Big Book Analysis...

There are some people in the world who have made it their life's work to deconstruct the "Big Book" of Alcoholics Anonymous. Most have done this in a healthy way as an attempt to help people understand the levels of meaning that the book has and the myriad of ways to view the content that has helped millions of men and women recover from active alcoholism. And, while there are some who have done this as a way to discredit the book's value, the overwhelming number of commentaries on the book are positive attempts to provide a road map through the logic that the first 100 members of AA used to present their method of recovery.

I have recently come to own one of these manuscripts that - although never published - is one of the finest examples of this process of fully explaining what the Big Book means and how AA was created. I'll use the name "Mr. Jones" as a reference for its author because I am unsure where this copy of the manuscript came from and do not want to compromise the source (the copyright on this copy may not have been honored in reproducing it and so long as it is not used for commercial profit I'm OK with owning it). Regardless, this is a wonderful, unedited version of how AA was created and the principles that undergird recovery through the 12 Steps.

Mr. Jones has a huge amount of inside information about the foundations of AA that must have come from years of painstaking research. He has a list of the "cast of characters" who were instrumental in creating AA - from Bill W. and Dr. Bob, through Drs. Carl Jung and Sam Shoemaker, to Philosopher William James and Ebby Thatcher (Bill's sponsor). Now, some of these names may not be familiar to the average reader, but they are all a part of what we know today as Alcoholics Anonymous having its roots in ideas about alcoholism that came from many other people before Bill W. and Dr. Bob. That's the way it is with many ideas that get to be a part of the mainstream culture - it builds upon what was already thought about by different people in different settings and comes together under one umbrella organization like AA.

There is a master timeline that shows the critical dates in AA development from the month that Ebby first carried the message of recovery to a still-drinking Bill W. in November, 1934, to the date of Dr. Bob's last drink on June 10, 1935 which is known as "Founder's Day" in AA. I did not realize that it only took four months from the time Bill W. first wrote out the 12 Steps on a yellow scratch pad in December 1938 at his home to the copies of the Big Book coming off the presses in April 1939. That's truly amazing.

Mr. Jones also has organized his commentary in a very helpful way. He chose to use the chapters of the Big Book itself as a way to organize his comments and interpretations of the chapter and paragraph meanings. So, one can find ideas about spirituality in "We Agnostics" and who the "alcoholic friend" who visited Bill was (Ebby Thatcher) in the forward to the Second Edition section.

But the best part of this manuscript is where Mr. Jones comments on the sections as ways to guide the reader through meaning that may have been intended by the 100 AA authors. There are just too many of these references in the 155-page manuscript to recount here. But, the reader should know that these commentaries obviously come from someone who knows the Big Book and AA very well from both intellectual and personal experience.

While I won't pretend to know everything that Mr. Jones knows about the Big Book and the founding of AA, I might be able to answer some of your questions about these matters thanks to having this manuscript. So, if you need answers to age-old questions that have been haunting you, drop me a line and I'll see what I can come up with.

Until then, all the best, Roger W.

Bill W. Film, The End...

We come now to the end of the film Bill W. and Lois made about the formation of AA that we have been running here as a serial. In a sense, it's too bad we cannot have more of him. However, there are other videos of Bill talking to groups, speaking on the Traditions of AA, and many audio tapes of his many addresses to large AA gatherings...you can find them through You Tube. Perhaps we can present some of them here. I think we cannot get enough of the written, video and audio accounts of the founders of this life-saving program.

In this clip, we conclude Lois's remarks about her thoughts and feelings when Bill was diagnosed and, most importantly, her feelings about her own situation with regard to Bill's alcoholism. We all know that her experience led to the formation of the Alanon movement that has helped countless spouses, siblings and friends touched by the disease come to grips with the need to care for themselves. This too is powerful material to see in the video. Bill concludes by taling about Dr. Shoemaker and the publication of the AA "Big Book" and what this has meant for him. When we last see him, he is broadly strolling his property in Bedford NY, off the screen and into history.

So, sit back and enjoy this last episode.

All the best, Roger W.

PS...Note that we now have buttons at the bottom of the posting that allow you to email or otherwise share this posting with others. I invite you to spread the word!

Focus and Flow...

Although I am no expert on jazz, there are times when I enjoy the improvizational style of a quartet. It's fun to hear the well-played music and try to pick out a meolody from the notes. Some of the best ones sound as if the music that springs from the group had been written down long ago, even though the players are entirely making it all up as they go along.

It takes incredible focus for this to happen well. Each member has to be trully and deeply concentrating on the music that the others are playing and accommodate their own style and interpretation of the music to the collective "vision" of the quartet. Few people realize how hard this can be, but I'm not one of them. Largely because I am not a musician, I marvel at how four people can come together with four different instruments and make wonderful, unwritten music. It's all about focus, for sure, but even I who might focus on the music each instrument is playing, could not re-create the beauty of it. Even many musicians can't do that.

One of the reasons there is a struggle has to do with flow. There is a certain movement within the music and the players where they become so absorbed in the playing that the outside world almost ceases to exist. They come together, start off playing as if they are acutely aware of the other muscians and the notes they are playing, but then a magnificant thing happens...each of them stops concetnrating on notes and starts playing music. There's a big difference between the two processes.

If you have ever been so completely engrossed in what you are doing such that the time passes without you being aware, or the place you may be loses its significance, or the sights, sounds, smells and touch of everything has become a part of what you are doing at the moment, then you know what I mean. We get like this when we are doing our hobby, when we are intensely listening to another person speak, when we are emotionally connected to another person or an activity that shuts out all the rest of existence. Then, we are in the flow.

I have always been intrigued by something that is attirbuted to Einstein when he explained his theory of general relativity to a layman: Relativity is the difference between putting your hand on a hot stove for a second and it seems like an hour, and being with your girlfriend for an hour and it seems like a second. That's flow. We become so engrossed in the here and now-ness of an experience that we move with it all effortlessly. Just like a jazz quartet.

It is hard to get into the flow of life. Especially hard to get into and remain inside the flow of recovery in the early phases. One becomes so consumed with the details, the technique and the self-consciousness of what to do in recovery that they only play the notes ("talk the talk") and not the music ("walk the walk"). The 12 Step programs have a solution for that: It's called surrender. When I give myself up to the world - the good and the bad, the highs and the lows - I am surrending to the will of my Higher Power in my universe and this brings me almost immediately into flow. Today, there are times, when I am so engrossed in recovery that I not only don't think of using, but I move effortlessly through people, places, things, and situations with a focus and flow I thought I could never achieve.

Today, I play fewer notes of recovery and more of the music.

All the best, Roger W.

Bill W Film #7...

Hi Folks...I'm now back from Ely MN now and working on the blog.

Here's another clip from the Bill W. film. Each time I see this I marvel at the fact that here we have, in his own words and images, the founder of the most successful alcoholism recovery method in the world talking about the first few days he got clean and sober. To me it's remarkable. It's like watching and hearing Jesus, Buddha, Yahweh, or Mohammed on film describing the religious foundations of their beliefs. Yes, it is THAT important to those of us in recovery to see and hear Bill W. talk about the creation of the AA program.

In this five minute clip, Bill speaks about the foundations of the AA program that lies with Dr. Carl Jung and his experiences with an alcoholic named Rowland - whose alcoholism therapy pointed the way toward the need for a spiritual transformation according to Jung. He also talks about his friend Ebby who came to visit him one day and how it changed his life, Dr. Silkworth who first wrote about the disease of addiction, and his wife Lois who talks about her own expriences with Bill and her recovery from co-dependency on his disease.

So, kick back and watch another segment of the facinating story about the founding of AA.

All the best, Roger W.

The power of a sunset, revisited

Yes, there's nothing quite like an Ely sunset. And, when you're sharing one with your best fishing buddy, Sam, it's even better.

Just kickin' back with a little fishin', readin', and computerin'!

All the best, Roger W.

The power of a sunset...

I am now way up north near the Canadian border in a small town called Ely MN. You may have heard of Ely, for it was just voted the best little town in America to live and raise a family. Thanks to the generosity of my friends George and Mary Kay, I have been coming to Ely for the past several years and enjoy one of the truly best parts of being here...a richly warm and glowing sunset over White Iron Lake.

Each time I sit on the dock and watch this sunset I am reminded about how small we really are here on planet Earth. This is not a melancholy awareness of how infantisimal we are, but rather, an acute awareness of just how much universe there really is out there, and a real clear reminder of my place within it. Just when I think that my problems are collosal and that there is a near-catastrophe in everything that happens to me that I don't like, I see this sunset in my mind and get grounded very fast.

There are an estimated 100 billion stars in our universe spread out over 100 billion light years of distance, and scientists are just now getting a good handle on how these stars are formed on the frontier of that universe. They are able to "see" these stars form and quickly die and measure the radiation that emanates from the star's death. When I look out over the lake at the setting of our sun - a moderately sized star that is about half way through its life - I can't help but think of the certainty that there is some other galaxy out there that holds within it the same kind of conditions on planets similar to our own. In other words, I see in our star's setting over the horizon the glimmer of reality that someone, somewhere is watching their own star set over their horizon. With this awareness I find a kinship with creatures that may be very much like we humans who exist in their world very much the way I exist in mine - one of 6 billion people spinning through the heavens.

Of course, only a few years ago - really a blink in the scheme of things - I was ripping and running my way through the lives of other people in this world and could never appreciate the value of a setting sun. Sure, when you smoke certain drugs you get that "insight" that only seems to come from the altered consciousness the drugs induce in you. But, a sunset points out very nicely how that fraudulent insight was nothing compared to the insight about our life on Earth that can come from watching a sunset clean and sober. This experience today is so much more vibrant and real, so much more meaningful than any that can be generated by alcohol and other drugs. Today I am able to see myself as a part of some greater whole, some greater and ever-expanding entity that exists in our universe that can provide peace of mind. Some people call that Higher Power, and others call it God that is touched when you experience these things this way. Regardless what it is called, to be able to experience this means that I will not be tearing through other people's lives today like a tornado through a trailer park. No, instead, I will be peacefully sharing my thoughts and feelings about cosmic events that bind me with others who are also riding this planet.

No...my problems don't amount to much more than a hill of beans as Bogart told Bergman before she boarded that plane. Put into its proper place, my world gets to glow like that sun setting over the hills. Some people have called that serenity. And, so would I.

All the best, Roger W.