The first time I walked into an AA meeting, I had that eerie experience so many newcomers seem to have: the speakers were telling my story. Secrets and feelings I thought were uniquely mine were being revealed to a room of a hundred people. After I got over the feeling that it was all a conspiracy–that the counselor who’d suggested I go there had called both speakers and told them exactly how to get to me–I began to experience some hope. There was laughter and the possibility of a different way of living being discussed in that room. Then my heart fell at the end of the meeting when everyone rose to recite the Lord’s Prayer. I knew I could never belong. I’d been nonreligious for too long. Religion was okay for people who were weak and needed it (or were simple-minded) but I was strong and smart and would have nothing to do with it.
Nevertheless I kept coming. A few meetings later, I saw the Steps displayed and again I felt I’d never make it. Yes, I could see a lot of common sense in them, but the word “God” was mentioned much too frequently for my peace of mind.
A few months later, I started attending a Step meeting. My mission was clear. I was going to rewrite the “Twelve and Twelve” and the Big Book so these poor deluded AAs could see what the Steps were really about. After my creative editing, all mention of God or Higher Power would be erased, and they would see the truth as revealed to me.
I tried to be open-minded but I was firm in my resolution to avoid religion. My home meeting, which I chose because of its convenient time and location (and, incidentally, the warm, loving, and supportive people in it), was based on reading and discussing the book Twenty-Four Hours a Day, from Hazelden. I found the thought for the day useful and informative, but could make no sense at all of the meditation and prayer for the day. People tried to help me and told me that my Higher Power could be a tree, the sun, a “Group of Drunks,” or anything I wanted, but I was still utterly baffled. I remember the twinkle in one old-timer’s eye as he drawled in his Texas accent, “Don’t worry if you don’t get it right away. It will eventually get you.” I knew he was wrong, but I kept coming and kept questioning.
I can’t say when things began to change. I went through several excruciating emotional periods after about a year of sobriety. It was suggested that I use the Serenity Prayer when a train-load of anxiety was bearing down on me as if I were a poor damsel tied to the railroad tracks. I tried the prayer, and for some mysterious reason, the train veered away and past me. I reached out for help to virtual strangers and they met me more than halfway with love. I began to see that it worked; but for the life of me, I still didn’t know what “it” was.
Since then, the fact that this is a spiritual program, not a religious program has slowly begun to sink in. All my life, I believed that the things you could touch and see were the only things that were real. I was a scientist and a materialist. The world for me was made up of atoms and molecules and nothing else. But I came to discover that there were other real things, things I couldn’t touch and see, but which were important and were really there. The nonmaterial (and hence spiritual) entity which was most important for me was the love that exists and flows between human beings. I made this love my higher power. It had always been there but I hadn’t seen it.
Now that my spiritual eyes have begun to open, the world is much fuller. When I walk into a meeting, I sense the love that fills the room to overflowing. This is a love I can share in. When I call an AA friend on the telephone, I make a direct connection with her capacity to love, and it nourishes me.
When I pray or meditate now, I turn within myself. Where before there was a gaping hole of emptiness, I seek within me that faint ember of self-love, self-worth, and desire for goodness. Then I breathe it into glowing life with my earnest prayers. I seek to know “God’s will in my life” by coming into harmony with my aspirations to be the best possible human being I can. I communicate with my inner self, which is gradually being transformed through the influence of the Steps in my life. Thereby, I am filled, fulfilled, and directed on my daily path.
When I talk about spirituality with traditionally religious people at AA meetings, I don’t find much contradiction between our ideas. Whether God is one or three or many and whether he wants them to abstain from pork or attend Sunday Mass is not important for our common recovery. As long as we focus on that aspect of their God which works through the fellowship and the Twelve Steps of AA, we have a lot in common.