Fear, Desire and Defects of Character

In doing our Fourth Step, we are instructed to review our fears "thoroughly," to write them down on paper, even where there is no resentment connected with them. Then we are asked "why" we had such fears, and questioned as to whether or not it is because our "self-reliance" had totally failed us. This realization is helpful in seeing the root cause of the fears (that are elsewhere discussed as being the "chief activator" of our defects of character), but it says very little about the process by which these fears themselves arise.

To understand how and why fear arises within us, one needs to turn to The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, where the "flip-side" of fear - instinctive desire - is discussed. "Every normal person," we read at Step Six, "wants . . . to eat, to reproduce, to be somebody in the society of his fellows. And he wishes to be reasonably safe and secure as he tries to attain these thing." We all have, and will continue to have instinctive desires, it is how we deal with them that determines how and to what extenet fear will continue to rule our lives and dictate our behaviours.

"Since most of us are born with an abundance of natural desires," the reading continues, "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 more satisfactions or pleasures 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, our sins."

Our instinctive drives are very basic. We have a need for air, water, food, clothing and warmth. On top of these we have an instinctive drive for sex, and as social creatures, a place in the human community. For most of us, barring natural or man-made disaster, securing these basic human needs and aspirations is straight forward and far from an impossible feat. Yet, are we satisfied once these needs are met? For most people, it would seem on the face of it, we would have to say "no," based on the behaviour that we see surrounding us. And perhaps, as a class, alcoholic addicts (once clean and sober) are amongst those least satisfied with the lot that falls to them.

Remember, as it says in the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous, that we are "driven people." Are we satisfied with three square meals a day, a roof to sleep under, and a companion and friends with which to share our lives? What about the promotion we now so richly deserve? What about that new car? What about new clothes? What about what other people might think of us? What about the people we want or "need" to impress?

Clearly, as is pointed out, "it is nowhere on the record that God has completely removed from any human being all his natural drives. Why and to what extent, then, do we continue to let our instinctive desires drive us blindly? Why do we allow our desires to create within us the room in which we allow our character defects to operate? Why with our needs for the day met do we obsessively work to ensure that tomorrow's desires - for food, clothes, sex, companionship etc. - will be met in surplus?

One answer may be, as many noted spiritual authorities attest, that there is within us a typically unrecognized desire for transcendence, for something much greater than the here and now. The alcoholic addict's "craving for alcohol (is) on a low level." Carl Jung observed, "the thirst of our being for wholeness, in medieval terms: union with God." And, similarly, I would suggest that our thirst for money, for prestige, power and sex, etc. is a similar misplaced thirst for the transcendent. Out of this thirst, or desire, arises the fear (rightly founded) that this thirst will not be quenched, as, in reality it cannot be. Then, because of this irrational fear, we act out, seeking to grasp more than we could possibly consume, all in a quest for a happiness which ever eludes us.

The solution to this dilemma is, as always, that the God of our understanding can restore us to sanity, if we seek our satisfaction there. This is not common sense. We are not taught this by society. Rather, it is uncommon sense. We need to seek a higher, acceptive consciousness that will allow us to fully accept and enjoy the here and now, instead of remaining mired in the egoic consciousness of "self" which is forever unsatisfied. To access this higher consciousness, and to attain, maintain and improve our conscious contact with a God which relieves our suffering (not only from alcohol or drugs, but also from fear, desire and our character defects) is the purpose of the Twelve Steps.

Step Six: Aiming at Perfection

"We aim at perfection," my sponsor often says, "knowing that we are going to fall short." This, of course, is the gist of the message in the Step Six essay in The Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, which helps us examine if we are "entirely ready" to have all of our character defects removed by the God of our understanding.

Step Six, in essence, asks whether we are ready to lead a wholly spiritual life - a decision that is difficult for all of us.

"(I)t seems plain," we read, "that few of us can quickly or easily become ready to aim at spiritual and moral perfection; we want to settle for only as much perfection as will get us by in life, according, of course, to our various and sundry ideas of what will get us by."

 Accordingly, "the difference between striving for a self-determined objective and for the perfect objective which is of God," is a mark of whether we are "entirely ready" to have our character defects removed through our efforts and with the grace of God. "The key words "entirely ready" underline the fact that we want to aim at the very best we know or can learn," Bill notes.

The difficulty with Step Six, it seems, is that when we honestly look at ourselves, we see that we are almost wholly reliant upon our habitual attitudes to get by, and to "manage" our lives and our interactions with others. Is there much difference between the man who projects a surly and -ill-tempered persona to keep other people walking on eggshells, and the beautiful woman who is alternatively flirtatious and coy in order to get her way with others? And what about the person who projects the image of being meek, mild and deferential? All these, and so many other roles we play, are the stuff of the tragedies and comedies of all ages.

Taking Step Six means that we become ready to drop these false personae and, with faith, allow our true "selves" to emerge from the shadows cast by the false egos we have habitually presented to the world. It is when we becoming willing to take what seems to be a huge risk in presenting our real character, that we embrace the aid and assistance of a Power greater than our small, self-cenetered egos. "This," we read, "is the exact point at which we abandon limited objectives, and move toward God's will for us." But we do not do so alone.

"Draw near to God," we read in the Scriptures, "and God will draw near to you." (James 1:8) As the great American Transcendentalist, Ralph Waldo Emerson observed:

"This intuition of the moral sentiment is an insight of the perfection of the laws of the soul. These laws execute themselves. They are out of time, out of space and not subject to circumstance. Thus in the soul of man there is a justice whose retributions are instant and entire. He who does a good deed is instantly ennobled. He who does a mean deed is by the action itself contradicted."

"If a man is at heart just, then in so far is he God; the safety of God, the immortality of God, the majesty of God do enter into that man with justice. If a man dissemble, deceive, he deceives himself, and goes out of acquaintance with his own being. A man in the view of absolute goodness, adores, with total humility. Every step so downward, is a step upward. The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.

"All things," Emerson observes, "proceed out of the same spirit, and all things conspire with it. Whilst a man seeks good ends, he is strong by the whole strength of nature. In so far as he roves from these ends, he bereaves himself of power, or auxiliaries; his being shrinks out of all remote channels, he becomes less and less, a mote, a point, until absolute badness is absolute death."

"The perception of this law of laws," Emerson suggests, "awakens in the mind a sentiment which we call the religious sentiment, and which makes our highest happiness. Wonderful is its power to charm and to command. It is mountain air."

["The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson," Modern Library Classics, pp. 64-65.]

"(A) blufffing of oneself will have to go the way of many another pleasant rationalization," we read in the Step Six essay. "At the very least, we shall have to come to grips with some of our worst character defects and take action toward their removal as quickly as we can." And it is Step Six which "is the exact point at which we abandon (such) limited objectives, and move toward God's will for us."

Problems of "Fancied Self-Sufficency"

I'm seldom short of astonished when reading the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous or the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (or, indeed, any of the vast collection of AA material) at just how deeply significant and meaningful the material there is  - particularly the material which I just skimmed over, or just plain missed. in my early sobriety. And to make matters worse, for the first five years of my sobriety I belonged to a group where each week we studied the Twleve Steps and Twelve Traditions. It is truly remarkable how effective the "roadblocks of indifference, fancied self-sufficiency and prejudice" were in my case.

[Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, p 28]

I had been rewarded throughout life for my intellect and, indeed punished (or so I perceived I it)  when my intellect failed me  - by dint not just of my alcoholic addiction, but moreso because of my other glaring character defects, in sobriety, chief amongst them being myself-centered fear about how I was going to get on in this life). Therefore, for many years I was loathe to truly turn my will and life over to the care of a God I did not know, didn't understand and, further, didn't believe in, even though I thought I had.

I was the man whose "instinct still cried out, 'Yes, respecting alcohol, I guess I have to be dependent upon A.A., but in all other matters I must retain my independence.'" After all, who else would be concerned with getting my outside to feel like I supposed the insides of others felt? I was the man dominated by "fancied self-sufficiency," yet wholly oblivious to it.

[Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pp  35-36.]

In other words, for many years I remained "the actor" carrying on as best I could, but still suffering "from the delusion that (I) could wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this life if (I) only manag(ed) well." I could accept that when I was drinking and drugging life was unmanageable, but I could not understand and accept that life remains "unmanageable" once I put down the bottle and the bag. Wasn't it my job as a newly sober and responsible" alcoholic to manage my life that was formerly unmanageable?

[Alcoholics Anonymouis, page 61.]

In the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, the discussion of Step Three asks the self-sufficient alcoholic in my situation to look at the so-called "normal' people" and to consider how well they seem to be doing 'managing' a life based entirely on the exercise of their self-will and their own egoic internal direction.

Should his own image in the mirror be too awful to contemplate (and it usually is), "he might first take a look at the results normal people are getting from self-sufficiency. Everywhere he sees people filled with anger and fear, society breaking up into warring factions. Each saying to the others, "We are right and you are wrong. Every such pressure group, if it is strong enough, self righteously imposes its will upon the rest. And everywhere the same is being done on an individual basis. The sum of all this mighty effort is less peace and less brotherhood than before. The philosophy of self-sufficiency is not paying off. Plainly enough, it is a bone-crushing juggernaut whose final achievement is ruin.

[Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 37.]

First published in 1952, seven years after World War II and at the height of the ensuing Korean War, is this description not just as valid today? Tuning in to the nightly news, reading the newspaper or watching the behaviour of other drivers in ordinary traffic ought to be enough to convince anyone that it is just a valid description of so-called "normal prople' today, if not more so.

So what is the alcoholic addict to do? We can't drink or drug and we can't just act like other people? How then do we act, ans what do we rely on when figuring out how to act? The answer, as so often is the case in this 'simple program for complicated people' may be found in our very basic principles. "Let Go and Let God" is one of the slogans we may use to great effect. Admit that one is not only "powerless over alcohol," but admit also that one's life has, in fact become unmanageable," and was all along.

Perhaps the best illustration of this idea of 'letting go' and ceasing to struggle to control one's life and the lives of others - even with the best of intentions - is found in the point form summary of our  entire program of "self-examination:, meditation and prayer." At the end of the "How It Works reading, the "three pertinent ideas" speak directly to the truth that life is inherently unmanageable, both before and after we quit drinking.

Our description of the alcoholic, the chapter to the agnostic, and our stories before and after make clear three pertinent ideas:

(a) That we were alcoholic and could not manage our own lives.
(b That probably no human power could have relieved our alcoholism.
(c) That God could and would if He were sought.

 We then read, that "being convinced we were at Step Three, which is that we made a decsion to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand Him,"  we are now required to understand that "any life run on self-will can hardly be a success." Therefore, for success in attaining and maintaining sobriety, and for living a contented and purposeful life, we need to have or develop a faith (even on a trial basis) that life is already being managed quite well, and that our trying to take over management of it is, at best, superfluous and at worst dangerous .

Take it from this member who came to AA for help with his drinking problem; today, 22 years into my sobriety, the things I have lost in sobriety were the things that I tried to manage the most; while the gifts that surprised me the most, and that I cherish the most, came unexpectedly out of left field.

So when I have a problem today, it is at root a Step One problem. I have moved in to manage some aspect of my life that I have no business running. My stubborn intellectual self-sufficiency has cropped up again, and damn it, this time I'm right!

That's why, no matter how long I'm sober it pays to have a sponsor. He can usually see right through me to the root of the problem - self sufficiency - while I remain opaque.