What is it that happens to us to change us into something totally different than when we came in? I know that I was totally walled in, paranoid, when I came into these rooms. I was hidden down within the darkness within, when I walked through the doors. There was a black hole within my center. I was told it was the “God hole”. I could no longer fill it up from the outside. It was going to have to come from within in me.
I had spent years out there trying to fill that hole up from the outside. Bought new cars. Got married and had children. Spent money trying to make myself better. Nothing worked. Now I was going to have to surrender and begin rebuilding inside of me. I was going to have to find my Higher Power, the God of my understanding and begin to live a spiritual way of life.
And that loneliness within began to pull me down into a new kind of pain. I found I was isolated from the rest of the people in here. I could hardly talk to them and ended up in the “losers circle” outside the rooms. That’s when my sponsor grabbed me and told me to go into the room and hang out with the “winners”. I did, but I was still hiding down in the walls inside of me.
One of the things my sponsor pointed out to me in the Twelve Steps, was the tense in which they were written. It was the past tense. Those founders had already done them and so had all the old timers I met. They were bright, open, happy, at peace with themselves, and definitely sober. Exactly where I would have liked to have been, but here I was cut off from the outside. And that’s where the Second Step came in.
I could see the examples, the result of having done these Steps. Had they been written in the present or the future tense they would have been questionable for me. Would they work? Newcomers like me would be left to guess. Yet here were those who had done this and they had worked. And what I had to do was to begin breaking down these walls around me and find the spiritual life within me, if I wanted to stay sober. And I had come to this program desperate to never drink again.
That desperation to stay sober was what drove me to surrender in that Second Step. Never ever want to forget that. It’s what changed my life. Little by little I began to begin to come to be able to let go and let my Higher Power into my life. And that God hole began to fill up from within. I was starting to live a spiritual way of life. The answer to living a sober life.
Over time things have begun to change. It’s a process which I don’t believe is ever finished. I know I will never be cured of what’s wrong with me, my alcoholism. And each day I stay sober is another opportunity to continue to grow along spiritual lines. I know that even though I am doing this, I never really think of myself as a spiritual person. I realize that I’m still human. Have my faults and have to deal with them. But I know that somehow I have learned to do what is asked of us in here. I know that I have been restored to sanity. I can well remember those moments and the grace which was given to me. Had a spiritual awakening. In fact, I believe, a number of them.
The meeting today reminded me of what I have been thinking about. Staying sober and living a spiritual life.