Ego, Humility and Grace

"By this time in all probability we have gained some measure of release from our more devastating handicaps. We enjoy moments in which there is something like real peace of mind. . . .Where humility had formerly stood for a forced feeding on humble pie, it now begins to mean the nourishing ingredient which can give us serenity."

"This improved perception of humility starts another revolutionary change in our outlook. Our eyes begin to open to the immense values which have come straight out of painful ego-puncturing."

-- The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 74 --

In a very real sense, Step Seven is the completion of the second half of Step One: Having admitted we could not manage our own lives - let alone life itself - and having determined to turn our will and our lives "over to the care of God as we understood him," we now confirm our decision to leave the management of life at that level, rather than vainly resuming the practice of managing life ourselves. This is ego-deflation at depth, and "painful ego-puncturing" at that, as we have been trained all of our lives that we must manage everything - or else!

At first the practice of humility is frightening. "What will become of me if such-and-such happens?" we ask ourselves, only to see in time that things never happen in precisely the way we imagine them and that, in most instances, our fears never materialize. We experience great pain, however, because we - or rather our egoic inner dialogue - assume that they will.

This, process of fear, desire and suffering continues just so long as we identify with the ego and believe whatever it thinks. The moment we realize that we are not the ego - that we are not whatever thought pops into our heads - the suffering stops. Yet it resumes immediately once we lose that awareness. Thus, the practice of Step Seven is repeatedly turning our will and lives over to the care of our Higher Power, and not just in making a decision to do so. In time we will become evermore humble in the truest sense of the word, in that we will be increasingly free of our egoic "self," and each time we experience suffering it will become a sign that we once more need to center ourselves in order to "Let Go, and Let God."

"For us," we read in Step Seven, "this process of gaining a new perspective was unbelievably painful. . . . It was only at the end of a long road, marked by successive defeats and humiliations, and the final crushing of our self-sufficiency, that we began to feel humility as something more than a condition of groveling despair." (Emphasis added.) Fortunately, however, we eventually learn that the requisite degree of humility needed to overcome the ego may "come quite as much from our voluntary reaching for it as it could from unremitting suffering."

"A great turning point in our lives," we read, "came when we sought for humility as something we really wanted, rather than as something we must have. It marked the time when we could commence to see the full implication of Step Seven: "Humbly asked Him to remove our our shortcomings."" For, in the end, we can only find grace within God, and it is in practicing Step Seven that we are freed from the egoic self and obtain to that level of grace with its ensuing peace of mind.

[The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pages 72 and 74]

Back From Life's Precipice

"It's extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull ears, with dormant thoughts. Perhaps it's just as well; and it may be that it is this very dullness that makes life to the incalculable majority so supportable and so welcome. Nevertheless, there can be but a few of us who has never known one of those rare moments of awakening when we see, hear, understand ever so much - everything - in a flash - before we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence."

-- Joseph Conrad --

["Lord Jim," Chapter 13.]

In his correspondence with Bill W. (attached below), the great psychiatrist, Carl Jung - who was the first link in the chain of events that would start A.A., as we know it  - observed that an alcoholic addict's cravings are "the equivalent on a low level of the thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: union with God."

For the alcoholic addict, while the booze and drugs continued to work, the drunk or the high was like that. We became complete, for a time, connected with our fellows and part of the world as an unbroken whole. But, alas, this seeming bliss was temporary and caused by alcoholic spirits rather than by true Spirit. Each time, we would crash from the heights of this unitive Wholeness and would awaken just a little bit more disconnected, more self-absorbed - perhaps, more self-loathing - and just that much more imprisoned in the bondage of self-consciousness than we were just a day or a week ago.

And the longer, and necessarily more, we drank or drugged, the more fleeting the elusive feeling of Wholeness became - and the sharper the fall. Eventually, this is how for some or, perhaps, most of us finally reached a point where we could not stand ourselves no matter how sober, drunk or high we became. This is described in the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous, as reaching "the jumping-off place."

"For most normal folks," we read, "drinking means conviviality, companionship and colorful imagination. It means release from care, boredom and worry. It is joyous intimacy with friends and a feeling that life is good. But not so with us in those last days of heavy drinking. The old pleasures were gone. They were but memories. Never could we recapture the great moments of the past. There was an insistent yearning to enjoy life as we once did and a heartbreaking obsession that some new miracle of control would enable us to do it. There was always one more attempt — and one more failure."

"The less people tolerated us, the more we withdrew from society, from life itself. As we became subjects of King Alcohol, shivering denizens of his mad realm, the chilling vapor that is loneliness settled down. It thickened, ever becoming blacker. Some of us sought out sordid places, hoping to find understanding companionship and approval. Momentarily we did — then would come oblivion and the awful awakening to face the hideous Four Horsemen — Terror, Bewilderment, Frustration, Despair. Unhappy drinkers who read this page will understand!"

"Now and then a serious drinker, being dry at the moment says, "I don't miss it at all. Feel better. Work better. Having a better time." As ex-problem drinkers, we smile at such a sally. We know our friend is like a boy whistling in the dark to keep up his spirits. He fools himself. Inwardly he would give anything to take half a dozen drinks and get away with them. He will presently try the old game again, for he isn't happy about his sobriety. He cannot picture life without alcohol. Some day he will be unable to imagine life either with alcohol or without it. Then he will know loneliness such as few do. He will be at the jumping-off place. He will wish for the end."

[Alcoholics Anonymous, pp. 151-152.]

It is because, sooner or later, the alcoholic addict will inevitably find him of herself at just such an existential cliff's edge - yearning to feel whole again, and at peace with his or her fellow travelers, yet with no apparent means of achieving such peace and wholeness - that a spiritual experience or awakening achieved with real Spirit (instead of false spirits) can be effective in overcoming addiction.

Who, with no other options discernible, would not trade in the "Four Horsemen" of terror, bewilderment, frustration and despair for the sense of freedom, wholeness and faith that he or she may be shown in A.A. (or any of its sister organizations) by God manifesting through us? Few, indeed, it would seem if they have, in fact, reached the "jumping-off place," and if they are assured through the presence of our consciousness and being that "one of those rare moments of awakening" (as Conrad puts it) might also be available to them. Perhaps then they, too, may walk back from the existential cliff's edge and join us as we "trudge the Road of Happy Destiny" in recovery.

There are three ways that one may find such an experience, Jung assured Bill. "The only right and legitimate way to such an experience," he observed, "is that it happens to you in reality and it can only happen to you when you walk on a path which leads you to higher understanding. You might be led to that goal by an act of grace or through a personal and honest contact with friends, or through a higher education of the mind beyond the confines of mere rationalism."

For "a higher understanding" achieved "by an act of grace," God is responsible. For helping the newcomer find "a higher understanding" by "a personal and honest contact with friends," we, as alcoholic addicts in recovery, are collectively responsible. And, for achieving "higher understanding" by "a higher education of the mind beyond the confines of mere rationalism" each of us is individually responsible, although we can, and should, show the newcomer how this may be achieved through the continuing practice of "self-examination and prayer" that Bill describes on page 98 of The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.

We are fortunate indeed if, through any or all of these means, we have achieved a spiritual awakening - an awakening which Conrad describes as being "rare" and fleeting amongst everyday men and women.  We are then able to utilize the experience strength and hope we have gained to help a fellow sufferer on life's precipice. We are in danger if we neglect doing so, for in such negligence we fail to grow along the path towards our own ultimate enlightenment.

 . . . . . . . . . . . . .

 As promised, below is the letter from Carl Jung to Bill W., which contains the all-important prescription for the alcoholic addict: "spiritus contra spiritum."

Carl Jung and Alcoholics Anonymous: Part II

Carl G. Jung (1875-1961)

In "Carl Jung and Alcoholics: Part I," we touched on Bill W.'s correspondence with the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, discussed why letting go of our "old ideas" is crucial to recovery from alcoholic addiction, and highlighted the following pithy description of just what "vital spiritual awakenings" consist of. Talking to Roland H. several years before Bill W. attained sobriety, Jung described the latter as "phenomena," whereby:

"Ideas emotions and attitudes which were once the guiding forces in the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and new conceptions and motives begin to dominate them."

It is essential to rid oneself of "old ideas," or at least work at letting go of them, in order to obtain a truly open mind and allow new conceptions of what one's life is really about to take root. For it is in obtaining such a new worldview that we are truly relieved of the craving for the experience and relief from ourselves that came with taking the first of what inevitably turned out to be too many drinks.

As Jung explained to Bill W. in the course of their correspondence some thirty or so years after Jung had last treated Rolland H., the thirst of the alcoholic is symptomatic of a much deeper existential craving. In Jung's words:

"His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God."

Jung, as he explained to Bill in his letter of January 30, 1961, was deeply concerned at the time that his then (and now) somewhat 'controversial' views with respect to the 'spiritual' or 'religious experiences' undergone by many reformed alcoholics might be misunderstood. Nonetheless, he would explain to Bill just how such experiences took root, as he had concluded that Bill had acquired an understanding "above the misleading platitudes one usually hears about alcoholism."

In explaining the spiritual paths that lead to what he termed a "religious experience" (undoubtedly an "inner religious" as opposed to an "outer religious" experience, employing the terminology used by William James in "The Varieties of Religious Experience"), Jung explained:

"The only right and legitimate way to such an experience is, that it happens to you in reality and it can only happen to you when you walk on a path, which leads you to a higher understanding. You might be led to that goal by an act of grace or through a personal and honest contact with friends, or through a higher education of the mind beyond the confines of mere rationalism."

I was extremely blessed to have received the benefits of "an act of grace" one evening, like so many other alcoholics I have met, while staring into the eyes of a very sick man reflected in my bathroom mirror. It was just the result of another typical day of drinking, but it was my last day of drinking some twenty-odd years ago.

I was doubly blessed to have the "personal and honest contact with friends in my first years in Alcoholics Anonymous," particularly the hundreds of hours that I was able to spend with my first sponsor before he died.

And, yet, even this was insufficient to trigger within me that deep and effective "spiritual" or "religious experience" Jung describes. I would spend five years in the lonely wilderness of sobriety after a decade clean and sober; a decade when all my time and effort was given over to a newly acquired profession and a growing young family that I put before my mental and spiritual sobriety. The result was not atypical, a slow and almost imperceptible descent into the depths of insanity, with a frightening drop at the end, as I hit bottom in sobriety.

I was fortunate to have survived bottoming out in sobriety. Many people I knew did not. And I was thrice blessed, because after hitting bottom in sobriety I was humbled and finally ready to receive "a higher education of the mind before mere rationalism."

As strange as it may seem at first, largely because many of us misconstrue rationalism with sanity, "mere rationalism" can be a block to the true and effective spiritual awakening that will relieve us of the symptoms of alcoholism, just as "the good can be the enemy of the great," as the saying goes.

Reinhold Niebuhr, the man who penned the "Serenity Prayer" explained that there is a  plane of thought and inspiration above the ordinary self-conscious "rationalism" or "reasoning" that we witness even so-called "normal people" struggling with. In delivering the annual Gifford Lecture (the same lectures that William James used as his basis for writing "The Varieties of Religious Experience") Niebuhr observed:

"Individual selfhood is expressed in the self's capacity for self-transcendence and not in its rational capacity for conceptual and analytic procedures."

I was extremely fortunate upon hitting bottom in sobriety to encounter two old-timers that would lead me on "a higher education of the mind beyond mere rationalism." Neither of them made it as far as high school even, yet with their spiritual experience in hand they were able to demonstrate to me (with my two university degrees) that a rigorous program of "self-examination, meditation and prayer." particularly meditation - could and would open an entirely new plane of existence to me.

And it is in attaining this promised "new plane of inspiration" or existence that one perfects the promise of a spiritual awakening and gains a whole new set of conceptions and motives with which to live a radically different life; it is on this plane that one can, in actuality, find a "contented" (and more importantly) a "purposeful life."

To find this new plane of existence and purposeful life is essential for long-term, contented sobriety. As Jung noted in his letter to Bill, in an observation that is at least as relevant, if not more so, today as it was fifty years ago in 1961:

I am strongly convinced that the evil principle prevailing in this world, leads the unrecognized spiritual need into perdition, if it is not counteracted by a real religious insight or by the protective wall of human community. An ordinary man, not protected by an action from above and isolated in society cannot resist the power of evil.

Fortunately, the alcoholic addict in recovery no longer needs to be isolated in society - unless he or she so chooses, as I did - nor must he or she be left unprotected outside "the protective wall of human community" or unaided by "an action from above."