Every once in a while I have to stop and think about the spiritual life as I know it. Probably not the same for everyone. I think, from my experience anyway, that what I think is probably not even close. I know for one thing that I always think I’m not spiritual. That’s my thinking I know.
When I look back at my background before I picked up a drink alcoholically, I should have been. Family and religious background I would think should have taken me that way. But there was a problem that I had no idea of. And that was the fact that I was totally immature. Meanwhile I had drank alcohol but it hadn’t taken over. It wasn’t until I was nineteen that I think alcohol grabbed hold of me. Or at least started to. I stopped and left to go off to the seminary, which should have led me up the path to spirituality. It didn’t because that immaturity was still there. After a few years I left and that’s exactly when alcohol took over.
Why am I thinking about this? Someone said something today, as did a few others this past week. They weren’t so direct, but I knew what they meant and I had to laugh and push those thoughts out of sight. I really can’t stand that stuff. I never think of myself as spiritual and probably never will. Like I said this week to myself, when I came into this program I realized for the first time that I was in my early forties, but was on the level of a fourteen year old. When I look back at that I can very well realize what that word “unmanageable” in the First Step meant to me. My whole life was unmanageable from infancy until I hit these doors.
The very fact that my sponsor told me that I thought I knew it all and didn’t told me that I had always thought that way all my life. I never really listened to anyone. Now I was going to have to and to begin to change my life, if I wanted to stay sober. I was going to have to learn how to share with others and start to do what I never had before. I was going to have to listen and begin to learn. And the main part of all of that was for me to start to grow along spiritual lines through the Steps and the rest of this program…if I wanted to stay sober.
In other words I was going to have to begin to grow up. To mature and become an adult. More than that, I was going to have to get out of my own way. I was going to have to learn how trim my ego down to size. I have to laugh when I think of that. The truth was that I needed help. I was glad that I had the sponsor I had and the old timers in here, who knew how to deflate my ego. It brought me into balance when I desperately needed it. And it gave me a taste of what some of this spirituality was.
I know I have to often stop and think about all of this, because I have to have at least something about this in my life or I wouldn’t be here, I don’t think. Anyway it’s still difficult for me to believe I have even a grasp of this. I mean I know things but not enough and practice is bumpy to say the least. Plus the fact that I don’t always know when my immaturity is taking over again. When I find myself stumbling over my faults in here.
Like the BB said, we’re not saints. We’re still human beings. Alcoholics with all the faults of an alcoholic. I’m not so much surprised that I can find myself stumbling. I know I’m not cured and I will have this disease until my life is over. Meaning I still have a lot to learn.
However I know that I am very fortunate that I have my Higher Power, who has done for me what I can’t do for myself. I’m sober because I begged for relief from alcohol and was given it. I was given this program and everything in it. I was given a sponsor who knew what he was doing and led me the way I needed to go. I have been given peace and happiness. I have been given the help of so many others it is amazing. I’ve been given my life which I should have lost out there. I’ve been given so much it is a miracle.
Anyway I’m going to stop now and step back. I just need to express my gratitude for all I have received from my Higher Power and the program and the people in here. I need to say “thank, you”.