Читать книгу Spiritual Awakenings II - Группа авторов - Страница 8

As usual, our AA co-founder Bill W. did not mince words when writing about the subject of this book. With his own white light experience one of the classics of written history, he referred to a spiritual awakening as “the greatest gift that can come to anybody,” but he also made it clear that a spiritual awakening is not just a lovely possibility, not merely an option. In the December 1957 issue of AA Grapevine he put it this way:

“We must awake or we die.”

“So we do awake, and we are sober. Then what? Is sobriety all that we are to expect of a spiritual awakening? Again, the voice of AA speaks up. No, sobriety is only a bare beginning, it is only the first gift of the first awakening ... a new life of endless possibilities can be lived if we are willing to continue our awakening.”

It is commonly acknowledged that we drank in a futile search for spirit, so it’s no surprise that alcohol also goes by the name of “spirits,” with some package stores even named “spirit shops.” But alcohol took away our spirits, and it’s only when we find the real thing through the liberating program of Alcoholics Anonymous that we realize we have come home.

Let one of the writers in this book describe what that feels like:

“You, too, can live—really live. There will be love and laughter and a delicious sense of well-being down deep inside if you will abandon yourself to the business of recovery—not just recovery from the disease of active alcoholism, but deeper than that, recovery from a former self. Such thorough recovery can be realized, I believe, only through the fearless application of spiritual principles to our daily lives.”

Written by men and women made new in spirit, these are stories that will light our way home.