Being Here
Page 113 of the AA book, Came to Believe, says this:
“The nondrinking alcoholic discovers in AA that you cannot Get Ahead until you learn to be Here. We discover from our Serenity Prayer that one of the things we cannot change is time. The Here-and-Now is the only reality, whereas in the unreal world of the drinking alcoholic there was only yesterday-and-tomorrow.”
This coincides with a saying I have on my bulletin board: The ego seeks the destination; the soul seeks the journey.
Accepting what is now, staying in this moment, has forever baffled me. However, when I first read the saying that is on my bulletin board, I made a giant step towards getting it. I can conceptualize my ego from my soul — the part of me that sees myself as different / separate from others (ego) from the part of me that sees us all as one (as in “of one value”).
The ego side of me charges forth to the destination of accomplishments to gather evidence for my badge of okay-ness. All the while my spiritual-self knows that I’m already okay simply because I’m a child of God. (As is every other human on the planet.) Maybe the point of my life on the planet is to — simply — grapple with life here for a while and not so much figure out what to do, or say, or sing, or write to make me okay. I’ll stop here before I overstate (which I’m very good at).
Thank you for attending this week’s meeting. Please write whatever reaction you have to anything I’ve written or — as always — please share what you need to help you in your recovery.