His drunkenness and dissolution are not penalties inflicted by people in authority; they result from his personal disobedience to spiritual principles.
I repeat the Hot Stove Story: mom tells child not to touch hot stove; child, defiant, touches hot stove; child gets burned by hot stove; child is pissed at mom. This is my behavior pre-Alcoholics Anonymous. I blamed the universe for my problems and not my behavior. The stove isn't evil. It's a stove and it's hot. Mom isn't evil - usually, anyhow - but the inherent, immanent, indwelling properties of hot metal meeting human skin will not be denied. The result is predetermined, preordanied, so . . . maybe stop touching the hot metal.
Great suffering and great love are A.A.’s disciplinarians; we need no others.
Someone who knew what he was talking about once remarked that pain is the touchstone of all spiritual progress.
Touchstone: A stone used to identify precious metals (an assaying tool).
Touchstone: A means of assaying relative merits of a concept.
I still don't know what a touchstone is.
We had ceased fighting anything and anyone - even alcohol.
We have been talking about problems because we are problem people who have found a way up and out, and who wish to share our knowledge of that way with all who can use it.
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