I was not an atheist. Few people really are, for that means blind faith in the strange proposition that this universe originated in a cipher and aimlessly rushes nowhere.

Honesty with ourselves & others gets us sober, but it is tolerance that keeps us that way.

Because of our kinship in suffering, our channels of contact have always been charged with the language of the heart.

We lose the fear of making decisions, great and small; as we realize that should our choice prove wrong we can, if we will, learn from the experience.

We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given to us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it.

Is sobriety all that we are to expect of a spiritual awakening? No, sobriety is only a bare beginning; it is only the first gift of the first awakening. If more gifts are to be received, our awakening has to go on. As it does go on, we find that bit by bit we can discard the old life - the one that did not work - for a new life that can and does work under any conditions whatever.

Nowadays my brain no longer races compulsively in either elation, grandiosity, or depression. I have been given a quiet place in bright sunshine.