Why is humility so important? That was the subject of the meeting along with what is an alcoholic. A lot to think about.
Humility for me is what the spiritual life is all about. It’s getting me into the proper perspective. It’s kind of like, walking out in back in the dead of night and looking up at the sky and seeing all those stars above me. How small and insignificant I am at that moment. I’m so tiny. A grain of sand on a big beach. Not even noticeable. And next to my higher power? The God of my understanding?
Yet, here I am, thinking only about the most important man in the universe. Me.
So self centered and selfish. Wanting my own way and believing I deserve it.
How did I get that way and what can I do about it? So blind to the needs of others.
And, of course, that’s what the 12 Steps are all about. To help me back to some sort of sanity, to deflate my ego, to get me to right size, to help me grow spiritually, to increase my hope and my faith, to come to believe in something far greater and more powerful than myself, to get me connected to this God of my concept, and to change me completely. All this takes some modicum of humility.
To lessen the me and increase the we.
To help me to listen to someone else, who can teach me what I need to learn, rather than think I know better or more than the other person. To learn to surrender and accept instead of trying to conquer the universe and those around me.
To recognize my weaknesses, my defects of character, to see the hazards they present to my sobriety. My sobriety? Whose sobriety is it really? I more and more recognize that I’m sober in spite of myself. God has done for me, what I could not do for myself. I couldn’t stop drinking. Yet a prayer, a plea, and admission of my helplessness and need of rescue, changed all of that. I became willing to do whatever it would take to stop drinking. And, when I awoke, it was all gone. The booze, the desire, the mental obsession, the compulsion and the craving. How did that happen?
So, here I am, still jousting and wrestling with me. I’m in my way. I have to somehow get out of my way and submit myself to my higher power and just learn to be quiet. To be still. To stop thinking and allow a higher power to do that for me. To become willing. To intend to do God’s will for me.
And this is what will keep me sober. How do I know that? Because not only have I seen others sober because of this way of life, but it is also true in my experience. And that is only a tiny portion of what I can conceive of as humility. I’m still learning.