Icy intellectual mountains

[nandm]

That statement hit me hard. It melted the icy intellectual mountain in whose shadow I had lived and shivered many years. I stood in the sunlight at last.
(Alcoholics Anonymous 12:11-13)

The melting of our own "icy intellectual mountains" allows us to move away from an intellectual conception of our Higher Power to direct conscious contact with this Power. The authors are not asking "blind faith" of us. They are not saying "believe this and you will be all right.' They are merely asking us to try this new way of living, which begins with a willingness to look in a spiritual direction and see for ourselves if it works or not.

An intellectual understanding of spiritual matters does not equal the vital spiritual experience we require to overcome alcoholism. Our very best thinking got us where we are now. We seek direct personal experience with our Higher Power through working the twelve steps.

[gravity]

I pray and I am stronger.
I think of loved ones that have passed away and I am stronger.
I think of my kids and I am stronger.

I have accomplished many things that I thought were impossible by doing this.

Before I started doing the 12 steps, I never really acknowledged this as a higher power but it was always there. I used to think that I was overcoming obstacles on my own. I used to try to rationalize religion & the existence of God but never came to any real conclusion. Now, I realize that my higher power was with me all along and instead of taking it for granted or ignoring it, I embrace it.

[barb dwyer]

I've watched a large number of people 'intellectualize' the program,
and the steps ... without actually DOING them.

all but less than a handful ...
go back out.

[CarolD]

It was a surprise to me when I found my childhood sunday School
God of love and forgiveness alive and present in the rooms of AA.

The Steps led me back to The Golden Rule.

Recovery continues to be an unbroken circle of faith for me.

[miss communicat]

for a few years, the intellectual genius that I am (joking) required that I attend Freethinkers AA so that I could sit around with other intellectual alcoholics and dissect the Higher Power concept to pieces.

What I soon learned, and this is just for me personally, is that I was no happier, that I was driven more by intellectual insecurity than I was by intelligence, and that the spiritaul life is not a theory.It must be lived and experienced directly in order for it to be real.

Today, I am at peace with acceptance of sunlight into my spirit. Don't need to know much more than that.

Thanks for this topic.