There’s nothing which worries more than fear. Oh, that’s right, worrying is fear with a different name.
I was having a conversation today with a good friend and it was about fear. Fear can paralyze us and leave us a total wreck. I’m not talking about the kind of fear which is incited in us by something physical, like standing on a railroad track with a train coming at us, but the kind of fear which comes from within. The fear of not knowing what is really within us. The fear of turning over a rock within and finding something awful about ourselves. So we hesitate to do that and stand frozen with fear. This is the kind of fear that sends us into worrying about what’s next. What’s there?
I was thinking about this after our communication and I wondered, where does this fit into the scheme of things on the path of maintaining our sobriety? Just where did Bill talk about this? Step eight popped right up. There was fear of course when we took our first stab at trying to find out about ourselves in step four and five. Especially taking this stuff to another human being. But, in step eight, Bill encourges us to take a deeper look at ourselves before we attempt amends to others. After all, I had been stuffing and burying this stuff for years with alcohol and other distractions, hoping not to feel what was going on within.
This is the kind of stuff, which can drive people like myself to the brink and maybe a drink. It comes out on the surface as all these character defects and adds to the unmanageability. And its been there for a long, long time. Bill talks about this and says that there was damage we did to ourselves and some of it is forgotten, but it’s down there below the surface. It’s in the 12&12 and it made a great impression on me, when I first read it. How some of this stuff gave such violent twists to our emotions and discolored our personalities and altered our lives for the worst.
And it all had to do with our relationships with others. I came to realize that I never lived in a vacuum. I lived with people from the very beginning. Their influence on me and me them was how I devloped into the person, who stepped across the threshold of AA. In fact Bill tells us to go back as far as our memory will take us.
Sounds like psychotherapy doesn’t it? In a sense it is. And then in a sense it isn’t. This is about the spiritual life. It’s about clearing away the wreckage so that we can see more clearly and communicate more openly with our higher power. In fact, when we reach steps eight and nine, we really are in a place where we become open to that spiritual awakening we seek. It’s in step nine that we first see the promises. And after those steps, entering into step ten, Bill talks about the restoration to sanity. A lot of good stuff coming out of the effort we’re willing to put into what we’re doing.
The best part of this is that we never have to do this stuff alone. In fact Bill tells us in the fifth that in spiritual matters it’s dangerous to go it alone. We have all kinds of willing and able companions to help us with this. People just like ourselves who have gone down the same paths before us and haven’t had to pick up a drink because of this journey.
We can even find other help with this and Bill encourages us to do so. Spiritual guides and professionals.
I was thinking about what Bill said in the eleventh step about the character of the man, who wrote the Prayer of St. Francis he suggests we can use as a model in attempting to meditate. He says of him that though he wasn’t an alcoholic, he, just like us, went through an emotional wringer and came out the other side of that painful experience a different man.
Why would I ever read this stuff and try to do the same thing? Because alcohol drove me to do this and to change my life. That’s the incentive. It’s all I need. I never want to drink again and I know if I do, I will die from the curse and insanity of alcoholism. No one is ever going to do this perfectly. All I have to do is keep on trying.