Faith

From "The Belief Will Come"

I remained dry for a number of years, and then, as you may already have guessed, I drank again. It was inevitable. I had accepted only those parts of the program that fitted into my life without effort on my part. I was still the self-centered egotist I had always been, still full of all my old hatreds, selfishness, and disbelief just as lacking in maturity as I had been when I first arrived at A.A.

This time, when I came to in the hospital, I had absolutely no hope. After all, you had told me that A.A. was the last hope for the alcoholic, and I had failed there was nothing else.

Spirituality

From "In His Own Individual Right"

"Spirituality is an awakening or is it all the loose ends woven together into a mellow fabric? It's understanding or is it all the knowledge one need ever know? It's freedom if you consider fear slavery. It's confidence or is it the belief that a higher power will see you through any storm or gale? It's adhering to the dictates of your conscience or is it a deep, genuine, living concern for the people and the planet? It's peace of mind in the face of adversity. It's a keen and sharpened desire for survival."

New York, New York, USA
1973 AAWS Inc.
Came to Believe, 30^th printing 2004, pg. 5

Change

From "A New Man":

"But the real miracle was what happened to him in the next ten years. He began helping people. I mean helping! No call has been too hard, too inconvenient, too 'hopeless.' He founded the A.A. group in his town, and he is embarrassed if you mention this to others or comment on the amount of A.A. work he is doing. He is not the same man I was trying to twelfth-step. I failed in all my efforts to help the man I knew. And then someone else provided a new man."

Bernardsville, New Jersey, USA

1973 AAWS, Inc.
Came to Believe, 30^th printing 2004, pg. 15

Conception

 "Back to the Fundamentals"

The answer I was looking for was on page 12, in Ebby's words to Bill: "Why don't you choose your own conception of God?"

"I've tried everything else", I thought, "and I've got no place else to go. I might just as well." I sat down at my desk, got a pad of paper and a pencil, and asked myself, "If you could pick the kind of God that you could believe in, what would He be like?" I bore in mind the facts that I was an alcoholic and that I had been a perfectionist all my life.

Consciousness: Two Babies Talking in the Womb

In a mother’s womb were two babies.  The first baby asked the other:  “Do you believe in life after delivery?”

The second baby replied, “Why, of course. There has to be something after delivery.  Maybe we are here to prepare ourselves for what we will be later.”

“Nonsense,” said the first. “There is no life after delivery.  What would that life be?”
“I don’t know, but there will be more light than here.  Maybe we will walk with our legs and eat from our mouths.”

The doubting baby laughed. “This is absurd!  Walking is impossible.  And eat with our mouths?  Ridiculous.  The umbilical cord supplies nutrition.  Life after delivery is to be excluded.  The umbilical cord is too short.”