This morning I had some thoughts about humility again. This might have been something I thought about some a little while back. It is the precise nature of humility. What is the greater dimension of the virtue? Perhaps rather than just being a feeling of modesty it is the true and more accurate awareness of the limits of one's abilities and the recognition that the seemingly less virtuous or less proficient person is actually just a less fortunate person. The person is not lesser in natural aptitude, rather that they are a product of less fortunate circumstances or environment than me.  There, but for the grace of God, go I.  Perhaps the significance of this is that one can never really see the truth if they are not in a state humble awareness, and one can never truly forgive another without this.

In Personal Adjustment class today our professor had us read stories about people who overcame great adversity and tragedy in life and went on to great success and self actualization by using their experience to inspire and help others.

At noon I met my wife at my son's school and we ate lunch with him for his birthday.

This evening I got to go to a 12 step meeting.  A guy from our group brought his brother who has double digit sobriety.  He brought our topic, "have you a sufficient substitute?", a line from page from page 152 in the Big Book.

This got me thinking about the parallels between my new life and the old.  Both involved going to a place to share an experience of conviviality, companionship, and colorful imagination.  Both also involved a critical element on which this experience centered, in the bar it was the drinking experience, in the AA club it is the spiritual experience.

I also thought about what it was like to hang out at the bar without the booze.  Sometimes I would go there perhaps sick, or perhaps needing a sober day, with the idea that I would just drink coffee or a coke and play pool or something.  Or, I would run out of money, or get cut off, and still hang out.  It was stupid, boring, and glum.  It was a whole lot of boring people hanging out at the same place for hours on end, playing the same old games and the same old music and talking about nothing.

Likewise when I was in AA without a spiritual experience.  Before I committed to the spiritual life or when my spiritual vitality ran dry due to lack of action.   It would be interesting for a while but it would start to grate on me.  The same people would say the same things every week, they were always grateful and everything was a freakin' miracle.  It was stupid boring and glum, it was like the bar without the booze.

I guess you could say that the booze put the spirit in the bar.  The spirits, the booze, was the power that made it all wonderful.  It fired the imagination, livened the mood, and brought together people who normally would not mix.  But it came with a price, It was an addicted power that robbed me of the most sacred value of all, that of free will, of the power of choice.  In the end, as I became more and more isolated, it robbed me of the very experience that drew me in.

In the 12 Step fellowships the experience is spirited by a Higher Power.  But the experience is counter to the former.  It is a progressively greater, it increases one's imagination, joys and rewards, and relations to others.  It begins by willingly giving oneself and progresses into increasingly greater freedom.  Most of all the spiritual experience gives one back the ability to function, succeed, and gives meaning and purpose to life.