The terms “spiritual experience” and
“spiritual awakening” are used many times in this book which, upon careful
reading, shows that the personality change sufficient to bring about recovery
from alcoholism has manifested itself among us in many different forms.
I will keep on harping on the truth of the matter for all of humanity -- we do not need a personality change, we need a heart change, we need life --- eternal life, which only Christ Jesus can give through the Holy Spirit, which has been offered to us, that we may receive it by faith!
Yet it is true that our first printing gave many readers the impression that these personality changes, or religious experiences, must be in the nature of sudden and spectacular upheavals.
There can be no greater upheaval than passing from death to life -- there can be no greater change to a man's entire system than the knowledge that all of his sins are forgiven, and forever, at the Cross, that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father, evermore justifying us!
Happily for everyone, this conclusion is erroneous. In the first few chapters a number of sudden revolutionary changes are described. Though it was not our intention to create such an impression, many alcoholics have nevertheless concluded that in order to recover they must acquire an immediate and overwhelming “God-consciousness” followed at once by a vast change in feeling and outlook.
We do not merely receive a "God-consciousness", we receive sonship through Christ!
Among our rapidly growing membership of thousands of alcoholics such transformations, though frequent, are by no means the rule. Most of our experiences are what the psychologist William James calls the “educational variety” because they develop slowly over a period of time.
Henry James is the last source that anyone should appeal to in order to get any ideas about anything. This man readily concluded that a man's experience and impressions determine truth. Uet or faith about something has not merit unless the object of our trust is praise-worthy and trust-worthy.
By dying for all our sins at the Cross, by taking away our punishment, effectively finishing off the ordinances against us, we can take God at His Word, for He gave His own Son -- will He not freely give us all things with Him?
Quite often friends of the newcomer are aware of the difference long before he is himself. He finally realizes that he has undergone a profound alteration in his reaction to life; that such a change could hardly have been brought about by himself alone. What often takes place in a few months could seldom have been accomplished by years of self discipline. With few exceptions our members find that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource which they presently identify with their own conception of a Power greater than themselves.
I do need merely a power greater than myself -- I need a revelation of God Almighty, whose power holds together the universe and also holds me!
Most of us think this awareness of a Power greater than ourselves is the essence of spiritual experience. Our more religious members call it “God-consciousness.”
Most emphatically we wish to say that any alcoholic capable of honestly facing his problems in the light of our experience can recover, provided he does not close his mind to all spiritual concepts. He can only be defeated by an attitude of intolerance or belligerent denial.
Open-mindedness is impossible without the Truth that sets us free -- and that Truth is Jesus Christ!
We find that no one need have difficulty with the spirituality of the program. Willingness, honesty and open mindedness are the essentials of recovery. But these are indispensable.
“There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance—that principle is contempt prior to investigation.” -- Herbert Spencer
With this standard in mind, the world is still waiting for documented proof that AA leads to a long and sustaining recovery -- no such evidence exists because the source of this and every other perversion in human experience is the lack of life which every man suffers from, as we are dead in our trespasses because of Adam's sin.
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