Often I wonder and think about the spiritual aspects of this program. So many questions. Do I really want to know? If I was honest, I probably don’t. What’s the old saying? “Don’t rock the boat.”
I was thinking today about the chapter There Is A Solution. When Dr. Carl Jung introduced the young man to the idea of seeking a spiritual experience, to help him to stay sober. I mean, here was a man, whom psychiatry couldn’t help. An alcoholic just like myself. As Dr. Jung was to say later, the alcoholic has to find God. The young man did and in my way so did I.
The doctor, in the Doctor’s Opinion, talks about the application of moral psychology, which he admits doctors cannot do for the alcoholic, and tells us that we alcoholics have to undergo psychic change. That’s in the beginning. Bill W. later introduces us to first a higher power and then the God concept. The 12 Steps do the rest.
All of this was a bit overwhelming in the start of my seeking to stay sober. I had started out on a spiritual path early on in my life and lost it. Alcohol took over and I ended up in the program some twenty years later back on a spiritual path again. Bill says in the 12&12, that people who had a faith and lost it are the most difficult ones. That’s true for me. It’s been a rocky road. But I’m committed to it, because this is the path to sobriety.
It’s kind of like what is said about our experience in falling in love for the first time. It ends, often abruptly. But you’re always haunted by that. So with me. Somehow it’s still there in the shadows. Carl Jung refers to this kind of experience in his study of mythology, as it applies to the psychology of man. In the legend of King Arthur, one of his knights of the Round Table, goes on the quest for the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail he finds out is in the possession and protection of a man known as the Fisher King. The Fisher King he finds is a man, who has suffered a wound early in his life, which will not heal. And the King is waiting for an innocent young child or fool, who can heal him. The knight on the quest is named Parsifal, which means an innocent young fool.
Like that shadow of the first love, I know what Jung was talking about. He tells us that, just like the Fisher King, many of us had some kind of experience, which was too big for us to handle at whatever age it occurred. That experience is the wound, which won’t heal.
Jung also tells us that we may have sought out someone we believed might know what that experience was about, maybe an adult, a teacher, or a minister or priest, and they don’t have the answer, which makes us doubt that we will ever understand what happened. And so we suffer, but soon it is lost in time. But it’s still there in the shadows.
When Jung told that young man to go find a spiritual experience, and he did, which was the seed which eventually became AA, it was the start of that healing process. Jung knew what he was talking about, because it was the same thing which happened to him. In the program, I believe that same thing is there for me and all the rest of us, who have lost our way through alcohol.
Anyway, as I sat in the meeting today and later on, I thought about this.