Today I was thinking about the word compassion. The dictionary defines it as a deep awareness of the suffering of another and the wish to relieve that suffering. That pretty much describes the sober alcoholic, trying to bring the message of the program into the life of a suffering alcoholic. The solution.
After reading that I went back into my memory of my last day drinking. Another man, who was not sober at the time, was the man, who brought the message to me that there was a place, where men and women met and stayed sober together. It was him, who gave me hope that I might get sober. He also brought me to my early meetings, although he did not get sober until a year or so later.
But he had compassion for my suffering.
Much later, after I got sober and had been putting this program into action, I began to experience, what that word compassion meant. But not in the beginning of sobriety. Although I was taken on 12th Step calls by my sponsor at the time, I really did not have compassion for the alcoholics we met and tried to help. I just did it, because it was the thing to do at the moment we were doing these calls. I’m a slow learner at best.
I guess the time that changed was around the time that I caught onto what this program was about. Perhaps at the time I underwent the spiritual awakening in this program. A time, when I stopped fighting everyone and everything, including alcohol. The time, when I was restored to sanity. The sanity that placed me in a position of neutrality with alcohol. Some place between the 9th and 10th Steps. When the promises in that 9th Step began to come true.
Looking back, I can see that, as long as I did not feel forgiven, it was not possible for me to forgive others. The 9th Step was the process for me that relieved me of my resentments and brought me to a realization that it was now time to forgive others for harms, real or imagined. It must have been a spiritual awakening, because it just happened.
I guess the reason I was thinking about this is that I’ve come to recognize what it is to be sober. I remember Sandy B., in one of his talks, spoke about the alcoholic coming to realize that he had reached a point, where he wanted the new person to get well. He said he wanted to cheer, when the person showed signs of recovery.
What started all this thought today was the line in the BB in the 9th Step, where it says that the spiritual life is not a theory. If it’s not a theory, then it must be a fact. Meaning the spiritual life is a reality. The evidence of that reality strikes me as being the things, which seem to make up the spiritual life. To me compassion would be one of them. The practice of compassion I think is the rest of that statement. The one about, it has to be lived.
Anyway, just thinking about sobriety today.