“What if you, like the Buddha Siddhartha, suddenly realized that the whole world you’d invested in was no more than a lovely theatrical stage meant to distract your from true life? What then? Would you, like Jim Carey in ‘The Truman Show’ have the courage to walk off the set? Or like Keanu Reeves in ‘The Matrix’ swallow the red pill?”
~Regina Sara Ryan
I found out about A.A. as the result of the court system A big “no no” in the fellowship and it wasn’t about some traffic offense. I ended up in rehab and as a result of the group therapy I started to experience a total cessation of emotion and almost all thought with no identification of “me” at all. I didn’t know what this was at the time so I began to ask my therapist about it and he had no idea what I was talking about. I also asked the inmates there if they were experiencing any like symptoms and they said no and that they too didn’t know what I was talking about.
I know now that this was my ego “dying” and of course, it fights very hard for it’s survival so I panicked because I thought it was some type of” mind rape” as a result of my staying there and left. I also attended my first meeting while I was staying there at a Catholic church where I picked up a white chip and won a Big Book in a raffle I consider that incident a preview of what was to come. But if it wasn’t for that incident I would’ve never known about A.A. being there.
Many years later after much more drunken escapades and reaching a wall with that I finally turned to A.A. to put a stop to things as for the rest well I’m still the anonymous person that been posting my experience with A.A. and my end result with the steps and what subsequently happened after that. Now all I find I can do is question A.A.’s thought/belief system because there is no “I” in God just like there was no awareness that “I” was an “alcoholic” or even my given “Christian name” I can’t go back because they’d ask for a sacrifice by saying I “need to drink more” or some such gesture or action which I will not do.
I stumbled onto this metaphysical aspect of “God” as a result reaching the end of my rope in my “sober” life and of the 12 steps of A.A.as described out of The Big Book in 1990. I did the usual things that were suggested i.e. prayer and seeking a sponsor when that occurred, only to end up at a Big Book step study group that slyly took you through the steps because the ego is so sly and resistant to God. When I got a quarter of the way through the 9th step, I “confessed my former ill feelings” as said in The Big Book to a woman whom I thought was a “bitch” and she forgave me as well. I left the meeting to go outside into the patio when I started to feel a wet spot in the pit of my belly that shot down to the bottoms of my feet and back up through my entire body removing every fiber of fear leaving nothing but the purest feeling of Love I had ever known. It was dumbfounding and very shaking because I had never experienced anything like this…ever. If this was “God” it was way beyond my “understanding”.
I basked in that experience for something like 20 minutes or so, then got up to drive home with a little hesitancy because I was wary of driving safe in that space, but I made it. I ended up taking a nap wondering if this would still be going on when I got up, and sure enough, it was. I went back to the club where I was going for meetings to share what had happened and as I listened to everybody share, and it was quite packed, the things that were coming out of people’s mouths had nothing to do with the God that had found me, like “belonging to A.A. is like belonging to the mafia” with lots of anger behind the tone of people’s sharing. There were one or two that talked about their current problem and I could tell that it was rooted in issues like co-dependency or just plain powerlessness. There was one woman at the meeting that the second she opened her mouth I knew she knew what I knew and had encountered, because there was a peace and a glow about her that was unequivocally from God.
Life had changed for me.
Like time slowing down and no longer being “linear’, incidences of Claire-audience phenomena . One morning i woke up with a warm spot in my chest in the shape of an eye where my heart chakra had opened, and days of blessed silence where I would just go through the motions with no mind chatter at all, just serene bliss. After a while of being involved with A.A. I felt that there was something not quite spiritually right in there. Much like the “man behind the curtain” in The Wizard Of Oz. After that it became like living in The Truman Show with no spontaneity and just robotic responses coming from other A.A. members. Finally there was a situation that arose between the Big Book group that I was involved in and other A.A. members pushing them out where I had no choice but to move on and so did the members of my Big Book group that I considered my home group.
I was dying of alcoholism and drug addiction. I’ve been to jails. wrecked cars, walked on the railing of bridges with about a 200 ft drop waiting to die. My experience as the result of the steps in A.A. changed all that. Some for the good. Some for the bad. But ultimately it was all good because ultimately it’s just a journey. I found out about man’s worst side in A.A. Infighting over The Infinite, predatoring, getting “sober” and opening up cathouses with prostitutes fresh out of rehab. They got high and busted for drugs and prostitution. At the risk of comparing myself to anyone I fell in love with a drug store manager that I had “stolen” from her then boy friend. The relationship was on it’s last legs anyhow and we wound up living together because I wanted to be legit and a part of the human race. But life happens and I was “new to the game”. Anyway one night I was sitting on the patio of an A.A. club that was going through an upheaval and I just decided to pull a Truman Show move and just “walked off the set”: as it were, took a “red pill” and left. After that experience I knew that A.A. was not the “end all be all” it subltly claims to be. Like Siddharthra Buddah I knew there were more answers to be had and known and I found out eventually that I was right because just down the street from me is a Unity church where half it’s members are 12 step and half A Course In Miracles and out of all that I interviewed the Course members were FORMER MEMBERS OF ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS!!! They had simply outgrew the meetings and left!!! And they lead full and productive lives!!! I was no saint by any means. I played in rock bands, got laid but I lived life and got happy because I deserved it after living life with a control freak alcoholic father that died by his own sword. I’m in a situation now where I’m taking care of my handicapped mother. It isn’t easy and any other addict would be drunk and high by now.
I’m not.
Because I’m not going back there. “They” say that because I’m an “alcoholic” and an “addict” that I’m supposed to miss getting drunk and high. The fact of the matter is that I don’t. I don’t miss committing suicide on the installment plan Who in their right mind would TRULY “miss” that???The alcohol poisoned “hangovers”, puking in the bowl and taking drugs to face the day. I don’t miss the wrecked cars and jail time. I love being free and clear brained. I can’t even say or type the word “sober” anymore because beyond that word there is “God” Eckhart Tolle is right. So was Jiddu Krishnamurti. I wish everybody would question what they have been “told”. Whatever it was…don’t believe it.
‘The search for truth started in the streets and I went through multiple phases: drugs, alcohol, religion, shamanism, spiritism, politics, revolution and spirituality. I didn’t find anything there but brief moments of tranquility nothing permanent and tangible that could be called THE TRUTH so I decided to find the truth for my self by my self. But I couldn’t, so I surrendered. And there and then I realized there is nothing to “understand”. In an instant, the clarity of this truth was there in such an obvious way and interpreted intellectually in this way: the one that perceives, the act of perceiving and what is perceived are one and the same. Separation simply does not exist. There is nothing to “understand” or to “attain”. There is only the totality. Life is an indivisible unit.” ~ Cesar Teruel
therealstarwanderer 