Spiritual Transformation or Stagnation? The Story of the 5 M’s

Written By: Bill Wigmore Date: February 4th, 2010. Topic: Spirituality.

Many years ago I met a man from West Texas who told me a story that changed my life. Good stories have the power to do that you know – and this was a good one. What prompted its telling was my complaint that the 12-Step Program I belong to didn’t seem nearly as strong, nor as spiritually focused, as when I first joined it back in 1972. My West Texas friend responded with the story of the 5 M’s. It’s the story of what happens to spiritual institutions – any spiritual institution – over time. As soon as I heard it, I understood my program, and my church, and my own recovery very differently. I hope you may as well.

My friend said every spiritual institution starts with the man. Now that man could be Jesus, or Buddha, or Bill Wilson. (Of course, that man could just as easily be a woman but then the “W” in “woman” instead of the “M” in “man” really screws up the story!) Anyway, that man (the first M) has a spiritual experience. It might be Jesus being baptized in the River Jordan and seeing the sky torn apart, or Buddha finding enlightenment under the banyan tree, or Wilson’s own white-light experience while detoxing for the 4th time at Towns Hospital. Each man reports having a direct encounter with the Divine. His consciousness is awakened and raised to what the Big Book calls “the fourth dimension of existence.” It’s this spiritual experience (sudden or gradual) that is the real goal of the 12 Steps. And what happens to each man, as a result of his encounter, is that he comes back “changed.” Each man has a wholly new perspective on his life, on his relationship with God, and on his life work.

And so each “changed man” then tries to carry the message (the second M) to those around him. Now it’s important to understand that the message he carries isn’t that the man who received it is so very special and unique – but only that he has now been awakened to a reality that’s readily available to all who’ll remove their blinders and come see and experience it for themselves. Jesus called it the Kingdom of God, Buddha termed it Enlightenment or Nirvana, 12-Steppers call it, Serenity or Recovery. If they’re ready to receive it, the message resonates deep inside all those who hear it and it becomes a “program of attraction.” They must now follow the same path as the man who carried the message to them.

And with this is born (the third M) the movement. So now we have Jesus with his growing number of disciples, Buddha with his growing band of monks, and Wilson with the First One Hundred sober alcoholics. This is the glorious heyday of the movement as it tries to pass on the life-changing message of its founder to a waiting world. It’s a critical time where the group is often viewed initially as “a cult” and as a threat to the established order of things; but then it finds greater respectability with increased numbers and new leaders are able to carry on the work of transformation even after the death of their founder.

Before long, however, as the young movement grows, it is presented with an increasing number of issues that call for clarification and greater group conformity. The message must now be organized and codified so false prophets and false doctrines don’t arise to lead the group astray. The message must also be written down and protected for future generations. So now enters the attorneys, the secretaries, and the theologians. They comprise the fourth M: the machine. The job of the machine is to create traditions, and formulas, and rituals that capture and protect the spirit of the founder. And so we have bishops, and bibles, and creeds in the church, abbots and temples among the Buddhists, and in A.A. the Big Book, and conference approved literature from the Central Office. Now, before you get a really bad resentment toward me, please hear me when I say the machine is absolutely necessary for the continuation of the movement, but over time, what invariably happens through machines is the machinery replaces the message – and the law replaces the spirit. People continue to go through the motions, but the power and the mystery are diminished as the machine mechanically pumps out the message.

I knew the machine was well at work in a 12 Step meeting I attended in Tennessee. A woman was playing solitaire at the table where the 5:00 PM meeting was about to begin. When the time for the meeting arrived she opened the meeting with the Serenity Prayer while she continued to deal her cards! The machine had arrived! She would now go through the motions but there would be no real “meeting!” I was also reminded of it when I visited Bill Wilson’s birthplace in Vermont several years ago. Someone, I’m sure with very good intentions, had placed a lamp over the very spot where Bill had been born. Now we have a “perpetual light” shining there that will never go out. Good work, machine! No doubt in a few hundred years the sacred coffee pot from the first AA group in Akron will be on display and maybe even the cigarette ashes from the first hundred alcoholics will be rubbed on our foreheads of those that chronically relapse and are in search of a miracle cure! Rather than encouraging new members to go through the same transforming experience as the founder, the machine simply takes them through the motions.

Left unchecked, the machine will grind on, spewing out new laws and new literature, producing mindless but obedient adherents who follow the form but miss the message. This, of course, leads invariably to the Fifth M: the Mausoleum. The power of the movement is dead. It no longer has the spiritual energy to inspire and transform lives. When this happens – and it will, as it is the nature of institutions – then other men (back to the First M) come along willing to challenge the lost vision of the group and willing to lead it through the 5 M’s all over again. And when they do, they generally go back to the experience of the founder and ask the question, “Who was that man and what really was his message?”

We need to ask that now of Jesus, and Buddha, and Bill. Have I experienced what they experienced and has it transformed me and given me a glimpse of that “fourth dimension of existence;” or have I simply put those men on a pedestal, read a quote or two from them now and then, and continued to deal the cards in my game of solitaire? It’s your deal!