DayTrader

Heard this on a AA convention recording (downloaded from XA - "The Usual Suspects - Sandy B and Jerry J).... and thought it might be worth posting.

It came during a Q&A with Sandy B. from Tampa

The question: If God can relieve us from this fatal disease of alcoholism, why doesn't he relieve others suffering from the same disease or from other maladies?

Sandy's answer: God relieves us of our fatal disease BECAUSE we become entirely willing to HAVE God remove the problem. It doesn't get removed UNTIL we do that. So, unless someone is SEEKING a spiritual experience, it can't get in (God can't come inside in order for the relief to happen).

* Being a pretty big fan of Emmet Fox, this would parallel what Mr Fox commonly writes about.

I'm not saying his answer is the only right one but ....anyway, I thought it was a good answer and it got me thinking - especially about what areas in my life there might be where I've refused to let God in and am trying to manage on my own.

Boleo

I don't know who said it first;

"God is such a gentleman, he will not go where he is not invited".

Music

God is the ultimate creator. I believe God could if He willed it, cure all maladies and all forms of disease however, there are checks and balances in all of nature. If people didn't get sick and die there would be more people than could be supported. If there weren't wars, there would be the same result. In some instances such as alcoholism, God has given some of us the desire and ability to be relieved of the disease, or dis-ease whichever way you want to look at it. People who don't avail themselves of the opportunity to get well, do so because they're happy where they are. And finally, if God wanted to remove all things dangerous to humans, how would He do it without being detected? In that case, what would be the need for faith? I don't believe God created diseases. Humans create some diseases through our actions and other diseases are natural occurrances. I guess it could be said that God allows diseases to exist because He's a loving God and rather than see us kill each other for the sake of a meal, he allow nature to take it's course.

Ananda

The question in the big book is "god could and would if he were sought" or i guess it's a statement.

I question this....and I find it arragant of those who have recovered to assume those who have not simply didn't seek hard enough....if it works for you great...It is sorta like saying you recovered from cancer cause you believed and god cured you....it indicates those who don't recover...they just didn't believe good enough or hard enough.

If that's what you believe fine....but for myself, I cannot go there, never have gone there and never will....2 months sober or 7 years sober...or one day....I absolutely object to blaming the diseased person for their inability to get well. It may make some feel safer, but it's a total cop out to the very spirituality expressed in the 12 steps to say it was the human power, belief, willingness or honesty that kept them from sobriety....

Is your quality of willingness, open mindedness and honesty soooo darn high you can really look down (sure with "compassion") upon your fellow man?

I believe in AA and the 12 steps...but sometimes...I believe it gets distorted.

tsmba

Who knows why anyone cannot recover? In my mind, people often fail to "get" the program due to many reasons: picking and choosing what they are willing to do, over-complicating things, or often they simply quit too soon. I did all of these things at one time or another, which is why I've had periods of sobriety ranging from 6-15 years with a few relapses. What happened? I got busy and complacent, slacked off doing what worked, found I did well for years at a time which I took to mean that I was OK. I can only stay sober a day at a time, but I hope to maintain that sobriety for many years. The only way I know to do that is to be vigilant about following the program!

skg

It is. And it's your conception of God--a God of your understanding. Call it Frank if you want.
I find it arrogant for anyone to presume to know what I think. ~wink~
Not at all. The people that I know in recovery who have long-term sobriety know they have a lethal disease that is in arrest, and that there is no cure; only a daily reprieve contingent on their spiritual condition.
Well, if you've never gone there, how do you know? Seems like you'd at least taste something before rejecting it and run around telling the restaurant patrons the food sucks. If, however, that's your position, then let everyone else eat in peace, and just take water. Or try another restaurant.
No AA meeting that I have ever been to blames the sick person. The sick person may be asked to leave if their disruptive, however, or acting out. In that case, one or more men (or women) will accompany them out and encourage them to settle down and come back. It's not uncommon.
It's understandable for someone to get angry and lash out at their own fears. I did it myself, I see it everyday, and I work with sponsees who do it.
Terminal uniqueness is deadly. "A.A.'s Twelve Steps are a group of principles, spiritual in their nature, which, if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole." (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Foreword)
I could ask you the same question. There's a quote that I used to hear all the time: "Methinks thou dost protest too loudly." Open-mindedness doesn't mean bashing someone else's perceptions. It means accepting that they believe what they believe--and being secure enough in my own spiritual path not to judge them.

shaun00

I have no idea why some continue to suffer....I guess, only he whom produces the miracle has the answer.

Reflecting on my own experience.....whom continued to suffer for a couple of years i guess.

Part of me still thinks my immersion in wishy washy AA.....Was part of it..
part of me disregards that......asking myself ...did i look hard enough.?
Did i have enough desperation to look and listen .....mmm..maybe not.

For me.......there was a tiny little dark corner of my mind that continued to believe......its a game of moral strength and shear guts.
While i had that resistance in me...the game continued.

Only a total collapse of that resistance....and enough desperation.......brought about the open mind and honesty i needed to see a ***** of the truth.......

purely me own experience.

Zencat

Its a good question, it suppose that God can be selective. With this supposition God has the choice to be forgiving or punishing. This is a religious truth of age old dimensions. To seek Gods favor, well it has been written that one pleases God. With all the usual perquisite stuff, for the ancients, some bowing and scraping stuff is needed. But to carry on.

Equally important is what displeases God.The general ramble is don't follow Gods instructions of his favor and be fowled. This will, as it is shown through biblical text will pišš the hell out of God. thus incurring his wrath.

Now the basics of what would be considered a relatively honest betrayal of God as worshiped by some 2.5 or greater billion people of this world has been somewhat established through my mind. I get to the meat of the subject.

God...if satisfied, with the predetermined scheduled laid out course of worship (action) will be reward [the worshiper (anybody)] a predetermined (by God) recompense...continued soberity.

Those that do not follow God's guided directions shall be cast back or continue to languish in [ungodly] sufferance.

This is all no dub religious jazz. I've practiced and studied religious texts...long time...as Jebus loves me long time. There are set standards paralleling Biblical text that overlooked befuddle and distort in-depth truisms.

I feel it is to anybody determent to not have some relationship understanding as from the roots of the BB and its Christan offshoot. This lack of acknowledge sets the wishy washy stage of interpretation without history. As it is known, what one fails to acknowledge, interpretation with personal flavor colors everything...psychedelically.

yeahgr8

This is pretty simple for me...

I had to be a place of hopelessness and desperation to even entertain getting help from someone other than myself and to trust another persons "suggestions" over my own...

I also had to be at a point where i didn't care if i lived or died to be able to hand over my life and will to someone else...

Before that no amount of "belief", "willingness", "honesty" etc would have made any difference for long...i put the words in quotes because they didn't have any real meaning for me until i recovered...

It's nothing to do with God being selective either...God loves us all whether murderer, alcoholic, doctor, housewife etc the only we have to do is "let him in":-)

Music

"Rarely have we seen a person fail who has 'thoroughly' followed our path". Some choose not to follow "our path". Some choose to cut corners. Some think they can figure out what to do on their own. "God could and would if He were sought." Some folks choose to not seek. The Big Book also suggests that there are those who cannot but also adds will not. Some are mentally sick and are incapable. I've never met one of those at least that I was aware of. Most people just won't give up. They think there's an "easier, softer way." They die seeking the easier, softer way because they're too stubborn to turn their will and their life over to the care of a higher power of their understanding.

I believe the worst thing one drunk can do to another drunk is to not be honest with him. I also believe I can litteraly love someone to death. By that I mean, I hold back telling them the truth because of what I think is love and kindness. In actuality, I end up killing them with kindness.

Boleo

What you just described is "spiritual pride". Yes I suffer from it. Anyone who has spent as much time and effort trying to "understand" God probably suffers from it as well (perhaps yourself).

In my case, I struggled for nearly 3 years trying to achieve sobriety. It was only when I detached from the outcome that the miracle finally appeared.
God confounds the wise man (so it is said). What confounded me was the fact that I had too much knowledge and not enough blind faith. Here is what Kabbalha says about this matter:


"Awakenings are as big a problem as descents because of the satisfaction. And the problem that can occur within us as we progress—to be satisfied at a certain level and remain still in that satisfaction—and to lose a connection with the Creator and believe that, “well now that I’ve had some kind of ascent, my intellect is full,” because when a person studies Kabbalah, they become a lot smarter. You begin to see how systems work. You incorporate the intelligence of the whole system in you because you agree with it basically. But that doesn’t give you any advantage over anybody else. You cannot progress in the Kabbalistic work or in the work towards spirituality with any special talent. No special talent is required. The simplest man with the proper attitude can reach the highest levels. The idea that now one understands something as a result of awakening is to “worship other gods,” it’s to believe in another force other than the Creator. Anytime there is awakening, it is not because you did something; it’s because there was an action by the Creator, the right hand of the Creator, drawing a person forward. (But this means that the matter of finding favor in the eyes of the Lord, or the opposite, does not depend on man himself, but everything depends on God. And man, with his external mind, cannot comprehend why now the Lord likes him and after that He does not.) That is actually the problem because our perception of good and bad, and the reasons for things, according to our will to receive, which really constitutes our mind, hides from us the real meaning behind an action, that is, the Thought and the Love of the Creator and the giving of that action through both the left and the right hand in which He pushes away and draws us close, and uses this whole system of hiddenness. What is hidden from us is the benevolence, the contact with the benevolence. It’s the degree to which we perceive the goodness that really constitutes our connection with the Creator. This is what is called “revelation.” The revelation is only to reveal the quality of the Creator, which is unconditional love. And likewise when he regrets that the Creator does not draw him near, he should also be careful not to be sorry for himself, for having been distanced from the Creator, for by so doing he becomes a recipient for his own benefit, and he who receives is separated from the Creator.
"

(from There Is None Else Beside Him)

onlythetruth

But that is not an answer. A person with cancer will not be cured because he "becomes entirely willing to have God remove the problem".

I am quite sure, for myself only of course, that the bottom line is that God is not the change agent in sobriety: the individual is, because the individual becomes willing to change his or her behavior. Each of us who recovers does so because a simple, although admittedly elusive, truth becomes evident to us: that the pain of continuing to drink is greater than the pain of quitting. That is the psychic change, the change that makes it all possible.

Giving the credit to God only muddies the waters. The power to recover is in each of us.

OTT

tsmba

When most of us speak of God, it is our label for "a power greater than ourselves (HP)". Finding HP is an act of faith, as opposed to figuring out something. Many of us spent years trying to recover ourselves, and failed miserably. IME, the harder I try to figure this out, the further away I get!

DayTrader

You realize this thread was posted in a 12 Step recovery section of the forum, right?

tmbg

I wanted to make that in bigger print because it's awesome--literally! So it's downthread

tmbg

"Awakenings are as big a problem as descents because of the satisfaction. And the problem that can occur within us as we progress—to be satisfied at a certain level and remain still in that satisfaction—and to lose a connection with the Creator and believe that, “well now that I’ve had some kind of ascent, my intellect is full,” because when a person studies Kabbalah, they become a lot smarter. You begin to see how systems work. You incorporate the intelligence of the whole system in you because you agree with it basically. But that doesn’t give you any advantage over anybody else. You cannot progress in the Kabbalistic work or in the work towards spirituality with any special talent. No special talent is required. The simplest man with the proper attitude can reach the highest levels. The idea that now one understands something as a result of awakening is to “worship other gods,” it’s to believe in another force other than the Creator. Anytime there is awakening, it is not because you did something; it’s because there was an action by the Creator, the right hand of the Creator, drawing a person forward. (But this means that the matter of finding favor in the eyes of the Lord, or the opposite, does not depend on man himself, but everything depends on God. And man, with his external mind, cannot comprehend why now the Lord likes him and after that He does not.) That is actually the problem because our perception of good and bad, and the reasons for things, according to our will to receive, which really constitutes our mind, hides from us the real meaning behind an action, that is, the Thought and the Love of the Creator and the giving of that action through both the left and the right hand in which He pushes away and draws us close, and uses this whole system of hiddenness. What is hidden from us is the benevolence, the contact with the benevolence. It’s the degree to which we perceive the goodness that really constitutes our connection with the Creator. This is what is called “revelation.” The revelation is only to reveal the quality of the Creator, which is unconditional love. And likewise when he regrets that the Creator does not draw him near, he should also be careful not to be sorry for himself, for having been distanced from the Creator, for by so doing he becomes a recipient for his own benefit, and he who receives is separated from the Creator."

onlythetruth

I am sorry if I offended anyone; but that is, indeed, my ESH. I will refrain from further commentary on this thread.
OTT

Music

I believe God gave me the desire to stop drinking. The resultant actions on my part i.e., staying out of bars, going to meetings, getting a sponsor and working the steps have kept me sober. Giving credit to God, muddy waters and all, is the correct thing to do because taking credit myself is dangerous in that my ego and self-will would come back into play and that's not good. As far as the cancer goes, one of the guys I sponsor has gone through three bouts with cancer. He's catholic and very devout. The cancer has gone into remission all three times. Now, whether or not God caused the cancer to go into remission is a question I don't think anyone can answer, however, the frame of mind this man has been in all through the ordeal is amazing. He's never lost his sense of humor and regardless of his difficulties has seldom been unpleasant to be with. His attitude is that if it's meant that he loses the battle, he'll be with his family and friends anyway so it's a zero sum game. He wins either way. Does God cure the alcoholic? Who knows? Having God with me through my sobriety has certainly given me the necessary hope and help to know or at least believe that I have a power greater than myself on my side, and that in turn has enabled me to keep going in times that were other than pleasant. The only credit I take for being sober is the process of decision making that got me off my butt and to a meeting, accepting risk and asking a guy to sponsor me, and doing my best to work the steps but all those decisions were based on the fact that the pain of continuing to drink, scared me more than the pain of quitting.

onlythetruth

The pain of continuing to drink scared me more than the pain of quitting, too.

That is why I quit.

For me, it is really that simple.

OTT

PS I really am sorry if others find my viewpoints offensive.

yeahgr8

Not offensive just naive...i would find it amusing but its the same stuff i used to say when i was on one of my dry spells so ive heard it and said it all before...if it works for you though great...now go on and enjoy your life of sobriety:-)