Was AA Created from this very Moment?

[Surrender]

Hi all.
Was listening to a Bill W audio of Him talking about his Spiritual Experience.
I typed his very Words down, as he spoke.
Does anyone believe, this is the very Moment AA was formed, or the Catylist that seeded AA.
Remembering Bill was 3 days Sober in Hospital when this Happened.
And he never drank again.

Bill W Spiritual Experience.
Then i remember, crying out, "if there is a God, will he show him self"!
And then came, the Miracle, the great central experience of my whole life.
The room instantly lit up, lit up, in a blinding glare white white light,
i was seized by an ecstacy, such as i have never known.
It seemed to me that i then stood on a mountain top, where a great clean wind was blowing,
I thought to myself, but this is not air, this is spirit, this is the God of the preacher.
How long i remain in this state, i just can not say, and again i have no words to describe, what it was like,
At lengths how ever, i found myself on the bed,
but now i was in, a New World, a world in which everything was right,
despite the wrongs of the world, i had been living in.
I felt myself filled with the consciousness of the presence of spirit, of God.
A great Peace stole over me.

[positrac]

Powerful point made and one that sticks out is God and today the biggest hiccup in AA is higher power as it refers to God. What I know is I have no desire to return to my old life because it was a real nasty thing and I was hopelessly wondering around looking for some kind of quick fix to my aliment. Drinking wasn't the problem it was the alcohol that was the problem and if I could just figure out how to drink like those other people then I would be ok and I'd fit into society.

[Surrender]

That's a lovely reply, for guests in dire straits searching the net in desperation for help.
I will (wont) remind our Group on Wednesday, we better tear the banners down, and the serenity prayer down, because the word God is written.
It may be the same as myself, going onto a Christian forum, and telling them, the word God is the biggest hick up, in the Bible.
Simply wouldn't be fair, for the Oppressed, addicted, assaulted, abused, lonely, searching for God for a snippet of comfort.
No offence, but i back the under dog, the still suffering Alcoholic, and respect AA's steps and traditions.
if i didn't i simply wouldn't be here, and wouldn't be amongst my AA freinds each week in our meetings.
i try my hardest to stay away from conflict, but as i said, i back the underdog.
Peace

[avaneesh912]

In the book Power of Now, Eckhart talks about limit situations like people in death-row.... people reach a point, where the mind shuts off and the consciousness takes over. Bill reached that point and the cosmos put the right resources in front of him. And Bill being a very smart person himself grabbed the solution like the book talks about how a desperate person will act:


We, in our turn, sought the same escape with all the desperation of drowning men. What seemed at first a flimsy reed, has proved to be the loving and powerful hand of God. A new life has been given us or, if you prefer, "a design for living" that really works.

One more thing happened. If weread Dr. Bob and Good Oldtimers we could see the power of prayer. How Henrieta S prayed for a solution (for Dr. Bob) and how the cosmos answered her with a call from Bill W.

[positrac]

When I lived in Australia in the mid 1990's I bought the 50th anniversary BB red cover with gold sidewalls and It had the first 165 pages of the original text and the story section were of Australians and their stories. My point is that AA almost didn't grab hold in Australia and luckily it did and they have a ways and means to recover from the insanity.

[Spirit Flower]

The room instantly lit up, lit up, in a blinding glare white white light,
i was seized by an ecstacy, such as i have never known.

What I used to be like: This sentence, mirrored in Bill's Story in the BB did for years piss me off. I never had anything like that happen to me. I even tried many other spiritual techniques which people claimed got them this illumination experience. I got annoyed at people who came out of treatment centers on pink clouds while I never got it. I probably went off to a monastery with 15 years of sobriety in order to have such an experience since Thomas Merton describes such a moment of clarity in Seven Story Mountain. Other religious mystics also describe it. People who have near death experiences describe it. This experience led Bill to try LSD later in life trying to re-create it. Addicts pursue drugs to death because of this feeling.

What happened: I've had to "settle" for the daily growth type spiritual experience discussed in the appendix.

What its like now: I meditate every day. I frequently feel tuned in, like I received an intuitive thought. I prayer for "an intuitive thought, inspiration or decision," as the Big Book says. My life is full of quiet moments of clarity, but never the mountain top. At the moment, newly retired, I have a quiet intimacy type relationship with my inner guidance for at least a couple of hours every day. It is not bright lights but I do frequently receive inspiration and the energy to act on it.