When I look at the future, it’s so bright, it burns my eyes.ĭuring our illness, it was as if our spirit lived in a deep, dark cave. Knowing that my Higher power is in the midst of the situation, I’ll face today’s problem with the assurance of an outcome that will be for my highest good. We also can find the confidence and fortitude that we’ve always needed. As we apply its principles in all of our affairs, we find improvements beginning to appear. The Twelve step program is a plan for mastering the problems of life. We will certainly be able to work through or around today’s problem. It is a wonder, for example, that most of us survived the crises brought on by our compulsion. The truth is we have probably worked our way through many situations much like today’s problem. “How will I ever get through this situation?” we think. ![]() You A.A.’s are privileged people.”įacing a vexing or even threatening problem, we sometimes feel a sense of hopefulness or futility. Truly did a clergyman say to me, “Your misfortune has become your good fortune. How much better it would have been had I felt gratitude rather than self-satisfaction–gratitude that I had once suffered the pains of alcoholism, gratitude that a miracle of recovery had been worked upon me from above, gratitude for the privilege of serving my fellow alcoholics, and gratitude for those fraternal ties which bound me ever closer to them in a comradeship such as few societies of men have ever known. Instead of seeing myself as a simple agent bearing the message of experience, I had thought of myself as a founder of A.A. I saw that I had been living too much alone, too much aloof from my fellows, and too deaf to that voice within. I pray that I may discipline myself so as to be ready to meet every opportunity. I pray that I may manifest God’s power in my daily living. Others will see the outward manifestation of the inward discipline in your daily living. Learn so much of the spiritual laws that your life cannot again be a failure. So keep disciplining yourself in the spiritual life every day. All your life is a preparation for more good to be accomplished when God knows that you are ready for it. When you see others manifesting the power of God, you probably have not seen the discipline that went before. Do I care enough about other alcoholics to help them to make this conversion?ĭiscipline of yourself is absolutely necessary before the power of God is given to you. This conversion to belief in a Higher Power comes gradually, as they try it and find that it works. ![]() They must start each day by asking this Higher Power for the strength to stay sober. They must see and admit that they cannot overcome drinking by their own willpower, so they must turn to a Higher Power for help. Now they must face a new kind of life, without liquor. ![]() Until now, everything they’ve done has been connected with drinking. Prospects must learn to change their way of thinking. In twelfth-step work, the fourth thing is conversion. Simple truths come in complicated ways to me when I become ego driven. A relapse brings truth to what we hear repeatedly in meetings – “Don’t take that first drink!” It reinforces the belief in the progressive nature of the disease, and it drives home the need for, and beauty of, humility in our spiritual program. sent us a clear message: a relapse can provide a positive experience toward abstinence and a lifetime of recovery. In keeping with the pain and adversity which our founders encountered and overcame in establishing A.A., Bill W. I think that your slip will have the effect of kicking you upstairs, instead of down. ![]() does not depend so deeply upon success as it does upon our failures and setbacks. Our spiritual and emotional growth in A.A.
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