Healing is a matter of time, but it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity
3. Principles
Principles are the language of miracles. Increasing our language ability helps us make the right choices. Our minds often play tricks on us, due to our disease, and we use spiritual principles as guidelines to escape our old ways. These principles can be mimicked but unspiritual people lack certain characteristics associated with spiritual growth. Love, caring, patience, peace of mind is hard attributes to fake! We each have to reach a point of surrender to enter the state we call 'recovery.' In NA, we have our own spiritual awakening and this gives us our own evidence of the reality of the God of our Understanding. We have to have our own miracles for spirituality to be real to us. Without principles, it is easy to fall back into our comfortable rationales where most of the world is wrong and we, poor isolated victims, are lost in a world of fools. We learn or create words to describe what is going on in our hearts so others can help us and so we can help ourselves. Recovery is getting back with humanity.
Spiritual growth is discovering ways to put principles into action. To grow spiritually requires three things: surrender, learning and practice. We have found that maintaining our spiritual condition is the best safe guard against relapse. Our spiritual condition determines the quality of our life. Regardless of our station in life, it is possible to achieve a great state of mind and spirit. Many of our members spend a great deal of time in our meetings and functioning as part of our active service structure. Others go about their business in good faith and show their gratitude for recovery through personal service. Personal service is helping addicts seeking recovery.
As we grow in recovery, unanticipated differences of viewpoint develop from our newly acquired information. When we begin to apply it, we discover ways to reconcile what we have learned with what we have known before and the situations around us. Pretending that these differences don't exist will ensure that they dominate us. Secrets have great power. We see this happen in any area of our lives where we are not free to openly discuss our feelings. While it may be a simple matter to resolve in open discussion, when we won't even admit something is wrong it takes on the enduring quality of stone. Until we found recovery, the inability to come out into the open with living problems has kept addicts in prisons of their own making. Just the fact that there are others who share our concerns, sets us free from feeling that we are alone.
Respectfully Submitted,
Randy G.
Spiritual growth is discovering ways to put principles into action. To grow spiritually requires three things: surrender, learning and practice. We have found that maintaining our spiritual condition is the best safe guard against relapse. Our spiritual condition determines the quality of our life. Regardless of our station in life, it is possible to achieve a great state of mind and spirit. Many of our members spend a great deal of time in our meetings and functioning as part of our active service structure. Others go about their business in good faith and show their gratitude for recovery through personal service. Personal service is helping addicts seeking recovery.
As we grow in recovery, unanticipated differences of viewpoint develop from our newly acquired information. When we begin to apply it, we discover ways to reconcile what we have learned with what we have known before and the situations around us. Pretending that these differences don't exist will ensure that they dominate us. Secrets have great power. We see this happen in any area of our lives where we are not free to openly discuss our feelings. While it may be a simple matter to resolve in open discussion, when we won't even admit something is wrong it takes on the enduring quality of stone. Until we found recovery, the inability to come out into the open with living problems has kept addicts in prisons of their own making. Just the fact that there are others who share our concerns, sets us free from feeling that we are alone.
Respectfully Submitted,
Randy G.
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