Step Three – The Path To Being Free

Dag Hammarskjold is quoted as having said “I don’t know who or what put the question, I don’t even remember answering, but at some moment I did answer “YES” to someone or something and from that moment I was certain that existence is meaningful, and that therefore, my life, in self surrender, had a personal GOAL.”

If existence IS meaningful, life in itself has a goal, in its freedom to surrender – not myself as a sacrificial victim, not the core of my soul to others as a compliant beneficiary to others, but to surrender TO others those things I have learned about myself FROM others. So that by being touched and moved by them, even if simply by listening, I and they may grow forward (slowly), toward Serenity, I believe, simply, that this is a reflection of the Third Step Prayer.

A Word To My Friends About Me and My God

There are those who will claim that they have heard me profess not to believe in a god. No, not true… What is true is that I do not believe in Jesus or Jehovah, Baal or Odin, Ra or Quetzalcoatl, Thor or Zeus, Allah or any such named entry in the god/biz. Not for me is Catholicism, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islamism, and Paganism, etc: and so on and so on.

I do believe that Goodness creates Godliness – that it is not in the “knowing”, but rather in “doing” that the door to spiritual growth is opened. And, that in the “doing” I can avoid the “root of my troubles” as described on page 62 of the Big Book. And, since this god-centered life requires a voluntary association, which produces a true learning behavior modification, it may perhaps be best described as “JOIN IN THE JOY”. But, most of all, I believe in the power of the group.  Power as described in Montague’s Prometheus Bound (1930) as a belief in a “power greater than ourselves that makes for good.”

By Terry W., Member of Bay West Group of Alcoholics Anonymous