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From: [email protected]
Category: Category 1
Date: 24 Dec 1999
Time: 16:22:27
Remote Name: ip19.atlanta14.ga.pub-ip.psi.net
Thoughts and Feelings
There are many things that come clear through time. One is that life exists on different levels. What is true, highly visible and important to one person my be invisible, untrue and unimportant to another, sitting right next to them. I have always wanted to understand things, to be able to see into life and what is really happening. For a while the drugs seem to help me do that, then they stopped working. Then I found recovery and through conscious contact, the ability to see into things came back. It is still coming back. Much of what real life is about, what seems so elusive when I get distracted, is plain and simple. I find that sometimes I have to set aside what is important for the moment to attend to something that can only be accomplished by repeatedly approaching the goal by tiny degrees. But my conscious contact tells me to keep doing this on faith and I have the most wonderful feeling inside when I do it.
Most of what we discover in recovery gets lost. We may repeat what we heard faithfully, but the meaning is somewhere between the lines and it takes what the Indians called savey to get it. We have to learn the spirit as well as the words of recovery. Going forward clean on a daily basis, I was led into the world of recovery. That world seemed to get bigger the longer I stayed clean and grew into a world that fit the size of this planet. There were obstacles. I would run into people and situations that would try to block my quest to know. To put me back in my place when I felt my place was everywhere! I kept listening, paying attention and taking notes. My world is still getting bigger.
In the Seventies and eighties I was involved with the growth of the service structure. I remember just after the Basic Text had been written by the Fellowship hearing that WSO could sue a member of group of members for unauthorized reproduction of our literature. This struck me as very strange. First, why the heck would WSO want to do such a thing. Second, what would give them the right when it was the Fellowship that wrote it? Over the years since then, I have had to sit and look at people who looked at NA differently. It finally dawned on me that people get clean, go to meetings and read the literature and get an entirely different idea and message. For them, recovery seems to be something we get in packages and that these packages have an existence beyond the spiritual Fellowship. They look at these packages as possessions and try to control the contents and distribution of the packages. It is like I am an African native listening to a person trying to tell me the value of diamonds when for me diamonds are a rock you pick up off the ground. I may listen attentively but I am really asking myself, "Why is this happening? And why can this person shoot me for picking up a rock off of my ground?" It gets really strange.
We used to say in NA that the literature was written entirely by members just like you. We can no longer say that. We used to say in NA that you have a voice in what happens, that your voice is important. I don't know if that is true the same way it once was, that is I believe that members have a choice to accept what is presented or leave NA. But that is different from being able to express yourself, be heard and occasionally listened to in a positive manner. We used to collect input from the Fellowship and sort through it all finding common themes and values. Then we would take sentences that were very representative of Fellowship input on their subjects and yet fit in with other sentences to form an overall pattern of interlocking truths and statements that closely approximated what the Fellowship was experiencing. Then, the items that continued to attract input could be gradually adjusted until even more members were satisfied. Involving the Fellowship and taking their input very seriously, won not only their support and loyalty, but made them members in an extraordinary sense. The program was part of them and they were part of the program. Lawsuits and corporate mechanics were anathema to this level of bonding.
Well, this type of polling group experience, forming agreeable compositions from this experience and presenting the composition to the Fellowship for approval or more feedback involves a trust and savey that is almost fanatical. Most people can't do it. It is very unusual when it happens. To me, I can't see how it ever happens except through some sort of miracle. It may be that someday we will have to comprehend what has happened for us and to us as a miracle. That is what I think and feel. Living it, loving it, sharing it, experiencing it, talking about it, writing it, seeking more of it, watching it in others, letting it change me: it is all miraculous to me.
The 1990's have been a time of great change in NA. The service structure as we knew it in the 1970's and 1980's is no more. It has been replaced by a management system that is centered in a California corporation. Members occupy some symbolic roles and may occasionally have input to the system - just so long as it doesn't go against the corporation. After all, the corporation is real and will stand up in court. And we? We clean addicts are mythical because our membership in an anonymous, spiritual fellowship is based only on our desire for recovery. We can not be enumerated, listed, contacted, quantified or picked up on suspicion. How can you measure a dream or lock up a spiritual principle? How can you copyright a way of life? The funny thing about the Twelve Traditions is that they give us a lot of ways to serve, in complete creative freedom, but not much power in the sense of ruling, censoring, dictating or deciding. We are empowered to help people get a new life, but we don't have the power to take life or tell people how they must live. One way to look at the super board service structure is in reaction to the increasing demands and expectations of the Fellowship. A bureaucracy can either get stronger by branching into more and more units of involvement with a population or it goes the other way and concentrates more and more power into fewer hands. What would you suppose has happened in our case?
As the linkage and involvement of the Fellowship with the corporation has waned to a humorous level, the roles and opportunities for spirited, loyal members to act within the NA Traditions has increased. We are free to inovate, create with God's help, visit, call, write and reach out to members we could never reach before. Through the miraculous appearance of the internet, we are able to reach members around the whole planet. We can dream, care, share, compare notes - we can EXIST as a world wide Fellowship for the first time in history. Members from every corner of the globe can access and read this article. The super board service structure is like our checking account now. Our job is to keep some money in the account while we otherwise live out our lives in increasing freedom. We live the 12 Steps of recovery. We write the literature. We carry the message to the newcomer. We have to learn to stand up for ourselves to be more than someone's cattle, someone's herd of domesticated addicts who are now safe for consumption by the main body of humanity! And the bank better do a good job with our account, or we are free to choose another bank!
So many miracles have come true for us that it would be impossible to try to mention all of them here. The insurance laws and regulations will probably be adjusted to allow for a significant factor of individual addicts who got clean and stayed clean. The war on drugs will be won when agents of society can no longer shoot and incarcerate people for having the disease of addiction. The government will have the surrender to win. Each addict among us can choose our friends, change jobs, explore life and a wider range of interests just because we are clean. The car wreck, the jail term, the broken relationship, the lost funds, the wasted time - none of these can happen because today, we are awake. We are free of the chains of addiction. We can admit fault and get better. We can each make the thousands of tiny adjustments that add up to a new life. By contributing to the health and recovery of others, we can keep our place in focus. By helping others get the benefits of recovery, we are freed to enjoy recovery ourselves. And together we are changing the world into a better place.
And this is just the beginning!
In Loving Service,
Bo S. December 24, 1999