Some thoughts on Anonymity

A recent discussion and some reading in Kevin Griffin's A Burning Desire: Dharma God and the Path of Recovery got me to thinking about Anonymity.

Anonymity is not just about concealment and protection, either of the group or the individual.  Protection from exposure of the individual as an alcoholic and protection from opening the fellowship up to negative publicity are certainly important.  Few newcomers would feel comfortable coming into the fellowship if they thought it meant publicly declaring they were alcoholics.  Admittedly, this worry about exposure very often diminishes or even goes away completely over time.  Similarly, protecting AA from the negative publicity of an openly declared member relapsing is also important.

I think the real core of Anonymity as the spiritual foundation of our traditions lies in its link to Humility.  When I walk into an AA meeting I am Brian M, with no family name, no profession, no title, no social status, no political or religious affiliation.  I have let go of all the 'identifiers' our society puts on us and I have come to a place where I can safely open up (and discover) who I really am, my real place in the world.  This search for who and what I am should not end with the 'right sizing' we so often hear about in meetings.   I have to admit that I find that phrase pretty troubling.  I can't help but hear an implicit comparison in the phrase 'right sized'.  It sounds to me like we are looking for our proper size in relation to others, and that is not true humility, although it may be a step toward humility.
Humility is about seeing yourself as you really are, and that is not a function of any comparison.  My experience has not been that I am greater or less than what I think I am, but quite simply that I am not really what I think I am.

Humility at its deepest level does not involve properly placing yourself on some scale, it means letting go of any eternally fixed identity, which is the way I spontaneously see myself.  The principle of Anonymity includes our learning to see ourselves as continuous works in progress, as a process and not a thing.  Spontaneously, I look for a 'real, essential' Brian, a stable, even fundamentally static being I can always count on finding and 'right sizing' on some scale or pecking order.  I seek that real, stable personality in all the most toxic places: my job, my possessions and, above all, what I think others think of me -- all measuring rods on which I can peg myself in relation to others.  I experience my 'real Brian M' as a stable entity defined by my social (friend, husband, brother, son), political (American, leftist, voter, pro- or anti- whatever), or economic (income, class, job, consumer) roles and labels.

This stable, eternal, externally defined persona is, in fact, what makes pride and vainglory possible.  Pride is only possible when you can feel separate from and superior to others, which requires a fixed place on some scale or pecking order.  Vainglory, the search for praise and affirmation from others, is only possible when there is something stable to praise.  This grasping after a fixed self is clearly trouble. In my case, I have recently seen just how much I identified myself as the job/career that ended with my layoff in January.  I was no longer Brian M the Educational Media Professional.  I had no job, no socially recognized role, which in our society pretty much means no status, so I ended up feeling I had no identity.  It turns out that it isn't removing my character defects that makes me feel like the hole in the doughnut; it's losing my invalid, static identifiers that makes me feel like the hole in the doughnut.

Now, that lack of a stable identity is in fact a good thing.  It is the beginning of real Humility, of seeing myself as a continually changing process within the continually changing world.  I just managed to experience it as pain because, once again, I was looking in the wrong place for what really counts.

Now, when I label myself as a 'recovering alcoholic', that is helpful, because 'recovering alcoholic' is not a state, it is a process, a direction.  But that will have to be the subject of another posting.