Are these extravagant promises? (part of a series)

The following is part of a series Dave and I are doing on the Promises. (See Contingent Promises, Learning to Play, and Love for an earlier post.)

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and selfpity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.  
Are these extravagant promises?

Well, as I often hear them interpreted in meetings, yeah, they are extravagant.

Let's take 'fear of ... economic insecurity will leave us.'  Speaking from my experience, I am far, far less materialistic than I was when I was drinking.  Back then the thought of my current economic situation would have reduced me to shear panic and I would have treated that panic with alcohol.  The panic isn't there, I am less interested in scoring my life at all, let alone by the number of toys I have.  But that doesn't mean that I don't get a knot in my stomach when I get my heating bill and wonder how to juggle paying that with paying the rent.  That knot is fear.  Yet I often hear people talking about the promises imply - or baldly state - that such fears should leave us completely and that having such fears indicates that I have a 'bad program.'  They say that all fear is a sign of a lack of faith, that if I work my program properly I will have no fear and I will realize that everything will be OK.  That is just plain not true.  Bad things do happen and fear is a natural human reaction to anticipated pain. Haven't these people ever heard of the Garden of Gesthemane?

The AA program is not designed to make us feel good all the time.  That is a form of spiritual materialism that totally misses the point.   The program is designed to change the way we live, to open us up to our better selves and our higher powers.  Changing ourselves, the way we live, does make us feel better in most circumstances, but it does not erase our susceptibility to human emotions. Certainly something happens and our emotional reactions do change.  As I said earlier, in the past I reacted with panic to the mere thought of things that I now experience with relative calm.  But moments of real fear are still there.  I sometimes get the impression, especially when the promises are discussed, that we are aiming at some kind of unrealistic 'AA sainthood'.  We forget that our goal is progress, not perfection.

In one of my recent posts I mentioned people in my home group whose homes have been foreclosed.  What are we saying to these people if we tell them that their economic insecurity should not scare them and that if it does scare them then not only are they homeless but on top of that they have a shitty program?  They don't know where they are going to live.  That is scary.  What I think we should be telling them is that the program will help them put their troubles in perspective, help them see that their troubles can be dealt with and really do matter less than they may think at the moment.  We should tell them that the idea is to deal with the situation better, that the situation does suck but their way of handling it doesn't have to.   That they can make progress and shouldn't worry about perfection.