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Going To Any Lengths



"If you have decided you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it --- then you are ready to take certain steps. ~ Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, How It Works, Page 58~



“Step Three is like the opening of a door which to all appearances is still closed and locked. All we need is a key, and the decision to swing the door open. There is only one key, and it is called willingness”. Pg. 34, 12 & 12. Willingness is the key! You have to be willing to go to any length to get it. Get what?



To be willing is to be ready to act gladly; eagerly compliant. But what is it that we have to be eagerly compliant to get? Is it sobriety? Not really! It’s spirituality! If we are willing to find the necessary spiritual experience, then sobriety will follow. This is why I find it hard to believe that people who claim to be working the steps say they do not have believe in a God of their understanding to make the steps work. They have not been willing to go to any lengths to get what it is that we have.



I have always been inclined to go along with anything that keeps someone sober, but again it is not the suggested program of recovery. It is not what has worked for many millions of people who have been willing to go to any lengths. That may be the reasoning behind why it is that these people have failed to find the necessary serenity to stay sober.



Oh! You ask why it is that I say that? Well sobriety isn’t just putting down the drink. Sobriety is being devoid of frivolity, excess, exaggeration, or speculative imagination. These are things that most of us don’t understand. Why? It has to do with not being able to recognize what they mean. We have been acting with-in the boundaries of frivolity, excess, exaggeration, and speculative imagination for so long that we have come to believe that it is normal to act that way. That is why I believe that someone can act without sobriety and not even touch a drink or drug.



Let’s get back to the subject of spirituality. Spirituality has to do with the immaterial. Immaterial being those things, which have no material body; the soul. I like to call it incorporeal consciousness. The spirit! This is the nature of who we are. But how is the soul linked to finding sobriety? Well look at where frivolity, excess, exaggeration, and speculative imagination come from. The mind, not the soul. The problem being we use the mind in concerns of the material rather than the concerns of the immaterial. The place where our conscience is.



Where does God fit into all of this? It seems to me that God is the ultimate in understanding spirit. God is the ultimate spirit. No matter where your understanding of that God comes from. After studying many different religions it has come to my opinion that the underlying result of a belief in this spirit or spirits has to do with understanding ourselves. Where we fit into all of the wonder it is we call the universe. It is when we come to this realization that we start to see it takes a lot more than our selves to make all of this work. There has to be something that has created all of this wonder. It just didn’t happen!



So you ask “Where is it that I found out that spirit is the thing that we must be willing to go any lengths to get”? Well again just turn to the Big Book. “Reminding ourselves that we have decided to go to any lengths to find a spiritual experience, we ask that we be given strength and direction to do the right thing, no matter what the personal consequences may be.” ~Alcoholics Anonymous, 4th Edition, Into Action, pg. 79~



Oh yeah by the way to have a spiritual experience is to become conscious of God as we understand Him. It is not by coming to a belief in ourselves. Our ‘self’ is where our problems lie. It is by God’s will that we stay sober. Not by our own. Of course that is if you want what we have and are willing to go to any length to get it! Just remember we are powerless, but there is One who has all power—that One is God. May you find Him now!
--Ed C.