A Spiritual Entity

"Spiritual entity" in Tradition Five says what a group must not become, and the rumour has turned it into a mood. The Long Form (Big Book, p. 563): "Each Alcoholics Anonymous group ought to be a spiritual entity having but one primary purpose". An entity is a body that acts as one. The rumour hears the word spiritual and thinks of soft voices, candles and a certain way of talking. That reading is about the feelings of the people in the room, and it lets a group feel spiritual while it is run like anything at all. Bill W. wrote down what the word was guarding against in 1946 (A.A. pamphlet P-17, p. 32): "an A.A. group is a spiritual entity, not a business concern." A business concern is a company. So a group is a spiritual entity in the Long Form's sense when it has nothing to sell, no client to bill and no payroll to protect. Then its one purpose, the drinker still out there, has nothing competing with it. Today the rumour lets a room with a price tag behind it call itself spiritual because the talk sounds that way. Nobody's private beliefs decide the question. The books do. Test it tonight: set aside how your meeting sounds, and ask whether anyone makes money because it exists.