Had a great meeting tonight.  It was an open discussion and started with a reading in How It Works. 64:3 “Resentment is the number one offender. From it stems all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick.  When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically.“
When I hear the state of some men and women and how they have suffered it makes my problems seem tiny.  I recall a passage in the chapter To Wives. 114:2 “The family of such men (women) suffer horribly, but not more than the men (women) themselves.”
All the problems we are left to work out.  Every wrong we’ve committed and any resentment; fearless and honest inventory; asking God to humbly remove shortcomings; making amends.
While the meeting was in session and listening to others share where they were spiritually and how they were dealing, I dug around in the book.  One man, in his late forties and reunited with his fifteen year estranged son, cried as he begged for fellowship.  He was hopeless.  He expressed that he had considered suicide but was mentally dismissive (whew).  He had been drinking that day and was at the very least “buzzed”.  His use of the word beg caught my attention and this is what I dug up, paraphrased.

There Is A Solution 26:3 – 27:5
He begged the doctor to tell him the whole truth, and he got it.  In the doctor’s judgement he was utterly hopeless; he could never regain his position in society and he would have to place himself under lock and key or hire a bodyguard if he expected to live long.  That was a great physician’s opinion.
But this man still lives, and is a free man.  He does not need a bodyguard nor is he confined.  He can go anywhere on this earth where other free men may go without disaster, provided he remains willing to maintain a certain simple attitude.
Some of our readers may think they can do without spiritual help.  Let us tell you the rest of the conversation our friend had with the doctor.
The doctor said: “You have the mind of a chronic alcoholic.  I have never seen one single case recover, where that state of mind existed to the extent that it does in you.”  Our friend felt as though the gates of hell had closed on him with a clang.
He said to the doctor, “Is there no exception?”
“Yes, ” replied the doctor.  “there is.  Exceptions to cases such as yours have been occurring since early times.  Here and there, once in a while, alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences.  To me these occurrences are phenomena.  They appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements.  Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them…”
…The doctor told him that while his religious convictions were every good, in his case they did not spell the necessary vital spiritual experience.

This really hit home with me.
I met with a man today and he became my sponsor.  I’m ready to take that moral inventory.  It scares the shit out of me a little.  Nonetheless I am ready to take it on, again.  I know I have resentments that have taken me off course and led me to troubled times in my thinking and attitudes.  This thing is going a good direction and I’m ready to walk on water, regardless how prevails the storm.
There’s nothing that I can’t handle if I leave the thinking to a healthy God consciousness.  
Storm Waves by Andrew Schmidt

This post was last modified on June 21, 2013 - learn more.

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