#RecoveryWithDepth

[decaffeinatednightanchor]

📜 We Agnostics: The Chapter No One Really Reads

(and why that matters more than you think)

Let’s be honest:

Most people in recovery talk about “We Agnostics” like they read it.

Like they “wrestled with belief” for five minutes, had an okay share about spirituality, and moved on to “the real work.”

But I’ve gone back. I’ve read it again. And I have a theory:

Most people don’t get “We Agnostics” not because it’s vague,

but because it’s too honest.

It’s too complicated.

Too metaphysical.

Too unflinching in its picture of what spiritual awakening actually costs.

⸻

🌀 The Big Misquote: “Insanity is doing the same thing…”

Let’s clear this up right now:

That quote—“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”—is not in the Big Book.

It’s slapped on slogans, printed on mugs, hung on walls.

But in “We Agnostics”, the real insanity isn’t just repetitive behavior.

It’s numbness.

It’s the soul-level disconnection from awe.

It’s the refusal to notice wonder even as it’s screaming through your body, your relapse, your memory, your mother, your music.

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🌌 What the Chapter Actually Says

The insanity is forgetting the sacred in you.

The miracle of consciousness. The terror of mortality. The Great Reality deep down within.

It says:

“We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that He may be found.”

But how many of us dare to go that deep?

To encounter God not as a belief system,

but as a felt presence—within grief, collapse, shame, or even silence?

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💀 The Fear No One Names: God Might Be Real

We Agnostics doesn’t spend most of its time convincing us God exists.

It quietly suggests:

“What if He’s real… and you’ve been running?”

The agnostic’s burden is not just doubt.

It’s intellectual pride.

It’s existential numbness.

It’s the deep ache of feeling nothing when you’re supposed to feel everything.

“We found that as soon as we were able to lay aside prejudice and express even a willingness to believe in a Power greater than ourselves, we commenced to get results…”

That’s not a baby step. That’s a quantum leap into terror and wonder.

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🔥 The Real Miracle in the Chapter

It isn’t the moment someone “accepts God.”

It’s the moment they surrender to awe—

when the defenses crack

and something primal, ancient, sacred stirs beneath the cynicism.

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✨ My Takeaway:

The opposite of insanity isn’t “better decisions.”

It’s sensitivity.

It’s the recovery of wonder.

So many of us didn’t drink just because we were impulsive.

We drank because we were numb, flatlined, despairing in a world that forgot how to feel.

We Agnostics is a call back to reverence—

not for dogma,

but for mystery.

For the trembling, ecstatic truth that maybe… we’re not alone.

✨ The Recovery of Wonder (with Footnotes from the Book You Forgot to Fear)

The opposite of insanity isn’t “better decisions.”

It’s sensitivity.

It’s the recovery of wonder.

Because what We Agnostics actually dares to suggest is this:

That spiritual awakening isn’t about signing on to a belief system.

It’s about feeling again.

Feeling awe.

Feeling terror.

Feeling possibility.

And yet—most of us were too numb to know we’d lost it.

“We found that God does not make too hard terms with those who seek Him. To us, the Realm of Spirit is broad, roomy, all inclusive; never exclusive or forbidding to those who earnestly seek. It is open, we believe, to all.”

(p. 46)

That’s not comfort. That’s invitation.

To wonder. To seek. To feel.

“We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that He may be found.”

(p. 55)

God not as a sky-father, but as an interior gravity.

Found not in theory, but in depth.

Not in belief, but in presence.

And then this:

“Yes, we of agnostic temperament have had these thoughts and experiences. Let us make haste to reassure you… Even though it was impossible for any of us to fully define or comprehend that Power, which is God.”

(p. 46)

That’s the line no one highlights—because it terrifies us:

You will not understand.

And you don’t have to.

All you need to do is be willing to feel the mystery.

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🕯️ So Here’s My Contemplation for the Reader:

Maybe the greatest insanity wasn’t our drinking,

but our refusal to feel what life was asking us to feel.

Maybe the most radical act of recovery isn’t control,

but surrender to the terrible beauty of being alive.

And maybe We Agnostics isn’t a theological soft-pitch,

but a cosmic call home.

Not to religion.

Not to dogma.

But to awe.

To sensitivity.

To that still place inside us where the Great Reality has been waiting—

not for our perfection,

but for our attention.

So read it again.

And this time, let it read you.