Ray A.'s Blog, page 2
November 28, 2020
In All Our Affairs: Practicing Justice
When I was a young man, I was all for justice. I was for justice for the working class, who were being exploited by capitalism. I was for justice for blacks and other minorities, who were being discriminated against. I was for justice for the Vietnamese, for Latin Americans, and for all the people of the third world, who were oppressed by Yankee imperialism.
Justice! I demanded. And I acted on it. I wrote flyers and newspaper articles, made angry, profanity-laden speeches, protested, demonstrated, marched, picketed, rallied, occupied offices and buildings, and went on strike. I joined a revolutionary communist party that wanted to overthrow the U.S. government, read and taught Marx and Engels, Lenin and Stalin, Mao and Che Guevara, and conspired to turn the student, labor, and civil rights movements in a radical direction. All in the cause of justice.
But I didn’t practice justice. Whoever disagreed with me politically were nothing but petit bourgeois reactionaries, counterrevolutionaries, pigs, fascists. I would try to intimidate them, silence them, block them, shout them down. They weren’t just wrong. They were the enemy. They had had to be stopped—by any means necessary.
I didn’t practice justice at work, which I saw as nothing more than a base of operations for my real work, my political work. I would consistently come in late, clock out to the field and go to a bar instead, file false reports, and create as much unrest in the shop as possible, abusing both management and union leaders.
I didn’t practice justice in my personal life, freely engaging in adultery and promiscuity, cheating on girlfriends, betraying friends, neglecting financial responsibilities, borrowing money and not paying it back.
Yes, I was selfish, self-centered, dishonest, arrogant, and all the other things we say about drunks like me in the program. But all of these things manifested themselves in widespread injustice. I was terribly unjust. . . .
Above is excerpt from “In All Our Affairs: Practicing Justice,” posted 09/22/20 at http://practicetheseprinciplesthebook.... For full text, please click on link and go to Practice These: The Virtue of Justice.
Justice! I demanded. And I acted on it. I wrote flyers and newspaper articles, made angry, profanity-laden speeches, protested, demonstrated, marched, picketed, rallied, occupied offices and buildings, and went on strike. I joined a revolutionary communist party that wanted to overthrow the U.S. government, read and taught Marx and Engels, Lenin and Stalin, Mao and Che Guevara, and conspired to turn the student, labor, and civil rights movements in a radical direction. All in the cause of justice.
But I didn’t practice justice. Whoever disagreed with me politically were nothing but petit bourgeois reactionaries, counterrevolutionaries, pigs, fascists. I would try to intimidate them, silence them, block them, shout them down. They weren’t just wrong. They were the enemy. They had had to be stopped—by any means necessary.
I didn’t practice justice at work, which I saw as nothing more than a base of operations for my real work, my political work. I would consistently come in late, clock out to the field and go to a bar instead, file false reports, and create as much unrest in the shop as possible, abusing both management and union leaders.
I didn’t practice justice in my personal life, freely engaging in adultery and promiscuity, cheating on girlfriends, betraying friends, neglecting financial responsibilities, borrowing money and not paying it back.
Yes, I was selfish, self-centered, dishonest, arrogant, and all the other things we say about drunks like me in the program. But all of these things manifested themselves in widespread injustice. I was terribly unjust. . . .
Above is excerpt from “In All Our Affairs: Practicing Justice,” posted 09/22/20 at http://practicetheseprinciplesthebook.... For full text, please click on link and go to Practice These: The Virtue of Justice.
August 20, 2020
Spiritual Awakening: The Caring Heart
As we have amply demonstrated in the preceding three posts, the Big Book and the 12&12 leave no doubt what the 12 Steps are all about, what their ultimate goal is. It is to have a spiritual awakening. That’s the transformational experience that what will relieve us of the obsession to drink and enable us to become “happily and usefully whole” as we saw the 12&12 put it.
As we have argued, this involves a radical change in the way we view and value things. In the last post, we discussed the first, the reordering of our vision. In this we discuss the second, the reorientation of our heart.
We find this idea of a deep, inner realignment throughout our two basic texts. The Big Book speaks of it with direct reference to the heart. In it, “heart” is a metaphor for the things that we care about, the things that matter, that are important, meaningful, or significant to us, the things that we are attached to or invested in and which therefore motivate us, stir our desires, arouse our emotions, and move us to act.
We noted that we find this change linked to a spiritual awakening in There Is a Solution: “The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous” (p.25).
We’ll find it again in We Agnostics, with reference to Fitz M. (“Our Southern Friend”), “a man who thought he was an atheist,” but who, having had a spiritual experience, “His change of heart was dramatic, convincing, and moving” (p.55).
In “To Employers,” the change is related to the issue of the reordering of our concerns, of giving things their proper value. “Though you [the employer] are providing him with the best medical attention, he should understand that he must undergo a change of heart. To get over drinking will require a transformation of thought and attitude. We all had to place recovery above everything, for without recovery we would have lost both home and business” (p.143).
And in the last chapter of the Book, A Vision for You, we are shown how, as we continue to grow along spiritual lines, our hearts are increasingly reoriented away from the selfish and self-centered concern with ourselves which is the mark of our disease: "Being wrecked in the same vessel, being restored and united under one God, with minds and hearts attuned to the welfare of others, the things which matter so much to some people no longer signify much to them” (p.161).
Above is excerpt from “Spiritual Awakening: The Caring Heart,” updated 08/09/20 and posted at http://practicetheseprinciplesthebook.... For full text, quotes, images, and additional resources, please click on link.
As we have argued, this involves a radical change in the way we view and value things. In the last post, we discussed the first, the reordering of our vision. In this we discuss the second, the reorientation of our heart.
We find this idea of a deep, inner realignment throughout our two basic texts. The Big Book speaks of it with direct reference to the heart. In it, “heart” is a metaphor for the things that we care about, the things that matter, that are important, meaningful, or significant to us, the things that we are attached to or invested in and which therefore motivate us, stir our desires, arouse our emotions, and move us to act.
We noted that we find this change linked to a spiritual awakening in There Is a Solution: “The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous” (p.25).
We’ll find it again in We Agnostics, with reference to Fitz M. (“Our Southern Friend”), “a man who thought he was an atheist,” but who, having had a spiritual experience, “His change of heart was dramatic, convincing, and moving” (p.55).
In “To Employers,” the change is related to the issue of the reordering of our concerns, of giving things their proper value. “Though you [the employer] are providing him with the best medical attention, he should understand that he must undergo a change of heart. To get over drinking will require a transformation of thought and attitude. We all had to place recovery above everything, for without recovery we would have lost both home and business” (p.143).
And in the last chapter of the Book, A Vision for You, we are shown how, as we continue to grow along spiritual lines, our hearts are increasingly reoriented away from the selfish and self-centered concern with ourselves which is the mark of our disease: "Being wrecked in the same vessel, being restored and united under one God, with minds and hearts attuned to the welfare of others, the things which matter so much to some people no longer signify much to them” (p.161).
Above is excerpt from “Spiritual Awakening: The Caring Heart,” updated 08/09/20 and posted at http://practicetheseprinciplesthebook.... For full text, quotes, images, and additional resources, please click on link.
June 6, 2020
Spiritual Awakening: The Seeing Eye
As the Big Book and the 12&12 make clear—and as we have discussed in the previous two posts—the goal of the 12 Steps is to take us through a process of spiritual awakening that will change the person we have been and enable us to live a useful, happy, and productive life. Not drinking is but the first step in that endeavor.
Expanding on the Big Book, the 12&12 describes what all experiences of such a spiritual awakening have in common as “a new state of consciousness and of being” that enables a person “to do feel, and believe that which he could not do before on his unaided strength and resources alone” (pp. 106-107).
Throughout both texts, this awakening is consistently associated with a fundamental change in our outlook, our perception, the way we view or look at things, our perspective or vision.
This is based on the understanding—which is implicit in the Big Book and the 12&12 and which we make explicit in PTP—that how we feel and what we do is essentially a function of the way we look at things and the value we attach to them.
The basic reasoning is simple: If X is important to us and we perceive it to be negatively affected by Y, we are going to feel and to act differently than if we perceive to be affected positively. If X is not important, Y’s effect on it will have no impact on how we feel or what we do.
That’s straightforward enough. The problem of course is that our vision is often warped and our heart is in the wrong place. For us alcoholics that means that we tend to view and value things through the distorted lens of our spiritual disease: selfishness and self-centeredness. This distorts our emotions and our actions and cause us to harm ourselves and others.
The goal of a spiritual awakening is to heal us of our spiritual illness and enable us to see and to care about things from “a spiritual angle,” to experience a change of heart and of vision which makes it possible for us to live in harmony with ourselves, other people, the world, God. . . .
Above is excerpt from “Spiritual Awakening: The Seeing Eye,” updated 05/30/20 and posted at http://practicetheseprinciplesthebook.... For full text, quotes, images, and additional resources, please click on link.
Expanding on the Big Book, the 12&12 describes what all experiences of such a spiritual awakening have in common as “a new state of consciousness and of being” that enables a person “to do feel, and believe that which he could not do before on his unaided strength and resources alone” (pp. 106-107).
Throughout both texts, this awakening is consistently associated with a fundamental change in our outlook, our perception, the way we view or look at things, our perspective or vision.
This is based on the understanding—which is implicit in the Big Book and the 12&12 and which we make explicit in PTP—that how we feel and what we do is essentially a function of the way we look at things and the value we attach to them.
The basic reasoning is simple: If X is important to us and we perceive it to be negatively affected by Y, we are going to feel and to act differently than if we perceive to be affected positively. If X is not important, Y’s effect on it will have no impact on how we feel or what we do.
That’s straightforward enough. The problem of course is that our vision is often warped and our heart is in the wrong place. For us alcoholics that means that we tend to view and value things through the distorted lens of our spiritual disease: selfishness and self-centeredness. This distorts our emotions and our actions and cause us to harm ourselves and others.
The goal of a spiritual awakening is to heal us of our spiritual illness and enable us to see and to care about things from “a spiritual angle,” to experience a change of heart and of vision which makes it possible for us to live in harmony with ourselves, other people, the world, God. . . .
Above is excerpt from “Spiritual Awakening: The Seeing Eye,” updated 05/30/20 and posted at http://practicetheseprinciplesthebook.... For full text, quotes, images, and additional resources, please click on link.
May 9, 2020
Spiritual Awakening: The Concept
We noted in the introduction to this section that AA was founded on the Jungian idea that there was a particular kind of alcoholic who could not recover except through a spiritual awakening. This is not subject to debate. It is a well-documented fact of our history. Most of our pioneers seem to have been like that. No doubt there are many in AA today who are not.
Whether we are or not is for each one of us to say. What is certain is that, for many of us, the question is not that important. If we are new in the program, having a spiritual awakening is just not the uppermost thing in our minds. We just want to get sober and get out of trouble: maybe get a job or an apartment, or get back with our significant other, or get our children back, or get out of jail. If we manage to stay sober and make some progress in these and other areas, the question will remain marginal.
If we are in long-term recovery and we’re getting better and life is (all things considered) generally good, we are probably not going to bother with the question either. We are probably making some spiritual progress anyway, even if we don’t describe it in those terms. A spiritual awakening can be gradual and take place on many levels. Even a minimum amount of work with the Steps will contribute to the process and show positive results.
The question may not really get our attention until we have a crisis or a relapse (the two usually coincide). The "slip" may be of the emotional or of the drinking variety. In either case, we’ve had a wake-up call. It’s hard to go on with business as usual. We feel like we have to do something. But what? Haven’t we been going to meetings? Haven’t we been working the Steps? Haven’t we had a sponsor and our share of sponsees? Why’s our life unraveling again? That’s when some of us take another look at the opening clause of Step 12.
“Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps . . .” Because of its grammatical structure, it is easy to miss the centrality of that clause to the Step. Upon a closer reading, we might notice that it tells us three rather significant things. First, it tells us the purpose of the 12 Steps, and therefore of the AA program that is based on them. That purpose is to have a spiritual awakening. . . .
Above is excerpt from “Spiritual Awakening: The Concept,” posted at http://practicetheseprinciplesthebook.... For full text, please click on link.
Whether we are or not is for each one of us to say. What is certain is that, for many of us, the question is not that important. If we are new in the program, having a spiritual awakening is just not the uppermost thing in our minds. We just want to get sober and get out of trouble: maybe get a job or an apartment, or get back with our significant other, or get our children back, or get out of jail. If we manage to stay sober and make some progress in these and other areas, the question will remain marginal.
If we are in long-term recovery and we’re getting better and life is (all things considered) generally good, we are probably not going to bother with the question either. We are probably making some spiritual progress anyway, even if we don’t describe it in those terms. A spiritual awakening can be gradual and take place on many levels. Even a minimum amount of work with the Steps will contribute to the process and show positive results.
The question may not really get our attention until we have a crisis or a relapse (the two usually coincide). The "slip" may be of the emotional or of the drinking variety. In either case, we’ve had a wake-up call. It’s hard to go on with business as usual. We feel like we have to do something. But what? Haven’t we been going to meetings? Haven’t we been working the Steps? Haven’t we had a sponsor and our share of sponsees? Why’s our life unraveling again? That’s when some of us take another look at the opening clause of Step 12.
“Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps . . .” Because of its grammatical structure, it is easy to miss the centrality of that clause to the Step. Upon a closer reading, we might notice that it tells us three rather significant things. First, it tells us the purpose of the 12 Steps, and therefore of the AA program that is based on them. That purpose is to have a spiritual awakening. . . .
Above is excerpt from “Spiritual Awakening: The Concept,” posted at http://practicetheseprinciplesthebook.... For full text, please click on link.
March 8, 2020
Spiritual Awakening: Introduction
Alcoholics Anonymous was founded on the idea that there was a certain type of alcoholic whose only hope of recovery was a spiritual awakening. The story is told in the Big Book (pp. 26-29), Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age (pp. 58 - 71), Pass It On (pp. 111-125), and The Language of the Heart (pp. 274 – 286).
It begins with Rowland H., the “certain American businessman” who, as the Big Book tells it, had everything going for him. Except that he couldn’t stop drinking. And there was nobody who could help him. After years of treatment, the best sanatoriums and psychiatrists had failed him. Desperate, he traveled abroad and went under the care of psychiatrist Carl Jung. To no avail. Acknowledging his own failure to help him, the Swiss doctor informed Rowland that he had never seen a single case like his recover.
Desperate, Rowland asked if there were no exceptions. Yes, responded Jung. Every once in a while, here and there, “alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences.” These “appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which once were the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them.” That’s exactly the kind of change his treatment had tried to bring about, explained Jung, “but I have never been successful with an alcoholic of your description” (Big Book, p. 27). . . .
Excerpt from “Spiritual Awakening: Introduction,” posted 01/07/20 in “Spiritual Awakening” at http://practicetheseprinciplesthebook.... For full text and images, please click on link.
It begins with Rowland H., the “certain American businessman” who, as the Big Book tells it, had everything going for him. Except that he couldn’t stop drinking. And there was nobody who could help him. After years of treatment, the best sanatoriums and psychiatrists had failed him. Desperate, he traveled abroad and went under the care of psychiatrist Carl Jung. To no avail. Acknowledging his own failure to help him, the Swiss doctor informed Rowland that he had never seen a single case like his recover.
Desperate, Rowland asked if there were no exceptions. Yes, responded Jung. Every once in a while, here and there, “alcoholics have had what are called vital spiritual experiences.” These “appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements. Ideas, emotions, and attitudes which once were the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them.” That’s exactly the kind of change his treatment had tried to bring about, explained Jung, “but I have never been successful with an alcoholic of your description” (Big Book, p. 27). . . .
Excerpt from “Spiritual Awakening: Introduction,” posted 01/07/20 in “Spiritual Awakening” at http://practicetheseprinciplesthebook.... For full text and images, please click on link.
February 8, 2020
The Virtue of Honesty - An Update
In AA, honesty begins with our admission of powerlessness and unmanageability in Step 1. Until then, we have lived in denial. We have been totally incapable of facing up to the truth about ourselves: that we are alcoholic and cannot drink like other people. It’s a truth we have to hold on to for the rest of our lives. If we don’t, we are certain to drink again. And why not? If that is not the truth, if we are not alcoholic, why shouldn’t we drink?
As a purely practical principle, then, honesty is foundational to recovery. The Big Book is forceful about this. We saw it in the passage we quoted in the post on dishonesty: “Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves . . . They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living with demands rigorous honesty (p. 58).”
This is repeated with equal insistence in the very last pages of the book: “Most emphatically we wish to say that any alcoholic capable of honestly facing his problems in the light of our experience can recover, provided he does not close his mind to all spiritual concepts” (Index to A Spiritual Experience, p. 568). This is the passage that links honesty with open-mindedness (and willingness) as “indispensable” to recovery. Why the link to open-mindedness? Because honesty requires that we care about the truth, and we cannot get at the truth if our minds are closed to it. But why open-minded specifically about spiritual matters? Because, for AA, alcoholism is more than a mental disorder which psychology might be able heal, or a physical illness which medicine might. It is also, and most fundamentally, a spiritual disease (BB p. 64). Hence the nature of the solution, the spiritual awakening to which all of the Steps are directed . . .
Excerpt from “Practice These Principles: The Virtue of Honesty,” posted at “Practice These” at http://PracticeThesePrinciplesTheBook.... Updated 11/27/19. For full text, quotes and images, and additional resources, please visit site.]
As a purely practical principle, then, honesty is foundational to recovery. The Big Book is forceful about this. We saw it in the passage we quoted in the post on dishonesty: “Those who do not recover are people who cannot or will not completely give themselves to this simple program, usually men and women who are constitutionally incapable of being honest with themselves . . . They are naturally incapable of grasping and developing a manner of living with demands rigorous honesty (p. 58).”
This is repeated with equal insistence in the very last pages of the book: “Most emphatically we wish to say that any alcoholic capable of honestly facing his problems in the light of our experience can recover, provided he does not close his mind to all spiritual concepts” (Index to A Spiritual Experience, p. 568). This is the passage that links honesty with open-mindedness (and willingness) as “indispensable” to recovery. Why the link to open-mindedness? Because honesty requires that we care about the truth, and we cannot get at the truth if our minds are closed to it. But why open-minded specifically about spiritual matters? Because, for AA, alcoholism is more than a mental disorder which psychology might be able heal, or a physical illness which medicine might. It is also, and most fundamentally, a spiritual disease (BB p. 64). Hence the nature of the solution, the spiritual awakening to which all of the Steps are directed . . .
Excerpt from “Practice These Principles: The Virtue of Honesty,” posted at “Practice These” at http://PracticeThesePrinciplesTheBook.... Updated 11/27/19. For full text, quotes and images, and additional resources, please visit site.]
December 1, 2019
Character Defects: Pride - An Update
In Step 7 of the 12&12, we read that “Humility, as a word and as an ideal, has a very bad time in our world.” Bill W. wrote that at the beginning of the 1950’s. If he were writing today, almost three-quarters of a century later, he would probably add that pride, by contrast, is having a decidedly good time.
We need only google the word to see that, if for most of history pride was considered a vice which few would willingly admit to, it is now celebrated as the equivalent of a virtue by growing segments of society—a development which, not incidentally, the Big Book and the 12&12 anticipated. Pride and humility are effectively switching places, the latter coming to be seen as a weakness if not an outright flaw.
Thus, if it was hard for the early AAs to grapple with the roles of pride and humility in our recovery, it is even more difficult for us. We not only have to deal with our own natural resistance to the one and our equally natural inclination toward the other, but we also have to buck much of the culture.
For there is no question that, as we find it in the Big Book and the 12&12, the AA view of pride is that it is a singularly bad thing. There are 31 mentions of pride, 3 of prideful, and 1 of proud. They are all negative. AA has nothing good to say about pride. It is a defect of character, period. Indeed, it is the worst of all possible defects.
And yet, leaving the excesses of our cultural moment aside, most of us cannot help but feel that not all pride is really bad. At one time or another, we have all used or heard someone use pride in a positive sense which doesn’t seem to be connected with anything harmful or defective. We speak of being proud of our children for doing well in school, or of our significant other for getting a well-deserved promotion at work, or of a friend for starting her own business. What’s wrong with being proud of others in these various ways?
Nothing, our two books would say if they were using pride to reference those kinds of attitudes in those kinds of situations. But they are not. They are using pride with reference to defective traits of character and their accompanying distorted emotions. In them, pride has one kind of meaning, the kind which is related to harm and wrongdoing and which, until recently, was the main connotation of the term.
Part of the problem for many of us is a linguistic one. This is the fact that the same term is being used for two entirely different things. One is a considered a defect, the other is not. Our two texts reveal an awareness of this when they qualify the term, as in “false” pride (12&12, S12, p. 123) and “unwarranted” pride (12&12, S4, p. 47). If there’s a type of pride which is false or unwarranted, then presumably there’s another type which is not. Yet our texts do not insist on the distinction, for their solution to the former lies, not in the latter, but in the entirely different disposition which is signified by the term humility.
Still, if we are to see where the defect really lies, we need to see where it doesn’t. Pride which may not be necessarily false or unwarranted refers to the pleasure or satisfaction we take in some good (e.g., an accomplishment, attribute, possession, association) which reflects well upon ourselves or those we love, as in the examples already cited. The false, unwarranted, or defective sort of pride refers to the pleasure or satisfaction we take in some good which reflects, not only or not so much well, but better upon ourselves, in comparison necessarily with others.
The problem of using the same term for two different sorts of pride exist in other languages. Some employ unique solutions. Spanish, for instance, uses its equivalent of proud (orgulloso) with two different forms of the verb “to be,” one (estar) to reference an ad hoc and limited response to a circumstantial good (our child doing well in school), and the other (ser) to reference a habitual state or condition (too proud to admit being wrong). The latter is the defect.
Most languages, however, seem to use other, more standard solutions, like qualifying the term, as already noted. This is the function of the parenthetical “too” in the last example, where the adverb connotes excessive and therefore defective, pride, a connotation which also attaches to being “prideful,” (i.e., full of pride) as opposed to just being proud.
In English, the current tendency is to avoid the problem by abandoning the use of pride as a blanket term with uniformly negative connotations and employing instead other, related terms which more specifically reference the variety of its defective forms or manifestations. We have dozens of such words and expressions. The most common perhaps is ego (with derivatives like egocentric, egoism, egomaniac, egotism, ego trip) which is Latin for “I” and thus nicely captures what is at the heart of defective pride: an excessive concern with oneself. Others are arrogance, conceit, hubris, and narcissism, or being haughty, puffed up, smug, snobbish, snotty, stuck up, uppity, or vain.
The most common and broadest in AA are selfishness and self-centeredness, which the Big Book says are the root of our problems and which, even better than ego, get at the essence of defective pride as a disordered concern with oneself. Others are boastful, braggart, cocky, grandiose, presumption, show-off, vainglory, and of course the many hyphenated corollaries of selfish and self-centered, such as self-importance, self-satisfied, self-sufficient, and self-reliance of the inordinate kind.
When the Big Book and the 12&12 talk about pride, then, these are the things they are talking about. When the 12&12 says that“[P]ride, leading to self-justification, and always spurred by conscious or unconscious fears, is the basic breeder of most human difficulties, the chief block to true progress" (Step 4, p. 48-29), it is talking about these forms of defective pride.
A full understanding of pride as a character defect requires therefore a full understanding of its manifold and specific defective manifestations in us, a task we undertake in earnest with Step 4 as we examine specific relationships in specific situations. Otherwise, the term remains too general and too broad to be of much practical help—as well as too vulnerable to cultural challenges which can sow confusion and easily lead us into rationalization and self-justification.
Pride makes us particularly susceptible to this. The reason is that pride is the hardest defect to recognize in ourselves. This is so for two reasons. First, pride makes us think too highly of ourselves, making it more difficult to see our flaws. Second, pride hides behind those flaws, making it harder to detect its presence.
These reasons help to explain why pride, as explained in our two texts, has historically been considered more than just another character defect. It is the deadliest of them, the seed from which they sprout and the root which sustains them. Pride “heads the procession” of the other capital vices or deadly sins: anger, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, and sloth. It “lures us into making demands upon ourselves or upon others which cannot be met without perverting or misusing our God-given instincts.” It is the main breeder of fear, “a soul-sickness in its own right” (p. 48-49). It leads us into “playing God” (Big Book, p. 62).
But if pride is the breeding ground of all character defects, humility is the nourishing soil of all the virtues. Thus seen, recovery is a lifelong process of surrendering the one and growing in the other. All of the 12 Steps, we are told, deflate our egos (12&12, S5, p. 5). The attainment of greater humility is the foundational principle in each and every one (12&12, S7, p. 70). The same is true of the 12 Traditions. They all aim to keep the self-asserting ego at bay and foster the spirit of humility which in the form of anonymity constitutes their spiritual foundation.
The pride that afflicts us as a defect is identified and surrendered as we identify and surrender it in every other defect. Similarly, humility is practiced and acquired in the process of practicing and acquiring every other virtue, for in some measure each requires that we humble ourselves.
We can move toward these goals as we work all of the Steps, practicing a day at a time all of their principles in all areas of our lives.
Update posted 07/27/19 in Character Defects: Pride, at http://practicetheseprinciplesthebook.... For accompanying quotes and additional resources, please click on link.
We need only google the word to see that, if for most of history pride was considered a vice which few would willingly admit to, it is now celebrated as the equivalent of a virtue by growing segments of society—a development which, not incidentally, the Big Book and the 12&12 anticipated. Pride and humility are effectively switching places, the latter coming to be seen as a weakness if not an outright flaw.
Thus, if it was hard for the early AAs to grapple with the roles of pride and humility in our recovery, it is even more difficult for us. We not only have to deal with our own natural resistance to the one and our equally natural inclination toward the other, but we also have to buck much of the culture.
For there is no question that, as we find it in the Big Book and the 12&12, the AA view of pride is that it is a singularly bad thing. There are 31 mentions of pride, 3 of prideful, and 1 of proud. They are all negative. AA has nothing good to say about pride. It is a defect of character, period. Indeed, it is the worst of all possible defects.
And yet, leaving the excesses of our cultural moment aside, most of us cannot help but feel that not all pride is really bad. At one time or another, we have all used or heard someone use pride in a positive sense which doesn’t seem to be connected with anything harmful or defective. We speak of being proud of our children for doing well in school, or of our significant other for getting a well-deserved promotion at work, or of a friend for starting her own business. What’s wrong with being proud of others in these various ways?
Nothing, our two books would say if they were using pride to reference those kinds of attitudes in those kinds of situations. But they are not. They are using pride with reference to defective traits of character and their accompanying distorted emotions. In them, pride has one kind of meaning, the kind which is related to harm and wrongdoing and which, until recently, was the main connotation of the term.
Part of the problem for many of us is a linguistic one. This is the fact that the same term is being used for two entirely different things. One is a considered a defect, the other is not. Our two texts reveal an awareness of this when they qualify the term, as in “false” pride (12&12, S12, p. 123) and “unwarranted” pride (12&12, S4, p. 47). If there’s a type of pride which is false or unwarranted, then presumably there’s another type which is not. Yet our texts do not insist on the distinction, for their solution to the former lies, not in the latter, but in the entirely different disposition which is signified by the term humility.
Still, if we are to see where the defect really lies, we need to see where it doesn’t. Pride which may not be necessarily false or unwarranted refers to the pleasure or satisfaction we take in some good (e.g., an accomplishment, attribute, possession, association) which reflects well upon ourselves or those we love, as in the examples already cited. The false, unwarranted, or defective sort of pride refers to the pleasure or satisfaction we take in some good which reflects, not only or not so much well, but better upon ourselves, in comparison necessarily with others.
The problem of using the same term for two different sorts of pride exist in other languages. Some employ unique solutions. Spanish, for instance, uses its equivalent of proud (orgulloso) with two different forms of the verb “to be,” one (estar) to reference an ad hoc and limited response to a circumstantial good (our child doing well in school), and the other (ser) to reference a habitual state or condition (too proud to admit being wrong). The latter is the defect.
Most languages, however, seem to use other, more standard solutions, like qualifying the term, as already noted. This is the function of the parenthetical “too” in the last example, where the adverb connotes excessive and therefore defective, pride, a connotation which also attaches to being “prideful,” (i.e., full of pride) as opposed to just being proud.
In English, the current tendency is to avoid the problem by abandoning the use of pride as a blanket term with uniformly negative connotations and employing instead other, related terms which more specifically reference the variety of its defective forms or manifestations. We have dozens of such words and expressions. The most common perhaps is ego (with derivatives like egocentric, egoism, egomaniac, egotism, ego trip) which is Latin for “I” and thus nicely captures what is at the heart of defective pride: an excessive concern with oneself. Others are arrogance, conceit, hubris, and narcissism, or being haughty, puffed up, smug, snobbish, snotty, stuck up, uppity, or vain.
The most common and broadest in AA are selfishness and self-centeredness, which the Big Book says are the root of our problems and which, even better than ego, get at the essence of defective pride as a disordered concern with oneself. Others are boastful, braggart, cocky, grandiose, presumption, show-off, vainglory, and of course the many hyphenated corollaries of selfish and self-centered, such as self-importance, self-satisfied, self-sufficient, and self-reliance of the inordinate kind.
When the Big Book and the 12&12 talk about pride, then, these are the things they are talking about. When the 12&12 says that“[P]ride, leading to self-justification, and always spurred by conscious or unconscious fears, is the basic breeder of most human difficulties, the chief block to true progress" (Step 4, p. 48-29), it is talking about these forms of defective pride.
A full understanding of pride as a character defect requires therefore a full understanding of its manifold and specific defective manifestations in us, a task we undertake in earnest with Step 4 as we examine specific relationships in specific situations. Otherwise, the term remains too general and too broad to be of much practical help—as well as too vulnerable to cultural challenges which can sow confusion and easily lead us into rationalization and self-justification.
Pride makes us particularly susceptible to this. The reason is that pride is the hardest defect to recognize in ourselves. This is so for two reasons. First, pride makes us think too highly of ourselves, making it more difficult to see our flaws. Second, pride hides behind those flaws, making it harder to detect its presence.
These reasons help to explain why pride, as explained in our two texts, has historically been considered more than just another character defect. It is the deadliest of them, the seed from which they sprout and the root which sustains them. Pride “heads the procession” of the other capital vices or deadly sins: anger, envy, gluttony, greed, lust, and sloth. It “lures us into making demands upon ourselves or upon others which cannot be met without perverting or misusing our God-given instincts.” It is the main breeder of fear, “a soul-sickness in its own right” (p. 48-49). It leads us into “playing God” (Big Book, p. 62).
But if pride is the breeding ground of all character defects, humility is the nourishing soil of all the virtues. Thus seen, recovery is a lifelong process of surrendering the one and growing in the other. All of the 12 Steps, we are told, deflate our egos (12&12, S5, p. 5). The attainment of greater humility is the foundational principle in each and every one (12&12, S7, p. 70). The same is true of the 12 Traditions. They all aim to keep the self-asserting ego at bay and foster the spirit of humility which in the form of anonymity constitutes their spiritual foundation.
The pride that afflicts us as a defect is identified and surrendered as we identify and surrender it in every other defect. Similarly, humility is practiced and acquired in the process of practicing and acquiring every other virtue, for in some measure each requires that we humble ourselves.
We can move toward these goals as we work all of the Steps, practicing a day at a time all of their principles in all areas of our lives.
Update posted 07/27/19 in Character Defects: Pride, at http://practicetheseprinciplesthebook.... For accompanying quotes and additional resources, please click on link.
July 2, 2019
“I’m Ray, and I’m an Alcoholic”
I don’t remember what anybody said at my first AA meeting, but I do remember how I felt. I was desperate—terrified in fact. I had no place to live. I was broke. I was driving a taxicab the night shift, a dangerous job in a dangerous city. It was the only way I could pay the rent on my teenage daughter’s apartment in another city, where, having left her at the mercy of alcohol and cocaine, her own life was coming apart.
I also remember how everybody else seemed to feel at that meeting. Not at all like me. They were all telling jokes and laughing and having a jolly good time. “I’m so and so and I’m an alcoholic,” they would start seemingly inauspiciously, and then they would proceed to tell some story that would make everybody crack up. As confused as I was, I realized what was going on. It wasn’t that they hadn’t felt what I was feeling. It was that they didn’t feel like that anymore. They seemed to have attained that state which I later would learn was AA’s long-term goal in recovery. They were “happy, joyous, and free.” It was an infectious condition. By the end of the meeting, I didn’t feel so bad anymore. My fear started to lift. I wasn’t alone. There was hope.
Some 90 days later my sponsor took me to the Commuter’s Special meeting of AA across the street from a large transportation hub and I delivered by first “qualification,” as we used to call it then. I told my story. It was the story that qualified me to be in that room with other alcoholics and to speak as one of them. So I identified myself accordingly, commencing my talk with “I’m Ray and I’m an alcoholic.” Thirty-five years later, I still identify myself that way before I share at an AA meeting. That’s the way they did it at my first meeting. That’s the way it’s done at every meeting, every time.
For some in the outside world, that’s a real problem. An acquaintance of mine (we’ll call him Jim) came out of rehab a couple of weeks ago. His church friends promptly arranged for him to meet with his pastor. This angered him, Jim said, because they hadn’t even bothered to consult with him. He was even more upset when the pastor didn’t seem to support Jim’s plans to start attending AA meetings, declaring that he didn’t like the way people identified themselves as alcoholics there. You shouldn’t call yourself an alcoholic, he said. You should call yourself a child of God.
Now, the pastor probably meant well. In his eyes, for me to say I’m an alcoholic is to speak ill of myself. It’s to put myself down and focus on what’s wrong with me. Worst of all, it’s to deny my real, spiritual identity.
Some years ago, I wrote a letter to the editors of a religious magazine which shared such a view. Apparently, the magazine had written favorably about AA in the past. But they had changed their minds. So they “revisited” AA, channeling their newfound disapproval through “D,” a “brother” who had become disaffected with the program. According to D, saying that he was an alcoholic was a “formula” that was “unwittingly feeding the beast” he thought he had “finally conquered.” It’s a “once-a-drunk-always-a-drunk philosophy” that “keeps us bound to our past condition with a 12-link chain,” where our life is “still revolving around the bottle,” and where “we are still controlled by our former problem to the extent that we are dependent on 12 Step meetings to keep us sober.” Contradicting “the scriptural truth that he was ‘a new creation’ and had been made free,” it’s “daily professing the wrong identity.” It “keeps people chained to sin.”
I had 23 years sober when I first read that article, and having now read it again, I’m still amazed at the self-righteousness it reflects. It reminds me of the Big Book’s quote about what keeps a person from having a spiritual experience in AA: contempt prior to investigation (p. 567). For it shows an abysmal ignorance of AA, even if it’s based on the experience of somebody who supposedly was in the rooms. It’s the kind of thing that gives religion a bad name.
When I say “I’m Ray, and I’m an alcoholic,” I’m hardly spouting a formula. Actually, I’m doing a number of rather significant things. First of all, I’m working Step 1, the Step on which the entire program of recovery rests. I’m reaffirming my admission that I’m powerless over alcohol. I’m reminding myself that I cannot control my drinking like other people can. No matter how long I’ve been sober, if I drink again, I will drink like the alcoholic I am. My life will become unmanageable again, and, not unimportantly, I will wreak havoc in the lives of others as well—again. That’s what “once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic” means. It’s hardly a “philosophy.” It’s a fact of life for drinkers like me, and none of those who object to it with such vehemence actually contest it. They never claim that it’s OK for the type of out-of-control drinker AA identifies as alcoholic to drink again. And—this should be very clear—that’s the only kind of drinker AA is for, not for any other.
When I say “I’m Ray, and I’m an alcoholic,” I’m practicing a number of spiritual principles which Step 1 embodies. One of these is honesty. I’m no longer in denial, but recognize that I do have a serious problem with alcohol. A second is acceptance. I’m no longer fighting the fact that I have such a problem, rejecting the diagnosis, and looking for ways to get around it and drink like everybody else. And a third is humility, the spiritual foundation of all of AA’s Steps and Traditions. Humility is at the heart of my admission of powerlessness, the recognition that I’m not in control. Humility opens the door to a Higher Power who can restore me to sanity. Practicing such principles hardly feeds my alcoholism, keeps me bound to my past condition, or makes feel controlled by it. It liberates me.
When I say “I’m Ray, and I’m an alcoholic,” therefore, I’m not speaking ill of myself at all. Understood in those words is the fact that I have recovered from “a hopeless condition of mind and body.” (Big Book, p. 20) Now, that’s a miracle, as our two basic texts tell us and most of us in the fellowship believe—from personal experience, mind you, not because the books say so. It’s a gift we’ve received, for as those two books tell us again and again, “we are today sober only by the grace of God” (12&12, p. 92; grace is mentioned 24 times in our two texts). And so I am grateful. I am “a grateful recovering alcoholic,” as many of us like to say. How does being grateful to God for his liberating grace keep me tied to sin? It doesn’t.
That gratitude—not some alleged dependence on 12-Step meetings—is what keeps me going to those meetings. The Big Book makes it abundantly clear that our “recovery is not dependent upon people,” but upon God, and more specifically, upon our “relationship with God.” (BB p. 100). This follows logically from the understanding that we are sober by the grace of God. Going to meetings is our grateful response to that grace. “Freely ye have received, freely give,” we’re told in the 12&12 (p. 110). By continuing to go to meetings, we are practicing two additional spiritual principles which AA derives from that quoted passage, the source of which is evident. Step 12 calls them “love and service.” We keep our sobriety by giving it away, out of gratitude and in love and service to others. We do that by sharing our “experience, strength and hope.” Therefore, our lives do not revolve around the bottle at all, but about giving back what God has so freely given us.
Finally, we are hardly professing the wrong identity when we identify ourselves as alcoholics. We are acknowledging the truth about our condition, and that honest and humble admission opens us to receive the gift of sobriety. “A.A.’s manner of making ready to receive this gift,” we read in the 12 &12, “lies in the practice of the Twelve Steps in our program.” That starts with our admission of powerlessness in Step 1. Underlying that admission is a recognition of our real identity. The Big Book tells us what that is in Step 3: “He is the Father, and we are His children.” It then goes on to conclude that such recognition is the beginning of our liberation: “Most good ideas are simple, and this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we passed to freedom” (Big Book, p. 62).
Admitting I’m an alcoholic doesn’t negate my being a child of God any more than admitting I’m a sinner. In both cases I’m admitting to my “worldly” condition, to use a language familiar to the religious, not to my original, divine origin. At the same time, in AA to say I'm a child of God is not to express a pious platitude or a dead dogma. It reflects a faith that works, a faith that practices acting and living like one. That’s the purpose of the 12 Steps and the spiritual principles in them.
As these brief remarks and accompanying quotes suggest, Jim’s pastor’s concern, and the magazine article’s critique, are unfounded. A simple reading of our two basic texts would bear this out. That’s not hard to do. The Big Book is not that big a book. It’s only 575 pages, and only the first 164 actually contain the AA program. The rest contain personal stories of the fellowship’s members (which may or may not reflect that program). The 12&12 is even shorter: only 192 pages of relatively brief essays. Both books are written in practical and accessible language. Certainly, religious leaders who wish to help those of their co-religionists who have a drinking problem bear a responsibility to give them honest and informed guidance.
Telling Anonymous Jim he’s not an alcoholic and discouraging him from attending AA is doing him a disservice. It is enabling his denial. For Jim is not able to stay sober. He keeps relapsing time after time, year after year. In AA’s experience, that shows he can‘t control his drinking, that he’s powerless over alcohol, that he is, in fact, an alcoholic. But he can’t bring himself to effectively admit it. Going to meetings is where he can find the help to make that admission, and, by the grace of God, receive at last the gift of sobriety.
Note:
1. For an extensive treatment of AA’s concept of powerlessness—which is what’s behind
the saying “Once and alcoholic, always an alcoholic"—see Step One, Chapter C:
Lack of Power: Our Dilemma, in PTP1 (excerpts for sections labeled “Surrender” and
“A Humble Admission” can be found on this site under Step One on the sidebar).
See also on this site: “Powerless Over Alcohol: An Objection and a Response,” in
Ray’s Book Reviews.
Posted 06/27/19 in "Reflections," at http://PracticeThesePrinciplesTheBook...
I also remember how everybody else seemed to feel at that meeting. Not at all like me. They were all telling jokes and laughing and having a jolly good time. “I’m so and so and I’m an alcoholic,” they would start seemingly inauspiciously, and then they would proceed to tell some story that would make everybody crack up. As confused as I was, I realized what was going on. It wasn’t that they hadn’t felt what I was feeling. It was that they didn’t feel like that anymore. They seemed to have attained that state which I later would learn was AA’s long-term goal in recovery. They were “happy, joyous, and free.” It was an infectious condition. By the end of the meeting, I didn’t feel so bad anymore. My fear started to lift. I wasn’t alone. There was hope.
Some 90 days later my sponsor took me to the Commuter’s Special meeting of AA across the street from a large transportation hub and I delivered by first “qualification,” as we used to call it then. I told my story. It was the story that qualified me to be in that room with other alcoholics and to speak as one of them. So I identified myself accordingly, commencing my talk with “I’m Ray and I’m an alcoholic.” Thirty-five years later, I still identify myself that way before I share at an AA meeting. That’s the way they did it at my first meeting. That’s the way it’s done at every meeting, every time.
For some in the outside world, that’s a real problem. An acquaintance of mine (we’ll call him Jim) came out of rehab a couple of weeks ago. His church friends promptly arranged for him to meet with his pastor. This angered him, Jim said, because they hadn’t even bothered to consult with him. He was even more upset when the pastor didn’t seem to support Jim’s plans to start attending AA meetings, declaring that he didn’t like the way people identified themselves as alcoholics there. You shouldn’t call yourself an alcoholic, he said. You should call yourself a child of God.
Now, the pastor probably meant well. In his eyes, for me to say I’m an alcoholic is to speak ill of myself. It’s to put myself down and focus on what’s wrong with me. Worst of all, it’s to deny my real, spiritual identity.
Some years ago, I wrote a letter to the editors of a religious magazine which shared such a view. Apparently, the magazine had written favorably about AA in the past. But they had changed their minds. So they “revisited” AA, channeling their newfound disapproval through “D,” a “brother” who had become disaffected with the program. According to D, saying that he was an alcoholic was a “formula” that was “unwittingly feeding the beast” he thought he had “finally conquered.” It’s a “once-a-drunk-always-a-drunk philosophy” that “keeps us bound to our past condition with a 12-link chain,” where our life is “still revolving around the bottle,” and where “we are still controlled by our former problem to the extent that we are dependent on 12 Step meetings to keep us sober.” Contradicting “the scriptural truth that he was ‘a new creation’ and had been made free,” it’s “daily professing the wrong identity.” It “keeps people chained to sin.”
I had 23 years sober when I first read that article, and having now read it again, I’m still amazed at the self-righteousness it reflects. It reminds me of the Big Book’s quote about what keeps a person from having a spiritual experience in AA: contempt prior to investigation (p. 567). For it shows an abysmal ignorance of AA, even if it’s based on the experience of somebody who supposedly was in the rooms. It’s the kind of thing that gives religion a bad name.
When I say “I’m Ray, and I’m an alcoholic,” I’m hardly spouting a formula. Actually, I’m doing a number of rather significant things. First of all, I’m working Step 1, the Step on which the entire program of recovery rests. I’m reaffirming my admission that I’m powerless over alcohol. I’m reminding myself that I cannot control my drinking like other people can. No matter how long I’ve been sober, if I drink again, I will drink like the alcoholic I am. My life will become unmanageable again, and, not unimportantly, I will wreak havoc in the lives of others as well—again. That’s what “once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic” means. It’s hardly a “philosophy.” It’s a fact of life for drinkers like me, and none of those who object to it with such vehemence actually contest it. They never claim that it’s OK for the type of out-of-control drinker AA identifies as alcoholic to drink again. And—this should be very clear—that’s the only kind of drinker AA is for, not for any other.
When I say “I’m Ray, and I’m an alcoholic,” I’m practicing a number of spiritual principles which Step 1 embodies. One of these is honesty. I’m no longer in denial, but recognize that I do have a serious problem with alcohol. A second is acceptance. I’m no longer fighting the fact that I have such a problem, rejecting the diagnosis, and looking for ways to get around it and drink like everybody else. And a third is humility, the spiritual foundation of all of AA’s Steps and Traditions. Humility is at the heart of my admission of powerlessness, the recognition that I’m not in control. Humility opens the door to a Higher Power who can restore me to sanity. Practicing such principles hardly feeds my alcoholism, keeps me bound to my past condition, or makes feel controlled by it. It liberates me.
When I say “I’m Ray, and I’m an alcoholic,” therefore, I’m not speaking ill of myself at all. Understood in those words is the fact that I have recovered from “a hopeless condition of mind and body.” (Big Book, p. 20) Now, that’s a miracle, as our two basic texts tell us and most of us in the fellowship believe—from personal experience, mind you, not because the books say so. It’s a gift we’ve received, for as those two books tell us again and again, “we are today sober only by the grace of God” (12&12, p. 92; grace is mentioned 24 times in our two texts). And so I am grateful. I am “a grateful recovering alcoholic,” as many of us like to say. How does being grateful to God for his liberating grace keep me tied to sin? It doesn’t.
That gratitude—not some alleged dependence on 12-Step meetings—is what keeps me going to those meetings. The Big Book makes it abundantly clear that our “recovery is not dependent upon people,” but upon God, and more specifically, upon our “relationship with God.” (BB p. 100). This follows logically from the understanding that we are sober by the grace of God. Going to meetings is our grateful response to that grace. “Freely ye have received, freely give,” we’re told in the 12&12 (p. 110). By continuing to go to meetings, we are practicing two additional spiritual principles which AA derives from that quoted passage, the source of which is evident. Step 12 calls them “love and service.” We keep our sobriety by giving it away, out of gratitude and in love and service to others. We do that by sharing our “experience, strength and hope.” Therefore, our lives do not revolve around the bottle at all, but about giving back what God has so freely given us.
Finally, we are hardly professing the wrong identity when we identify ourselves as alcoholics. We are acknowledging the truth about our condition, and that honest and humble admission opens us to receive the gift of sobriety. “A.A.’s manner of making ready to receive this gift,” we read in the 12 &12, “lies in the practice of the Twelve Steps in our program.” That starts with our admission of powerlessness in Step 1. Underlying that admission is a recognition of our real identity. The Big Book tells us what that is in Step 3: “He is the Father, and we are His children.” It then goes on to conclude that such recognition is the beginning of our liberation: “Most good ideas are simple, and this concept was the keystone of the new and triumphant arch through which we passed to freedom” (Big Book, p. 62).
Admitting I’m an alcoholic doesn’t negate my being a child of God any more than admitting I’m a sinner. In both cases I’m admitting to my “worldly” condition, to use a language familiar to the religious, not to my original, divine origin. At the same time, in AA to say I'm a child of God is not to express a pious platitude or a dead dogma. It reflects a faith that works, a faith that practices acting and living like one. That’s the purpose of the 12 Steps and the spiritual principles in them.
As these brief remarks and accompanying quotes suggest, Jim’s pastor’s concern, and the magazine article’s critique, are unfounded. A simple reading of our two basic texts would bear this out. That’s not hard to do. The Big Book is not that big a book. It’s only 575 pages, and only the first 164 actually contain the AA program. The rest contain personal stories of the fellowship’s members (which may or may not reflect that program). The 12&12 is even shorter: only 192 pages of relatively brief essays. Both books are written in practical and accessible language. Certainly, religious leaders who wish to help those of their co-religionists who have a drinking problem bear a responsibility to give them honest and informed guidance.
Telling Anonymous Jim he’s not an alcoholic and discouraging him from attending AA is doing him a disservice. It is enabling his denial. For Jim is not able to stay sober. He keeps relapsing time after time, year after year. In AA’s experience, that shows he can‘t control his drinking, that he’s powerless over alcohol, that he is, in fact, an alcoholic. But he can’t bring himself to effectively admit it. Going to meetings is where he can find the help to make that admission, and, by the grace of God, receive at last the gift of sobriety.
Note:
1. For an extensive treatment of AA’s concept of powerlessness—which is what’s behind
the saying “Once and alcoholic, always an alcoholic"—see Step One, Chapter C:
Lack of Power: Our Dilemma, in PTP1 (excerpts for sections labeled “Surrender” and
“A Humble Admission” can be found on this site under Step One on the sidebar).
See also on this site: “Powerless Over Alcohol: An Objection and a Response,” in
Ray’s Book Reviews.
Posted 06/27/19 in "Reflections," at http://PracticeThesePrinciplesTheBook...
May 7, 2019
A New Pair of Glasses
The Waste Land, T. S. Eliot
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
April is the cruelest month. The words come up again with the first signs of life every spring. They remind me of the way it was when I drank. Everything turned black. It’s as if somebody had thrown off a switch. I saw, as another text from another time and place had put it, through a glass darkly.
I first studied "The Wasteland" as a doctoral student in Comparative Literature. I’d been introduced to it years earlier, in the 1960s, when I met with a group of fledgling rebels in the apartment of a young professor in the bohemian section of a big metropolis. A Marxist economist, the freshly-minted Ph.D. saw the poem’s title as a metaphor for the ravages of capitalism. It was capitalism that had rendered the world a wasteland. Hence the need for revolution. We had to change everything.
The message resonated with me. All of my experience till then said something was wrong. The professor told us what it was and what we had to do about it. He gave us hope. With the others, I set out to change the world. When that road came to a bitter end in the early 70s, the darkness turned only darker. It was then that I crossed AA's "invisible line" and became an alcoholic. I was in utter despair, a rebel without a cause, as the Grapevine one day would entitle my story.
On one reading of Eliot, April is the cruelest month because it reawakens longings and recollections the dead months of winter have buried deep in depression. Feeling after a long period of numbness can hurt. Those of us who have deadened our pain with alcohol know what it’s like. We stop drinking and, when the anesthesia has worn off, the pain is as strong as ever.
I had a different reading. Yes, I used alcohol to deaden the pain, but even as I did that, I would do other things that intensified it. Like reading Eliot or certain other poets or philosophers, or listening to a certain type of singer or composer. Misery loves company, and they helped to deepen the gloom and doom. Though it made me hurt more, it confirmed my sense that things were as bad as I felt them to be. A cold comfort that, but a comfort nonetheless.
And so April was the cruelest month because it was a hoax. It stirred up hope when there was no hope. It promised new life, but the promise was false. I would turn Shelley’s question on its head. If spring comes, can winter be that far behind? Doesn’t everything move toward entropy? Doesn’t death win in the end? Isn’t that, after all, what the title of the poem really means?
I suppose I could put the matter in clinical terms and say that I had become a depressive (like Eliot, like Bill W., like so many of us). And that certainly would be true. Starting at age 13, I had five major, months-long episodes of depression before I hit bottom on my sixth and came to AA. I had an even longer one in sobriety, lasting from 1996 to 2002.
The cloud didn't start to lift till I got sober, on April 28 of 1984. It didn’t clear completely till 18 years later, when I had a spiritual experience which brought my six-year emotional relapse to an end.
Since then, I’ve come to understand that the wasteland was spiritual. It was my soul that had been ravaged. There was a solution. But it wasn’t to change the world. It was to change me. And central to that change was a spiritual experience that would transform my interior landscape and with that my vision.
A few springs ago I attended a meeting of an AA group in a rural area of a northern state. April showers had persisted well into May and a woman shared her despondency over the pall that seemed to have settled over the region. It was all so dreary. When would it end?
Having just come from sunny Florida for the summer, I thought I would share my experience with weather-induced dejection. I recounted how I had moved down there to escape a certain city whose winters were bleeding me, as a particular tune described it. I couldn’t stand the grayness anymore, the cold, the snow, the ice.
After a year in paradise, I longed for cloudy skies and rain, lots of rain. And I was grateful when it came. It was a welcome relief from the unrelenting sun and the unbearable heat, the unanticipated downside to perennially clear skies.
I can tell you are not from around here, the woman snapped. She was right. I was not. I am now. The snowbird flew back north six years ago this month. And he stayed. My delight in cloudy and rainy days followed me from the south. I love them. They bring peace and quiet, just like today. They also bring out the forsythias, the magnolias, the dogwood, and the cherry blossoms, all now in their full splendor.
I know their glory will soon fade. But that only makes me all the more grateful for it. The seasons will succeed each other as they always have, each gracing us with their own beauty, each inviting their own enjoyment. December won’t be long in coming, but there’s no longer any pathos in that. I've come to love winter, and the snow, and the long nights of hibernation.
AA suggests that having a spiritual awakening or experience brings us a new outlook on life. Not that we become more positive, though we do become that. Not that we become more optimistic, though that may also be the case. But that we are able to see what we could not see before. That’s what's happened to me.
It’s happened to countless alcoholics in AA. It can affect even the way we look at the weather and the seasons.
This Friday I celebrate 35 years sober. And so April is a sign of life for me in another, very personal way. For that’s when the darkness left and I started to live again. And for that, I am grateful.
Posted 04/23/19 in "Reflections" at http://PracticeThesePrinciplesTheBook...
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
April is the cruelest month. The words come up again with the first signs of life every spring. They remind me of the way it was when I drank. Everything turned black. It’s as if somebody had thrown off a switch. I saw, as another text from another time and place had put it, through a glass darkly.
I first studied "The Wasteland" as a doctoral student in Comparative Literature. I’d been introduced to it years earlier, in the 1960s, when I met with a group of fledgling rebels in the apartment of a young professor in the bohemian section of a big metropolis. A Marxist economist, the freshly-minted Ph.D. saw the poem’s title as a metaphor for the ravages of capitalism. It was capitalism that had rendered the world a wasteland. Hence the need for revolution. We had to change everything.
The message resonated with me. All of my experience till then said something was wrong. The professor told us what it was and what we had to do about it. He gave us hope. With the others, I set out to change the world. When that road came to a bitter end in the early 70s, the darkness turned only darker. It was then that I crossed AA's "invisible line" and became an alcoholic. I was in utter despair, a rebel without a cause, as the Grapevine one day would entitle my story.
On one reading of Eliot, April is the cruelest month because it reawakens longings and recollections the dead months of winter have buried deep in depression. Feeling after a long period of numbness can hurt. Those of us who have deadened our pain with alcohol know what it’s like. We stop drinking and, when the anesthesia has worn off, the pain is as strong as ever.
I had a different reading. Yes, I used alcohol to deaden the pain, but even as I did that, I would do other things that intensified it. Like reading Eliot or certain other poets or philosophers, or listening to a certain type of singer or composer. Misery loves company, and they helped to deepen the gloom and doom. Though it made me hurt more, it confirmed my sense that things were as bad as I felt them to be. A cold comfort that, but a comfort nonetheless.
And so April was the cruelest month because it was a hoax. It stirred up hope when there was no hope. It promised new life, but the promise was false. I would turn Shelley’s question on its head. If spring comes, can winter be that far behind? Doesn’t everything move toward entropy? Doesn’t death win in the end? Isn’t that, after all, what the title of the poem really means?
I suppose I could put the matter in clinical terms and say that I had become a depressive (like Eliot, like Bill W., like so many of us). And that certainly would be true. Starting at age 13, I had five major, months-long episodes of depression before I hit bottom on my sixth and came to AA. I had an even longer one in sobriety, lasting from 1996 to 2002.
The cloud didn't start to lift till I got sober, on April 28 of 1984. It didn’t clear completely till 18 years later, when I had a spiritual experience which brought my six-year emotional relapse to an end.
Since then, I’ve come to understand that the wasteland was spiritual. It was my soul that had been ravaged. There was a solution. But it wasn’t to change the world. It was to change me. And central to that change was a spiritual experience that would transform my interior landscape and with that my vision.
A few springs ago I attended a meeting of an AA group in a rural area of a northern state. April showers had persisted well into May and a woman shared her despondency over the pall that seemed to have settled over the region. It was all so dreary. When would it end?
Having just come from sunny Florida for the summer, I thought I would share my experience with weather-induced dejection. I recounted how I had moved down there to escape a certain city whose winters were bleeding me, as a particular tune described it. I couldn’t stand the grayness anymore, the cold, the snow, the ice.
After a year in paradise, I longed for cloudy skies and rain, lots of rain. And I was grateful when it came. It was a welcome relief from the unrelenting sun and the unbearable heat, the unanticipated downside to perennially clear skies.
I can tell you are not from around here, the woman snapped. She was right. I was not. I am now. The snowbird flew back north six years ago this month. And he stayed. My delight in cloudy and rainy days followed me from the south. I love them. They bring peace and quiet, just like today. They also bring out the forsythias, the magnolias, the dogwood, and the cherry blossoms, all now in their full splendor.
I know their glory will soon fade. But that only makes me all the more grateful for it. The seasons will succeed each other as they always have, each gracing us with their own beauty, each inviting their own enjoyment. December won’t be long in coming, but there’s no longer any pathos in that. I've come to love winter, and the snow, and the long nights of hibernation.
AA suggests that having a spiritual awakening or experience brings us a new outlook on life. Not that we become more positive, though we do become that. Not that we become more optimistic, though that may also be the case. But that we are able to see what we could not see before. That’s what's happened to me.
It’s happened to countless alcoholics in AA. It can affect even the way we look at the weather and the seasons.
This Friday I celebrate 35 years sober. And so April is a sign of life for me in another, very personal way. For that’s when the darkness left and I started to live again. And for that, I am grateful.
Posted 04/23/19 in "Reflections" at http://PracticeThesePrinciplesTheBook...
March 12, 2019
Character Defects: Envy
How many of us took inventory of envy when we did Step 4 for the first time? Probably not many. How many did in subsequent 4th Steps, or when working Step 10? Again, in all likelihood very few. And yet, as we can see in our opening quotes below, the Big Book and the 12&12 count envy as one of our biggest problems as alcoholics, on a part with anger, resentment, and fear.
Why then is envy not on our radar screen? Because, like greed, envy is hard to detect in ourselves. To paraphrase Milton Friedman’s take on greed, none of us are envious, it’s only the other fellow who’s envious. Indeed, envy hides even more than greed. Greed can always pose as a positive quality. It can hide behind ambition or behind a good cause. We want more because we want to do more, we rationalize; we want to accomplish things, make a contribution, do good.
There’s no such out with envy. As a defect of character and of emotion, envy is beyond redemption. It is a detracting construal of others issuing from a detracting construal of ourselves. Its trademark is rivalry. In envy, we want something somebody has but we lack. It can be any good: a quality, talent, advantage, possession. But we don’t want it so much for itself as for the value that it confers upon the person who has it (e.g., approval, respect, admiration). That’s the underlying concern, what’s really important to us. The rivalry is for personal significance or worth.
If we desire to have the object of envy too but we don’t mind that the other person has it, the rivalry is amicable and ours is said to be “friendly envy.” If on the other hand we begrudge the other person’s possession of it and would like that person to lose it or otherwise to be diminished, the rivalry is hostile and our envy is said to be (redundantly) of the “invidious” type. The other’s success is our failure and his failure our success.
That’s the kind of envy the Big Book and the 12&12 are talking about. That’s what they say led to the bottle and is one of our greatest enemies. It’s not hard to see why. In envy our self-worth is always on the line. We are always comparing ourselves with others and always falling short. We’re always competing and losing. We become bitter and resentful. We get depressed and feel sorry for ourselves.
Envy is often conflated with other emotions, which compounds our problem when taking inventory. One of these is greed. Like envy, greed is an immoderate or inordinate desire for possession. But greed targets possessions in general. Envy targets specifically the possessions that belong to another. Moreover, greed is concerned with possessions properly speaking, that is, with external objects of ownership (her Porsche or Mercedes Benz). While also concerned with these, envy is more concerned with internal qualities that belong to a person (her looks or musical talent). What it really wants is what the possessions say about the possessor. It wants for itself the worth the possessions reflect.
Envy is also confused with and used as a synonym for covetousness. Both target what belongs to another. But when we covet, our focus is on the possession itself, not on the value the other person derives from it. Moreover, the focus is only on the outward type. We do not covet someone’s personal or inner attributes. We are not competing for self-worth. The 12&12 sets the two apart in the following sentence: “Unreasonable fear that our instincts will not be satisfied drives us to covet the possessions of others, to lust for sex and power, to become angry when our instinctive demands are threatened, to be envious when the ambitions of others seem to be realized while ours are not” (Step Four, p.49, our italics).
The biggest confusion, however, is with jealousy. In fact, jealousy is routinely used as a synonym for envy. Like envy, jealousy involves rivalry. But unlike envy, the rivalry is over something the subject of the emotion already has and the object of it doesn’t. . . .
Above is excerpt from 02/28/19 post at http://PracticeThesePrinciplesTheBook...
in “Character Defects.” For full text, as well as quotes and additional resources, please click on link.
Why then is envy not on our radar screen? Because, like greed, envy is hard to detect in ourselves. To paraphrase Milton Friedman’s take on greed, none of us are envious, it’s only the other fellow who’s envious. Indeed, envy hides even more than greed. Greed can always pose as a positive quality. It can hide behind ambition or behind a good cause. We want more because we want to do more, we rationalize; we want to accomplish things, make a contribution, do good.
There’s no such out with envy. As a defect of character and of emotion, envy is beyond redemption. It is a detracting construal of others issuing from a detracting construal of ourselves. Its trademark is rivalry. In envy, we want something somebody has but we lack. It can be any good: a quality, talent, advantage, possession. But we don’t want it so much for itself as for the value that it confers upon the person who has it (e.g., approval, respect, admiration). That’s the underlying concern, what’s really important to us. The rivalry is for personal significance or worth.
If we desire to have the object of envy too but we don’t mind that the other person has it, the rivalry is amicable and ours is said to be “friendly envy.” If on the other hand we begrudge the other person’s possession of it and would like that person to lose it or otherwise to be diminished, the rivalry is hostile and our envy is said to be (redundantly) of the “invidious” type. The other’s success is our failure and his failure our success.
That’s the kind of envy the Big Book and the 12&12 are talking about. That’s what they say led to the bottle and is one of our greatest enemies. It’s not hard to see why. In envy our self-worth is always on the line. We are always comparing ourselves with others and always falling short. We’re always competing and losing. We become bitter and resentful. We get depressed and feel sorry for ourselves.
Envy is often conflated with other emotions, which compounds our problem when taking inventory. One of these is greed. Like envy, greed is an immoderate or inordinate desire for possession. But greed targets possessions in general. Envy targets specifically the possessions that belong to another. Moreover, greed is concerned with possessions properly speaking, that is, with external objects of ownership (her Porsche or Mercedes Benz). While also concerned with these, envy is more concerned with internal qualities that belong to a person (her looks or musical talent). What it really wants is what the possessions say about the possessor. It wants for itself the worth the possessions reflect.
Envy is also confused with and used as a synonym for covetousness. Both target what belongs to another. But when we covet, our focus is on the possession itself, not on the value the other person derives from it. Moreover, the focus is only on the outward type. We do not covet someone’s personal or inner attributes. We are not competing for self-worth. The 12&12 sets the two apart in the following sentence: “Unreasonable fear that our instincts will not be satisfied drives us to covet the possessions of others, to lust for sex and power, to become angry when our instinctive demands are threatened, to be envious when the ambitions of others seem to be realized while ours are not” (Step Four, p.49, our italics).
The biggest confusion, however, is with jealousy. In fact, jealousy is routinely used as a synonym for envy. Like envy, jealousy involves rivalry. But unlike envy, the rivalry is over something the subject of the emotion already has and the object of it doesn’t. . . .
Above is excerpt from 02/28/19 post at http://PracticeThesePrinciplesTheBook...
in “Character Defects.” For full text, as well as quotes and additional resources, please click on link.
