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Old 05-21-2014, 03:28 PM
  # 7 (permalink)  
Ngokpa
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: El Cerrito, California
Posts: 580
What happened to me is I had a pretty bad reaction to the Big Book, but found that being a critic of it wasn't going to keep me sober. I ended up praying for guidance--didn't know who I was praying to (an aspect of the collective unconscious perhaps) but it was better than what my mind was coming up with.

I came to think that the third step was about being in touch with intuitive rather than judgmental and obsessive thinking. And I felt I got little "nudges"--go to meetings even when I hated them, become a secretary, etc. I read outside literature about alcoholism. Eventually, I went to a meditation place--Buddhist--where one of the teachers wrote "God is irrelevant." It's about working with your mind, and being open and curious--but not about blind faith.

I've been sober a long time, and have always had an odd relationship with AA--get a lot more out of my Buddhist place actually--and therapy was also big. AA doesn't seem to be open minded to much besides its own take on things, but I stumbled into something that worked for me.
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