Last night I was thinking about a couple of passages from the BB. The first came from How It Works. It was about the solution to our alcoholic problem, the 2nd step: That God could and would if he was sought.
The key to that is the word sought. The suggestion is that we have to seek God. Meaning that, if I really want to stop drinking, I’m going to have to find a God of my understanding, if I’m going to have any hope of ending my drinking.
For me, and I’ll bet most of us, that really presented a quandry. In reading the chapter We Agnostics, I discovered I was one of them. Up to that point I was sure I had a handle on God and who he was. But what I came to realize that I wasn’t sure and so I came to first use the group as my higher power. But in reading that line in How It Works, it told me that I was going to have to actively look for a God, who could solve my alcoholic problem. How was I going to do that?
I got stuck on the 3rd step. I complicated and analyzed it to death. I was frustrated. But my sponsor came along and got me out of it. His first suggestion was that I should look around the rooms to find someone who was sober and then borrow the God of his understanding and pray to him.
I was desperate enough at that point to follow his directions and I did. It seemed to work, so I kept doing that for a while, but I still wanted something more concrete.
(My sponsor’s suggestion, as I look back on it, reminds me of something which Bill wrote about later. Spiritual pride. He said that he was so convinced he was right about his beliefs that he drove many alcoholics away from recovery. He said it saddened him to think about what had happened.
But, I guess, he came to the conclusion that it isn’t up to us to proselytise newcomers into our beliefs. We each will arrive at our own understanding in our own way, as Bill wrote, as long as it makes sense to him.)
Then, as I started to work my way up through the steps, I saw something and came to a realization. It was the 11th step. It started: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God…There it was, the word sought again. But this time it implied that I had a God of my understanding…somewhat. Because I found out for me that this was going to be a process and it still is.
The truth for me is that it was the process of working these steps which became the seeking and the finding and the solution to my alcoholic problem.
Somewhere along the way it happened. Not a big bright flash, as Bill had, but a gentle, gradual realization. Without knowing it, it just happened.
Anyway, I was thinking about the word “seeking”. Actually actively looking. I was thinking how these steps work. And they do work. My experience and the experience of so many others is evidence that they work. How our founders and the first group of sober alcoholics knew these steps would effect such a solution is a mystery to me, but I’m grateful that they did.
Like I said, just thinking.