Dataset Viewer
text
stringlengths 4
128
|
|---|
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?
|
End of preview. Expand
in Data Studio
No dataset card yet
- Downloads last month
- 3