Super interesting! I found sobriety through my own explorations of the esoteric which led me to implementing daily meditation. There were so many steps and strategies tried, but of them all I believe my daily reflection practice is what sealed my bad habit's doom. And that was just the start, the practice has literally opened up worlds for me.
Wow. Fantastic piece, Mitch. As someone in recovery from alcohol abuse, I have had my struggles with some of the ways Bill W.'s philosophy gets expressed in the AA community. Every person who has struggled with the concept of Higher Power in AA should read this article. Really excellent writing! Thank you so much!
"The hesitators, the undecided, those who cannot commit to a path— they receive nothing." ❤️
Great piece, you clearly know your stuff about the AA program and fellowship, and the history as well!! My spiritual journey started in AA and is still the foundation of my spiritual life. It’s encouraging to know that the founding members experienced a spirit of adventure and discovery that fellow seekers can use for inspiration and encouragement! This same spirit and respect for the history of AA seemed to be lacking at the time I used to frequent AA rooms, and I would love to see it revived again!
It’s my opinion from my experience and of others that I’ve observed, success and failure alike, that the AA program which is spiritual in nature, must become a way of life and taken in full measure. What I’ve found is that it’s more about willingness to believe, and change those beliefs as we grow, than it is about what you believe initially. As it is taken from the Big Book, “Half measures availed us nothing.”
An outstanding contribution, deflty packaged. Thank you so much for your work, @Mitch Hororwitz! Keep on as I will - plumbing the depths of our intellectual traditions that inform this mind-cure movement.
Mitch, this article was incredibly compelling to read. I hope you have the opportunity to publish it broadly or in a book. The WGW letter was a find! Everything you write is so well researched. Thank you!
I re-read this piece today with as much keen-ness as a few years ago when I read it on a different platform. I sometimes wonder if the fact I began studying homeopathy around the same time I got sick and tired of being sick and tired, but most significantly began to truly truly wish to no longer be a drunk, was why I experienced a reprieve from the obsession to drink day one; if I enjoyed an influx of Spirit and Grace because the way was paved by my belief in Homeopathy. I sure did not believe in God, or any other Higher Power (although age 19 I had a mystical experience of God on a beach in Bali, tripping on psilocybin) nor did I imagine I could ever not want to drink; I had been to a few meetings in the past, and not liked them. Despite Jung's term Spiritus contra Spiritum, what homeopathy and AA have in common is like cures like, and Swedenborg. Modern American homeopathy was very influenced by James Tyler Kent, who was a Swedenborgian, and the school I was attending in the early 1990's was in that metaphysical camp. It is always great to be reminded of the incredibly rich history and influences enjoyed by Bill and Bob, thank you Mitch.
As a sober witch I never resonated with fellows who complained that AA is too Christian. Get what they are saying. Hey it never FELT Christian to me per se. this explains why. 🖤🖤
I’m also glad you posted this because one of the people in AA I looked up to used to lie to me and tell me that Bill and Bob were Catholic and that the whole program was based on entirely Christian principles.
To add to what you've written, I'll point out that another text that exerted a major influence on AA's early years, via the Oxford Group connection, was MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST, the Christian daily devotional book by Oswald Chambers, or rather, by Oswald and his wife Biddy. First published in England in 1924, it was created by Biddy from the verbatim shorthand notes that she had taken from the various sermons, talks, and lessons Oswald had delivered at both the Bible college they had co-founded in London and the military camp at Zeitoun, Egypt, where he served as a YMCA chaplain to British Commonwealth troops during World War I for the last two years of his sadly cut-short life (he died at age 43 in 1917, at the hospital in Cairo, from complications stemming from a ruptured appendix). There were also other books that bore Oswald's name, including two that he had worked on before his death, plus many more posthumous titles that Biddy created from her notes. But UTMOST was by far the most popular, especially after it entered the American evangelical scene with its first American edition in 1935 and gained promotional backing from many prominent figures, including Billy Graham, Bill Bright, and Henrietta Mears.
Interestingly, two other promoters who helped to establish UTMOST and Oswald as somewhat iconic presences were none other than AA's Bill Wilson and Bob Smith, who adopted a practice, borrowed from the Oxford Group, of making UTMOST one of the standard books for studying at group meetings. Prior to that, the book had entered the Oxford Group via Frank Buchman's fascination with Chambers's religious and spiritual philosophy. He read all of Chambers's available books in the 1920s and 1930s and ended up liking UTMOST above them all. In fact, for a time it was regarded as *the* devotional manual for the Oxford Group.
This all relates back to your focal topic, Mitch, of AA's mystical roots because Oswald Chambers was that rarest of creatures, an evangelical Christian mystic. Raised a Baptist and personally converted at age 15 after listening to a sermon by Charles Spurgeon himself, he went on to imbibe the spirit of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century transatlantic holiness movement, and this, combined with his prodigious intellectual abilities and creative-artistic temperament, led him to imbibe a veritable galaxy of books and philosophies. He was passionately fond of the writings of F. W. H. Myers, Plato, Ibsen, Goethe, Schiller, Nietzsche, Shelley, Wordsworth, Augustine, Browning, Amiel, and more. The spirituality he developed from this rich ferment was deeply mystical and intensely original in its expression, processed as it was through his evangelical upbringing and education and expressed in terms that enlarged the scope of his specifically Christian vocabulary.
Super interesting! I found sobriety through my own explorations of the esoteric which led me to implementing daily meditation. There were so many steps and strategies tried, but of them all I believe my daily reflection practice is what sealed my bad habit's doom. And that was just the start, the practice has literally opened up worlds for me.
Wow. Fantastic piece, Mitch. As someone in recovery from alcohol abuse, I have had my struggles with some of the ways Bill W.'s philosophy gets expressed in the AA community. Every person who has struggled with the concept of Higher Power in AA should read this article. Really excellent writing! Thank you so much!
"The hesitators, the undecided, those who cannot commit to a path— they receive nothing." ❤️
Thank you my man, very meaningful to read. -M-
Great piece, you clearly know your stuff about the AA program and fellowship, and the history as well!! My spiritual journey started in AA and is still the foundation of my spiritual life. It’s encouraging to know that the founding members experienced a spirit of adventure and discovery that fellow seekers can use for inspiration and encouragement! This same spirit and respect for the history of AA seemed to be lacking at the time I used to frequent AA rooms, and I would love to see it revived again!
It’s my opinion from my experience and of others that I’ve observed, success and failure alike, that the AA program which is spiritual in nature, must become a way of life and taken in full measure. What I’ve found is that it’s more about willingness to believe, and change those beliefs as we grow, than it is about what you believe initially. As it is taken from the Big Book, “Half measures availed us nothing.”
Thanks for writing this piece!!
An outstanding contribution, deflty packaged. Thank you so much for your work, @Mitch Hororwitz! Keep on as I will - plumbing the depths of our intellectual traditions that inform this mind-cure movement.
thank you, my man
Mitch, this article was incredibly compelling to read. I hope you have the opportunity to publish it broadly or in a book. The WGW letter was a find! Everything you write is so well researched. Thank you!
Thank! Some of it appears in my second book, One Simple idea, and in my more recent Happy Warriors. The WGW letter is a recent revelation.
I re-read this piece today with as much keen-ness as a few years ago when I read it on a different platform. I sometimes wonder if the fact I began studying homeopathy around the same time I got sick and tired of being sick and tired, but most significantly began to truly truly wish to no longer be a drunk, was why I experienced a reprieve from the obsession to drink day one; if I enjoyed an influx of Spirit and Grace because the way was paved by my belief in Homeopathy. I sure did not believe in God, or any other Higher Power (although age 19 I had a mystical experience of God on a beach in Bali, tripping on psilocybin) nor did I imagine I could ever not want to drink; I had been to a few meetings in the past, and not liked them. Despite Jung's term Spiritus contra Spiritum, what homeopathy and AA have in common is like cures like, and Swedenborg. Modern American homeopathy was very influenced by James Tyler Kent, who was a Swedenborgian, and the school I was attending in the early 1990's was in that metaphysical camp. It is always great to be reminded of the incredibly rich history and influences enjoyed by Bill and Bob, thank you Mitch.
As a sober witch I never resonated with fellows who complained that AA is too Christian. Get what they are saying. Hey it never FELT Christian to me per se. this explains why. 🖤🖤
I’m also glad you posted this because one of the people in AA I looked up to used to lie to me and tell me that Bill and Bob were Catholic and that the whole program was based on entirely Christian principles.
Fascinating stuff. Thank you, Mitch.
To add to what you've written, I'll point out that another text that exerted a major influence on AA's early years, via the Oxford Group connection, was MY UTMOST FOR HIS HIGHEST, the Christian daily devotional book by Oswald Chambers, or rather, by Oswald and his wife Biddy. First published in England in 1924, it was created by Biddy from the verbatim shorthand notes that she had taken from the various sermons, talks, and lessons Oswald had delivered at both the Bible college they had co-founded in London and the military camp at Zeitoun, Egypt, where he served as a YMCA chaplain to British Commonwealth troops during World War I for the last two years of his sadly cut-short life (he died at age 43 in 1917, at the hospital in Cairo, from complications stemming from a ruptured appendix). There were also other books that bore Oswald's name, including two that he had worked on before his death, plus many more posthumous titles that Biddy created from her notes. But UTMOST was by far the most popular, especially after it entered the American evangelical scene with its first American edition in 1935 and gained promotional backing from many prominent figures, including Billy Graham, Bill Bright, and Henrietta Mears.
Interestingly, two other promoters who helped to establish UTMOST and Oswald as somewhat iconic presences were none other than AA's Bill Wilson and Bob Smith, who adopted a practice, borrowed from the Oxford Group, of making UTMOST one of the standard books for studying at group meetings. Prior to that, the book had entered the Oxford Group via Frank Buchman's fascination with Chambers's religious and spiritual philosophy. He read all of Chambers's available books in the 1920s and 1930s and ended up liking UTMOST above them all. In fact, for a time it was regarded as *the* devotional manual for the Oxford Group.
This all relates back to your focal topic, Mitch, of AA's mystical roots because Oswald Chambers was that rarest of creatures, an evangelical Christian mystic. Raised a Baptist and personally converted at age 15 after listening to a sermon by Charles Spurgeon himself, he went on to imbibe the spirit of the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century transatlantic holiness movement, and this, combined with his prodigious intellectual abilities and creative-artistic temperament, led him to imbibe a veritable galaxy of books and philosophies. He was passionately fond of the writings of F. W. H. Myers, Plato, Ibsen, Goethe, Schiller, Nietzsche, Shelley, Wordsworth, Augustine, Browning, Amiel, and more. The spirituality he developed from this rich ferment was deeply mystical and intensely original in its expression, processed as it was through his evangelical upbringing and education and expressed in terms that enlarged the scope of his specifically Christian vocabulary.
Fascinating. I never knew any of that. Thanks.