The Dawning

The Dawning...

I read stories in the book "Alcoholics Anonymous" (referred to as the Big Book) and there are many stories about spiritual awakenings.  Many talk about a flash, or a sudden realization, a quick and overwhelming sense of the spirit and an understanding that there is something higher and greater than the sick, selfish alcoholic self.  These stories are amazing and attractive and provide hope to many sufferers.  They can also cause frustration for the multitudes of people for whom this does not happen in the same way.
I have always been attracted to these flash-bang stories.  I wanted a spiritual awakening and I wanted one quickly.  I am such a text book alcoholic.  I, like many addicts, want things right now.  I want what I want when I want it as they say.  I had gastric bypass surgery because I wanted to lose weight and fast without the effort of exercise and diet.  That didn't work out well did it?  I became an alcoholic shortly thereafter AND began to regain some of the weight I lost.
It is easy now for me to see my flawed thinking and easy now for me to see that flawed thinking in others who may seek my counsel.  I worry that my clarity will not last so I look myself fully in the eye every day now by practicing the tenth step.  The tenth step is all about reviewing your actions and looking for flaws and when finding them rectifying them immediately.  I worry about how I will hold a mirror up to another for them to see themselves clearly.  Looking in the mirror is critical and until someone is willing to pick up the mirror and look, then I must hold it up for them but do so firmly with love and understanding.  It is a precarious balancing act.
In my home group we say that people who have gone through the steps have reached the other side.  To some that may sound arrogant, but it isn't meant to be elitist at all.  It is an acknowledgment of the self examining work that has been done.  It is almost like that saying, "The grass is always greener on the other side"... Well, it occurs to me that it is greener but not because the grass is different on the other side, but because I have better vision.  I would argue that most of the people who enter the rooms of AA want the greener grass, but unless they actually do the steps, they will never see it.
It took me some months of working and writing and following the directions of my sponsor before I started to recognize a few things.  I was starting to feel better.  I was starting to like myself.  I was starting to stand taller, care more about my appearance, look people in the eye, emerge from my hole of self-pity.  I was starting to smile and laugh and become sure-footed.  My problems were not gone and my life was chaotic, but I was not.  I was steadily plodding along doing the next right thing with a growing awareness that I was not alone.  I was seeing the benefits of my new clarity all around me and I was having epiphanies right, left and center.  I was becoming the person that I have always wanted to be and what an amazing realization that was.
So I did not have a flash-bang spiritual awakening, I would describe it differently.  It was as though I got up early in the morning while it was still dark.  I began my day and went about doing the things I needed to do and began slowly to feel warmth, so I lifted my head and saw the slow beautiful dawning of the sun.