer struck me to my core and validated everything that I am doing today for my recovery. Like finding a landmark on a seldom traveled path at the point you’re sure you’re lost, this bit of information, delivered clearly and specifically and in a way that I could understand, has given me a much needed dose of faith and hope.
It’s fantastic to be sober. It’s fantastic to have been given a life and a purpose, and it’s fantastic to be able to share it.
“Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure; having this seal,
The Lord knoweth them that are his.”
Timothy 2;19
If the meeting I was at last night was the first AA meeting I had ever been to, I am quite sure I would have ran out the back door and never returned. Perhaps I should lower my expectations since I live deep in the heart of Jesusland. It is one of the essential parts of any real 12 step program that we don’t shove some particular idea of “Higher Power” down the throats of newcomers. It is absolutely essential that we guide them toward a personal relationship with that power by taking a path that begins right where they are.
That’s why, well that along with the fact that I am a contrary, sarcastic, vicious, deeply egotistical mo-fo, when I hear people in meetings talk about the only real Higher Power being Jesus Christ, it is almost all I can do not to start talking about, “My Higher Power, whom I choose to call Lucifer,.” I’m afraid I’m not really that much better than I was when I was actively using. Some defects are only slightly diminished.
Here’s the thing. If you’re a Christian you know that the crime of heresy Jesus was executed for was the heresy of teaching that one’s relationship with God is personal. It didn’t require High Priests. Nobody needed to stand between you and God. So if you’re a Christian and you attend 12 step meetings, for God’s sake (seriously) leave Jesus at the door. He doesn’t mind.
I may end up being a Christian yet, but I’m pretty turned off by it every time someone brings up His name in an AA meeting, particularly when it comes with a warning about how other people in the room are selling false prophets. I got sober and I got sober without Jesus, thank you very much. I got sober believing that Jesus didn’t die for my sins but so that Mel Gibson could become a billionaire. I’ve been sober a few months and never even had the compulsion to place a name on God or feel like I needed an agent or broker to reach Him.
When I was new my prejudice was so powerful that if anyone had told me that I had to accept Jesus as my Lord and Saviour in order to get sober I would simply have said thank you, I’d rather be high. Ciao. Remember, that in AA, God expresses Himself in our group conscience, and for over 70 years that expression has told us that it is a God of our own understanding. So to all the freaks in Jesusland, Jesus says shut the fuck up. You’re killing alcoholics.
sober count
Linked In
Recent Comments