His craving for alcohol was the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God.* Carl Jung

I started off on the broad bright lit highway of ease and comfort looking for the  God of my misunderstanding at the wrong zip code and residential address, it  took me through tobacco road and the quick sand mired swamps where denizens abound in the dusky realm of  King alcohol.

it’s not any more unusual to be born twice than it is to be born once

Some get spiritual cause they see the light and some cause they feel the Heat, for nothing will make you more spiritual than brushing up against the dirt nap of the big sleep,

“We are not human beings on a spiritual journey. We are spiritual beings on a human journey.” Stephen R. Covey

We ain’t navy beans, we ain’t lima beans, we is human be’ ins,  serch’n for a spiritual row to hoe

Demon Rum and his first cousin the green fairy who lives in the absinthe want your soul. Spirits on the prowl and on the loose, gathering the long, the short, and the tall he wants them all on the fog bound journey of the tormented soul.

It’s my understanding and my alone when we pass this veil of tears and woe, the only thing we get to take with us is who we are and what we know. He who is happy  will be happy still and he who is unhappy will be unhappy still, he who is a horse thief will still be looking for a free ride, and he who is addicted will be addicted still.

What is this “spiritual malady” we alcoholics suffer from and how can “untreated alcoholism” cause an alcoholic to return to drinking even when he or she doesn’t want to?

When dying in your addiction, the body is on an undetermined hiatus and no longer available to go through the effects of withdrawal. The spirit is now left to writhe and wriggle in a sea of welter regret sounds like hell to me. A regret that is a lively sense of his own conscious filled with guilt, pain and anguish with nothing to quench the burning of the spiritual DT’S (Delirium tremors) that seem to go on for an endless eternity

Every place has their advantages, “heaven for climate, hell for company!”

Mark Twain

Charley T an alcoholic with 25 yrs. of recovery had come upon hard times was welcomed into my home until he was able to sort things out. Curiously Charley had done the same for many other alcoholics who were on the ropes, as he helped them up in days of future past when his resources of circumstance would allow. Charley had confided in me that he had found himself in a liquor store as of late and lingered there but for the shortest while he claimed to have heard John barely corn, barely audible but yet distinct whispering from the shelves of finely colored cut glass filled with liquor distillates,  they were whispering to one of their own who had slipped the bonds and then their grasp it was the sirens beckoning call, a call  back to alcohol.

Ever notice that the whisper of temptation can be heard farther than the loudest call to duty.

Earl Wilson

I tell a tale of familiar spirits, I used to hang out at many a bar had my own regular stand and when in my cups every so often I would experience a curious phenomenon. I would have the distinct sense that I was not alone that there was someone or something rubbing up close to me. I had never thought much about it, until an old alky confided in me that these were familiar spirits, the spirits of alcoholics who had died in their disease and was for some reason stuck in between. They would haunt their old watering holes and would try to get close enough to catch a vicarious buzz from the living.

Most of the images of reality on which we base our actions are really based on vicarious experience. Albert Bandura

I’m looking for a way out of here. I can’t have it physically, so I’m going to have it with some familiar and fun vicarious spirits

The point is that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. … Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. …

Spiritual growth is like a moving river; as you grow spiritually you grow in effectiveness and understanding, as more shall be revealed. When you stop taking the necessary action it’s like damming that river, your all dammed up no longer able to grow in effectiveness or understanding, resigned to the moldy laurel leaves of complacency and the rotting  restlessness that  reinfects, the question would be, can the return to active addiction be ever so far behind?

A body in motion tends to stay in motion, as a body at rest tends to get drunk.

“If you dam a river it stagnates. Running water is beautiful water. So be a channel.”

Captain why have we stopped? I am sorry son but we have run into your spiritual dam. Am I dammed to Hell Captain? No fortunately you’ve come twelve  leagues from the coast of the lost, it’s more like an endless winter in Cleveland, but you are spiritually dammed by a failure to expand your spiritual experience, “you stop the flow when you stopped to grow”  your stuck in the mud of inactivity, right here and right now. How can we go on? I can go out and push and shove and blast my way out. Belay that old thinking and come hard about, your in dangerous waters Mr. Tough Guy, there is one sure way back to get on track that never seems to fail. What would that be Captain?  go and help someone else, for  its every man to the rigging , and help he who is stuck  down below the water line, it works each and every time, Aye Aye Captain consider it done.

So, any time your feelin’ bad ‘Stead of feeln’ sad just remember  that maximum service is the breakthrough  plan,  and its, Oops there goes another billion kilowatt dam.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places. KJV.

Come eat the fruits of recovery and be merry for we have put away the drink. Suit up and show up and tuck in your clean and sober shirt so as not to get tripped up by worldly entanglements. Put on your trudging shoes for our shoulder to shoulder journey, Take your Big Book off the shelf for in our hands it becomes our guide, compass and our beacon. Make haste and partake, for we came in late and the next suffer can’t wait  the delay of yet another sunrise to forsake.

See you on the radio

RumRadio.org

Joseph

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