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Old 10-23-2006, 12:47 PM
  # 54 (permalink)  
paulmh
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Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: UK
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Hiya Paul.

So, for you - "the virtues you mention can be secular as well".

That would be those ones like "honesty, openmindedness, willingness, patience, tolerance, hope, faith, love, ect..."?

I don't know very much about any other programmes of recovery so I can't speak about them. But I can say that AA unlocked the power of these values in an entirely secular way. I didn't "convert", and it seems to me that no-one expected me to. I didn't "find G*d"" and again, no-one held it against me. I found nothing more and nothing less than a way of life. And I suspect that's what Blake is saying - is that once we find a way of life which we fully embrace, strangely we feel much happier and at peace (perhaps because we're "harmonising" with the Higher Power that is Michski's "larger picture"?) - and perhaps that's a principle that's common, rather than all the other stuff which is simply dogma?

I paid lip-service to those values we mentioned, for a very long time. I was an active addict, and nothing mattered but me. Those values came alive for me, and G*d has nothing to do with it. I started to live differently, and slowly slowly those values are practised better in my life one day at a time. And that is better than asserting - "oh, I'm a humanist" and thinking that that sets me apart as superior to the poor deluded believers in the world. We're all just trying to find our tao, right?

PS, Michski, your "larger picture" metaphor resounds with me. My personal metaphor is "mighty river". Anything that lets us escape from the tyranny and the delusion of the self as master of the universe!
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