Knowledge may or may not be power, but is sure can be an attempt at control

The doubt and fear that often overtake me come from a desire to know more than I can know.  To control more than it is my purview to control and to control it by know it, intellectually mastering it, neatly delineating it into questions I ask and answers I have.  I take on the universe, and try to make it human-sized, one person-sized, self-sized.  I persist in the notion that I can hold it all in my two hands, grip it tightly, make it mine.
Marya Hornbacher, Waiting: A Nonbeliever's Higher Power  (highly recommended!)

I've written before in this blog about how I've come to see worry as a form of control.  Hornbacher's comment prompts me to think about how much I have used knowledge as a form of control.  My academic background is in Philosophy, so it's no surprise that I have sought answers to the 'big questions' all my life.  There was a valid spiritual quest buried in there but there was also a hiding from reality behind pride.  If you really think you can answer the question "Why is there something rather than nothing" you are assuming a pretty high -- let's face it, godlike -- status.  (Note for believers: the question includes within it the question "Why is there a god?").

The 'big questions', at least as I posed them, always set me apart from the reality I was trying to understand.  I was a separate being trying to understand reality rather than a simple part of reality trying to live it.  Living it, treating life as a mystery to be lived rather than a problem to be solved, is humility.

So, I am working on a spirituality that is lived rather than merely thought.  I see what I'm aiming at as somehow related to Taoism, the spirituality of the Cloud of Unknowing ( a 14th century Christian text, one of the inspirations for Centering Prayer), and Dudeism, the path inspired by the movie "The Big Lebowski".  (That last is a good application of Rule 62*.  After all, if you can't laugh, you're not in recovery.)

The goal is wisdom, living a fuller, more loving life, not knowledge

*"Don't take yourself too damn seriously."  see Twelve and Twelve, page 149

The Second Step and Our Limits

I have written before about my misunderstanding the Second Step when I first got into the program.  Like a lot of people, I focused on the Power, demanding to know exactly what it was before moving on.  It took years for me to realize that the Step is fundamentally saying that there is a way out.  The only thing it says about that way our is that it is through a 'power greater than ourselves.'  So far, so good.  I had gotten beyond demanding a theological treatise, but I was still very much focused on that now fuzzy, ill-defined Power.

Over the last couple of days I've looked at the Step a bit differently.  I think it is valuable to see Step Two as a direct extension of Step One.  In Step One we said we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives were unmanageable.  We began to recognize our limits.  In Step Two we continue to recognize those limits and say "OK, there may be a way out, but it sure as Hell isn't me." 

For years as an active alcoholic I insisted that I was the way out.  I would use my tools -- reading, meditation, discipline -- and I would conquer this addiction and I would be happy.*  There is a saying in the medical community that the doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient.  Well, by that standard (and many others) I was a total idiot during my active alcoholism.

Moving from Step One to Step Two is a process of 'coming to believe' that I am not the only resource I can call on, that there are forces greater than me and that I can use their help in my recovery.  It is a gradual process and one that requires practice in every sense of the word.  Luckily, the First Step has relieved us of the burden of doing it all ourselves, since we just plain can't, and frees us to focus on our lives, our behavior and the people and things we encounter.  Gradually, through letting those powers in and doing the work we do come to believe.

And, unbelievably enough, the addiction comes under control and I do end up happy.  Even better, I end up quietly content.

*I now find the statement "I am happy' a bit creepy, since happiness and contentment are not solitary activities.  But that's a subject for another posting.

Steps 3 through 12 are how we get from step 1 to step 2

"Steps three through twelve are how we get from step one to step two."  I heard someone say that at a meeting a while back and I think it's an interesting and, for me at least, fresh way of viewing steps.  

I've long said that step one without step two is a good description of Hell.  "Oh, so I'm powerless over alcohol and my life is unmanageable.  How nice."  Personally I knew that damn well for at least 10 years before I got sober and it just made me drink more.  My salvation was when a small glow of hope that there was a way out appeared.  Typically, I've always viewed that as an intellectual event.  I received the information that AA could help me and that gave me the hope I needed.  

Of course, that's not really the way it really happened.  My bottom came with heart failure induced by my attempt to go cold turkey off alcohol completely on my own.  Laying in an ICU bed I actually decided it would be better if I died, especially for my wife.  I was certain she'd be happier with a new husband.  I don't know what my doctors would say but I was and am convinced that if I had let go at that point that I would have died.  However, the thought crossed my mind that if I worked at it I could be that second husband and that would be a way to try to make up for the years of pain I had put my wife through.  A couple of days later a guy came into my hospital room and 12th stepped me.  That didn't go very well, but I did get a meeting book out of it.  I decided to try a meeting.  That's the point.  I didn't really have hope at that point.  I had a desperate need for hope and a path of action that might provide that hope.  

That, I think, is what the speaker meant when she said that "Steps three through twelve are how we get from step one to step two."  It is by our actions and their results that we grow in optimism and faith in AA.

As the old AA slogan says, it's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.