The Authority Problem
This is a simple discussion, and one which has shown up many times in these pages. But it keeps seeming - to me - that everything comes back to this.
Where do you find out what to do?
There's always only one real question - "What do I do now?" Anything else is daydreaming or curiosity. Even if "what I do now" is go to sleep, it's still the next thing on the agenda.
My pondering this question is a particularly useless exercise; it is a bit of wondering why the world is the way it is, which is a short sidestep away from thinking that it should change. And that attitude is actually the real problem - it's called "playing God", on page 62.
But I was in a Big Book study yesterday, and I found myself wondering these things, again. It seems that AAs (at least) get their instructions from these sources, mostly:
1) The Big Book
2) The 12 & 12 (as much as I say that there aren't any real instruction in there, it's not true; they aren't framed and structured the way I see the BB's instructions, but they can be found or inferred).
3) Their sponsor
4) Things they hear at meetings
5) Their own minds.
6) The Grapevine (and other literature)
The above list is in no particular order, BTW. I said "the Big Book" because that's what comes to mind for me, immediately; I can't tell that most folks go there first.
I have nothing against reading the other literature (including the 12 & 12) or listening at meetings or talking to my sponsor, but I have made a conscious decision that authority rests with the Big Book. Anything that extends what I read in the Big Book is useful; if it seems orthogonal to the Big Book's content, then it might be informative, and if it contradicts the Big Book, then I ignore it with all the vigor that I can muster.
Now, one might note above that number 5 can include God's direction via intuition or inspiration, and I would concur with such a viewpoint. And one might say that God should always be the Ultimate Authority (like our Tradition suggests) and I wouldn't be able to agree fast enough with that statement.
But how do I trust my own mind? I use the same criteria as I do with the other sources: if what I think (or receive from what I believe to be my Higher Power) extends or conforms to the Big Book, then I'm all for it, but if it contradicts the Big Book, then I try to ignore it.
That may mean that I wind up missing some really good stuff from God - but I'm willing to take the chance that He's not going to try to confuse me by sending me instructions that would go against the disciplines that allowed me to find Him in the first place.
This is really a topic that I think more of us could profitably investigate - but that very notion is, once again, playing God, so it's going against the Big Book, so I should shut up now : )
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