I couldn’t help but think today about the word “ego”. Me. Who I think I am. Bill W. has a lot to say about the alcoholic and our egos.
My ego has gotten me into so much trouble in my life. When I was drinking, it was out there all over the place and trying to run the world and the people in it. Like Bill said, I was like a tornado roaring through the lives of all I knew and some I didn’t know. But it was destructive.
The truth is, I learned over time, is that my ego is not really me. It’s something we all make up over time, as we develop. It’s really about survival. It begins in the cradle, when we react to what’s going on around us. We want food, so we cry, or laugh, or whatever works to get what we need. And it goes on from there. Whatever shows up to help us defend ourselves and survive becomes “me”. My ego. By the time adulthood shows up, my ego is pretty much in place.
But none of that is who I really am. In fact, I don’t really know who I am. And one thing for sure, my ego is not about to let me know. Ego deflation in depth is what Dr. Harry Tiebout, a psychiatrist, who was an early supporter of AA, says is necessary for our sobriety. But the more I insist on that, the more my ego works to sabotage my efforts. Trying to get out of my own way is almost impossible.
The woman, who was my spiritual director and counselor at one point, told me that my ego was so big there was no room on the planet for anyone else. I couldn’t deny that.
Why am I bothering with all this? It’s because of what this is really all about. Staying sober. My ego is the thing, which causes all the problems in my life. My moods, my thinking, my emotions, my attitudes, my character defects, and the list could go on. And just how am I to get a grip on it?
Sounds impossible doesn’t it? But, hold on. The answer begins with Step One. I am powerless over alcohol. Me. The big I am. Pain and insanity knocked me down. The 1st Step is the beginning of the answer to me. Once I can accept I’m powerless and respond with surrender, I go to that next Step. Step Two and the introduction to a higher power. That concept knocks me to one side. I have to get out of the way and allow something greater than me to come into my life.
The beginning of spirituality and my initiation into some degree of humility. And there is the key to it all. Up to that point, doctors all over the place, who might have been aware of the problem with our egos, had no answer to how to help us get sober. But a bunch of drunks, bumbling and stumbling around in their attempts to stay sober, borrowed and picked out what they could and came up with the answer.
But the real beginning was in Switzerland, when Dr. Carl Jung directed a young man to go out and find a spiritual experience. The man did and the rest is history. Our founders were able to put all of this into 12 Steps, which lead us to a spiritual awakening and opens the door to the possibility of coming to some form of humility, which puts me back into proportion to a relationship with something greater than myself; the God of my understanding. When I can begin to recognize how much I owe to this God, my higher power, which is represented in my being able to stay sober in spite of myself, there is a chance that I might begin to acquire the necessary humility to live this life.
When I am able to recognize that I am not in charge, that I am not my higher power or anyone else’s, then I am able to change. It’s called the 12th Step. I have a spiritual awakening. Somehow what I was I no longer am. In the beginning it’s by degrees. My attitudes changed, my personality changes, my motives change, my ideas, my thoughts. And the more I employ these 12 Steps to my life, the changes continue.
None of this is an overnight change. Like our one motto states, Time Takes Time. Although I have seen some sudden changes in others. I believe it was because they didn’t have the time. Alcohol had shortened their lives and what they had grasped was amazing. At least to me and some others, who had witnessed this phenomena.
Anyway, I sat down and thought about about all of this. There’s a lot more, but this is more than enough for now.