What it was that amazed me today was that book by Sandy Beach. I was reading that Chapter 2, This Thing Called A Higher Power. It was suddenly, after all this time in here being sober, I realized that I had really gone through the same thing. It just took me a long time to go back and realize this.
When I came in I had done the First Step without realizing it. I had surrendered my alcoholism over to the God of my understanding back then. So here I was in the program of AA. And, guess what? I had stopped being faithful and just operating on my own ideas. Being spiritual and, at least, thinking about a God of my own was not there.
The first barrier I realized was that I had come in here paranoid. I believed that the members in here were in moods, which disliked me. I would see them standing across the room and laughing as they talked. I believed they were making fun of me. And then I would see them talking with serious faces, and I supposed they were talking about how much they disliked me. Talk about my insanity. This was at least part of it.
So I hooked up with my first sponsor, who was not all that friendly with them. He had ten years. His main working with me was us doing Twelve Steps which were pretty available back then, since there were no rehabs and hospitals did not deal with alcoholism. And then one day he went back out and drank again, because he had a huge resentment, and he died. That woke me up.
That made me go to an old timer, because I found I was gradually getting friendlier with some of these sober individuals. And he opened the door to not only friendships in here, but to what was to become my spiritual way of life. And he did that the way it was written in the Second Step. And that’s what Sandy talked about in his book. I could change my thoughts about coming to believe or end up going back out and drinking again and dying. I had to come around and begin to believe in a Power Greater than myself, make a connection and begin to develop a belief and willingness to do his will and live a spiritual life. And I did.
One of the reasons I found out that I was having trouble in here, was how I now was becoming aware of what was crippling me. The fact that I thought I knew what I was doing was so untrue. The reason was that my thinking was being governed by negative emotions. My sponsor and those old timers were able to show me, and I became willing to clear my intellectual part of my mind and help it take over and to block off the negative emotions. Time took time, but it worked.
Anyway, I was glad that my mind opened up to this and how this program is helping me to stay sober, by putting the Second Step into action in my life. I am so grateful to my Higher Power, and all those old timers, and my sponsor for all their help.