This book is designed for people who are seeking to “perfect and enlarge” their spiritual life, the key, as the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, puts it, to continued sobriety, inner freedom and the joy of living. It is based on notes I took over 20 years during weekly talks with my sponsor, Jane H.,* as she provided a Twelve-Step guide on meeting life’s challenges and transitions. When Jane died in 2013 at age 83, she had nearly 40 years of sobriety. I have 25. We grew together with many of our friends in the program, who now also have 20, 30, 40 and more years. So the wisdom of these insights works! Jane and I walked together through the death of my husband, the loss of my parents, job changes, lost animals and felled trees, as well as the many joys of sobriety. With her guidance, I was trained to see through spiritual eyes, not through my earthly lenses. I was taught to keep growing, to leave behind my old cloak to put on a new one. I was trained on how to be free from worry and anxiety by strengthening my spiritual practices. Others afflicted by doubts and fears will derive a special benefit from this book. Jane touched the lives of hundreds of people in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous. She derived her wisdom from deep study and practice of the Twelve Steps, as well as from extensive readings from other spiritual sources…. I wrote this book to capture the unique wit, humor and colorful language she used to explain spiritual principles so that others could benefit from them, as I did for more than two decades. Her words ranged from the zany to the impudent – and enlivened the recovery experience. She used pithy and meaningful phrases – such as “spiritual termites,” “the sequential error,” “a mental squirrel cage,” “cockeyed,” and “golden banquet or pig slop?” When I got into trouble due to pride, she would say, “The higher you get on your high horse, the harder you fall.” Her images and phrases helped deepen and enrich my understanding of, and joy in, the message of recovery and provided solutions to meet the day’s challenges. Excerpts: Week 1 Uniquely fitted God has placed me in the position I am in for a reason. I must ask myself why. Instead of being content with the role God has given me, am I dabbling in too many other areas? If so, I am taking energy away from what God would have me be and do today. I once considered taking in a problem teenage boy to help a relative, despite the fact that I had no experience raising troubled teens and had a sick husband at home. I was already volunteering with abused children, participating in Alcoholics Anonymous and working. Pride makes me believe I can be all things to all people. God did not select me to conquer the world – to pursue pie-in-the sky endeavors to look good. Those in recovery have been chosen for very specific work. I am uniquely fitted for this special role. If I divert from that and try to be superior, I pay the price. Dabbling in matters not core to God’s purpose for me results in loss of focus and spiritual depletion. Instead, my purpose is to do the best with what’s in front of me. I am specially equipped to do the assignment God has given me.
Action: I will pursue my assignment as a glory, not a deprivation. Meditation The shared gift …Faith is more than our greatest gift; its sharing with others is our greatest responsibility. May we of A.A. continually seek the wisdom and the willingness by which we may well fulfill that immense trust which the Giver of all perfect gifts has placed in our hands. Bill W., from As Bill Sees It, p. 13 Week 10
End of eras – and letting go Life is a series of eras that end. My childhood ends. My teen years end. Over my life, there are many endings. But sometimes I don’t learn to let go of the emotions – or to accept that life’s eras pass. How often I have tried to prolong my goodbyes – orchestrating numerous trips to visit my parents as they were getting older and sicker, or to visit nieces and nephews fearing the day I would lose my closeness to them as children. I was like a little child who wants her family forever intact. Instead, emotional maturity means learning to let go. When I grow up spiritually, I grow up emotionally. I had to learn that even though my parents were going, it was all right. It was all part of God’s plan. If I seek spiritual growth, it heals the emotional longing for things long gone – my childhood, my childhood relation with my parents. I can never be fulfilled by clinging, grasping, prolonging, or hanging on to what’s passing. If I feel lonely and deprived, I am missing something. Only God can fulfill my longing. Action: I will seek emotional maturity by learning to let go.
Meditation
The symphony of life The symphony of life moves on but you keep looking back, clinging to a few bars of the melody, blocking your ears to the rest of the music, thereby producing disharmony and conflict between what life is offering you and what you are clinging to. Then comes the tension and anxiety which are the very death of love and the joyful freedom that love brings. For love and freedom are only found when one enjoys each note as it arises, then allows it to go, so as to be fully receptive to the notes that follow…. The secret is to renounce nothing, cling to nothing, enjoy everything and allow it to pass, to flow…. Then you will stop looking back and allow yourself to be enchanted by the music of the present moment. Anthony de Mello, The Way to Love, pp. 114-115
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