I Like AA People and You Should Too

I know. It’s a cult. It’s a religion. The members are losers—sober, but still selfish, self-centered and judgmental to the hilt. Just a bunch of phony, hypnotized zombies, obsessed with Big Books, pre-occupied with their past and as addicted to meetings and each other as they ever were to booze.

But wait! That’s not true. They aren’t all that way. Maybe some are, but not every one of them. Consider the origin and clockworks that launched Twelve Step organizations and moves their recovered fellows.

Twelve Step fellowships, like Alcoholics Anonymous, have within them an element of spiritual advantage that is inestimably valuable to all—alcoholics, non-alcoholics, drug addicts, sex-aholics—even those with none of these issues. Literally everyone.

In fact, within the base solution they found to their drinking problem lies the essence of peace and wholesome living that is indispensable to all mankind, not just those suffering with alcoholism and addiction.

They didn’t invent it. The principles they discuss and execute have been around for eons. They’ve just adopted them. But they’re axiomatic to all human existence.

There’s one in particular.

If you look into their “Big Book,” you discover how the founding AA folk came to see that resentment was the primary culprit instigating what they call spiritual disease within them. They saw how it awakened a terrible selfishness within, and that unless removed, the malady would surely kill them.

First, they got angry. Then they bitterly played God. Immediately, pained by shame and remorse, they turned selfish, becoming self-centered, excuse making bores. That’s when their world began to fall apart. One way they found to cope with the brokenness, now all around them, was through indulgence.

By anesthetizing the pain, they could temporarily smooth over anxiety and discontentment, still continuing in their emotionally agitated, if suppressed, state. And for them, the anesthetic was a food.

Not any food would do. It had to have a very high psychoactive effect, even greater than that of sugar. It was alcohol. And once started, they could not stop for if they did, they’d be forced to face the horrid truth of what they’d become – God playing, hate-filled, judgmental jerks, rejecting God to become Him.

He tried to call them back. He sent notice. Anxiety. But they gave Him the finger and did all they could to quell that discomfort. They became incompatible with their own Creator, some even sitting in church pews and praising Him all the while. Life became increasingly unmanageable, as it does for all Godless creatures.

With a sublime understanding that spans the lives of every human-being on earth, they explained in their book titled, “Alcoholics Anonymous,” that unless they were freed from anger, there’d be no good life to live. There could only be a self-centered, narcissistic existence filled with ongoing obsessive behavior, like drinking, adding misery to their irritation and sense of hopelessness.

They admitted the lost capacity to manage their lives and that unless they recovered, would never see manageability restored. We know for sure today how this leads to death—negative emotions breaking down the body both physically and mentally.

To them, escaping such fate first required mastery over the horrible, universally negative power that initiated it. Yes, God was a power greater than they. But then without Him, so was resentment. By putting God first, they would receive His help and be rid of it forever. They’d get free of the anger that had gotten inside and once set off an unholy regression of their humanity, sending them into the dark pit of obsessive drinking and alcoholic despair.

It had to be done and it would be done, first and foremost by spiritual awakening. Then, becoming spontaneously cured from the infection of hate separating them from God, a spiritual disease. They knew that their “alcoholism” couldn’t be cured because alcoholism is a symptom of a disease, not itself one. But the underlying malady is entirely curable, and once it is, the symptoms disappear. Poof! Gone.

But they were stuck. No matter how hard they wished, prayed or desired, the authority to master resentment just wasn’t within them.

Not yet anyway. Not until they had a spiritual awakening as the result of their Twelve Steps, becoming God-consciousness and living in an inspired state – constantly improving that graceful condition. It caused them to lose their fears, drop the anger, and gain mastery over all resentment.

God-consciousness was the answer to all their problems just as it is the answer to all of the problems of every man, woman and child.

That’s because we human beings can’t manage resentment ourselves. Each of us can only either allow Ego-self to seize and feed upon hate, or not, depending on our decision to be conscious or unconscious. It is either one or the other. This is the only true choice we ever get to make in this lifetime.

When we’re conscious, God means everything to us. His protective Light infills our being and we become God-centered. When we are unconscious, only Self matters. Then God becomes nothing to us. We go dark inside, transformed into Self-centered zombie-like creatures of self-will, subject to chance.*

By remaining awake and aware, vigilant of your lower Self as It rises to meet and nourish Itself on resentment energy, It shrinks under the inner radiance of conscious awareness. It’s unable to feed and becomes feeble, no longer gaining control of thoughts or behaviors. We find we can regulate, via a power within us supplying the strength – this is our “daily bread.”

God-consciousness is the state of awareness essential to becoming free. It’s when negative emotions no longer chip away at the mind and body bringing us to an unhappy, unhealthy human existence that is full of fear, mental strife, and physical illnesses.

Consciousness is the answer to the resentment dilemma we all share. It was the answer for the co-authors of the Big Book as it has been for centuries for anyone who chooses the narrow path to the discovery of God within. In order to become a member of AA, of course you’d have to actually be an alcoholic, fitting what they call “our description of the alcoholic.”

But with no monopoly of God, wouldn’t their way of life, as they admit, “have benefits for all?” It sure does.

Their way of life doesn’t mean, sitting in church basements sharing troubles before the world, living out of a book, forever trapped in an egoistic lifestyle, constantly drawing up personal inventories of unremoved defectiveness, while constantly making amends to others for ongoing harms made to them. Who could live well around such a person?

The design for a God-centered, awakened life transcends the mundane. It entails getting free from anger, healed of obsessive behavior, and subsequently experiencing an easy peace-filled life—without fear or bitterness, only love and tolerance.

Now you can see how the co-authors of “Alcoholics Anonymous” can boldly declare that “When the spiritual malady is overcome, we straighten out mentally and physically.”

It happened to them. It happened to me. It happens to anyone who makes that leap of faith, deciding from this moment on to live in the present realm, for the improvement of conscious contact with God, and placing that above all else.

Mastery over resentment isn’t just a Twelve Step proposal. It doesn’t require going to meetings, getting a life-coach, sitting in group therapy or buying psychological counseling. But it is found in the quintessence of all Judeo-Christian spirituality, the existential leap that all humanity must make or else risk its very being.

Living, one day at a time can be a good start for some. The AA people have their kindergarten book that shows them one precise way to make that beginning and experience an initial awakening. That’s why I like them so much. If one continues to grow, then one moment at a time becomes a more accurate truism, clearing the pathway that approaches everlasting peace, serenity and life forever.

*When a person is intoxicated, willingly under the influence to numb inner pain, he has made his decision. He is Godless. It goes to a cute expression, but Otto von Bismarck was wrong about God being committed to the wholesale protection of drunks. If it were so, then so many would not die in car wrecks, murder their spouses and beat children in a drunken stupor or commit suicide. For the most part, drunks and drug addicts are on their own, rudderless and adrift in the steam of life, for which reason they become an evil blot on society, spreading the hate that’s infected them to the world around—not some chosen breed of the goodhearted, but unfortunate souls. That is a hopeful fantasy. Some make it, many do not. Most alcoholics and addicts are going to die drunk or high and that is a horrifying fact.