Besides a seeming inability to accept much on faith, we often found ourselves handicapped by obstinacy, sensitiveness, and unreasoning prejudice. Many of us have been so touchy that even casual reference to spiritual things made us bristle with antagonism. This sort of thinking had to be abandoned. Though some of us resisted, we found no great difficulty in casting aside such feelings. Faced with alcoholic destruction, we soon became as open minded on spiritual matters as we had tried to be on other questions. In this respect alcohol was a great persuader. It finally beat us into a state of reasonableness. Sometimes this was a tedious process; we hope no one else will be prejudiced for as long as some of us were. (Big Book)
Thus was I convinced that God is concerned with us humans when we want Him enough. At long last I saw, I felt, I believed. Scales of pride and prejudice fell from my eyes. A new world came into view. (Big Book)
“Do not search for the truth,” said an ancient patriarch, “only cease to cherish opinions.” For me, ceasing to cherish opinions is part of the Tenth Step. Much of what I find wrong in my life is related to my opinions—that is, my prejudices, assumptions, self-righteous stances, attitudes. (Courage to Change, October 14)
When I arrived in recovery and for many years thereafter, I was very prejudiced about religious and spiritual ideas. Even though lots of smart, kind, capable, thoughtful, rational, and learned people were religious, spiritual, or both, I, from a position of almost abysmal ignorance, in the light of all that could be known, cherishing only the small, wretched corners of my blinkered and benighted experience, clutching onto them like childhood pebbles, blithely dismissed everything that did not jive with my perception of myself as the materialist, the rationalist, the capitalist, the humanist, the modern, the intellectual, the scientist, the all-knowing centre of the universe, the mover, the shaker, the sine qua non, the ne plus ultra, the highest of the high, the tippest of the top, the hippest of the hop, the acme, the zenith, the summit, the pinnacle, the great I Am.
An unfortunate thing happened. I started to read and listen and engage and think and pray and meditate and talk with people wiser than me, with a completely open mind, and with nothing barred from the round table of discussion. Without really realising what was happening, a whole new world hove into view. I found myself believing things and, in fact, knowing things I would previously have castigated myself for even considering.
It turns out that prejudice is as fragile as an orchid, which will die if kept out of the hothouse and exposed on the outer windowsill to the elements of the wider world.