Following an AA meeting several
months ago, a good friend in the Program asked me to stay a bit. He told me one
of the people he was currently sponsoring just went back out and resumed his
drinking. He went on to tell me how difficult it was to communicate with his
sponsee.
“He says he’s very spiritual and
quotes Bible verses to me all the time. He says he prays to Jesus a lot in
addition to reading the Bible, and so he believes he’s very spiritual. I have
tried to explain to him that if he’s developed a true spirituality in the AA
Program, the desire to drink will be lifted. What do I do?”
I told my friend there is a huge
difference between being spiritual and being religious. Being religious is all
about believing in the rituals, practices, cognitive beliefs, and the magical words
of the Bible – or the Quran or the Tanakh. Because my friend regularly attends
a Big Book meeting, I went on to provide my friend with an analogy.
“You’ve been to Big Book meetings before, haven’t you?”
“Yes.”
“It’s as if,” I commented, “we had a group of non-AA folks stand
outside the room and observe our Big Book meeting. What would they see? They’d
watch each of us read a paragraph of one of the stories of recovery in the Big
Book (Alcoholics Anonymous, AA World
Service) and then go back around the table offering some comments. These watchers
might go on, perhaps, and conclude: ‘Hey, we could do that. We could get some
friends together and read a story and make comments on what the story talked
about. That way we won’t become alcoholics.’ We both know that wouldn’t work,
don’t we?”
“Right.”
“Why?”
“It’s not what we do.”
“That’s right. It’s not what we do. When we are commenting on the
stories, we are not making observations about what the story-teller said. We
are commenting about the similarities of our own experiences with the
experiences of the writer. As each of us tell our very unique story, triggered
by the story in the Big Book, we all understand that, as unique as each of our
stories is, they are all the same story. We are not sharing our ideas about the
words of the story-teller. We are simply sharing our unique version of the same
story. All of our stories are unique, but all of our stories say the same
thing.”
This is what I tried to deal
with in my book, How the Bible became the
Bible. We read the Bible not to intellectually dissect the words of the
author – as if the words are something super-natural. We read the words of the
author and find ourselves understanding the experience the author was writing
about. We, too, have had that experience and, although we might express it
uniquely and differently (because of our different culture, mores, values, and
timeframe), it is the same story. We do not read from a letter written by the
Apostle Paul to cogitate over his wording. We read one of his letters to
understand the marvelous mystery that he had experienced and was now wrestling
with as to how to express that reality in words. We would comment on the
marvelous mysteries we’ve experienced, and usually we would find it equally
difficult to express in words.
A Course in Miracles (ACIM)
states that to communicate these kinds of experiences is simply beyond words.
That’s why I love the introduction to the Course:
This is a course in
miracles. It is a required course. Only the time you take it is voluntary. Free
will does not mean that you can establish the curriculum. It means only that
you can elect what you want to take at a given time. The course does not aim at
teaching the meaning of love, for that is beyond what can be taught. It does
aim, however, at removing the blocks [my egoic perceptions] to the awareness of love’s presence, which
is your natural inheritance. The opposite of love is fear, but what is
all-encompassing can have no opposite.
This course can
therefore be summed up very simply in this way: Nothing real can be threatened.
Nothing unreal exists. Herein lies the peace of God.
ACIM is a course in “undoing”
and removing my ego thought-system of duality. It’s a course in mind training.
Collectively, we are the Son of God, and when the Holy Spirit changes our
perception, we can live in a community of love and acceptance. To live in the womb
of an accepting community will transform each of us. This is what AA has done
for me. A place, wherever I find a meeting, that allows me to be just as I am –
honestly. It is a place where I am accepted. [Being accepted is a more meaningful synonym for love for me.] AA’s Program is not about memorizing the
words or stories of the Big Book. It is to work the Twelve Steps in absolute
honesty. It is to turn my life and will over to the care of God, as I
understand God, by working Steps 4-12 for the rest of my life. Doing this, I underwent a spiritual
transformation. To quote the Big Book – or to memorize and quote the Bible – is
to remain in my ego thought-system of duality, sin and separateness, both from others
and from God.
When I drank I was in that world
of separateness and it was a world of death. When I fall back into my ego
thought-system of the “rightness” of my perceived sense of reality, I fall back
into that same world of death. I want, now, to be happy and peaceful, not
right. Perhaps that’s why so many fundamentalist Christians (or Moslems or
Jews) seem always to be so angry, resentful, irritated and frustrated.
As I’ve stated before, “I
have to understand, on a visceral level, who the “Me” or “I” really is when I
am speaking or thinking. The “I” that says to myself, “I really need a newer,
more reliable car” is a different “I” than the one that says to my Holy Spirit,
“I can’t do this anymore; help me perceive things the way You see them.”
Although
these messages are mostly for me, thanks for listening to me and getting to
know me – warts and all. As always, feel free to forward this message to your
friends, family, and those accompanying you on your spiritual journey.
Don
#2 Jul 2016
Copyright 2016
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