Stop runnin', varmint!

For years I have said that as active alcoholics we anesthetized ourselves, cutting ourselves off from the joy and pain of life.  I'm beginning to think that it might be better to say that as active alcoholics we were running and hiding from ourselves, and that the deep meaning of surrender is a willingness to stop, turn around, and face ourselves.  I say "a willingness to..." because we don't surrender once and have done with it; surrender is an attitude that has to be acted upon every day, all day.

This is where the 11th Step shows some of its power.  I tend to spontaneously think of meditation as a way of silencing the chatter in my head and releasing tension.  It is that, especially in the beginning.  But as I meditate more I realize that it is even more about recognizing that what I have been running from all my life is me and learning to embrace myself as a full reality, both as an individual with virtues and defects and as a part of a greater whole.  I will never be fulfilled by satisfying my desires for security, approval, or control.  I have to both embrace those drives as part of me and at the same time let go of them, seeing them as dead ends that lock me into my ego, isolating me from from that greater whole.  


Steps 4 through 9 help us deal with our 'character defects' or 'shortcomings'.  I think most of us would agree that these terms are more than a little vague.  Are my shortcomings limited to the seven deadly sins or do they also include the minor infractions that make me such a daily pain in the ass?  How about those drives for security, approval and control?  Those drives certainly don't put us on a path to serenity, but is it realistic to include them on a list of 'shortcomings' to be 'removed'?  I think we're more on the mark if we say we are aiming to 'remove' the manifestations of these drives in our daily lives, the behavior they normally give rise to while acknowledging that the drives themselves are part of our egos, our 'false' or 'descriptive' selves and as such are something we can at best dance or perhaps laugh with.  Learning to do that is a job for Step 11.


As for that greater whole that I am a part of, I freely acknowledge that my participation in that reality is my 'true' or 'transcendental' self, but I don't really know much about it.  I'm just trying to experience and learn about that greater whole.  I know that it involves my abandoning myself and joining the dance of the universe that I have always been part of but have been afraid to recognize. 


I also know that I'm not going to get anywhere unless I stop running.  And I can't stop running without Step 11.