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So since December I've snagged a new food sponsor, and I think he's a keeper. We're calling him Sam. I don't think for a minute I could have lost all the weight I have lost in these months without his help, and I thank the Goddess he's with me.

He's another one of these guys that raised his hand to become a sponsor in response to the "Service" tool. In the 12-steps it is thought of as the fact that in order to help ourselves we have to reach out to others. When we are engaged in honest service, aiding those further down the scale than ourselves we gain perspective on our own disease and therefore gain another tool to use in our own recovery. At it's most grandiose it means passing the light of spiritual questing and healing into the dark personal corners of the world, in the most basic light it is a way for recovering addicts to keep busy. After all I can't eat twenty Ho-Hos RIGHT NOW if I'm leading an OA meeting or on the phone with my sponcee. They will notice.

It seems to me to be a sort of pyramid scheme of healing. The gifts and labors of program kind of flow back and forth between the members, and I think that this friction is what really keeps people involved and spurs folks onto recovery. If you are doing it right both sponsor and sponcee lean on one another.

In my example, Sam is clean and has his food where it belongs, but he has other major problems in his life. He's been out of work for awhile and his unemployment is about to lapse. His chosen profession in the IT sector is really sitting in the doldrums right now. The pallor on the markets digs into profits, which means less income trickling down to the offices, which means less money to new computer and software sales over all. That being the case, the offices are less likely to incorporate new software and new technology solutions overall into their businesses, and that is where it's hurting Sam. So he talks to me about it. I hear about his interviews, what happened with his online applications, who screwed him over and who's headhunting him for jobs he can't afford to take. I can tell he appreciates the opportunity to get things off of his chest, and I am only happy to listen, but what really gets me is what I realized next.

He wants to hear about my issues and problems too. When I start to talk he allows me long pauses and doesn't interrupt, and usually offers some perspective on what I'm going through. Amazing, no? I've spent my life making sure that I don't complain and that I am cool and collected in every situation. I think it helps in a lot of instances, but it is isolating and can give people the wrong idea. With my former sponsors, I hardly ever told them of my hardships unless it was directly related to program, and even then sometimes I held back. Who wants to listen to me grumble and whine about my life after all?

Well, in this sponsor relationship, if you aren't giving up your problems to this guy you start to look kinda snobbish. After all if I'm in program I obviously have problems, right? Why hide them? Why even have a sponsor if I'm not sharing with him? How can he even know how to help me if he doesn't know my problems? It makes a lot of sense to me now, but before I guess I was expecting mind readers to help me with my eating. My knockout wife has been feeling like I have been shutting her out too, so this works on both fronts. Sometimes it's funny how program carries into other aspects of life.

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Get used to seeing that on my posts as my new sponsor only wants me weighing myself once every month. I knew that jumping on the scale everyday during my first bout of abstinence was not a good idea, but at the time it was the only thing I was getting out of program. Now that I am in step study the focus is on having a spiritual connection with my higher power. This connection is what is going to sustain me now, so the book and Bill say.

Now we had arrived at Step Three in the process. In regards to that I am a man who has had congress with the divine and the not-so-normal by my own estimation, and as a result I have no delusion that divinity is not real or that there is no guiding force in the cosmos, so why is Three such a hard sell? I just can't see this power as a part of myself. In it's presence I was so confounded by it's size and scope, it was an impossibility ingrained in every little thing that exists. You hear this a lot if you study these sorts of things, it was for a moment as plain as my hand or a tree but the feeling of this presence was temporary.

I can remember the feeling but do not have a way to put that knowledge to use. Also, and I think this is the crux of the issue, I felt this power was separate from myself. Somehow I was inert in this world of the 'divine body' that I had sensed. Was it simply because I was an observer? Or was I too distracted to notice my own role in that fantastic place? Even now I know that that power is in the keys I am typing on and in the air I'm breathing, I simply cannot sense it. Now I'm not telling you that I am a prophet or that this experience was even planned in any way shape or form, but it certainly did happen.

Now how in the heck is that supposed to help me stop eating? A fair question I think. In that moment I sensed the being that encompasses us all, not a god but a goddess. An Earth Mother to be exact. She did not create us in her image, nor did she send floods and trials upon a gang of well informed unfortunates in ancient times, she simply is. That being said and understanding that all of her creations are equal in importance, why is my eating problem going to stir a being with nary even a concept of a Ho Ho? This is my problem.

I find myself reading "We Agnostics" and finding much that I relate to. The judeo-christian Yahweh is omnipotent and all powerful by report, so imagining such a being using an influence of a sort to keep boston cream pie from my mouth makes sense. After all if he is "all-powerful" he's got power to spare. Why not help a soul who is suffering if he prays? I certainly would. Unfortunately I am cursed with divine knowledge as opposed to religious knowledge and the situation in the big book does not add up for me.

I'm not saying that I don't believe that millions of christians also feel this disconnection from their God, I'm just sitting a different part of the same space. For me the divine is a fact and the conflict is my role within it, for the typical christian my guess is that the existence of the divine itself is the issue and the resulting conflict therefore being religious teaching versus reality, or at least the perception of reality. In the end who knows? I've been wrong enough times to know I will probably be wrong again.

I can say with an amount of certainty that I think OA is working for me right now. Bill is pretty much exactly what I need in a sponsor and the step process is going to be good for me. It's funny, even as I am writing this I am having terrible food thoughts... :P It's nice to feel that I won't be giving into them today at least.