The Riddle of Ego, Self, and Innermost Self

To borrow the oft-quoted line from Winston Churchill, the 'secret' of Alcoholics Anonymous (and its sister organizations) is "a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." Those who have solved this "riddle" often smile mysteriously and enigmatically - like the slight and knowing smile of the Sphinx - when trying to explain it. The "riddle" goes something like this: "You have to find a Power greater than yourself, but you have to find this Power deep down within yourself."

 What??? If you are like I was, perhaps it is at this stage that you shut down and start asking others what God is, what they use as their Higher Power, or just what the heck 'It' is that we are supposed to rely on.

The answer to this seemingly inevitable question given to me by my first sponsor was "Good Orderly Direction." Others have been told, "Group of Drunks," or a variety of other responses. In my case, this answer combined with my close-mindedness and fierce "will to win" led me on a nearly 15-year wild goose chase to "wrest happiness and success out of this world" by managing life well, that is by getting me some of that 'Good Orderly Direction' in my thinking. (See, page 61 of Alcoholics Anonymous.)

However, there is, I believe, a very straightforward 'key' to solving this "riddle" and discovering just what the 'secret' (so to speak) of A.A. is -  i.e., exactly where and how to access "a Power" greater than oneself that will solve the alcohol problem and render the alcoholic addict "happily and usefully whole." That 'key' is (or was in my case) understanding the relationship between (i) one's "ego" (ii) one's "self" and (iii) one's "innermost self".

"Ego" is variously defined in metaphysics as "a conscious thinking subject," in psychology as "the part of the mind that reacts to reality and has a sense of individuality," and in popular usage as "a sense of self esteem" or pride: (Oxford English Dictionary). "Self" - in its turn - is defined as "a person's or things own individuality or essence" and "a person or thing as the object of introspection or reflective action." One's "innermost self" is undefined (although "one's better self" - defined as "one's nobler instincts" - comes close.)

The 'key' to the 'riddle' lies in these definitions and, most importantly, in understanding that ego does NOT mean pride in A.A. literature. Almost invariably, "ego" is used interchangeably with "self". ("Our actor," we read on page 61 of the 'Big Book', "is self centered -- ego-centric, as people like to call it today.") A working definition of both "ego" and "self" for our purposes, therefore, may be something like: "the thinking part of the mind that reacts to reality and has, or gives us, a sense of our own identity and individuality."

It is this constant inner stream or commentary of thoughts, images and ideas - "the thinking part of the mind that reacts to reality" - together with their bodies, that the vast majority of people (alcoholic addict and non-addict alike) take themselves to be. It is 'who' they 'are '- or so it seems to them. (Interestingly, Bill W. in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions variously calls this constant inner stream of ego/self a "painful inner dialogue" and "terrifying ghosts.")

If one can understand that the ego/self is not who we are, but that "ego" or "self" is but a fraction of our mind - an attitude or way of relating to the world that is learned - and that underneath that small but loud and unceasing fraction lies "an innermost self" that is the "essence" of who we are, then he or she can productively begin to work the 12 Steps, the first of which is: "to fully concede to (his or her) innermost self that (he or she is) alcoholic" or an addict. (Admitting to one's "innermost self" that one's life has become, is, and will continue to be "unmanageable" comes next.)

Consider these points from the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous:

• "The problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind, rather than his body." (Page 23)
• "We alcoholics . . . have lost the ability to control our drinking." (Page 30)
• "Whether such a person can quit upon a non-spiritual basis depends upon the extent to which he has already lost the power to choose whether he will drink or not." (Page 34)
• "(T)he actual or potential alcoholic, with hardly an exception. will be absolutely unable to stop drinking on the basis of self-knowledge." (Page 39)
•  "The alcoholic at certain times has no effective defense against the first drink. Except in a few rare cases, neither he nor any other being can provide such a defense. His defense must come from a Higher Power." (Page 42)
• "If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism, many of us would have recovered long ago. But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matter how hard we tried." (Pages 44-45)
• "Our human resources, as marshalled by the will . . .  failed utterly." (Page 45)
• "Lack of power . . . was our dilemma." (Page 45)
• "We had to find a power by which we could live (free of alcohol, drugs, etc.), and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves." (Page 45)
• "(W)here and how were we to find this Power?" (Page 45)
• "(The) main object (of the 'Big Book') is to enable you to find a Power greater than yourself which will solve your problem." (Page 45)
• "We found the Great Reality deep down within us." (Page 55)
• "(L)iquor is but a symptom. So we had to get down to causes and conditions." (Page 64)

So the alcoholic addict learns that the loss of control over liquor, drugs, etc., is not the problem but is symptomatic of a deeper problem that centers in her mind, and that she needs to find a Power that is greater than her 'self'. Self-knowledge will not cut it. How and where, then, is she to find such a Power that will relieve her symptoms, particularly if she doesn't believe in a quasi-mythic Old Testament God 'out there' somewhere? That, we learn, is the "main object" of the process.

"How" to find such a Power is quite clear: Do the 12 Steps! But  the "how" of doing the Steps if you do not believe in a "God" or "Divinity" which most cultures teach is 'out there' is exceedingly difficult, indeed. Fortunately, the "where" of finding a Higher Power is set out on Page 55 of the 'Big Book'. Here we find a concise rebuttal to the cultural norm that God, Yahweh, Ishwara, Allah, Buddha-mind, the Divine, one's Depth, the Ground of Being - whatever one chooses to call It - is exterior to us.

Although it is often obscured by "the calamity, pomp, and worship of other things" characteristic of the "self" or "ego" (i.e., "the thinking part of the mind that reacts to reality and has, or gives us, a sense of our own identity and individuality"), we find that there exists within us "an Innermost Self" that is the "Essence" of our "Being." It is this "Inner Self" that all the world's great religious and wisdom traditions seek to activate and develop.

Page 55 sets out, in clear and precise language, that:

"We (find) that Great Reality," i.e., our 'Inner Self' or 'Essence', "deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that He (or She, or It) may be found."

In a letter to Bill W., the great psychologist, Dr. Carl Jung, pointed out that: "(The alcoholic's) thirst for alcohol (is) the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: union with God."

Although he was much concerned that he would be misunderstood when using such culturally freighted words and concepts, he nonetheless elaborated further on such an "experience" - that is, the psychological and spiritual "union with God" at the heart of all the world's great wisdom traditions.

"The only right and legitimate way to such an experience," Jung notes, "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." That is, one must follow a spiritual path without aid of drugs or booze, a path or methodology (like the 12 Steps) that leads you to a "higher understanding" and "experience" of one's mind beyond the ordinary, ego-centric perspective and narrative of "self."

"You might be led to that goal," - i.e., to a "spiritual awakening" of one's 'Inner Self' or 'Essence' - Jung points out, "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 or mere rationalism." Fortunately for the alcoholic addict, "the path" laid out in the 12 Steps, the work we do, and the fellowship we find in A.A. (or any of its sister organizations) offers all three.

But the key to realizing grace, receiving meaningful friendship, and transcending the mind to a level "beyond the confines of mere rationalism" is in solving the "riddle" presented by the "ego" or "self" in which we are seemingly confined. In finding our 'Innermost Self', in experiencing our 'Essence' in consciousness, we access the "mysteries" at the heart of the world's great religions and esoteric traditions. In working our way through the seeming "paradox" of finding a "Power" that is at once greater than one's "self" but which is ultimately found "deep down within" one's 'Innermost Self', we begin to solve our alcohol problem and we open up to the potential and experience of what Bill W. calls "a new state of consciousness and being."

Our collective experience is that: "With few exceptions our members find that they have tapped into an unsuspected inner resource which they presently identify with their own conception of a Power greater than themselves. Most of us think this awareness of a Power greater than ourselves is the essence of spiritual experience. Our more religious members call it "God-consciousness."" (Alcoholics Anonymous, Appendix II, pages 567-568.)

As Jung succinctly points out in his letter to Bill W., "(A)lcohol in Latin is 'spiritus' and you use the same word for the highest religious experience as well as the most depraving poison. The helpful formula therefore is: "spiritus contra spiritum."

We Atheists

On the night of November 11, 1989, I experienced what many alcoholic addicts describe as "a moment of clarity." Alcohol and drugs had not been working for me the way they used to. They could no longer alleviate the punishing, self-conscious thoughts in my mind, and they only added to the fear and emotional turmoil I was regularly experiencing, particularly when I was "in my cups." Thankfully, I acted upon that brief moment of quiet acceptance and I was introduced to Alcoholics Anonymous. I had a fixed desire to quit drinking and drugging.

From the start I had great difficulties with the program's spirituality. Raised in a scientific household and community (my father was a nuclear scientist, though my mother was a Christian Scientist), I had no belief in God or a Higher Power. For religion, or religionists, I had no time. Fortunately I quickly got myself a sponsor. I made my first and most crucial mistake in sobriety, however, on that first day we talked (the significance of which will be described below). Knowing me from the time I was out "performing" - his description, not mine - he told me point blank that I would have to take Step Two.

Having been in A.A. a number of weeks before we hooked up, and knowing that this "Power" greater than myself referred to the God of my understanding from Step Three, I asked him what his idea of God was. He told me he viewed God as "Good Orderly Direction," and I adopted this, believing that without the booze and drugs I would sure be able to able to turn around my thinking into some semblance of "Good Orderly Direction." This I tried with a vengeance. I returned to university and then law school, where I graduated at the top of my classes. Surely this was a sign of "Good Orderly Direction?"

Nonetheless, and needless to say, the material success I had in sobriety did not suffice to deepen my spiritual experience, even though I went through the Twelve Steps several times and went to many, many meetings in the first nine years of my sobriety. (I am, I know now, an alcoholic addict that needs more than a handful of meetings a week to maintain my sobriety.)

With life's success taking me to a future I could not have imagined, working long hours as a lawyer at one of Canada's oldest and most reputable law firms in order to support my family and give them the luxuries I thought they wanted and deserved, I turned my back on A.A. I could not imagine taking myself away from my family during the admittedly few family hours my professional responsibilities afforded me. Thus, I made a conscious decision not to attend A.A. in the community we had just moved to. (My second great mistake in A.A.)

For the next 4 and 1/2 years, I held it together as best I could before falling into a profound depression that cost me all that I had worked for, and which nearly cost me my life. In and out of psychiatric wards for the next eighteen months of this tortured sobriety, my life, my family and my career fell apart. All without taking a drink or drugs.

(In his Step Three essay in The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Bill W. writes: "More sobriety brought about by the admission of alcoholism and attendance at a few meetings is very good indeed, but it is bound to be a far cry from permanent sobriety and a happy and contented life.") (Emphasis added.)

Fortunately, in October of 2003 the best-friend of my first sponsor (who had passed away when I was only 5 years sober) heard I was in trouble and left me a telephone message. I would not return that message until January of 2004 (after a botched suicide attempt), but when I did my sponsor's friend hit the nail on the head: I had become a dry drunk. He took me to an unforgettable A.A. meeting, and forthwith I got a new sponsor and joined a group in the community I was living in, having been separated from my wife and my role as a full-time father

I attended A.A. on a daily basis thereafter. Fourteen-and-a-half years clean and sober, but without a clue as to how the program of Alcoholics Anonymous worked though, as I mentioned, I had gone through the entire Twelve Steps several times in my early, ineffective years in the Fellowship. I had been held back by the prejudice and contempt I had for all matters religious or spiritual.

My new sponsor -  a man who drank at 15 years of sobriety, but had once again reached that threshold - took me through the Steps once more, getting me all the way to Step Seven before he succumbed to cancer. Little did I know that there were other old-timers watching me, and watching me continue to suffer because I did not have a God of my own understanding. (Although I wished to believe in a Higher Power, I could not find one of my own understanding, prejudiced as my thinking was by my understanding of science. I needed a Higher Power that was compatible with what I knew of both psychology and science.)

Fourteen years clean and sober, with my life in shreds and acutely feeling the demise of both my marriage and a brief fling with a very lovely woman, my best A.A. friend and I were out looking for a new apartment for me to live in. On finding and renting the perfect apartment for me, my friend and I went to celebrate by having lunch on a nearby patio. My friend is an interesting and talkative man, so I just listened to him talk as I basked in the incredible feeling of peace, ease of mind and well-being I was enjoying as a result of our morning's work.

Suddenly, however, I stopped listening to my friend and my thoughts turned I know not where, likely to my family or my recent failed relationship. It does not matter, for what I felt as soon as I turned my mind from what my buddy was saying to my own thoughts a wave of great fear washed over me from head to toe. I knew then that my problem was an inside problem, and that the solution to it must somehow also be an inside job.

Several days later, one of the old-timers who had been watching me saw that I was through suffering. (He had been urged by another friend to talk to me, but his reply was, "No. He hasn't done suffering yet.") Approaching me, he offered to lend me a book: Eric Butterworth's "Discover the Power Within You." It was the first book of a spiritual nature (including all the books A.A. had published) that I read with an entirely open mind and new perspective. It was the first book of a spiritual bent in which I did not throw away the 'baby' of those things I could understand and believe with the 'bathwater' of concepts that were beyond my understandings and belief.

A day later, this old-timer and I spent about four hours going through the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous and discussing our mutual experiences. It was not a thorough dissection of the 'Big Book.' Rather, it was an exposition of some of the principle parts of our basic text that I would need to understand if I were to progress spiritually. The main sections he discussed with me were:

• Page 23: "(T)he main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind

• Page 55: "We found that Great Reality (i.e., the God of our own understanding) deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that it can be found." 

• Page 567: "With few exceptions our members find that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource which they presently identify with their own conception of a Power greater than themselves. . . . Most of us think that this awareness of a Power greater than ourselves is the essence of spiritual experience. . . . Our more religious members call it God-consciousness." (Emphasis added.)

True sobriety, I was shown, is a matter of replacing the self-conscious stream of thinking in our minds ('self' or the human 'ego') with a greater awareness and higher consciousness - one unaffected by the seeming duality and separateness of the human ego and our ego-centric thinking.

The "first and most significant mistake" I had made so long ago then became clear to me: Instead of asking my first sponsor what God is, I should have asked what "self" is. After all, it was only a Power greater than my "self" that I would need in order to restore me to sanity, not the God of some of the more perverse religious teachings. It is only once we know, understand, address and overcome the workings of the ego/self through meditation and prayer that we can understand God, Allah, Brahman Bhudda-nature, or whatever you may wish to call It. Indeed, I know that it was only then that I, a former atheist, came to believe and then to experience God's presence within and all around me.

Most helpful, was the following passage from the eminent theologian, Paul Tillich, which was included in Butterworths' "Discover the Power Within You." (Tillich was a friend and colleague of Reinhold Niebuhr, the man who wrote our Serenity Prayer.) In a book of his collected sermons, Tillich talks directly to the atheist about the "depths" of his or her being:

"The wisdom of all ages and of all continents speaks about the road to our depth," Tillich notes. "It has been described in innumerably different ways. But all those who have been concerned - mystics and priests, poets and philosophers, simple people and educated - with that road through confession, lonely self-scrutiny, internal or external catastrophes, prayer, contemplation, have witnessed to the same experience. They have found they are not what what they believed themselves to be, even after a deeper level had appeared to them below the vanishing surface. That deeper level itself became surface, when a still deeper level was discovered, this happening again and again, as long as their lives, as long as they kept on the road to their depth. . . . "

"The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being," he continues, "is God. That depth is what the word God means. . . . For if you know that God means depth, you know much about him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or an unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not. He who knows about depth knows about God."

[Paul Tillich, "The Shaking of the Foundations," Scribners, pp. 56-57.]

That "depth" is an ever-increasing refinement of  consciousness, a consciousness that is inextricably entwined with all matter. In its purest form it is God. "When we became alcoholics," we read in the 'Big Book,' "crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn't. What was our choice to be?" I faced that proposition and came to know that God is, in fact, everything - the manifest and the unmanifested, everything within and everything without all beings and even matter itself.

Having experienced the higher consciousness ( or "God-consciousness") that underlies but is obscured by the ego/self, I came not only to believe, but know, that there is a "Power greater than ourselves" that can restore us to sanity. While I may not understand that higher consciousness in all its facets, I know that it is there at every moment. It is "by self-forgetting" that it is found, and found in the last place most people would think to look for it: "deep down within every man, woman and child."

On Ego as One's Sense of Self

ego / n. (pl. -os) 1 Metaphysics a conscious thinking subject. 2 Psychology the part of the mind that reacts to reality and has a sense of individuality. 3 a sense of self-esteem.

 self / n., adj. & verb (pl. selves) 1 a person's or thing's own individuality or essence (showed his true self). 2 a person or thing as the object of introspection or reflexive action (the consciousness of self). 3 a one's own interests and pleasures (cares of nothing but self) b concentration on these (self is a bad guide to happiness). . . .

[Source: Concise Oxford English Dictionary.]

The Twelve Steps are a process designed to bring about "ego deflation at depth." It is critical, therefore, to understand from the start just what "ego" is. Popularly, "ego" is seen as "pride" or "a sense of self esteem," but in recovery and recovery literature "ego" is used (as above) to denote the individual as "a conscious thinking subject" and/or "that part of the mind that reacts to reality and has a sense of individuality." As such, the term "ego" is used interchangeably with the term "self" (including its derivatives, "yourself,"  "themselves," "ourselves," etc.) to denote a person's sense of "individuality."

"Ego" as a person's "sense of self-esteem," on the other hand, is not used in recovery literature. Rather,  "ego" as a sense of "pride" or "self esteem" is seen as one of the individual's defects of character and is discussed in depth as such in the Step Seven essay in The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, where it is examined as the first of "the Seven Deadly Sins" - pride, greed, anger, lust, gluttony, envy and sloth.

Unfortunately for the individual who is new in recovery, "ego" and "pride" are often confused and discussed as one and the same concept, while "ego" as a person's "conscious thinking subject" or his or her sense of "self" is overlooked. This, despite "selfishness" and "self-centeredness" (rather than "pride" or "self-esteem") being clearly identified as the primary problem of the alcoholic addict (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 62).

"The main problem of the alcoholic," we read at page 22 of the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous, "centers in his mind, rather than his body." Thereafter, we are shown that we need to establish (and resolutely improve) a conscious contact with "a Power greater than ourselves" - i.e., greater than our egos - that will relieve our alcoholic addiction and restore us to sanity. We are shown, therefore, that we need to tap into a deeper consciousness than that of our ordinary ego consciousness if we are to recover. Fortunately, that is precisely what the Twelve Steps are designed to achieve.

In describing the purpose of the book, Alcoholics Anonymous, the author (at page 45) writes:

"Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a Power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves. Obviously. But where and how were we to find this Power?"

"(T)hat's exactly what this book is about," we read. "It's main object is to enable you to find a Power that is greater than yourself which will solve your problem."

The 'how' of finding a Power greater than one's self or ego is straightforward: it is the surrender, self-survey and house-cleaning set out in the Twelve Steps. The 'where' of finding a Higher Power is similarly straightforward, although it may run counter to many of the beliefs we have been raised with. Rather than looking 'out there' or 'up there' for a God of our own understanding, we are directed to look 'within.' Thus, at page 55 of the 'Big Book,' we read:

"(D)eep down in every man, woman, and child, is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there. For faith in a Power greater than ourselves, and miraculous demonstrations of that Power in human lives, are facts as old as man himself."

"We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of our make-up. Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but He was there. He was as much a fact as we were. We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that He may be found." (Emphasis added.)

"With few exceptions," we read in the Spiritual Experience appendix to the 'Big Book', "our members find that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource which they presently identify with their own conception of a Power greater than themselves. Most of us think this awareness of a Power greater than ourselves is the essence of spiritual experience. Our more religious members call it God-consciousness." (Emphasis added.)

God-consciousness, rather than self-consciousness (or ego-consciousness) is thus the solution to our dilemma. A "new state of consciousness and being" (as described at page 107 of The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions) as distinct from the "calamity, pomp and worship of other things" central to the ego, allows us to think, say and do what we were incapable of doing before. It relieves the irritability, restlessness and discontent that characterizes the ordinary, self-consciousness of the alcoholic addict when not drinking or using.

Through working the Twelve Steps, and by practicing meditation, prayer and contemplation, we are thus relieved of "the bondage of self" from which we sought escape with alcohol and/or drugs, and we emerge (however briefly and sporadically at first) into a new consciousness of being devoid of ego, seeking daily to improve our conscious contact with God.

Higher Consciousness and a New State of Being

"When a man or a woman has a spiritual awakening, the most important meaning of it is that he has now become able to do, feel, and believe that which he could not do before on his own unaided strength and resources alone. He has been granted a gift which amounts to a new state of consciousness and being. He has been set on a path which tells him he is really going somewhere, that life is not a dead end, not something to be endured or mastered. In a very real sense he has been transformed, because he has laid hold of a source of strength which, in one way or another, he had hitherto denied himself." (Emphasis added.)

-- The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pp. 106-107 --

Spiritual awakening, as mystics, philosophers and sages have recognized for millennia, amounts to a "new state of consciousness and being," As Carl Jung describes it in the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous: "Ideas, emotions and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them." Yet such a seemingly new state of consciousness and being is not something foreign to any of us. It is innate.

In the Spiritual Experience Appendix (added in the second edition of the 'Big Book' when there were approximately 150,000 alcoholic addicts in recovery) we read that: "With few exceptions our members find that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource which they presently identify with their own conception of a Power greater than themselves." "Most of us," we continue to read, "think this awareness of a power greater than themselves is the essence of spiritual experience. Our more religious members call it "God-consciousness."" (Emphasis added.)

Once one recognizes that the fundamental problem of the alcoholic addict is not booze and/or drugs but "self" (or the ordinary human "ego") - and that booze and or drugs were but artificial, and therefore temporary, solutions to the existential problems of self-consciousness that ultimately failed to work anymore - then one becomes truly able to believe that there is a Power greater than one's "self" that will restore sanity.

It is not that sanity has disappeared per se, but rather that it has become lost to the sufferer. He or she can no longer effect a conscious contact with a Power greater than him or herself which will restore her to sanity. The "unsuspected inner resource" which exists within all of us - the peace and quiet of mind of a higher consciousness - has been obscured by the calamitous, pompous and outwardly focused and worshipful inner dialogue of the ego. "Ego deflation at depth" is, thus, required so that the sufferer can effect a conscious contact with this Higher Power and then turn his or her will and life over to the God of his or her own understanding.

Meditation and prayer are essential to reconnect to this inner core of our being, but the accurate self survey and sharing of our moral inventory are equally necessary to mute our "old ideas, emotions and attitudes." In completing and sharing our moral inventory, by "admitting to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs," certain things happen. "We can look the world in the eye," we read. "We can be alone at perfect peace and ease. Our fears fall from us. We begin to feel the nearness of our Creator. We have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience." (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 75.)

By building on this newfound spiritual experience, by asking for the courage and humility to face the people we have harmed, by making restitution (where possible) for wrongs done, we transform our inner experience. More and more we can be alone and not be prey to the punishing and unrelenting inner dialogue of the egoic self. We move from being utterly self-conscious to potentially God-conscious people.

Yet this "new state of consciousness and being" requires practice if we are to perfect it. When we are wrong - that is, when we act upon the dictates of our lower self rather than those of our higher being - we can promptly admit it and make restitution if harm has been done. Thereby, by conscious and continual attention to just what we are thinking and doing, we continue to deflate the ego and to reinforce our Higher Self.

Most importantly, by the practice of meditation we improve our ability to attain to this new state of consciousness and being, and when we fall short, we pray to be relieved of "the bondage of self." By practicing these basic principles in all our affairs, this hitherto "unsuspected inner resource" truly becomes a working part of our consciousness, and we are indeed transformed.

A New State of Consciousness and Being

". . . (T)he disciplining of the will must have as its accompaniment a no less thorough disciplining of the consciousness. There has to be a conversion, sudden or otherwise, not merely of the heart, but also of the senses and of the perceiving mind."

-- Aldous Huxley --
("The Perennial Philosophy," page 72.)

The Twelve Steps utilized by Alcoholics Anonymous (and its sister organizations) have as one of their principle objectives the goal of "ego deflation at depth." Just as the alcoholic addict drinks and/or uses drugs to counteract and overcome his or her ordinary self-consciousness (or ego-consciousness), so too our ordinary state of egoic self-consciousness must be overcome in sobriety if we are to enjoy the "new state of consciousness and being" that Bill W. describes at page 107 of The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.

A "new state of consciousness and being" may perhaps be better described as a "renewed" state of consciousness and being. That is, in overcoming the thought structures of the ego (or separated "self") we regain the sense of wholeness and completeness we had as children; that is, we regain the state of consciousness and being we had before self-conscious thought became our sense of identity; that is, we are in effect "reborn" (as described at page 63 of the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous).

Our acceding to this renewed state of holistic consciousness and being may rightly be called a "conversion" experience, as it is labelled, above, by Aldous Huxley (one of Bill W.'s many non-alcoholic spiritual friends). And, albeit whether it happens suddenly or over a prolonged period of time, it is clear that such a "spiritual awakening" is the solution to the existential problem of self-inflicted alcoholism and addiction, a point reinforced in Carl Jung's correspondence with Bill W. 

In his letter of January 31, 1961, explaining how one might achieve such a "spiritual awakening," Jung observed:

"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 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."

The Twelve Steps are just such a path "in reality" which leads "to higher understanding." It does not matter, as Jung notes, whether we are led  to this path through a sudden "act of grace," through the "personal and honest contact with friends" which we attain with our sponsors and fellow alcoholic addicts, or through the "higher education of the mind" we attain through prayer and meditation. The point is that there occurs within each of us not only a change of "heart," but also a change in both our "senses and perceptions" that could not have been readily achieved through other, non-spiritual means.

"What often takes place in a few months could seldom have been accomplished by years of self-discipline," we read in the Big Book's Spiritual Experience Appendix. "With few exceptions," we are told, "our members find that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource which they presently identify with their own conception of a Power greater than themselves." "Most of us," we then read, "think this awareness of a Power greater than ourselves is the essence of spiritual experinece," while "(o)ur more religious members call it "God-consciousness.""

We can thus see that is not sufficient just to turn our will and our lives over to the care of the God of our understanding, as set out in Steep Three. We must have as the"accompaniment" of this critical Third Step "a no less thorough disciplining of the consciousness," as Huxley points out.

It is precisely through Steps Four to Step Eleven that we "discipline" our consciousness, moving however slowly from the self-centeredness of our ego-consciousness to the other-centeredness of God-consciousness. It is by following this path "in reality" that we attain to the "new state of consciousness and being" that arrests both our alcoholism and our overwhelming and painful self-consciousness. It is on this "path" that we are "reborn."

The Small Self

"It is our ignorance that makes us think that our self, as self, is real, that it has complete meaning in itself. When we take that wrong view of self, then we try to live in such a manner as to make self the ultimate object of our life. Then we are doomed to disappointment, like the man who tries to reach his destination by firmly clutching the dust of the road. Our self has no means of holding us, for its own nature is to pass on, and by clinging to this thread of self which is passing through the loom of life, we cannot make it serve the purpose of the cloth into which it is being woven."

-- Rabindranath Tagore --
("Sadhana")

 Self manifested in numerous different ways - self-absorption, self-centeredness, selfishness, self-consciousness, egocentricity, etc. - is, we are told, the real problem of the alcoholic addict. Alcohol and/or drug abuse is a symptom of this underlying problem. Thus, we chase an illusory freedom from self each time we drink or use. While it is still effective we gain a temporary reprieve from the "punishing inner dialogue" of our smaller self. Yet, each such time the effects wear off and we return to an identification with a sense of self that is ever larger, ever stronger, and ever more painful. We are, in effect, living to make self-satisfaction "the ultimate object of life," and we are "doomed to disappointment," as Tagore notes (above).

"So our troubles," we read in the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous, "are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme case of self-will run riot, though he ususally doesn't think so. Above everything," we are warned, " we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us!"

Harsh words, but it is a universal truth - for alcoholic addicts and so-called normal people alike. So long as we hold onto, and are identified with, our small selves, we cling to the dust in the road mistaking it for our destination. We cling onto a single thread in a life that is otherwise a tapestry. For the non-alcoholic addict, such clinging leads to a life of frustration and suffering. To the alcoholic addict, it leads back to the bottle, the bag, and eventually the hospital, the psych ward, jail or the morgue.

As alcoholic addicts, we are powerless over booze and drugs, and our lives are unmanageable. But there is one who has all power. That one is God, may you find Him now! For in finding God we awaken to the divinity within, to a greater Self than that of the narrow, egoic self Tagore writes of. And with this Power greater than our narrow self, we are enabled to "trudge the happy road of destiny," rather than clutching vainly to the dust we kick up along the way.

Tagore, the first East Indian to win the Nobel Prize for literature, puts it this way:

"I went out alone
on the way to my tryst,
but who is this 'me' in the dark?
I step aside to avoid his presence,
but I escape him not.
He makes the dust rise
from the earth with his swagger.
He adds his loud voice to every word I utter.
He is my own little self, my Lord.
He knows no shame.
But I am ashamed
to come to thy door in his company."

-- Rabindranath Tagore --
        ("Gitanjali")

Relieve Me of the Bondage of Self

" . . . (T)hinking without awareness is the main dilemma of human existence."

-- Eckhart Tolle --
("A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose")

The fears and desires of a mind prone to obsession, like the mind of the alcoholic addict, cloud out all reality. If unchecked, such fears and desires may drive the sufferer in any of a hundred different directions, none of them good, thereby reinforcing the habitually obsessive nature of a mind that is already afflicted.

"Since most of us are born with an abundance of natural desires," we read in The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, "it isn't strange that we often let these far exceed their intended purpose. When they drive us blindly, or we willfully demand that they supply us with more satisfactions or pleasure than are possible or due to us, that is the point at which we depart from the degree of perfection that God wishes for us here on earth. That is the measure of our character defects, or, if you wish, of our sins."

"As a man thinketh," says the proverb, "so is he." A mind that is consistently besieged by non-stop thoughts - which is the definition of an obsession - will direct actions designed to lessen such insufferable thoughts, oftentimes irrespective of the harm that may be caused. Such egoic, self-centered thinking, led as it is by the fears and desires of the smaller self, thus creates the field (or "measure") in which our shortcomings operate.


The challenge for the individual, then, is how to lift the hold such obsessive thoughts have upon the mind, and the key to such challenge is constant self-awareness. Only by constant vigilance of what the mind is thinking, and by an awareness of the emotions that we experience in response to such thoughts, can we begin to lift the siege.

"Relieve me of the bondage of self" may be the most powerful prayer we have to be rid of our obsessive thinking. At once it is a recognition of the problem - i.e., self - and an invocation for intercession by a Power greater than one's self in order to relieve the sufferer. For, as it is pointed out in the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous (at page 55), we find a "Great Reality deep down within us," but it is only by lifting the siege of the ego that we can effect a conscious contact with this reality.

"(D)eep down in every man, woman, and child is the fundamental idea of God," we read, although this "may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, (and) by worship of other things." It is only by consciously lifting our mind above the ego, above the obsessive thoughts that obscure our true nature and make us miserable, that we are enabled to recover an awareness of our greater Being, and to be returned thereby to sanity.

The Tao of Selflessness

In the Eleventh Step Prayer, we affirm that: "(I)t is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven. It is by dying (to the ego) that one awakens to Eternal Life." Thus we see that a transformation of consciousness is what we are truly seeking, for the so-called normal, egoic consciousness of the alcoholic addict is the basic problem for which booze and/or drugs was once a viable solution - that is, while they still worked to bring us out of our narrow self-consciousness. Anything short of such a transformation of consciousness is bound to be painful and ineffective over the long haul.

In the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous it is pointed out (at pp. 44-45) that mere knowledge and intellectualism is insufficient to overcome alcoholic addiction.

"If a mere code of morals or a better philosophy of life were sufficient to overcome alcoholism," we read, "many of us would have recovered long ago. But we found that such codes and philosophies did not save us, no matter how much we tried. We could wish to be moral, we could wish to be philosophically comforted, in fact, we could will these things with all our might, but the needed power was not there. Our human resources as marshaled by the will, were not sufficient; they failed us utterly."

"Lack of power (is) our dilemma," we are then told, and the purpose of the 'Big Book' is to show us how and where we might find and establish conscious contact with a Power greater than ourselves in order to transform our inner being.

Thus, philosophy and intellectual knowledge are insufficient for our purposes, but actual spiritual experience - if it is real and effectual - will relieve us from the fears and desires that constitute the raw fuel of our lower, egoic self-consciousness. We will find such a Higher Power "deep down within us" we are later told, and this paradoxical discovery - the paradox of all spiritual paths - will solve our dilemma of powerlessness and life's unmanageability.

In the Taoist book of spiritual wisdom, Lau Tzu's "Tao Te Ching," we read:

"Exterminate the sage, discard the wise,
And the people will benefit a hundredfold;
Exterminate benevolence, discard rectitude,
And the people will again be bound;
Exterminate ingenuity, discard profit,
And there will be no more thieves and bandits.
These three, being false adornments, are not enough
And the people must have something
To which they can attach themselves:
Exhibit the unadorned and embrace the uncarved block,
Have little thought of self and as few desires as possible."

 It is by forgetting self - with all the fears and desires that preoccupy our lower thought lives - that we ultimately find recovery, sanity and wholeness in a new, transformational state of consciousness and being.

Pesonal Religion and Finding the God of Your Own Understanding

In recovery, there is no requirement that you believe in the God of your upbringing, nor in the God of any particular faith. Rather, what is suggested is that you find a God of your own understanding. And, as Bill W. points out (at page 27) in The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions: "A.A.'s tread innumerable paths in their quest for faith." Further, in the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous (at page 28), the writer points out that William James, a distinguished Anmerican Psychologist, in his book "The Varieties of Religious Experience," "indicates a multitude of ways in which men have discovered God."

"We have no desire to convince anyone that there is only one way by which faith can be acquired," the 'Big Book' author continues. "If what we have learned and felt and seen means anything at all, it means that all of us, whatever. our race, creed, or color are the children of a living Creator with whom we may form a relationship upon simple and understandable terms as soon as we are honest and willing enough to try. Those having religious affiliations will find here nothing disturbing to thier beliefs or ceremonies. There is no friction among us over such matters."

In "The Varieties of Religious Experience" (at pages 28-29), William James distinguishes between "institutional" and "personal" religion. It is personal religious experience that James, like A.A. (and its sister organizations), is concerned with.

"In the more personal branch of religion," James notes, " it is . . the inner dispositions of man himself which forms the center of interest, his conscience, his deserts, his helplessness, his incompleteness. And although the favor of God as forfeited or gained, is still an essential feature of the story . . . the individual transacts the business by himself alone, and ecclesiastical organizations, with is priests sacraments and other go-betweens, sinks to an altogether secondary place. The relation goes direct from heart to heart, from soul to soul, between man and his maker."

In dealing with the inner being of the alcoholic addict, with "his conscience, his deserts, his helplessness, (and) his incompleteness," the writer of the 'Big Book' notes that invariably the alcoholic addict comes to a point where he or she must decide by themselves just what the God of his or her own understanding is to be.

"When we become alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is noting. God either is, or He isn't. What was our choice to be?"

If we take the provisional position that God is literally everything, this has many, many times served as a common beginning to understanding and faith. Then, working through the 12 Steps we are assured by those who have gone before us that they "found that Great Reality deep down within (them)," and that "(i)n the last analysis it is only there that He may be found."

Thus we are assured that within our being is the fundamental essence of an all-pervading God, an "unsusupected inner resource" that is the essence of spiritual awakening, and which many of the oldest of the old-timers came to know as "God-consciousness." ('Big Book,' Spiritual Experience Appendix, pp. 567-568.) Thus, we become enabled to find, believe in, and experience a God that is truly in and of our own understanding, although the voyage we take to get there is bound to be unique and singular.

The Great Paradox: Lack of Power, Ego and the Depth of Our Being

"Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves. Obviously. But how and where were we to find this Power?" 

-- Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 45 --

Here we have the first and the greatest paradox in recovery. Elsewhere, we read that the alcoholic addict is "selfish" and "self-centered," an acute example of "self-will run riot," and that our difficulties are "self-inflicted." Therefore, we are in need of "a Power greater than ourselves." The paradoxical irony, however is that we find this Higher Power "deep down within us."

Reading page 55 of the Big Book, the author makes clear that this is indeed the case.

". . . (D)eep down in every man, woman, and child," we read, "is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there. For faith in a Power greater than ourselves, and miraculous demonstrations of that power in human lives, are facts as old as man himself."

"We finally saw that faith in some kind of God was a part of our make-up, jsut as much as the feeling we have for a friend. Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but He was there. He was as much a fact as we were. We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that he may be found." (Emphasis added.)

Thus, the paradox. We are told that we must find this "Power greater than ourselves," then we are told that we find that Power "deep down within us." In fact, we are told, that is the only place where such a Power may be found. Is this a fatal paradox? I think not. In fact, I know that it is not. The key to unraveling this paradox - paradoxically - is not to try to understand what is meant by a Higher Power, by God, by the Great Reality etc., but rather to understand what is meant by "self."

"Our actor is self-centered - ego-centric, as people like to call it nowadays," the author of the Big Book writes at page 61. And there's the rub. To the Big Book author, "self" is synonymous with "ego" -  not "ego" as in "pride," but "ego" in its psychological meaning, as "the part of the mind that reacts to reality and has a sense of individuality." Beneath our sense of a separate self, there is the underlying unity of a "Power greater than our selves."

Indeed, the entire Twelve Step program is designed to uncover this hidden, unacknowledged Power that exists within each of us, and it does so by getting rid of the mental calamities, grandiosity and desires which obscure such Power. "The problem of the alcoholic centers in the mind," we read on page 23 of the Big Book; and, paradoxically, so does the solution - only it lies in a far deeper part of our mind and being, in that part of our mind and being accessible initially only by deep meditation and prayer.

In a classic series of sermons, the great 20th-century theologian, Paul Tillich, a close friend and colleague of Reinhold Niebuhr, the author of the Serenity Prayer, observed that there is a fathomless depth to our being, a depth so great and infinite that it is the ultimate Ground of Being.

"The wisdom of all ages and of all continents speaks about the road to our depth," Tillich notes.  "It has been described in innumerably different ways. But all those who have been concerned - mystics and priests, poets and philosophers, simple people and educated - with that road through confession, lonely self-scrutiny, internal or external catastrophes, prayer, contemplation, have witnessed to the same experience. They have found they are not what what they  believed themselves to be, even after a deeper level had appeared to them below the vanishing surface. That deeper level itself became surface, when a still deeper level was discovered, this happening again and again, as long as their lives, as long as they kept on the road to their depth." 

"The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being," he continues, "is God. That depth is what the word God means. . . . For if you know that God means depth, you know much about him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or an unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not. He who knows about depth knows about God."

[Paul Tillich, "The Shaking of the Foundations," Scribners, pp. 56-57.]

Addiction, Freedom and Power

"Lack of power, that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live, and it had to be a Power greater than ourselves. But where and how were we to find this Power?"

"Well, that's exactly what this book is about. Its main object is to enable you to find a Power greater than yourself which will solve your problem."

-- Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 45 --

Couched in a Catholic theological perspective, the attached videos of controversial, ex-Catholic priest, Fr. John Corapi may not be for everyone. (Corapi recently resigned from the ministry, amid unproven allegations of sexual impropriety, as well as drug and alcohol addiction.) Yet, his message on addictions still delivers a poignant warning about the power of drugs, alcohol, gambling and other vices, particularly if there is any truth to the allegations made against him.

Pointing out that freedom, to be true freedom, must operate within the parameters of God, Fr. Corapi observes:

"Freedom is power. Freedom is the power to do not whatever I want to do, but to do what I ought to do. And what should I do? I ought to love God with my whole heart, mind, and strength. But you (have) to be a free person to do that."

"It takes a free man," Corapi observes, "a liberated person, to do what is right and just. You have to be free to love God. . . .You have to be free in order to act in accordance with right reason."

But, he adds, to earn this freedom, the addict must ask for help.

In this experientially-based talk on addiction, Fr. Corapi concludes by telling his audience: "I hope you never read in the newspapers that I ended up dead in a crack house. But," he adds, "don't you ever think that it can't happen."

As one of the many thousands who has been moved by Fr. Corapi's gritty and realistic sermons and lectures about the challenges to faith in our modern age, and the perils of the pleasures that seemed at first to be pearls, I sincerely hope that the allegations made against him are false. All too often, though, I know that a relapse back into addictive behavior is part of an individual's life journey, even after many, many years clean and sober. If this be the case, this does not diminish Fr. Corapi's message on addiction, but rather makes it the more poignant.

Overcoming the Paradox of "Self"

Anyone familiar with 12 Step living has undoubtedly noted the many paradoxical concepts that underlie it: the need to surrender in order to win, coming to A.A, because of our drinking only to find out that drinking is not the problem but a symptom of the problem, how sharing our story with another helps us irrespective of whether it helps the other, etc.

Nowhere are the deep paradoxes underlying our program more apparent, however, than they are when we come to believe "in a Power greater than ourselves" only to find "the Great Reality deep down within us." Solving this "paradox of the self" is, I believe, the key that unlocks our understanding of the 12 Steps, and encourages us in our quest to attain and then "improve our conscious contact with God as we (understand) Him."

Merriam-Webster's dictionary has two germane definitions of "self" that lie at the heart of this paradox. Most commonly, "self" is defined as "the entire person of an individual." Secondarily, it is defined as "the union of elements (as body, emotions, thoughts, and sensations) that constitute the individuality and identity of a person." It is this latter definition, rather than the former and more common meaning, that is being used when we talk of "self" in reference to the 12 Steps; a definition that is consistent with the way that the concept of "ego" is also used in the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous, not as "pride" but as "the self, especially as contrasted with another self or the world." (The Oxford English Dictionary, has another, more helpful definition of "ego," defining it as "the part of the mind that reacts to reality and has a sense of individuality.")

I suspect that many newcomers (and even old-timers) are somewhat stymied in their spiritual development, as I was, because of this underlying confusion as to what is meant when Step Two talks "about a Power greater than ourselves." It sounds like this Power is something exterior to us, rather than a Power that is actually within us, albeit a Power which is obscured by the self/ego and the "calamity. pomp and worship of other things" that are the thought stuff of the self/ego complex.

The 'Big Book' explicitly states (at page 45) that "lack of power" was our dilemma, and that we need "to find a power by which we could live, and that it had to be a Power greater than ourselves." Then it states that "how" and "where" to find such a Power is "exactly" what the 'Big Book' is all about. The "how," I put to you, is through taking the 12 Steps and applying them to one's life, while the "where" is deep down within one's being. In other words, we are not looking externally for a "God of our own understanding," but internally.

Consider the following passage taken from the middle paragraphs from page 55 of the 'Big Book':

". . . (D)eep down in every man, woman and child, is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there. . . . Sometimes we had to search fearlessly, but He was there. He was as much a fact as we were. We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that he may be found."

Consider, also, if you will, the following passage taken from Appendix II of the 'Big Book' (i.e., the Spiritual Experience appendix):

"With few exceptions our members find that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource which they presently identify with their own conception of a Power greater than themselves. Most of us think this awareness of a Power greater than ourselves is the essence of spiritual experience. Our more religious members call it "God-consciousness."" (Emphasis added.)

From the above, it should be clear that we are not looking for some entity that is wholly exterior to us, but rather for a broad yet heretofore hidden aspect of our very being, that wholeness of our being beyond the limited and limiting egoic self which is co-extensive with God.

At page 53 of the 'Big Book' we are shown how "crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that God is everything or else he is nothing. God either is, or He isn't."

By looking outside of our being, instead of looking at our being beneath the limiting self of the ego, we are in essence saying that God is not everything. We exclude ourselves from God and create a false duality that cannot be overcome. It is only in looking deep within our being (mainly through meditation, but also through self-examination and prayer) that we find our own God-consciousness, and come to the realization that we are an integral component of all that is.

And by acting in accordance with - and from the place of - this newfound God-consciousness, we are finally able to rightly align ourselves with the world and its inhabitants, and to overcome the necessary suffering caused by the self/ego complex and thinking - a feeling and a feat we had only been previously able to do under the influence of booze and/or drugs when, and if, they still worked for us.

Chasing Our Desires

Chasing our desires is like blindly chasing dragons. Unexpectedly, they turn on us and we get burnt. Moreover, spiritually it is an impossibility to fulfill our desires, as for every desire or demand that we satisfy, new desires will always arise to take their place. Thus, the alcoholic addict in recovery is threatened as much by his or her success in seemingly conquering life, as he or she ever was by active addiction. The stories of countless A.A.'s contained within the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous and within the confines of our meeting rooms makes clear that, both before and after our active addiction, life remains unmanageable.

The basic problem with our seeking to fulfill what seem to be natural desires by our own means is that, as it so ably expressed in The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions: "Instead of regarding our material desires as the means by which we could live and function as human beings, we (take) these satisfactions to be the final end and aim of life."

[The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 71.]

Mistaking the drives created by our desires in such a manner makes for an obsessive compulsion in the ego to see that all our desires are met, with the fear that they will not be met triggering our acting out in accordance with our character defects in a vain effort to satisfy the unsatisfiable. "The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear," we are reminded, "primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded."

[The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 76.]

"Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands," The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions continues, "we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration. Therefore, no peace was to be had unless we could find a means of reducing these demands."

Since we cannot long stand being in a disturbed and frustrated state - particularly if there seems to be nothing more we should want - finding an inner peace devoid of further desires and their emotionally crippling demands is an imperative if we are to survive our own defects of character.

"Since most of us are born with an abundance of natural desires," Bill writes in his Step Six Essay, "it isn't strange that we often let these exceed their intended purpose. When they drive us blindly, or we willfully demand that they supply us with more satisfactions or pleasures than are possible or due us, that is the point at which we depart from the degree of perfection that God wishes for us here on earth. That is the measure of our character defects, or, if you wish, of our sins."

[The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 65.]

Instinctive desires run wild thus create the mental and emotional space for the ego (or our "self-centered thinking") to operate in. And it is these desires that we must let go of, as they invoke within us the old "ideas emotions and attitudes" that will lead us back into addiction. Therefore the question is, having once "turned our will and our life over to the care of God as we understand him," are we willing to do so continually, leaving our will and our lives (along with our insatiable desires) to be managed by a Power greater than our narrow, egoic "selves"? Steps Six, Seven and Eleven are critical for this continual process of self-forgetting.

Putting aside our desires, and seeking to free ourselves of "the bondage of self," we begin to replace the self-seeking of the ego with a conscious contact with God. Completing the Steps, making amends  where possible, continuing to take a daily inventory, and beginning the sincere practice of prayer and meditation makes this possible.

"There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation and prayer," we read on page 98 of the The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. "Taken separately, these practices can bring much relief and benefit. But when they are logically related and interwoven, the result is an unshakeable foundation."

By seeking to forego our desires in favor of meditation, prayer and a continuing self-inventory, in this manner, we may be granted what amounts to "a new state of consciousness and being" that is truly desireless and therefore fulfilled in its basic nature.

[The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p. 107.]

Step Four: 'The Tao of Fear'

When we put pen to paper and begin to take a moral inventory of ourselves, we read in the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous that it should be "searching and fearless." Writing down the resentments we hold, their cause and how they effect us, we are then told to examine them closely, looking for our own mistakes and listing where we had been "selfish, dishonest, self seeking and frightened."

Looking deeply at our fears, we are told to "put them down on paper, even though we had no resentment in connection with them," as fear is "an evil and corroding thread" that runs through "the fabric of our existence." All these fears, great and small, we are to find, cut us off from what Bill W. called "the sunlight of the Spirit."

[Alcoholics Anonymous, pp. 64-68.]

"Small fear is fearful," writes Thomas Cleary in his translation of  "The Essential Tao," great fear is slow. In action they are like a bolt, an arrow, in their control over judgment. In stillness they are like a prayer, a pledge, in their attachment to victory." Thus, we read in the 'Big Book,' it is fear that "set(s) in motion trains of circumstances which brought us misfortune we felt we didn't deserve."

In the face of fear the human tendency is to fight, take flight or freeze. Consumed and identified as we are with the inner dialogue of the "self" or ego - a psychological phenomenon that is wholly dominated by fear, and the flip side of fear, desire - we usually choose the wrong option, freezing when we should take flight, fighting when we should freeze, etc.

"(Fears) kill like fall and winter," according to the Tao, "in the sense of daily dissolution. Their addictions to what they do is such as to be irreversible. Their satiation is like a seal, in that it disintegrates with age. The mind drawing near to death cannot bring about a restoration of positivity." The relentless and insatiable demands of the ego for perfect security and happiness, indeed, seem to place us beyond human aid.

"Joy, anger, sadness, happiness, worry, lament, vacillation, fearfulness, volatility, indulgence, licentiousness, petentiousness," says the Tao, "are like music issuing from hollows, or moisture producing mildew. Day and night they interchange before us, yet no one knows where they sprout. Stop, stop! From morning to evening we find them; do they arise from the same source?"

And, once again, we find that the source of all these fear-based states of mind is the "ego" - our selfish, self-centered smaller "self." ("The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear," we read in The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, "primarily fear that we wold lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded.")
"If not for other, there is no self," according to the Tao. "If not for self, nothing is apprehended. This is not remote, but we don't know what constitutes the cause. There seems to be a real director, but we cannot find any trace of it. Its effectiveness is already proven, but we don't see its form. . . . Evidently there is a real ruler existing therein: the matter of whether or not we gain a sense of it does not increase or decrease its reality."

"(D)eep down in every man woman, and child," we read in the 'Big Book,' "is the fundamental idea of God. It may be obscured by calamity, by pomp, by worship of other things, but in some form or other it is there. . . . We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis it is only there that it may be found."

[Alcoholics Anonymous, page 55.]

"We can only clear the ground a bit, the 'Big Book' continues. "If our testimony helps sweep away prejudice, enables you to think honestly, encourages you to search diligently within yourself, then, if you wish, you can join us on the Broad Highway. With this attitude you cannot fail. The consciousness of your belief is sure to come to you."

(Excerpts from Thomas Cleary, "The Essential Tao," pp. 70-71.)