https://12stepnationalmeetings.com/media/Step-12-Alcoholics-Anonymous.mp4#t=4
Hello, how you doing? Again? Now? We’re at the conclusion step 12. Well, you have a better understanding. I hope and you ready to complete the work that you’ve been told about and here we are at step 12 and it gives us a great promise. It says having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these Steps A Spiritual Awakening now doesn’t tell us exactly how we will awaken spiritually how we will feel or what
We will go through but it promises that we will have a spiritual awakening. Remember the people who did this are not just talking Theory. They’re talking experience. They’re telling us what happened to them. They said in the past tense having had a spiritual awakening and they said if we follow their path we too will have a spiritual awakening now. Some things had to be said about this because Bill W had a sort of sudden Awakening and then simple
Let’s save learning. He had a light come through a window and had a sudden Awakening in my tradition. Some people have that they have a sudden Awakening and they never drink. They never drug again. They said I look at my hands. My hands look new. I looked at my feet and they did too. I’m not belittling that some people have a sudden Awakening but by the same token, I believe the majority of us have a gradual Awakening and so Bill W. They wrote in the big book about the gradual Awakening.
In those moments of Truth those moments of growing those moments of learning the gradual Awakening that takes place even as you’re in the rooms and people say something and it strikes you that you two need to do that’ll act like that. These are gradual spiritual Awakenings, but they promise that we will have a Spiritual Awakening A Spiritual Awakening and I think spirituality has to do with our morals has to do with love. Somebody said the greatest commandment.
The love our higher power and to love our neighbor. Okay. So if you have my Spiritual Awakening for me, it means that I am walking more with my higher power and I am walking more with other people. I’m not isolating. I’m loving people no matter who they are how they are where they are. I am loving people. I’m not codependent. I’m not enabling them, but I do love them and care about them. So Spiritual Awakening for me. It came gradually, you know people often ask me.
Now, what was the one thing that made you stop that behavior? What was the one thing that did that you knew you would never do it again? And they always looking for this magic bullet this one thing that will help them to overcome. I don’t have it. It was no magic bullet. I’ll I went into treatments a lot of times. I did a lot of things. I read a lot of books and one day I saw that I had one day I had two days. I had a month. I had two months at a year. I had two years. I had five years. It just came up.
on me by the grace of God it was a spiritual awakening that slowly dawned upon me like the dawning of the day as the sun comes up and comes brighter and brighter until the noon day I didn’t control the spiritual awakening my higher power control the spiritual awakening that’s why when I see someone in the throes of their diction I say but for the what grace of God there go out by the grace of God woke me up the grace of God bathed me in the timing of the grace of
God it was a spiritual awakening that gradually took hold of me and there was nothing that I did necessarily to make it happen right away like a sudden rebirth or being born again or being redeemed though I believe in all those things this thing gradually took ahold of me and Truth begin to transform me the second part of the step says we tried to carry this message to other people and to practice these principles in all our Affairs again spirituality is Holy
A stick it’s not static. We want to practice humility and all our fans. We want to practice truthfulness and all our fans. We want to practice letting go of resentment and all of our fans we want to practice this and all of our fans and we want to practice it with all the people around us because now we have had a spiritual awakening. We understand that the people who are doing things to us are not bad people. They are what sick people hurting people hurt people and we’ve heard people
people and we’ve been forgiven and we’ve been changed. Now other people may be hurting us. We will forgive them. They too may be changed. We have a greater understanding a greater reality in our life now because of what we’ve been through some people say only addicts have to become better people in order to get over their problem. We have to become better. And in this kind of recovery, there may be other kinds of recovery agnostics can stop using and recover.
And this kind of recovery. We are coming upon a conscious contact with our higher power. We are being changed because we don’t just want the symptom to be gone. We want to be better people spiritual people loving people and you know before I leave I just want to say this one thing. I believe one of the greatest greatest things that can show that we’re growing spiritually is humor. I believe that laughter is a
Very very spiritual thing not laughing at the expense of someone else, but just a wholesome humor because you feel better now and because you understand some things about life humor is a great spiritual thing, but the course the greatest of these is love and if we know all 12 of the steps, but we can’t love the people in the rooms love the people now family love the people on our jobs then perhaps we need to go back to step 1. Thank you very much.