“I have since been brought into a way of living infinitely more satisfying and, I hope, more useful than the life I lived before. My old manner of life was by no means a bad one, but I would not exchange its best moments for the worst I have now. I would not go back to it even if I could.” (Page 42, Big Book)
Having a spiritual awakening means adding a new dimension to
the material life, namely the spiritual dimension. This infinitely expands
one’s life.
This is what having a ‘big life’ means.
If having a ‘big life’ means simply filling the material
life with more things (work, career, family, interests, people), then all one
has done is made the same material life with the same, unchanging and
unchangeable dimensions more varied but essentially fuller.
This is why street drunks often seem happier than the
grey-faced commuters rushing past them. The latter have got the same material
lives as the tramps, but their rooms are stuffed and they have no room to move
around in them. They haven’t got bigger lives; they’ve got more constrained,
cramped lives, pushed around by endless targets and obligations.
You can give yourself more space either by getting rid of things from your material life or expanding into new premises, the spiritual life. And the more time you spend in the spiritual life, the less the material life matters, and the more things drop out of that too.