Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps…”, thus the Twelfth Step begins. It tells us that the awakening has taken place by virtue of what we have done with the first eleven steps. I believe it, not just because it was written as a result of what the pioneers of AA had done and experienced, but that has been my experience, also.
I’ve always thought and felt that way. But the other day, a young man spoke up at a meeting. He said the judge told him he had two choices; to go to jail and serve time, or he could stop drinking and come to AA and stay home. He said something which made us all laugh. He said he immediately had a spiritual awakening. Really?
I thought about that, wondering about this. Could it be that we have more than one spiritual awakening? I mean Bill W. had his flash of light in the hospital, where he was detoxing. Rowland Hazard could not stop drinking and Dr. Jung told him the only way he could stop drinking was to seek and find a spiritual experience and he did. Neither man had any knowledge of the steps at that time and certainly had not gone through them. Both men remained sober until the end of their lives.
I thought back to my own experience on the last day I drank. I’ve often done this, just to remind myself of what happened, and I have often taken for granted that first night and the next day. Did I have a spiritual awakening?
The answer is, I must have. When I awoke the next day the thought of a drink had left me for the first time in twenty years or more. The night before I had asked God to take it from me and that’s exactly what happened.
Everything had changed and yet nothing had changed.
But, it didn’t stop there. There have been any number of times during my sobriety, where I have had what seems to have been yet another and another spiritual awakening. These were all preceded by some kind of bottom. Some change that was taking place in my life. Another surrender of an old idea or an old way of thinking and doing things. Whatever these were, it meant becoming willing to give them up. Letting go and letting God.
Of course, there’s no denying the effect of arriving at the Ninth step and going through with it. The moment I could recognize that I had stopped fighting everyone and everything, including the alcohol. I knew that peace, which I had never expereienced before. I felt the chains, which seemed to have bound my chest, release and I had the feeling I could breath for the first time in my life. The neutrality toward a drink seemed to have become a more permanent state of life.
I could well recognize God’s part in all of this. It was all His. My part I knew was the willingness to go through all of this. Bill tells us that’s about all we have to bring to the table. But, it’s big enough.
It’s all spiritual from the day we stop to wherever each one is at the moment. I guess that’s the point of this reflection. Whether we felt or knew it or not, each one of us, the moment we stepped through the door was beginning to live on a different basis than anything we knew before. We may not have known what it was, but it was different. Someone in the BB says something to the effect that he felt that his drinking problem had been solved, the minute he committed himself to the program. As indeed it was, he said. My sentiments exactly.
We come here and enter into God’s world. We still live in the world; a drinking world. And yet we are free. Free not to drink and go about our business. We live in a community of others like ourselves, who have found the very same answer we have. We possess, as a community, a solution for all of those, who like ourselves, have come to the doors and asked for help. We…now there’s a real spiritual awakening.
Just some thoughts.