Скачать или смотреть 13. AA💡Joe and Charlie 📚 Big Book Workshop "Step 8'

Big Book p. 569, par 2 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. 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. 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 gradually over time. J & C Now Bill’s was a sudden spectacular change. Some of the others in the stories in the back of the book were sudden spectacular changes. But what he’s saying here is for most of us it won’t happen that way. Most of us will have the educational variety and we will change as we learn and as we apply, slowly over a period of time. Sooner or later though we awakened to the fact that we have changed also. And then we’ll call it a spiritual awakening. So it really doesn’t make any difference whether it’s sudden and spectacular or whether it’s a slow thing that evolves over a period of time. In either case it’s going to be a personality change sufficient to bring about recovery. Now I can begin to think with this, I can live with this kind of idea. But when you start talking about what Aunt Much had in the Baptist Church, I couldn’t live with that idea at all. Cause I was raised in the southern Baptist Church too. And my idea of a spiritual experience was an entirely different thing. Thank God for this Appendix. It let me know what it really is. A change in my personality. My personality is made up by the way I think, by the way I feel, my attitude and outlook upon life, people, places and things in general. That’s what determines my personality. I come here restless, irritable and discontented. Filled with shame, fear, guilt and remorse. If I can change from that to peace of mind, serenity and happiness, I have undergone one hell of a change in my personality. This educational variety is the type that we are having this weekend. Right? We won’t be the same after this weekend. None of us will. No. Big Book p. 569, par. 4. 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. Most of us think this awareness of a Power greater than ourselves 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. We find that no one needs to struggle with the spiritual aspect 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." J & C See I knew so many things that were not true when I arrived in Alcoholics Anonymous. Lifelong theories that were not true. I lived my life based upon those things and they didn’t work. And they were so true in my mind that it was almost impossible for me to learn something that was true. So I had to lay aside a bunch of old ideas to be able to accept new and I needed an open mind. In fact I need an open mind more today then I have ever needed an open mind because there is so much more to learn throughout life. J & C OK, now we pointed out the fact a while ago that Bill loves to teach by using examples of something we already know about to teach us something new. That’s what he did when he used the great ocean liner. Another trend that Bill has, and I think it’s very important for us to realize it, is that, like most writers, he repeated himself quite often. But every time he repeated himself he would normally find a different word that means the same thing.