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When I was in early sobriety and trying to worrk the Steps for the first time in my life, I came face to face with Step 2. It took me months to navigate this mine field. In my mind there was no way I go on until I was willing to believe there even was a God.
Now mind you, everyone in AA was telling me I was trying to take off a much bigger bite than this Step requires. But nothing doing, I was going to "do it right dammit!". My problems were obviously bigger than my God at that time.
Here I am many years later looking at Step 2 again. Why? Well, partially because I can answer yes to a few of the items the Big Book asks me on page 47: "We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn't control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression, we couldn't make a living, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn't seem to be of real help to other people…"
I understand these questions (which are located smack dab in the middle of the Step 2 prep work, and lead directly to Step 3) to be the real reason I drank. I know this because a few drinks took these problems away almost instantly. So why, with a few years of sobriety, are they still pertinent to me?
Well, I also know that the Book tells me that there is something that I can use as a substitute for alcohol and what it used to do for me: "… I know I must get along without liquor, but how can I? Have you a sufficient substitute?" Yes, there is a substitute and it is vastly more than that. It is a fellowship in Alcoholics Anonymous."
It seems that alcohol has always done something for me that it doesn't do for normal people, but that's not my problem. My problem is that I need that something done for me in the first place, and this problem still exists no matter how long I have been separated from alcohol.
Last night my friend Daniel called me and out of the blue simply asked "What do you do to maintain your conscious contact?" I was dumbstruck for an answer. Partially because my head was somewhere else at the time, but also because lately I don't have a very direct answer. I have been "searching" a lot lately, grasping at straws. I have been attempting different methods and disciplines of prayer and meditation, none with any regularity or success. All of which smacks of a guy who knows he has a problem festering, and is frantically reaching out for help in some way.
I realize that sounds like a cry for help when written down, but I don't think it is. In my understanding of the 1st Step I have admitted and realized there is a big problem, and that my old solution no longer works and hasn't for a long time. It also says that I am willing to try anything else (besides alcohol) to help solve that problem. Finally, it says that the solutions I am seeking now are of a spiritual nature.
Somewhere along the way I came to believe that a Power greater than myself could restore me to sanity. Plain and simple. I have yet to be able to define what that Power is, but it is to a Power (that isn't alcohol) that I turn to first these days. And it's with that realization today that I finally got over the hurdle of the Second Step again. Not a bad place to be actually.
Saturday, August 7, 2010
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Thank you for the reminder about the 'bedevilments' or the 'Step 2 Inventory'. "We were having trouble with personal relationships, we couldn't control our emotional natures, we were a prey to misery and depression, we couldn't make a living, we had a feeling of uselessness, we were full of fear, we were unhappy, we couldn't seem to be of real help to other people…"
ReplyDeleteI think that feeling of being torn up, what William James called “torn-to-pieces-hood”, is part of being human. We all suffer from it and try to treat it in various, usually misguided and ineffective, ways. One of the universal truths of spirituality is that there is no such thing as a material solution to a spiritual problem, and that is precisely what alcohol, drugs, compulsive shopping, material acquisition, social status, sexual conquest and so on, are.
We can't apply external, material salves to this pain nor can we deny its existence. We have to deal with it from within our human condition, which means from within our torn up pain. If I understand them correctly, this is what Kurz and Ketcham are talking about in The Spirituality of Imperfection.
My current belief is that we can never find unity and peace within ourselves. We feel torn apart, fragmented because we are looking in the wrong place. The wholeness does not lie within us, but in the whole(s) that we are part of. We naked apes, like all apes, require social structures – we are not truly complete alone. We are part of an ecosystem – we could not exist without it. Ultimately, we are part of a universe with physical, biological, and social processes that come together to form some kind of a whole.
So, I think these problems are still pertinent to you because you're human. They will always be pertinent and at times they will well up and be excruciatingly painful. The good news is, as you point out, that you now have a way of dealing with them (which is, of course very different from having a way to solve them).
Step 2 is one of my most favorite places to be. Where so many are scared by 'the God thing', i found immediate attraction to the insanity thing. Nothing could convince me more of my own need for help and the degree of how my alcoholism permeated every facet of my life as looking at my own insanity - both in thinking and behavior.
ReplyDeleteNeeding to identify God, and looking for reasons to object to this God was easy and attractive, but irrelevant. We all (not just alcoholics) are killing each other trying to pin God down and make him identify himself to us. There is some insanity in that. Meanwhile we are hiding who we are from ourselves and desperately trying to create an image for everyone especially ourselves to see. We will do everything we can to promote a fictitious image - all to make us feel happy and comfortable. Feeding the ego is our full time job. Whether or not the ego is being fed with accurate information is not terribly pertinent to the end result of having a well fed ego. The less imput on the truth about who we are the better it is for our ego.
Now, imagine having a power greater than ourselves that all we know about is this simple concept that it is greater than you and that it is not punishing. We can see more of the lies about who we are in a gentle way when it is compared against perfection. We understand that we are human, and deeply flawed and in that we can create a healthy relationship with God. Our relationship with our defective selves is the answer to our insanity because the truth of who we truly are will provide reason and rational thought.