Didn’t get to a meeting, been under the weather. So I stopped and thought about the program. I was thinking about the spirituality of this program and this brought some things to mind. One of them is the broad spectrum of individual alcoholics, who come to this program to get sober. And they very often do and stay sober.
The reason I was thinking this is what the program did at the very beginning. After arguing and struggling with the question of faith, God, and a number of other things, including the 4 Absolutes from the Oxford Movement groups, it was decided by all involved that they would throw the doors open to all alcoholics, seeking sobriety, whether they believed in anything or not. They wrote the 12 Steps and the BB so that the choice would be the individuals. No arguments. No disputes. And yet it was to be basically a spiritual program, because that was the answer. Amazing.
It reminded me of those two men, a Doctor and a psychological therapist, who did the national study of people, who practiced meditation. The study was very involved, including pictures of the individuals brains, before, during, and after meditating. And the people whom they were studying, included a large variety. People of faith and no faith. Religious people, agnostics, atheists, and a large variety of all kinds of beliefs. Yet the results were pretty much the same. And the name of the book? How God Changes Our Brains. And the men doing the study went into it with no special belief themselves or a forecast of results.
Almost sounds like the program. Because, when I look around and see the results of those, who have worked the 12 Steps, and practice the program, it’s almost breathtaking. It doesn’t matter the person’s background, personal beliefs, or none, it works. They’re all living a sober life. They’ve changed. So have I.
I know what works for me. And from personal conversations over the years, when others were willing to become open and share with me, I have heard a variety of things. But in the end I can say I don’t always know that I don’t know. How often I think I do.
What I do know is what the Steps say, what my sponsor and those old timers told me of their own experiences. None of them ever preached to me. None of them, as far as I can remember, ever talked about God. They never told me how to pray. Just do it. No one said to meditate. What they talked about was how they worked this program. And I could see the results. Talk about spirituality. It was right there in front of me. They were living it. Didn’t need anyone to tell me that. But I knew it, as did those around me.
The bottom line, the results, which doesn’t take any special machine to look at our brains, is the fact that we’re sober and living a sober way of life. That’s what often amazes me, even though I know what I have been told and what I have read. For me it’s a miracle. All I have to do is look back at what alcohol was doing to me. How it owned me body, mind, and soul. And here I am, a lot of 24 hours a day later, still sober.