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AsBillSeesIt

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AS BILL SEES IT

Personality Change

"It has often been said of A.A. that we are interested only on

alcoholism. That is not true. We have to get over drinking in

order to stay alive. But anyone who knows the alcoholic

personality by firsthand contact knows that no true alky ever

stops drinking permanently without undergoing a profound

personality change."

We thought "conditions" drove us to drink, and when we

tried to correct these conditions and found that we couldn't

do so to our entire satisfaction, our drinking went out of

hand and we became alcoholics. It never ocurred to us that

we needed to change ourselves to meet conditions, whatever

they were.

In God's Hands

When we look back, we realize that the things which came to

us when we put ourselves in God's hands were better than

anything we could have planned.

My depression deepened unbearable, and finally it seemed to

me as though I were at the very bottom of the pit. For the

moment, the last vestige of my proud obstinacy was

crushed. All at once I found myself crying out, "If there is a

God, let Him show Himself! I am ready to do anything,

anything!"

Suddenly the room lit up with a great white light. It seemed to

me, in the mind's eye, that I was on a mountain and that a

wind not of air but of spirit was blowing. And then it burst

upon me that I was a free man. Slowly the ecstasy subsided. I

lay on the bed, but now for a time I was in another world,a

new world of consciouness. All about me and through me

there was a wonderful feeling of Presence, and I thought to

myself, "So this is the God of the preachers!"

Pain and Progress

"Years ago I used to commiserate with all people who

suffered. Now I commiserate only with those who suffer in

ignorance, who do not understand the purpose and ultimate

utility of pain."

Someone once remarked that pain is the touchstone of

spiritual progress. How heartily we A.A.'s can agree with him,

for we know that the pains of alcoholism had to come before

sobriety, and emotional turmoil before serenity.

"Believe more deeply. Hold your face up to the Light, even

though for the moment you do not see."

Can We Choose?

We must never be blinded by the futile philosophy that we

are just the hapless victims of our inheritance, of our life

experience, and of our surroundings -- that these are the sole

forces that make our decisions for us. This is not the road to

freedom. We have to believe that we can really choose.

"As active alcoholics, we lost our ability to choose

whetherwe would drink. We were the victims of a compulsion

which seemed to decree that we must go on with our own

destruction.

"Yet we finally did make choices that brought about

recovery. We came to believe that alone we were powerless

over alcohol. This was surely a choice, and a most difficult

one. We came to believe that a Higher Power could restore

us to sanity when we became willing to practice A.A.'s

Twelve Steps.

"In short, we chose to `become willing', and no better choice

did we ever make."

Maintenance and Growth

It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads

only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that

we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have

been worth while. But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the

maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this

business of resentment is infinitely grave. We found that it is

fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off

from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcohol returns

and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die.

If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and

the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious

luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things are

poison.

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS, P. 66

All or Nothing?

Acceptance and faith are capable of producing 100 per cent

sobriety. In fact, they usually do; and they must, else we

could have no life at all. But the moment we carry these

attitudesinto our emotional problems, we find that only

relative results are possible. Nobody can, for example,

become completely free from fear, anger, and pride.

Hence, in this life we shall attain nothing like perfect humility

and love. So we shall have to settle, respecting most of our

problems, for a very gradual progress, punctuated

sometimes by heavy setbacks. Our oldtime attitude of "all or

nothing" will have to be abandoned.

The Realm of the Spirit

In ancient times material progress was painfully slow. The

spirit of modern scientific inquiry, research and invention

was almost unknown.

In the realm of the material, men's minds were fettered by

superstition, tradition, and all sorts of fixed ideas. Some of

the contemporaries of Columbus thought a round earth

preposterous. Others came near putting Galileo to death for

his astronomical heresies.

Are not some of us just as biased and unreasonable about

the realm of the spirit as were the ancients about the realm of

the material?