The NA Way of Life Book As Written and Approved by the NA Fellowship-At-Large in Open, Participatory Conferences
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NA Way of Life - Fellowship Work in Progress Eighth Presentation Form 2011 First Edition 2012 The N. A. Way of Life FELLOWSHIP USE ONLY Begun in 1991 1 NA Way of Life - Fellowship Work in Progress Eighth Presentation Form 2011 First Presentation Form – 1999 Second Presentation Form – 2001 Third Presentation Form – 2002 Fourth Presentation Form – 2003 Fifth Presentation Form – 2006 Sixth Presentation Form – 2008 Seventh Presentation Form – 2010 Eighth Presentation Form - 2011 First Edition 2012 Note: this is an ongoing effort and there will be some additions to the 2011 Form in the coming year. To help members keep track, the date of each issues here: April 29, 2011 Copyright © 1998 Victor Hugo Sewell, Jr. TXu-893-505 www.nawol.org [email protected] NA Foundation Group 6685 Bobby John Road Atlanta, Georgia 30349 All rights reserved. This draft may be copied by members of Narcotics Anonymous for the purpose of writing input for future drafts, enhancing the recovery of NA members and for the general welfare of the Narcotics Anonymous Fellowship as a whole. The use of an individual name is simply a registration requirement of the Library of Congress and not a departure from the spirit or letter of the Pledge, Preface or Introduction of this book. Any reproduction by individuals or organizations outside the Fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous is prohibited. Any reproduction of this document for personal or corporate monetary gain is prohibited. 2 NA Way of Life - Fellowship Work in Progress Eighth Presentation Form 2011 Our Pledge to the NA Fellowship This material is the result of years of work and preparation. To reach a larger number of NA members, we have checked the spelling, grammar and paragraph order. Some sections will be much the same. Others have been greatly improved. There may be a 6th Presentation form or even a 7th as we write our way to an agreeable Final Form.* The technical editing we have done will save time, so that you can now concentrate on the recovery and spiritual issues. Only members can perceive and share about these. This material is the most complete form so far, but crucial areas are missing - areas that you know more about than we do. All this has been done to allow a greater number of members to study, review and discuss the material. We need to find out what is missing, poorly stated or inappropriate. We will keep your input in files, and hold conferences to discuss how to include new material. We remain firm in our commitment to group conscience and group processing. We are hoping you will be moved to action and begin your own local NA Foundation Group meeting. An NA Foundation Group uses existing NA literature, carries the NA message of recovery, but it also reads and studies this book. The purpose is to clarify the subjects covered, include members experience and thoroughly process the material subject to finalization by some great number of members - we hope for at least ten thousand. This material is copyrighted and held in trust by those writing it, so that all may own but none may sell it. In its final form, it will be dedicated in gratitude to the NA program and held in trust for the Fellowship-at-large. A ‘joint work’ is a work prepared by two or more authors with the intention that their contributions will be merged into inseparable or interdependent parts of a unitary whole. * Now we have an 8th Presentation Form in May 2011. 3 NA Way of Life - Fellowship Work in Progress Eighth Presentation Form 2011 This was the basic idea all along. All subsequent contributions were anonymous contributions freely given to help other addicts. May we always keep faith with those who have freely given. All NA members will be free to copy, produce and distribute this writing. No intrusion by outside forces will be allowed. The authors of this work will go to great lengths to protect the integrity and form of the NA Way of Life book as written and approved by the NA Fellowship-at-large in open, participatory conferences. When complete, the work will be placed in public domain. No permission is extended to any outside enterprise or corporation. Outside forces are defined as those who see the work we are doing as commercially viable rather than a free expression of our experience, strength and hope. We do not charge for our Twelfth Step, nor do we allow others to do so. We trust a loving God to care for us, provide for us and protect us from the pressures of money, property and prestige. Production and distribution methods will be considered at a later stage of the work. As it nears completion, with a great many members from all over the world involved, we will finalize a method that will both make the material available and keep the price at a minimum. We don't want this book sold for profit, royalties or personal gain from ownership, production or distribution of the work. We do insist it remain as a work written by addicts, for addicts. To this end we are pledged. We don't need money or permission to do this work. Our Fellowship stresses our complete, creative freedom. We don't need outside guidance - God gives us plenty. What we need is you, as a willing NA member, to show your concern in positive ways by sending in your input and showing up at our conferences to help process all the input. Only members can do this well. In Loving Service, Foundation Group of N.A. September 22, 2005 4 NA Way of Life - Fellowship Work in Progress Eighth Presentation Form 2011 PREFACE This work is designed to produce written recovery materials for addicts seeking recovery in Narcotics Anonymous. Our efforts to originate and accumulate helpful material benefit everyone. All are welcome to support, participate, and engage in this effort. Write seriously or playfully, as the Spirit guides you. There is no telling what great goodness may emerge if our motives and our spirits are purely devoted to being instruments of a loving God. We write this for the good of others like us who have lost their way or never had a way to start with. We are addicts who come from the dying times. We vividly recall when we believed that there was absolutely no hope, anywhere on earth, for people like us. No one else believed there was any hope either. We have created a life style and mind set which was given to us by a God of our understanding. We are still creating and enlarging the pathway that gives people like us choices that we never knew that we had before. Our newfound hope lets us live clean and grow spiritually. We have applied the Twelve Steps of NA to our lives and we live the results. We see the negative consequences of unhealthy selfishness and compromise. We prefer now to go our way in peace and to follow the Will of our Higher Power. The main obstacle to writing recovery material is the fact that it must come from addicts. When considering written input, we go through an enormous amount of extra trouble to determine whether it is our disease talking or our recovery. Writing material to suit the needs of all NA members is nearly impossible for any individual to do. The fact that we have written even one book, our Basic Text, is a great miracle. A second is bound to be less difficult because now we know it can be done. We are free to approach any subject that needs consideration and discussion. 5 NA Way of Life - Fellowship Work in Progress Eighth Presentation Form 2011 Whether it is about a helpful technique or an obstacle to recovery, we declare our right to write. Recovering addicts write about their lives and their recovery. This is the process of sorting out our lives and filling in the blanks. As in recovery, fear is the basic obstacle to the writing. It begins when we are afraid to tell the truth. Truth telling may seem an all occasion remedy, but that can be another illusion. There are frequent times when telling the truth will be mistaken for it's opposite by the unlearned listener or will overburden the more complacent members. These things take time - God's time. We believe NA started to grow in the nineteen seventies because all members were encouraged to participate and add our voice to NA by writing the Basic Text. Reversing this, leaving people out of the writing process, diminishes NA as a whole. Incomplete processing can only embed errors in material that proports to be approved by the NA Fellowship. These errors are easily corrected if enough members are allowed to participate in the process. The extraordinary processing that went into the Basic Text in 1979 to 1982 is the origin of the enhancement of “approved” material. To mark written material as “approved” without such in depth processing is misrepresentation of the facts. Handling these things "professionally" is not necessarily superior, correct, or more efficient. “Professionally” means that either we don't care enough to do something on our own time, or that we can't, so we pay someone else to do it. However, in our case we care and we happen to be the only people in the world who know what we do to recover on a daily basis. Professionalism downplays the beauty and wonder of ordinary members writing recovery material. This betrays the Spirit of NA.