[ Contents | Search | Post | Reply | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: [email protected]
Category: Category 1
Date: 07 Feb 2000
Time: 15:38:56
Remote Name: ip4.atlanta.ga.pub-ip.psi.net
Night Stuff 5
February 7, 2000
If we were to make up NA today, what would we do? We would want a WSO of some sort. We would want a general assembly and a group of experienced men and women we could appeal to for help. We would want bodies of interested members used to working in areas of interest and ability. The H&I people would get good at what they do. Paralleling their efforts, we would have Public Information with areas of concern that need to fit in with H&I. Members accustomed to working with written materials could serve there. Members who don't mind dealing with the intricacies of policy and administration could help with this branch of service and contribute ideas and valuable support long after serving in key positions. In other words, we would have a well- integrated service structure that approximates a nervous system for the body of our Fellowship. Information would be routinely presented to the Fellowship and the Fellowship just as routinely would think, study and develop their ideas about NA in such a way that with all our diversity, we have a cohesive whole. At the center would be certain principles. We would know about our NA History, where we came from as a Fellowship and how we learned, as a Fellowship, certain lessons. Now, the question is: Is this what is happening? If not, we have time to change it for the better.
There is not a single individual member involved in today's world service structure who I don't love, like, trust, respect, enjoy, etc. on an individual basis. That is not the problem. It is more subtle. It involves the fact that a corporation takes on a life of its own. A new corporation is often insecure and seeks to assure itself that it will continue to exist. It becomes a cause in its own right. It begins to list friends and enemies. It rewards the faithful and attacks the critical. It can become its own cause and selectively interpret information to make itself swell and its protagonists small. Itself righteous, its enemies nefarious. Our Twelve Traditions warn us against lending our name to any outside organization. Right now, if you will look at this possibility, we have lent our name to a corporation that holds our copyrights in its name, controls our funds and retails our literature. It not only retails our literature, it wholesales it to some publishers, so that massive funds go outside the Fellowship. Perhaps the material makes it into the hands of some addict. The justifier is that by producing more books and selling them at discount to large publishers, we lower the per unit cost and can thereby keep the cost down. What gets lost in the shuffle and I think needs to be looked at more squarely, is that selling large quantities of books is seductive and makes the selling of these books to persons outside our organization and through other channels of delivery has to have an effect on the system. Some of you should investigate the effect of this.
I don't think it has gone beyond redemption. I don't think we can make anything better by firing all the people involved, even if they have committed errors in the past. Let's just work our programs and forgive them. But, I do think we can make things better by studying statecraft. I think we can make things better by collecting, discussing and making available our real history, minutes, records, correspondence, eye-witness accounts where the person puts their name on the line. We don't need any witch-hunting here. We need to grow and develop our members who show an interest or aptitude for this kind of service so that we can gradually change things for the better. It is not something that could be done over night without great injury and without the errors of haste. But I talk to a lot of members and know that there are many who realize the problems I am speaking, well writing, about. They tell me things more often than I tell them things. One of the things is that this is an oldtimers problem. That newer members have trouble understanding all this stuff and that if some real problems evolved, they would have to be dealt with by those concerned and experienced enough to get involved without getting hateful. We can't really afford to do that.
One way to come at what I am feeling clearly and deeply is that the members who got clean in the eighties and nineties were responding to a call. They were led to believe that there was a place where they would be welcome, they would be safe, they would be told what to do to get out of their difficulty. I helped make that call and care very much that it be true and real. Gradually, I realized that as a new member to NA, I thought that there were people who went before me to make safe the way. That important issues had been talked about, discussed, argued and finally understood so that what I was told was steady and reliable. In many topic areas having to do with recovery, it was true. In some areas, it was faulty. The most known example of a ‘recovery flaw' is the idea that newcomers have no relationships the first year and that this applied to married couples. Uh... In the areas of money, property and prestige, we never had any till the eighties and nineties. So, we are hardly experienced. See how easy it is to get beyond the subject? The promise of love, understanding and caring is fundamental to NA's spiritual integrity. We must never let other concerns come first. The Fellowship who is still answering the call to recovery, the invitation to a new life, still calls the shots on everything. Even if they forget they have this power, it can come back to them in a flash!
Many time we addicts are forced to move through the cracks. I was speaking with a very special NA member the other night and he interrupted to tell me he had Saturday Night Live on the tv and that in the words "on air", the letters "n a" had a square line around them. Could it be real? I guess there are some na's on the show. We need also to hold open learning days. At least three or four per year. We need to discuss anything members feel is important. We need to identify the key principles we cherish as a Fellowship. We need to develop young spirited leadership. We need to encourage members to ask good questions. We need to develop written materials so that our people can access the facts and information they need to understand. We need to awaken to the fact that we in NA exist. Without any greater sanction than our rich spirit and desire for recovery, we are enough. We are here. The rest is details. All the money, power, property and prestige cannot get one addict to stop using drugs against their will. If you kill the spirit, you kill the person. The spirit needs a clean, safe place to re-establish itself in someone's life. A chance to make-over from a new starting place, a life worth living. A chance to change things that we've gotten wrong somehow. A chance to make amends where they are due - as much for our own peace of mind as anything. A chance to live among a healthy, supportive, pro-active bunch of people who recognize and appreciate the miracle of our recovery.
I am one of a small group of people who made a personal commitment to see that others, within the NA Fellowship, get the same good treatment I received when first I got involved with area service and later to the WSO and the WSB. There were great people then and I am not afraid to be great in a similar manner. It is great to care, share and take time with people. I don't have to make false postures or have all the answers. I just have to be honest and real. If they have a question I can not answer, I can usually find someone who can - or I can publish the question through email groups on the internet. No one is alone in this. This is not the result of someone's error or oversight. It is just the way it is. Real life requires us to do all these simply ordinary things that combine without our realizing it into the greatest miracle I know of and the one that means the most to me - NA!
It occurs to me that members of our Fellowship need some help with basic spirituality. A simple way to recognize misinformation is that it doesn't feel right. When you question the source of misinformation, you are given more misinformation, and that raises certain questions. In our case, to whom do we appeal? If we ask more questions, we are treated with contempt designed to still our bothersome intrusion. We are then asked to sign or approve something. If we persist with our questions, we are treated as someone who is just "not going along with the program." Kind of funny, isn't it? The reason they are in a hurry and won't answer our questions is because they don't know the answer, have never thought it through enough to understand themselves or they don't want us to think it through. Hey, you got the rest of your life to figure all this out. Just remembers one thing, right or wrong, you are the one who is going to have to live with your answers. I generally recommend prayer and the NA Twelve Steps. I know I had to learn restraint. Sometimes, I get fearful or upset and the only problem is that I don't know enough or that I've got something wrong. In either case, I try not to plunge wildly ahead. I have a sponsor, friends, a Higher Power, a capacity for prayer and meditation to help me find principled answers. Thanks to NA, there are plenty of people in my life today. This ‘rushing' thing though. I can't think of a time when I made a mistake in life that I wasn't going to fast or failed to put the brakes on when I found someone pushing me. When I studied at theosophical society, I found one teaching that may apply. The way to tell an evil spirit is that it is always in a hurry. If you don't go along with everything it says blindly, you get treated with a mixture of anger and contempt. Maybe its a kind of social pressure thing and probably works in many cases.
The hope that impells me to write these articles is that as we grow in numbers, that we grow internally as well. We really need each other. Bad things happen when good people are silent. I know that when our movement went into high gear, it was astonishing and awesome. Even with the disorders, lack of a stable service structure and all the competing personal interpretations of things, we have never stopped growing. It is time to really sort out how we feel, put first things first and build the NA of the future. Of course, that's what we have been doing all along, is it not? And now, we have access to information that was previously unavailable to any but a very small group of NA trusted servants. Information has to be absorbed slowly over a period of time. Adjustments of understanding have to be made. Individuals have to be free to advance their particular light, even if in time it proves faulty, those who follow the development of things closely learn, learn, learn. It will take a lot of learning to become wise and the situation requires some degree of wisdom. The definition of wisdom I like best in NA is the ability to do the right thing in a situation you've never experienced before. This is my understanding of the role spiritual principles play. I hope all this helps someone.
In Loving Service,
Bo S.