There’s a goldmine here in this program. It’s in the BB and it’s in the people who have led me to this point. I’ve been reading and following, not only what I’ve read, but the advice and suggestions made to me during all these years. This is what I was thinking as the meeting went on today.
All the stuff we went through, when we were in our cups, the things we did and how we mishandled our lives and our affairs, turns out to be pure gold, when it comes to working with another. The things which most shamed us, after we were on the path to recovery, is just what we need to pull out of our past and share with someone who is suffering, just as we did, when we came through the doors. It’s this stuff , which opens the door to hope for so many of the hopeless.
One of those things my sponsor said to me was about the process. I guess I was in one of those funks, where I felt that I was on the wheel of a squirell cage, just going around and around and going nowhere fast. He pulled me aside and asked me what I thought I was looking for. I don’t know what I told him, but he exhibeted all the patience in the world to me.
He told me that what I was looking for was right under my nose, but I couldn’t see it, because I was looking elsewhere. I was missing seeing it.
It was the process. When he said that, I came to a sudden realization. Like he said, I missed seeing it, because I was looking for a reward, which came from unreal expectations.
He brought me back to earth and reality with just telling me that. The process. I couldn’t see the forest for all the trees. Here I was, involved in this process everyday, and I couldn’t see that.
Looking back at that moment, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gone back to those words and realized that everyday I am a recipient of this reward daily. Like an old timer pointed out it’s progress not perfection. It’s in the book. He said that the only yardstick we can be measured by is the progress we’ve made from the first day we came in to the program. It doesn’t take a genius to see that I’m not the man I was, when I came in. Sometimes I may feel that I haven’t gone far in this program, but talking to someone else and taking an inventory, will demonstrate even to a thick head like mine, that I have changed. And it’s all due to the process we’re involved in.
Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path. That’s it. The path. That’s the process we’re involved in. If I stop looking around and look down to my feet, I can see that they are on the path. The process tells me I’m not done. I haven’t graduated and never will. But as long as I’m in the process, I’m on the right path. I’m moving in the right direction, away from that last drink and into a realm of the spirit.
One of the directors of the General Service office, on his retirement, made the statement that recovering alcoholics are examples of people who are living a spiritual way of life in a materialistic world. And if I am involved in this process, following this path laid out for us, I am one of those people, whether I want to think so or not.
All of the benefits of being sober comes to me through the process. I am happier today than I have ever been. I love this way of life. I would never have believed that, standing in a baroom drinking. Who would have thought then that one day I would be looking down at what was right under my nose and being happy and pleased at something called the process?
Anyway, just something I was thinking about today.
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