Spiritual Experience

"A spiritual experience is something that brings about a personality change.  This personality change is not necessarily in the nature of a sudden and spectacular upheaval.  We do  not need to acquire an immediate and overwhelming God-consciousness, followed at once by a vast change in feeling and outlook.  In most cases, the change is gradual.  The acquiring of an immediate and overwhelming God-consciousness, resulting in a dramatic transformation, though frequent, is by no means the rule.  Most of our spiritual experiences are of the educational variety, and they develop slowly over a period of time.  Quite often friends of newcomers are aware of the difference long before they are themselves.  They finally realize that they have undergone a profound alteration in their reaction to life and that such a change could hardly have been brought about by themselves alone."

I don't know about the idea that the White Light experience is frequent.  I'm not sure I've ever met anyone in Alcoholics Anonymous who had one.  I was talking to a woman in our community who has three sons with alcohol and drug problems - two in recovery and one living outside in an area of Ventura called the River Bottom which, as you may have guessed, is not a high-end condo development.  She knows I'm in recovery so she just kind of casually mentioned that she once had a White Light experience.  Intrigued, I listened as she described an event almost identical to what happened to Bill W in The Big Book.  It was eerie and I'm not making this up.

I believe that if you have acquired a peace and a contentment that you didn't have when you were drinking then you've had some kind of spiritual experience.  I had one and it was separate from my experience growing up in a conservative, religious household.  I did not have any trouble with the God idea or the suggestion that I declare myself powerless but the God I had wasn't very present or effective in my life.  The way I approached my Higher Power was not giving me the strength to stop drinking but because I had so much experience with this church God - who after all had been important in my life - it took me some time to grow into a working relationship with a working God.

No mumbo-jumbo for me - it has to be practical.