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 …
I never cease to be amazed at how appropriate the topic at meetings I attend seems to be in relation to my life at that particular time. We can only become students in the presence of a teacher—and when a student becomes ready, a teacher will appear. We can only learn if we are being …
The Gamblers Anonymous Program’s Fourth Step suggests that we make a fearless moral and financial inventory of ourselves. For so many of us, especially newcomers, the task seems impossible. Each time we take pencil in hand and try to look inward, Pride says scoffingly, You don’t have to bother to look. And Fear cautions, You’d better nor look! Eventually …