Brightening wrote:
For me, the strength of will I find to do all great things in life comes from "within" (cheesy, right?). Not the "me" that is destructive, but that better person I know resides there, waiting to be drawn out.
Cheesy? H.E.Double L. No! It does go against the grain of a higher power "outside ourselves". But it took me 4 years in A.A. to come to the understanding as an atheist that since no power outside myself assisted me, that it came from within.
When I talked once at a step meeting, I said that when I was drinking I often wondered why I did things I knew to be wrong, seemingly without the ability to prevent myself; and why I did not do things I knew to be right. When I was struck, one day, by the idea that this was my whole problem, my means of making excuses, I was hit by a ton of bricks,
I admitted I was powerless, and then went to my first meeting!
After the meeting, a man thanked me for my honesty about my atheism, and told me that I basically had said what Paul said in Romans 7:15. I was dumbfounded. But he was right. I went home and read it. However, Paul attributed his inability to do the next right thing to the sinful nature of the flesh. I attributed it to "stinkin' thinkin'"
Thanks for saying outloud what many of us already think but don't say often enough outloud. Other's need to hear it.
Sincerely,
Curtis C