This is not an easy concept to come to grips with, or at least it wasn’t for me. When I first got sober I listened to everyone and thought they were border-line saints. They had been sober for so much longer than me and had so much more insight.
I soon saw that all these almost-saints were in fact flawed. What they said in meetings was not, always, how they lived their lives and I started to question the value of their shares based on how they live their lives. In short, I became judgmental.
I would sit in meetings and think to myself “that person is so full of crap. I know they thirteenth stepped so-and-so and whatever comes out of their mouth must be rubbish.”
This is not true. God speaks through all of us. I have learned to take the message that is carried and if I can use it, then I do. I don’t get all tangled up in what they may or may not be like outside the rooms of AA. It is not relevant. What is relevant is that I must sit in meetings and listen.
If I only listened to and learnt from perfect people then I would learn absolutely nothing. Ever. Even Ghandi could be viewed as a foodie in a certain light.
Another aspect of this is that the whole point in AA is that we are imperfect. Yet life happens to us and if I can’t learn from what someone says, perhaps I can learn from what they don’t so. Or from what they do.
It is intertwined with the concept of Principles rather than Personalities that permeates our fellowship.
Don’t get me wrong, there are people that I don’t much like in AA, but I have learned that they can help me to stay sober and sometimes it is through a very casual remark. Quite often it is through something that really irritates me and then I need to think hard about my reaction and what caused it. I have learned that if I automatically resist something then the chances are good that it has value.
AA is my medicine and I can’t suddenly get selective about what I will and will not listen to. The best advice I ever got was to separate the message from the messenger.
Besides, if my head is so busy thinking about the person and all of their defects, how can my head be open to anything of value? It can’t. What if I miss something terribly important, that could save me from another drink?
My modus operandi is to listen in meetings and if I don’t like the person outside of the group then it’s not like I have to live with them.