Sandy B. – AA Speaker – God takes care of everything!
Clancy says alcoholism is a disease of perception. We are looking at this world incorrectly because we’re disturbed. So how can we get to look at it correctly? Get undisturbed? In other words, that becomes the new top priority. So I tried to thin, what is necessary to make this change? We need a new way of looking at everything. I was trying to find a way of looking at the ego and make up a story so we can have some dynamics about what the ego is. I’m not going to go through the whole thing, but I came up with an analogy of a trees. There are tons of elm trees in New Haven where I grew up, they were very big and must have had thousands of leaves.
I looked it up at the trees and just marveled. If you think about it, the tree is an incredible entity that functions like a symphony orchestra. There’s obviously some divine guidance going on and all of the components of this tree, it is in harmony with everything and the leaves are very important. In it in this analogy, the Higher Power gives the leaves free will. After a while they’re sitting on the branches and they’re looking around going, “This branch is much bigger and we are doing more work, and we’re producing more sugar.” They think they ought to organize and try to change the way things are. They’re all frustrated. They just have this sense of unease, even though they are right where they are supposed to be.
When you read scripture writings, it’s like we were all born with something that was causing us unrest. C.S. Lewis, Carl Jung, all the writers talk about. Dr. Jung insisted that is exactly what alcoholics are doing by drinking, they are trying to quench their thirst for God and the uneasiness they feel. They’re off on this tangent thinking that alcohol is doing enough, and drinking in a way, was a spiritual experience for alcoholics. Alcohol was a very transforming thing, because it was a power greater than ourselves that changed the way we looked at everything, and the way we look at the world when we saw it under the influence of that power. In order to change this dynamic, you have to be able to see everything entirely different than you saw it in active alcoholism.
Letting go and changing
God takes care of everything. What do you mean you take care of everything? What are you talking about. It’s hard to believe. So we’ve got to stop trying to believe it. You have to let go of belief that you don’t need to leave everything to God. You go beyond belief. Things are revealed when your perception is changed and you realize you didn’t really learn anything, you just now see things differently. It’s just like if someone moved all the scenery while you were sleeping and you came out in the house and it was painted differently, to where everything you see looks wonderful. So the traditional idea of learning doesn’t work in this same way, like we read all these books. This is a fundamental change in our reality. You completely let go and give it to God. Well then, you ask, “What’s going to happen?” You’re going to wait and see. You’re going to get up every morning and see what happens. That is surrendering and turning it over. It is a freeing thing when you let all of that go. The world seems lighter and easier to deal with on a daily basis.
