The two stages of surrender

The first surrender is when the alcoholic life becomes too much, and I seek sobriety. I discover AA, and realise that the programme can eliminate all of the blocks within me that are keeping me trapped in alcoholic drinking, and that are preventing me from realising my master plan in life.

The purpose of the programme then becomes to help me achieve my own goals, and I will be satisfied with as much AA as enables me to do that, provided that what is required is not too inconvenient or difficult. I talk to a sponsor to get out of him everything I think I need to improve my life, and then I close the hatch in the door of my castle through which I have been speaking to him and send him away.

The second surrender is when I realise that no plan I can come up with will match God's plan for me and that trying to plough my own furrow will ultimately lead to perdition. The game is now different: rather than fitting AA around my life I fit my life around AA.

Then, the game is to seek and do God's will in all matters, for its own sake. The test: "the things which matter so much to some people no longer signify much to them. How could they?" (Big Book, page 161), for what I have then is the peace of being a servant, and nothing beats that.