Bill W & The Spiritual Awakening?

Thanks Professor.

The Belladonna thing always made me laugh when I heard about it. The spiritual awakening thing is another load of rubbish. So many steppers put anything good that happens in their life down to following a higher power and not because they have stopped getting out of their minds using various substances. They then become self righteous and spiritually awakened and this seems to make many of them feel superior and makes them even more likely to spout Billshit etc.
Many people see things if the detox too fast . I wonder what would have happened if Bill had seen a vision of giant spiders or had thought he was superman and jumped out the window. Sadly he seems to have had such a lack of imagination that even with the aid of drugs he could only think of religeous imagery rather than something more interesting. Sadly this resulted in one of the most boring books ever written called the big book which is probably puts more people off trying recovery than it has helped.

This was one of my first problems with AA. Bill never even practiced the steps and to have a spiritual awakening while trippin-out and then make up some steps to tell you how to get there? WTF? Isnt that like putting the cart before the horse? The fact is Bill never had a SA after working the Oxford steps. Bob never had a SA either according to his daughter Sue. Its all a crock-a-shit. When I used to hear people share their experience with the SA, it was comical. The fact is these people felt better and started noticing the beauty of nature and the stars n whatever because they put down the drink or drug.

It is like me telling you how to make a million and then you find that the ONLY million I ever had was given to me by my dad!!
JJ says; This is off topic but I had a friend in AA who lived in her fathers house till she was 30. She then inherited a large sum of money somewhere around 750,000 from her granddad. She moved from NY to Hawaii. I went to visit her on the big island a few years later. We went to meetings and she had led everyone in the meetings to believe that she had obtained the big house on the water and the nice audi car, and wardrobe on her own by doing the right thing one day at a time. She was a total fraud with double digit sobriety. lol Typical

I got my life back by myself & a few other members having talks after & outside the meetings & sharing our thoughts & concerns & the obvious contradictions & the crazy ways the members acted, the church ladies, the outrage & indignation how dare you mentality when you actually thought critically & on your own & expressed it. We had each other to validate doubts & it really helped a lot. On my own it would have taken much longer & I hate to think of the further damages I would have suffered.

I was thinking about how Dr. Bob always looked so serious. I wanted to see if I could find any pics of him smiling so I searched and Walla! I found one and some other pics of early members.
http://www.texasdistrict5.com/history-in-photos.htm

Actually a spiritual experience is extremely easy to have if you set the bar low enough. All you have to do is start with the assumption that you are a complete and utter failure at anything and everything. Brainwashing will allow you to do this. Then anything and everything that can possibly go right will be from gawd.

For instance, if you're at the grocery story and someone blocks the isle, you have to start with the belief that you're going to obsess about how rude that person was for a day, maybe even a week. Then you quickly forget about it because you've turned your attention to the items on your grocery list. Later you can realize that you didn't obsess about it for a day, or a week, and attribute it to gawd. Then you can claim you've had a gawd shot. String together a few events like this and you've had an awakening. It really is that easy. And that absurd.

To put the frosting on the cake, it seems that Bill Wilson stole the whole story about being on a mountaintop with a wind of spirit blowing through him from his own grandfather. It was Bill's grandfather, who was also an alcoholic named William Wilson, who climbed a mountain one Sunday morning, and begged God for help in quitting drinking, and had a dramatic religious experience of feeling a wind of spirit blowing through him, and never drank again.

Bill claimed that this happened to him:

      "Oh, God," he cried, and it was the sound not of a man, but of a trapped and crippled animal. "If there is a God, show me. Show me. Give me some sign."

      As he formed the words, in that very instant he was aware first of a light, a great white light that filled the room, then he suddenly seemed caught up in a kind of joy, an ecstasy such as he would never find words to describe. It was as though he were standing high on a mountaintop and a strong clear wind blew against him, around him, through him — but it seemed a wind not of air, but of spirit — and as this happened he had the feeling that he was stepping into another world, a new world of consciousness, and everywhere now there was a wondrous feeling of Presence which all his life he had been seeking.

— Robert Thomsen, Bill W., 1975, pp. 222-223.

But in the biography of Bill that was written by Lois Wilson's personal secretary, Francis Hartigan, we learn that Bill's paternal grandfather, who was also named William Wilson, also had a bad drinking problem. In desperation, he climbed a mountain and had a religious experience of a wind of Spirit blowing through him, and he never drank again:

William Wilson may have preferred inn keeping to quarrying, but inn keeping is seldom the right occupation for a hard-drinking man. His attempts to control his drinking led him to try Temperance pledges and the services of revival-tent preachers. Then, in a desperate state one Sunday morning, he climbed to the top of Mount Aeolus. There, after beseeching God to help him, he saw a blinding light and felt the wind of the Spirit. It was a conversion experience that left him feeling so transformed that he practically ran down the mountain and into town.

     When he reached the East Dorset Congregation Church, which is across
the street from the Wilson House, the Sunday service was in progress. Bill's grandfather stormed into the church and demanded that the minister get down from the pulpit. Then, taking his place, he proceeded to relate his experience to the shocked congregation. Wilson's grandfather never drank again. He was to live another eight years, sober.

Bill W.; A Biography of Alcoholics Anonymous Cofounder Bill Wilson, Francis Hartigan, page 11.

What are the odds that both Bill's grandfather and Bill would have exactly the same dramatic religious experience, almost word-for-word identical,

• both beseeching God for help,
  
• both seeing a blinding White Light,
  
• both feeling that they were on a mountaintop with a wind of Spirit blowing through them,
  
• and both being so overwhelmed by the experience that they never drank again?

Or did Bill Wilson just appropriate his grandfather's story to embellish his own detox experience?

Did Bill's grand vision of God really happen at all?

We are still left wondering just what this statement in the Hazelden "autobiography" of Bill Wilson really means:

There will be future historical revelations about Bill's character and behavior in recovery that will be interpreted, by some, as direct attacks on the very foundation of AA.

Bill W., My First 40 Years, William G. Wilson, Hazelden, page 170.

Remember, that "autobiography" was written by Hazelden staff members, using a set of autobiographical tape recordings that Bill Wilson made before his death. So just what are they hiding in the sealed AAWS archives? What else is on those tapes? I am eager to hear those "future historical revelations".

I wonder if that picture of Bill and Helen B was actually Helen Wynn. Bill looks pretty happy
http://www.texasdistrict5.com/history-in-photos.htm

What are the odds that Bill W heard his grandfather's story and did a re-enactment? Maybe the same odds as "I'll Have Another".
http://www.preakness-stakes.info/preakness-odds.php