stevieg46

This was passed on to me recently . It is an article by a ''non member of AA '' it is very good and it is anonymous it was written in 2001.

Simply google > Whats this great reality thing , The Muser <

Stevie recovered 12 03 2006

LadyBlue0527

What a fantastic article!

Since I restarted the step work with my new sponsor I am finding myself within an entirely new dimension. I've restarted the steps twice and made it to step 4 with an old sponsor. This time is much different. The discoveries that have happened over the past month and a half or so since this new work are almost incomprehensible to me. I have to laugh because years back I would have loved to grab a joint and a few beers and sit around a campfire discussing this God concept. These days I don't want anything in my body that could alter my state of mind and inhibit me from experiencing what I'm feeling to the fullest degree. Usage of any mind altering drug or drink would be a waste because I never felt this way using any of those things.

In going through the steps previously I always said that I had accepted that there was a power greater than myself. Still, I really don't think that I fully grasped that concept until this new work. For me, it is completely within. My God concept is that conscious voice that has always been with me. Even if I was talking myself into doing something that was wrong that voice was always there, reminding me that I knew better. I have to say that I can't ever remember a time in my life where that voice was wrong. So instead of trying to fight against it I have now decided to listen. I'm not sure if it's because I am consistently working towards positive energy and feel a purpose that things have changed but one thing is definitely present. Instead of questioning that voice I have decided to open myself up and listen. The difference in my life since that point has been nothing short of beautiful. Do I have bad moments, bad days, fall of track? Sure, I'm not perfect. The difference is I am righted far more quickly now by just simply allowing that voice to guide me. In the same respect, when negative energy enters my realm I will close my eyes and ask that this feeling be removed. Within minutes I'm sitting there and realize that I can't determine when or how it happened but that negative energy and thinking are gone. It's fascinating.

One thing spoke very deeply to me in that article. I have watched others experience what I am referencing above. I couldn't find my way there. Five simple words in that article helped me to understand why.

"The concrete notion of God"

Most of us, as we grow up, are introduced to exactly that. There are differing representations of names and images along with methods of prayer, the buildings we visit. Right along with the rituals that belong to that religion. So we end up with exactly those words which then also bring along a very specific line of thinking. So when we enter a program that encompasses spirituality we automatically associate all of those representations that we've acquired over the years based on whatever we were introduced to. This makes it hard to grasp that maybe that's not really what God is. Maybe it's something that's far bigger than what we were taught. For me too, to try to grasp the concept that maybe God wasn't what I was taught as a little Roman Catholic girl brought about feelings of shamefulness because I wasn't representing the faith I grew up in. I was veering from my teachings and considering that maybe that really wasn't what God was about. To some that would be considered to be a bit blasphemous.

So that was a definite hindrance to my spiritual growth. I had to let go of that concrete notion and dig deeper within. When I allowed myself to let go of the notion of shame in thinking differently and to open my mind and my heart to the possibilities only then could I understand that the voice that had been with me all my life, that did not have a face or a name but was just there, was truly my higher power.

I can't explain how I got here but I know this. I taught myself to play the piano beginning at the age of 5. I could play many songs by ear. If you asked me what key was what note I couldn't tell you. I loved to play. In 4th grade I learned to play the violin and also learned to read sheet music. I played for many years up through high school. I got the crazy idea to take piano lessons figuring I already knew how to read, it was just a matter of finding out where those notes lay on the keys. It all started with middle C. I continued to take the lessons for a bit and then abruptly stopped.

I came to realize that prior to knowing where the notes were on the piano the music was coming from my heart. When I sat in front of a sheet of music and played it became animated and removed all the feeling. I had taken away my ability to play from the heart.

When I was searching for my higher power I was doing it based on my concrete notion of God. I was thinking with my brain. It was only when I shut that thinking down and opened my heart that I realized it had been with me all along.

CaiHong

Thanks Stevie, I found the website but couldn't locate the article
.
Lady blue what a great share,

stevieg46

Cai Hong , try the same website and click on Speaking Spiritually .

Stevie

Algorithm

It almost sounds like you are speaking of your conscience, which you ignored during active addiction. This would certainly fit the definition of an unsuspected inner resource, and might effect a personality change.

The Oxford Group, from which AA got much of its program, taught the Four Absolutes (honesty, purity, unselfishness, love), which could be seen as a call for a renewed morality.

For the Oxford Group, sin was anything that stood between the individual and God, which they understood to provide the power for such a morality.

Setting aside the precise source of the power, alcohol silences or separates us from our conscience, does it not?

Gottalife

Well actually no it doesn't. My conscience could not be ignored. It roared around in my head, pointing out my failings and what I should have done. Perhaps it is expressed best in this biblical quote which I heard recently. It fitted me pretty well.

"I do not understand my own behaviour. I set out to do the things I know are right, and end up doing the things I hate. For though the will to do good is in me, the peformance is not"

Consistently failing to do the right thing, betraying our own values, leads to such despair that some take their own lives. In my case, I think it was my conscience, and values, that lead me to seek help.

Gottalife

I had to dash away midway thrugh my post so here is part two. Big Book page 44 talks about the fact that if a mere code of morals could have saved us, many of us would have recovered long ago.

This became evident to me in early sobriety. My conscience had been giving me a real battering about the things I was doing that were wrong. Hence I was full of guilt and shame. So I set out to do what I thought was the right thing, only to find that was wrong as well! It seems my functioning as a human being was largely on an instinctual basis as a result of my alcoholism. Living with the purpose of satisfying one's instincts is guaranteed to put me in conflict with the people around me both internally and externally. My conscience gave me another battering, but the truth was I did not know how to live rightly in this world, and was unable to discover how on an intellectual level.

So I guess I changed, through the steps, from trying to live by some kind of faulty intellectual self propulsion, to seeking guidance from a higher power. Such guidance manifested itself in a change in my behaviour which seemed to occur naturally and without any thought or effort on my part. I simply began behaving in a different way.

Now my conscience is still with me, and it is clear. It forms a useful part of my new guidance system, where before it was simply a form of torture, amplified by comments from people suggesting I should straighten out.

Algorithm

Mike,

My experience was that my conscience roared indeed, while I was not under the influence, but that a few stiff drinks would silence it temporarily. I would not reduce it to a mere code of morals, though.

I've often pondered those Romans 7:15-20 passages, which are an excellent description of life in addiction. It is indeed satisfying base instincts, as you put it.

mfanch

I loved this article.

The 3 essential ideas he found in the BB were the exact ones that I clung to in order to follow the directions. I crossed out ALL the "God" words as I read the BB for the first time. So all the "gods" are blacked out until page 47, when I was instructed to read the Spiritual Experience appendix. As soon as I read that I could have ANY conception that I might, I stopped crossing them out.

At one point later in sobriety, I was going to start fresh with a new BB since I had scratched out words in my old one. I decided not to . I like looking back and seeing how I "came around" so to speak.

Bird615

Thank you! I enjoy this topic and can very much relate to these experiences, but these days find myself unable to articulate any of it to anyone else. I've just been speechless for some reason.

I do believe if I am meant to comment, the words will come, so in the meantime, I'll keep appreciating these discussions.

LadyBlue0527

Somewhat, but I know that this voice has always been there. Even when I was plotting and planning things far before I even began to drink I could feel the "you know better than this". Even when I tried to reason with that voice and give it excuses as to why I should be considered as right, no, it persisted.

That brings up another question. AA speaks of God consciousness and this is what I believe it to be. There has always been something there guiding me, I just didn't want to listen. How can it be my conscience? This voice has not only veered me from darkness when I listened it has forewarned me of things to come, I just wasn't listening. Things there were no way I could know anything about.

Speaking of which, have you ever read the book The Secret?

Gottalife

Something my sponsor once told me about the youth offenders her worked with. Essentially most of them have no conscience. they are second or third generation hard drug users who were never taught any values by their parents, except to hate the police. About life in general they are completley ambivalent. Nothing makes them feel good or bad. Some had committed horendous crimes just to see what it was like.

My parents taught me some values, and I think they saved my bacon in the end. Knowing and feeling I was in the wrong was the constant pressure that I think helped break down the psychotic denial, or broke through to the truth. In a way I think my conscience was "parent given", quite different to spiritual guidance which tends to drive inspirational action as opposed to conscience driven right/wrong/black/white behaviour.

Pagekeeper

When I came into AA, I basically had no belief in a higher power. I was somewhere between an atheist and an agnostic. I really loved the term "The Great Reality" because it was one of the terms in the book that made sense to me in regards to a power greater than myself. Reality was something I did not live in very often. Reality was pure and true and it crossed time and space. I came to believe that this great reality was my higher power, and when I am spiritually fit, I live in reality way more than I live in delusion.

Fly N Buy

A few years back I read this story of The Sculptor and identify with the journey towards the great reality;

In ancient India lived a sculptor renowned for his life-sized statues of elephants. With trunks curled high, tusks thrust forward, thick legs trampling the earth, these carved beasts seemed to trumpet to the sky. One day, a king came to see these magnificent works and to commission statuary for his palace. Struck with wonder, he asked the sculptor, “What is the secret of your artistry?”

The sculptor quietly took his measure of the monarch and replied, "Great king, when, with the aid of many men, I quarry a gigantic piece of granite from the banks of the river, I have it set here in my courtyard. For a long time I do nothing but observe this block of stone and study it from every angle. I focus all my concentration on this task and won’t allow anything or anybody to disturb me. At first, I see nothing but a huge and shapeless rock sitting there, meaningless, indifferent to my purposes, utterly out of place. It seems faintly resentful at having been dragged from its cool place by the rushing waters. Then, slowly, very slowly, I begin to notice something in the substance of the rock. I feel a presentiment . . . an outline, scarcely discernible, shows itself to me, though others, I suspect, would perceive nothing. I watch with an open eye and a joyous, eager heart. The outline grows stronger. Oh, yes, I can see it! An elephant is stirring in there!"

"Only then do I start to work. For days flowing into weeks, I use my chisel and mallet, always clinging to my sense of that outline, which grows ever stronger. How the big fellow strains! How he yearns to be out! How he wants to live! It seems so clear now, for I know the one thing I must do: with an utter singleness of purpose, I must chip away every last bit of stone that is not elephant. What then remains will be, must be, elephant."

When I was young, my grandmother, my spiritual guide, would often tell just such a story, not only to entertain but to convey the essential truths of living. Perhaps I had asked her, as revered teachers in every religion have been asked, "What happens in the spiritual life? What are we supposed to do?" Granny wasn’t a theologian, so she answered these questions simply with a story like that of the elephant sculptor. She was showing that we do not need to bring our real self, our higher self, into existence. It is already there. It has always been there, yearning to be out. An incomparable spark of divinity is to be found in the heart of each human being, waiting to radiate love and wisdom everywhere, because that is its nature.

--Eknath Easwaran, in God Makes the Rivers To Flow

Fly N Buy

I have a BB that almost every word I first 164 is highlighted. The pages were damp from highliting.

Algorithm

I have not read the book, but I know that it is premised upon the Law of Attraction from the New Thought movement.

LadyBlue0527

I love the entire post but this part in particular gives me goosebumps.