"Rarely have we seen a person fail..." BB pg 58. I used to hear this part of the book being read every day at meetings. Notice there are no statistics given here. In almost every other area, if people want to indicate success, they will provide numbers. This completely took me by surprise, because here were a group people who did not belong to the debating society. The wind in the sails were gone. There was no more fighting and arguments about alcohol. Here were people that seemingly said nothing but actually said everything.
I was so fascinated that I decided right there and then that I going to investigate this program. There had to be holes in it. To my surprise the more I sought to find holes, the more answers to my own problems were being found. The realisation dawned on me that there was a power in AA that worked, and it kept me sober and sane, despite what opinions to the contrary were saying. The voice of the critic in me was shut forever, by living proof of a God, that did for me what I could not do for myself.
Strange how careful and skeptical of things we can be about everything except the one thing that will kill us if we let it! I felt the same way... just the way the book I received looked, all duct taped up, would have thrown me off before. Luckily I had a few meetings in, and some reading from it before I got the one I did. Needs for stats and proof, superficiality... the list could go on and on. I have many character defects. I'm so lucky to have a program to help me with those! Thanks for the post! Tasha
What a diversity that I find in my own thinking. That I can believe whole heartedly in this first sentence (an all) of chapter 5, and yet I will tell people about the grim statistics presented by one or several of AA own surveys, that say 1 in 20 who walks through the door. Both are correct. We must be that one "...who thoroughly follows our path" to Be the miracle in progress, to be on the upside of the statistic, to recover from this disease. It begins with putting aside our own ideas and developing a faith in a group of people, a process, a spiritual path. "I can't, but We can".
Everyone or everything in my life has - at some point or another - lied, bullshitted or just not been the thing that it said it was on the box - except this program.
