Real humility

I was at a meeting last week, and I was controversial. It really took even me by surprise; I have worked intentionally to neither cause waves, nor teach, nor marginalize. But I have been taken to a place in my recovery, where I truly understand the program. While sponsorship is imperative, it really is about a spiritual answer: a God answer. 

For me, this has always been why in our Traditions, we specify that we attract by our lives, rather than our words. We cannot force God onto anyone, that would be futile. Faith is between man and God alone, however, as the literature says, we must not shy away from the topic of God. 

After I preached, I felt uncomfortable; most of us who enter the program are bitter, and I must remember that I was no exception. But, by the grace of God, I wanted recovery badly enough, that I humbled myself enough to go to Layla and her group. Maybe I feel like I paid my dues, and now I know better than others, but maybe I really do have the real message now, as well. 

We then read pieces of Step Three from the Big Book, and I felt that we could have taken my preaching as the selfishness of the active alcoholic, for he is usually in opposition with someone else. I began to contemplate when is opposition a result of being self-serving, and when is it a result of being prophetic? In truth, I felt embarrassed. So I said, you know what, it can be hard, but I never stopped going to meetings, and that turned out to be my saving grace.

I had to think fast. Our Preamble says that we come to a turning point, and that we turn to His protection and care with COMPLETE abandon. God either IS or He ISN'T. What was our decision to be? This is verbatim, and yet, how easy it is to either gloss over it, or just be plain ignorant. Then people like me come, and look like the bad guy. But I came upon an article that Layla posted, and she reminded me what the Bible says:

"All the people in the synagogue were furious when they heard this. They got up, drove him out of the town, and took him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, in order to throw him off the cliff. But he walked right through the crowd and went on his way." ~ Luke 4:28-30

I must remember that the Lord said that I will be hated, for he was. but that does not change the Program. God either IS or He ISN'T, he is either the spiritual answer that has been lost in time, or your meetings are. But, will your meetings stay with you when you are fearful about your finances, or envious of your neighbour, or resentful at your government, or obsessed with your relationships? 

I can tell you from direct experience that God will heal us of those defects, and it takes a genuine Step Three, Six, Seven, Ten, and Eleven to do that. But, if you think the Steps are enough, you are wrong, for you are missing one constituent: humility. Humility, such a strange word, just as foreign as "Thy will be done." (Again, the Truth guiding the aforementioned Steps). I have heard time and again people say that they do not know what the word humility means, that they can't grasp the concept that it does not actually mean "embarrassment", or that they don't know what is "God's will". And yet, when people like me come along to tell them exactly what it means, they put their backs up. Why? 

Maybe it's because these people are not real alcoholics, or maybe their crash course isn't going in the direction of a real Step One. Either way, they are infiltrating our Fellowship. If they are the latter, we must pray for them to have the courage to walk in the "sunlight of the Spirit", but if they are the former, it is time to filter them out, before the founders are no longer known to us through direct contact of the old-timers, but are only known through books, leaving the fellowship vulnerable to Evil. 

Karma's a bitch

There is no salvation in karma, the governing principle in Eastern philosophy, for there is no true justice is this widely misunderstood doctrine. Those who have rejected their Christian birthright in the chase for serenity by seeing the "god within" have failed to see that karma is more a bitch than they can reckon with. 

By the very definition of karma, pain can never be relieved, and therefore evil can never be conquered: it is a vicious cycle, not a holistic one. The New Age movement completely and utterly fails to confront the fundamental flaw in the teachings of karma, which is the silent assertion that pain is deserved. 

Another serious flaw is the game of chance: in order for one's karma to come back to them, another must set up his karma to be consequently further corrected at a later time, by which another will set up her karma, and so on. For Jack's wrongs to be righted, Jill must be be his justice, while simultaneously becoming a victim, being setup for her intrusion on Jack to be avenged.

But the Westerner already had his victim and avenger, fully vindicating his entire and complete existence, through Jesus Christ, and yet we see more and more leaving the Son of God to proclaim some perverse self-demi-god nature. That, to me, is the poster-child of insanity. 

Light in darkness

"'Build up, build up, prepare the road!

Remove the obstacles out of the way of my people.'

For this is what the high and exalted One says - 

he who lives forever,

whose name is holy:

'I live in a high and holy place,

but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit,

to revive the spirit of the lowly

and to revive the heart of the contrite.

I will not accuse them forever,

nor will I always be angry,

for then they would faint away because of me - 

the very people I have created...

I have seen their ways,

but I will heal them...

Peace, peace to those far and near'

Says the Lord.

'And I will heal them'...

But the wicked are like the tossing sea,

which cannot rest,

whose waves cast up mire and mud.

'There is no peace', says the Lord,

'for the wicked.'"

Isaiah 57.14-6+18-21