Grey Book Reflection
Personality change was what we really needed. Change from a self-destructing to a self-affirming pattern of living was imperative.
Gray Book, p. 25 (Chapter Three, Lines 18-20)
Living in active addiction we warped our thinking. Our personalities took a strange twist.
Our defects saved our lives because they enabled us to use, and we used to live. These emotional twists affected us at a deep level unbeknownst to us. In fact, we were sometimes the last to know that we had a problem.
Denial and self-centeredness protected us from seeing the reality of what our lives had become. Since Spirituality is the right Relationship with reality, we had none.
Our Basic Text says, "Living skills were reduced to the animal level. Our Spirit was broken. The capacity to feel human was lost.
Our character became defective, and our behaviors and attitudes just confirmed it. We were in survival mode, the people we once were, were swallowed up by our disease. Our conscience left soon after we refused to listen to it, and denial set in. The personalities that were formed only served one purpose, and that was to keep on using, at all costs.
Narcotics Anonymous and working the Steps offered a transformation of the Heart, Body, Mind and Spirit. Our characters needed reconstruction; we needed God as we understood him to be the architect. Our Steps and Traditions are the Spiritual Tools needed for our blueprint for Living.
Narcotics Anonymous offers the plan and the design for Living. We must Surrender to this Way of Life, if we are to continue Living, not just existing, dying or suffering.
We will Surrender to this overhauling, of Character, Mind and Spirit. With the help of Narcotics Anonymous, our Sponsors, and our Higher Power.