Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 60
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Yesterday, the topic at the Sundowners Meeting was “spiritual progress”. I’m not sure how it got started but people began sharing their experience with “God” or what their opinion of what “God” was to them. Little or nothing was said about spiritual progress. I listened regardless, even though at times I wanted to stand and stomp out of the door. I just hung on to the bottom of my seat and waited for the meeting to end, repeating to myself “Love and tolerance, George… love and tolerance”.Some of the people who shared are dear friends and have been in AA from ten to well over twenty years. If Jesus showed himself out of a cloud in the sky, that’s okay with me. I just believe it is more important to share, especially in an open meeting, about how we believe rather than what we believe.
Finally, one of the last people to be called on, a young woman started off saying something like this; “I am an atheist but my experience has been that it isn’t important to believe anything. I sit every day in meditation to center my thoughts on a ‘higher principle’. After I meditate I go out and practice these principles I’ve learned through the Steps to my daily affairs. That is spiritual progress to me.”
I thanked her after the meeting and assured her that, not only was she the only one to share on topic, but that she was not alone in her beliefs. Often times, after a meeting turns into a pep-rally for God, I go away feeling worse than when I went in. It isn’t that I don’t believe in God because, in my personal experience, something happened when I called on the Heart of Compassion to relieve me from the grip of alcoholism. My beliefs beyond that experience are nobody’s business but my own. Spiritual progress is about how well I apply that experience to my daily affairs and to always keep in mind that, though I aim for the bull’s eye of perfection, I am new at this sport of archery. I remain a student of the Spirit that guides me.
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