Waking up, the beginning AA principles Steps 1-4 (notes for a talk I am giving for a retreat)

[Mark Dohle]

Waking up, the beginning
AA principles Steps 1-4
(notes for a talk I am giving for a retreat)​

1st Step: We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol – that our lives had become unmanageable.

I often wonder how manageable anyone’s life is. How much illusion is at work in our lives? I do believe that we each live in our own universe, have deep inner lives, with an often traumatic past. In this world, anyone who has had no trauma, or little, in their lives, is very rare indeed. All one has to do is to sit down with anyone for ten minutes and have a real conversation about each other’s life to find that out. Yes, a burden, but we adapt, survive, and in time may come to see it as normal, ok, and perhaps this is necessary so that we do not succumb.

People who have compassion, or a deep supply of empathy, easy to talk to, and who are accepting from others, more often than not, happens because they have a past that they have dealt with on some level. They know that their experiences while unique, are also common. Many people like this have had to come to a place in their lives where they were presented with a choice. Change, or die, or have your life slip ever deeper into fragmentation, and loss of all that is dear.

It is a long journey for most of us, a slow one, with many starts and stops, and going off the path, to yet again to find oneself back again. To have a loving relationship with “One’s Higher Power”, as the 12 steps put it, is very important and essential for most on the 12 step program. I like the use of the concept “One’s Higher Power”, because the actual word “God” can carry with it a lot of baggage which can take a lifetime to unpack.

Humility is essential for being able to do the 12 steps. From the 1st step, we are reminded that we have to admit that we are powerless over ‘whatever’ is making our lives a form of indentured slavery. It seems paradoxical that before we can begin change, we have to admit our powerlessness. It is not surrendering into servitude, but an actual taking off the chains and become free. We learn that ‘human freedom’ is not what many people think it is. Freedom is grown into by making small choices, hard choices, one moment at a time if need be. It is not about ‘will-power’, but about ‘willingness’. For humility is about facing reality and embracing the truth about ourselves, which can be a sort of death, that can turn all of our values upside down.

Once we admit we have a problem (honesty), this deepening self-knowledge can lead us to understand that we need ‘grace’ something bigger than ourselves in order to have the strength, and desire, to break free of the chains that weigh us down. We have to open-our-minds to the reality of the part we play in the drama of our lives. We stop becoming victims and blaming others for our troubles, and problems. We grow in acceptance of ourselves, but not self-hatred, or contempt. To begin the 12 step program is an act of self-love in the truest sense of the word. For many, it could be the first actual act of self-acceptance ever experienced, and in this comes healing. How fast that healing takes is dependent of course on how deeply committed one becomes to deepening their relationship with their Higher-Power. This brings about serenity.

Prudence is also important. The need for community is essential for healthy growth in one's spiritual life. We need someone to pick us up, or help us up when we fall, and failure will happen. In fact, failure is just as important as success, perhaps more important for many. For it is in our failures that true humility deepens. To begin again, not to despair, or to fall into self-contempt, which is a choice, but an easy one, is an act of self-love, leading to the love of others and deepening compassion and empathy.

Humility leads us to be honest with ourselves and fearless in accepting our responsibility for our lives, and how we have hurt or offended others. This allows us to let go of being victims of others, or of our past. We are called to live today, to face the problems that we face, and to not let our past to dictate how we live or react and treat others.

The key to unlocking the cycles we find ourselves in is open-mindedness, endurance, and to grow in the understanding that when we find ways to protect ourselves based on lies, we only make our problems worse, and our relationships with others will often deteriorate.

When we lack humility (self-knowledge), open-mindedness (the ability to listen), Honesty (transparency), we cannot grow in love and tolerance of others. We are not real, we hide behind our lies and in the end, those we love will leave us to ourselves because there is no other way. So we need to be fearless (fortitude), to walk the path that the 12 steps ask of us.—Br.MD

 

[Dave L]

Luther preached something similar about salvation.

"First, God has promised certainly His grace to the humbled: that is, to the self-deploring and despairing. But a man cannot be thoroughly humbled, until he comes to know that his salvation is utterly beyond his own powers, counsel, endeavours, will, and works, and absolutely depending on the will, counsel, pleasure, and work of another, that is, of God only. For if, as long as he has any persuasion that he can do even the least thing himself towards his own salvation, he retain a confidence in himself and do not utterly despair in himself, so long he is not humbled before God; but he proposes to himself some place, some time, or some work, whereby he may at length attain unto salvation. But he who hesitates not to depend wholly upon the good-will of God, he totally despairs in himself, chooses nothing for himself, but waits for God to work in him; and such an one, is the nearest unto grace, that he might be saved."

Martin Luther. The Bondage of the Will.

 

[Mark Dohle]

In the end, it is grace. We will either knell in joy before the Lord or be compelled.

Peace
Mark