Paging through the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous I find myself saying “I don’t remember reading this before…” But, I know that I have read it many, many times before. After all, my home group is a Big Book Study and I have read the “Book” from the “Roman Numerals” beginning with the “Preface” through “Doctor Bob’s Nightmare”, probably more than 20 times. So what accounts for the appearance of this new line or paragraph? I have come to believe that I am ever evolving and that I am not the same person that I was when I last read that line or paragraph that has taken on new meaning for me. I see things just a little bit differently. Hopefully, I have grown in ways that make me a kinder, gentler person. Perhaps I have learned something new about freedom, so that when I read on page 55 of the Big Book:
“What about people who proved that man could
never fly?
“Yet we had been seeing another kind of flight, a
spiritual liberation from this world, people who
rose above their problems.”
What a new and wonderful way to view “Spiritual Liberation”…rising above our problems. Emmet Fox, an early favorite of Bill W. and Dr. Bob S. always said, “The solution to any problem is to raise your consciousness above the problem.” If we need Spiritual Liberation we need only be alright with, or rise above, our unresolved problems.
“You can’t stand in the same river twice” – so said Heraclitus. I guess he was talking about our own conscious evolution bringing new meaning to our experiences, bringing new meaning to things we have read before like page 55 of the Big Book.
“We claim spiritual progress…”
Alcoholics Anonymous p. 60
Greg Dorst J.D., CAS II