One of the byproducts of this program is what it has done to me and for me. Day in and day out over the years of going to meetings and working the steps, reading the literature, have produced in me a consciousness I never thought I’d ever reach. It’s an awareness of this program no matter where I am.
I remember years ago someone said to me that I could meditate anywhere. Whether I was waiting for a bus, or on the bus. When I was sitting in a waiting room for an appointment. When I was walking or running. Those moments of being by myself, even when a crowd was around me, I could go down within and find a place of quiet within. For a long time I did this consciously and then that thought seemed to fade as time went on.
Today, after our meeting, when I was finally by myself, this memory came back to me, after a conversation with a friend of mine on the way home. We were talking about how fortunate we are to be sober. The very fact of sobriety had not only changed our lives, but had saved them. It was then I became aware of how much I think about sobriety and this program. Without knowing it, what started out as a conscious effort, has become a habit of thinking. It is a way of life for me. I take this program with me everywhere I go. Only stopping to think about it did I realize that.
Even saying this do I realize how imperfectly I do this. Often times my conscious mind is caught up in so many things that I get pulled away from this kind of thinking…but is that really true? I find that, when I stop carping and whining over situations in my life, my mind is back on the path again.
In fact, often when I become aware that I’m off the beam, I stop and begin to think about he program again to smooth the path out again.
Someone once said that art is the perfection of habit. So is the art of living. At one time I know I was not living, only existing. The AA program gave me a reason for living and showed me how to live, probably for the first time. It offered me good habits to replace the bad ones I had. It gave me the incentive, through the pain of living in those things, which caused so much unmanageability in my life, to begin to practice, practice, practice.
The steps: 4 & 5, 6 & 7, 8 & 9, the fulfillment of the 3rd, were the way I found to do this.
Anyway, I surprised myself, when I stopped to think today.