Look at the world as your Father’s house. They finally realize that they have undergone a profound alteration in their reaction to life and that such a change could hardly have been brought about by themselves alone.” Is my outlook on life changing for the better? Quite often friends of newcomers are aware of the difference long before they are themselves. Most of our spiritual experiences are of the educational variety, and they develop slowly over a period of time. Choked with emotion, I had cried, but this time, when I received my son’s card, my tears were tears of joy, not desperation.Ĭontinuing the consideration of the term “spiritual experience”: “The acquiring of an immediate and overwhelming God-consciousness, resulting in a dramatic transformation, though frequent, is by no means the rule. It had been during the previous Christmas holidays, when he had said to me, while crying, “Dad, I love you! Can’t you see what you’re doing to yourself?” I couldn’t. Happy Birthday, I love you.” My son had told me that he loved me before. It was a card from my son in college, saying, “Dad, you can’t imagine how glad I am that everything is okay. While on the road to recovery I received a gift that could not be purchased. Marvelous results often follow such a reunion. From that point on, progress will be rapid. In time they will see that he is a new man and in their own way they will let him know it. The AAs have made this necessary lesson clear by making me fully accept the necessity of discipline so that I may continue healing spiritually as well as physically with their help.The alcoholic may find it hard to re-establish friendly relations with his children. This applies to groups too if we don’t assert discipline and self-respect on our own, then the group will enforce it for us one way or another. Tradition Four points me in a spiritual direction, even though my alcoholic inclinations would prefer that I stay away from spirituality. I am an active alcoholic who abused every liberty life allowed him but I’m learning to respect Tradition Four which says we should always maintain our sobriety outside those walls as well because without self-respecting authority over oneself there can be no true freedom or integrity when dealing with other people.Ĭonclusion paragraph: I had to learn respect. 104-05Ī.A has made me fully accept the necessity of discipline and that, if I do not assert it from within myself then others will pay for my disobedience in Alcoholics Anonymous meetings every day But this ultra-liberty is not so risky as it looks. A.A. group, provided that as a group they have no other affiliation.”*. For example, in its original “long form,” Tradition Four declares: “Any two or three gathered together for sobriety may call themselves an A.A. Some may think that we have carried the principle of group autonomy to extremes. There are times when I feel like giving up or just turning back to alcohol, but then I remember that there are people who care about me and want me to be healthy again.Įven though alcoholism can be a very slippery slope, with one slip leading to another until you find yourself drinking again without any clue how you got there- by remembering what’s important to me and why I stopped drinking in the first place, makes living each day sober so much easier than ever before. I have been sober for over six months now, and it has not been easy at all! I know this because my life is proof of the truth in that statement.
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