If there’s one thing that blocks me in making progress on this path to spiritual growth, it’s me. Me, myself, and I. The old AA joke: I ain’t much, but I’m all I think about. At every turn, it seems, I am in the way.
Self concern has been a bugaboo since I was a child. I came into this program with all the trappings of what was described in the BB. Selfishness, self-centeredness was so much of what was wrong with me. Bill tells us that we must be done with these or they will kill us. He also said that a lifetime of these is not turned around over night. In my case, not over a month(s), nor over years.
No wonder the founders looked for a way to deal with this before we stumbled over us and found ourselves drinking again. Carl Jung saw this in the patient in the BB. He told him that he had the mind of a chronic alcoholic. That mind, soaked in booze, always seeking a way to get a drink, is filled with not only the desire to drink, but focused on itself.
Jung saw only one way out for this young man: a spiritual experience. So, right up front, they introduced the new members to the solution; a power greater than themselves, who was not them. From their own experience they drew up a plan, which if followed, would introduce them to the spiritual experience necessary to free them from the slavery of taking a drink. In my experience and so many others, this plan has worked over many days and many years.
Each day I follow these steps presented so freely to me, I find that the thought of a drink is no longer there. Even in my most self-centered moments it’s gone. What a relief. I can almost recall the moment, when I could take a deep breath and breathe freely for the first time in a lot of years. It was like the chains that were secured tightly around my chest, restricting my breathing, fell away. I could, for the first time in memory, walk into the sunshine of the spirit.
Yet, on any given day, at any given moment, I can find that what binds me to my character defects, myself, is still there.
There’s work to be done. The Serenity Prayer describes it to me. What is it that only God can do and what is it that I’m supposed to do. If I don’t want to drink again, it requires me to freely give over those things I’m truly powerless over, and then be ready to do the footwork. But how often I find that my defects are like on a yo-yo. I put them out there and then yank them back in a moment of desire. Thank God that AA is the one place where I am given the opportunity to
pick up a medal for just making the effort.
I think I’ll try again.