There are those in the Gamblers Anonymous Program who, at the beginning, shun meditation and prayer as they would avoid a pit filled with rattlesnakes. When they do finally take the first tentative and experimental step, however, and unexpected things begin to take place, they begin to feel different. Invariably, such tentative beginnings lead to …
There are no boundaries to meditation. It has neither width, depth, nor height, which means that it can always be further developed without limitation of any sort. Meditation is an individual matter; few of us meditate in the same way, and in that sense, it is truly a personal adventure. For all of us who practice meditation …
For many months after I came to Gamblers Anonymous, I paid little attention to the Eleventh Step, to the practice of serious meditation and prayer. I felt that it might help me meet an emergency—such as a sudden craving to return to gambling—but it remained among the lowest levels on my list of priorities. In …
In the words of Teilhard de Chardin, We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience. Even though we acknowledge in theory that we are spiritual beings, most compulsive gamblers had to experience some sort of spiritual awakening before we were willing to turn our lives over to a …
The Gamblers Anonymous Red Book says: The word spiritual can be said to describe those characteristics of the human mind that represent the highest and finest qualities, such as kindness, generosity, honesty, and humility. Inasmuch as the Gamblers Anonymous Fellowship advocates consideration of these principles as a way of life, it is said that ours is …
The more self-searching we do, the more we realize how often we react negatively because our pride has been hurt. Pride is at the root of most of my personal problems. When my pride is hurt, for example, I almost invariably experience resentment and anger—sometimes to the point where I’m unable to talk or think rationally. When I’m in …
Those whom I most respect in the Gamblers Anonymous Program—and, in turn, those from whom I’ve learned the most—seem convinced that pride is, as one person put it, the root-sin. In moral theology, pride is the first of the seven deadly sins. It is also considered the most serious, standing apart from the rest by virtue of …
The mystery of ego: painful when inflated and painful to deflate, often keeping me from wholeheartedly working the Gamblers Anonymous Program. Even armed with the truth, I too often fall back on the old, familiar ideas that led me to the edge of despair. It takes such work to shrink the ego, and sometimes it …
When I’m motivated by pride—by bondage of self—I become partly or even wholly blind to my liabilities and shortcomings. At that point, the last thing I need is comfort. Instead, I need an understanding friend in the Gamblers Anonymous Program—a friend who’ll unhesitatingly chop a hole through the wall my ego has built so that …
Virtually all of us suffered the defect of pride when we sought help through the Program, the Twelve Steps, and the Fellowship of recovering compulsive gamblers who truly understood what we felt and where we had been. We learned about our shortcomings—and of pride in particular—and began to replace self-satisfaction with gratitude for the miracle …