What amazing coincidences. For the third day in a row the Second Step was brought up. Almost makes me think it’s not an accident. Three different people. I don’t believe any of them was present when the subject was brought up the other times.
My thoughts on this subject are still much the same. I’d say my experiences are still the same. Or are they? After all I know I believe that the entrance of my Higher Power into my life, that is consciously, has changed my life. I know that it was this that arrested my disease for which there is no cure. Placed me in a position of neutrality as far as alcohol is concerned. An absolute miracle for this alcoholic. There was no way I could have stopped drinking on my own. I know. I had tried too many times and failed.
Then what is it that makes me think there’s something else here I should be thinking about? The Step itself. What it’s all about. And what it’s about is spirituality. And, as the Ninth Step says that the spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it. And that’s what I think was getting into my mind. Living the spiritual life.
I am not too anxious to talk about living the spiritual life. Maybe that’s because I never feel spiritual. I know the Eleventh Steps talks about improving our conscious contact with the God of our understanding. Only on rare occasions have I ever felt that I’ve had a conscious contact with my Higher Power. Most of the time I feel far apart. Out of touch in a sense.
As I said I have had rare moments, when I was consciously aware of my Higher Power. I think I have had some spiritual experiences in my life. One in particular still brings up feelings I cannot describe. Just the memory can almost move me as it did at the time it happened. And then here I am in today. I say my prayers and I really have to concentrate or I have this feeling that they’re just words coming out of my mind and my mouth and going nowhere. Like I’m talking to myself.
However I know since I started to take that Second Step that my hopes have grown, as has my faith in my Higher Power. And, as someone pointed out today, that my biggest problem with all of this is my thinking. My mind has always been a problem. My thinking. All I have to do is to look at my experiences with my thinking and know that the best thing I can do for myself is to shut my thinking down. Not an easy task that’s for sure.
That’s why I try to take the time each and everyday to stop and take time out to sit and meditate. To focus my mind by writing what I’m thinking. That way I can stick with where I am going with my thoughts. Yet they are not so much in my head. They’re out there in front of me. I can see them and know that I’m doing that form of meditation called Safe Harbor.
To step into the boat and let it drift down the waters until it reaches shore in a safe harbor.
To let my thoughts go where they’re going. Hopefully spiritual thoughts or at least on the way to them.
I’m not always conscious that I’m meditating. Sometimes I am, as I am at the moment. That’s because I’m aware that there might have been a purpose to all of this about the Second Step. Again my thoughts go back to Dr. Carl Jung in the BB, when he told that young man that the only way he could save himself from his alcoholism was to go and find a spiritual experience. And as he pointed out to the man, he was going to need more that his religious beliefs. I think I’ve somehow arrived at that place. Possibly. All I know is that I have had a spiritual awakening. Just reading what the BB said, I know that.
Enough for the moment.