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.]
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