Maintenance of My Spiritual Condition

Spiritual:  Characterized by the ascendancy of the spirit showing much refinement of thought and feeling.


The topic of today's meeting centered around the phrase "we have a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition."  In a meeting of The Fellowship the "reprieve" is from the scourge of alcohol and drug addiction, which is quite a scourge indeed.  Many people talked about the fact that while they are no longer consumed with the desire to drink and drug they are still quite often, in fact, CRAZY.  Personally, today I'm not so much worried about picking up a drink as I am about sinking under the delusions and anxieties on my aforementioned Problems List, which I'm still too embarrassed to reveal, even under the guise of an anonymity.


I also believe that all of us, drunks or not, would have a better life if we started out each day with a short period of time to enlarge our spiritual life.  The whole idea of prayer, as I understand it, is to have a little chat with something bigger than me; the whole idea of meditation, in my opinion, is to shut down my mind for a couple of minutes.  It never ceases to amaze me how much is going on in my head until I try to stop it from happening.  I don't believe that we have to come up with any particular concept of god.  That's religion and we stay away from that in The Fellowship.


Religion:  Belief in a divine or superhuman power or powers to be obeyed and worshiped as the creator(s) and ruler(s) of the universe.


Can you imagine coming into The Rooms and having that definition up on the wall somewhere?  Whew, that would be a ruckus.


Meditate:  To think deeply and continuously; reflect; ponder; muse.


That sounds better to me.  I can do that.  I'm an excellent thinker; a little too good, in fact.


Pray:  To ask for by prayer or supplication; beg for imploringly.


Ouch.  That one would worsen the ruckus considerably, possibly causing violent riots.


I do something that I call a Quiet Time and I recommend it to others.  I take a half hour and sit quietly and ponder before I rush off into my day, half-baked and fully-cocked.


Quiet:  Serving to relax and soothe.


There.  Isn't that nice?  Spend a few minutes in the morning seeking to relax and soothe yourself.  Who can complain about that?