Our friend McQ tells me that despite our imperfections and defects, there is one element that is a thread which runs through our life; perseverance. No matter how badly I do with my attempts to pray and meditate my job is to keep on trying. Not to quit.
It’s amazing. Of all the things I’ve tried in life, the one thing that “I’ve done” the longest is this program. The one factor that has been the thread running through all of this is that I’ve never quit…although there have been times I have been tempted to; any number of times. Somehow I’m still here.
Going back to my earliest years, it seemed in the first ten or so, prayer and meditation were so easy. Or, at! least, my heart and mind were more passionate and more ferverent. And then there was a period of time, when my mind and heart were given over to all kinds of distractions. I was frequently wandering off the path and all over the place. Others were there to pull me back and get me straightened out. Usually I was directed to work all the harder with others, who needed this program.
But, whatever humility I had acquired along the way began to erode. I reached a point, where I thought that I had all the answers, that I knew what I was doing. I must have thought that I knew what the program was all about. I became an “old timer”; a veteran. I think I had reached a place where I felt secure and could teach anyone what this program was all about. I was in a rut and didn’t even know it. I must have thought that I knew God’s will and was doing it, without ever seeking it.
The words “spiritual pride” were ascribed to me by someone and I had no idea what he was talking about. Only later, when I was reading something written by Bill W. on this, did I realize what I was suffering from. But, by then I was long out of that phase of my life and I could “hear” what he was saying. He, too, had gone through the same thing. Had I seen it earlier on, I would have probably been critical of him. Not me, I would have said.
Someplace along the way, I picked up something written by a woman, who today is considered a saint. She wrote it back centuries ago. She described herself as suffering from the same thing for about a dozen years or more. She said it was the worst place she could have found herself in. She said no one could tell her what she was doing wrong. Or, that she was wrong. She said that on the surface that her life appeare! d to be all right, but deep down in herself her life was beginning to corrode and fall apart. She said that all anyone could do for her was to pity her and pray for her. Someone must have been praying for me.
One night, when I had come back to Syracuse, a man, who I didn’t know, took my inventory at a meeting. He went on for about fifteen or twenty minutes describing me to myself. Like I said, he didn’t know me or I him. It was humiliating. I developed a slow burn and began to have a deep resentment toward him. After all, what did he know? I was already twenty years in the program and had a lot more time than him. A couple of days later, while I was mulling his words over and over, something hit me. Maybe he was right! I went back to the literature and began my program all over again. I owed that man a debt of gratitude. I later thanked him, but he had no idea what I was talki! ng about. But, I did.
The price of sobriety is eternal vigilance. Apparently I had lost that vigilance along the way and fell asleep again. I was sleep walking along the way. He woke me up.
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