'Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.'
- Alcoholism is not arrested until the individual gives up his specialness and dissolves into the whole.
- Personality is an expression of specialness.
- Personality can be repurposed by God to help carry the message.
- This particular form is secondary to the message, however.
- Individuals in AA are channels not sources: any goodness comes through them not from them.
- No one need be placed on a pedestal.
- No one is irreplaceable.
- If a channel is blocked or ceases to exist, the Source will switch channel.
- There is never any interruption to the supply.
- Channels are temporary form on the material plane.
- When a person's form 'dies' on the material plane, they are subsumed back into the whole.
- Nothing is lost by 'death'.
- Personalities are form.
- Principles are substance.
- Form is not real, because it can be destroyed.
- Principles are real, because they cannot.
- Love is a principle, so it is real and cannot be destroyed.
- We are all expressions of the love of the Source.
- We in turn extend that love outwards, infinitely.
- Atonement is a principle.
- The principle of atonement is that the separation never happened.
- Realising this brings about atonement, or at-one-ment.
- The separate forms are temporary illusions on the material plane.
- The material plane is the plane of dreams.
- We give up our dreams and see the Great Reality.
- It is not a greater reality, because there is only one Reality.
- That means that the material plane is not a lower reality.
- It is not a reality at all.
- The purpose of the material plane is to learn this and help others learn this.
- In an AA setting:
- When a discussion takes place, who raises an idea does not matter.
- The idea matters.
- We set aside quarrels and enmities between personalities, between egos, and focus on the ideas.
- We focus on the ideas, always considering the primary purpose (Tradition V) and common welfare (Tradition I).
Inventory:
Looking at the above ideas:
Where am I currently falling down?
What can I do differently?