If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you're probably alcoholic.
If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer.
At first some of us tried to avoid the issue, hoping against hope we were not true alcoholics. But after a while we had to face the fact that we must find a spiritual basis of life – or else.
...but the needed power wasn't there.
Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves. Obviously. But where and how were we to find this Power?
Well, that's exactly what this book is about. It's main object is to enable you to find a Power greater than yourself which will solve your problem.
To others, the word "God" brought up a particular idea of Him with which someone had tried to impress them during childhood.
We found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice and express even a willingness to believe in a Power greater than ourselves, we commenced to get results, even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that Power, which is God.
As soon as we admitted the possible existence of a Creative Intelligence, a Spirit of the Universe underlying the totality of things, we began to be possessed of a new sense of power and direction, provided we took other simple steps.
It is open, we believe, to all men.
So we used our own conception, however limited it was.
We need to ask ourselves but one short question. "Do I now believe, or am I even willing to believe, that there is a Power greater than myself? "
As soon as a man can say that he does believe, or is willing to believe, we emphatically assure him that he is on his way. It has been repeatedly proven among us that upon this simple cornerstone a wonderfully effective spiritual structure can be built.
… It was comforting to learn that we could commence at a simpler level.
Besides a seeming inability to accept much on faith, we often found ourselves handicapped by obstinacy, sensitiveness, and unreasoning prejudice.
Alcohol was a great persuader. It finally beat us into a state of reasonableness.
The reader may still ask why he should believe in a Power greater than himself...right there our perverse streak comes to the surface and we laboriously set out to convince ourselves it isn't so.
...we agnostics and atheists choose to believe that our human intelligence was the last word, the alpha and the omega, the beginning and end of all. Rather vain of us, wasn't it?
We used to amuse ourselves by cynically dissecting spiritual beliefs and practices when we might have observed that many spiritually-minded persons of all races, colors and creeds were demonstrating a degree of stability, happiness and usefulness which we should have sought ourselves.
Instead, we looked at that human defects of these people, and sometimes use their shortcomings as a basis of wholesale condemnation. We talked of intolerance, while we were intolerant ourselves.
We never gave the spiritual side of life a fair hearing.
They are questions for each individual to settle for himself.
This power has in each case accomplished the miraculous, the humanly impossible.
They flatly declare that since they have come to believe in a power greater than themselves, to take a certain attitude toward that Power, and to do certain simple things, there has been a revolutionary change in their way of living and thinking.
In the face of collapse and despair, in the face of the total failure of their human resources, they found that a new power, peace, happiness, and sense of direction flowed into them.
...they were making heavy going of life.
…people are able to say that the consciousness of the Presence of God is today the most important in fact of their lives...
We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn't control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression, we couldn't make a living, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn't seem to be of real help to other people…
Our ideas did not work. But the God idea did.
We agnostics and atheists were sticking to the idea that self-sufficiency would solve our problems.
… We think our present faith is reasonable…
… God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn't.
Did not these feelings, after all, determine the course of our existence?
...a spiritual liberation from this world, people who rose above their problems.
For faith in a Power greater than ourselves, and miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives, are facts as old as man himself.
We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that He may be found.
"Who are you to say there is no God"
Circumstances made him willing to believe: he humbly offered himself to his Maker – then he knew.