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."

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."

Quieting the Mind: 'The Tao of the Doughnut Hole'

To lead a contented and purposeful life, the alcoholic addict in recovery is dependent upon a "spiritual awakening" - the opening up of a 'new' consciousness, beneath and above the internal dialogue of the 'ego,' or what we ordinarily thnk of as self-consciousness - as well as the daily maintenance of the 'spiritual condition' of what is really the 'renewed consciousness' of our fundamental innocence.

I call it a 'renewed,' or 'recovered' innocence  - the two words share a common meaning - because it is an innocence which we have experienced more or less often as children before the onset of the constant internal voice of the ego took firm hold. After all, it is fundamentally this "painful inner dialogue" and the accompanying discomfort of the 'existential pain' of unrelenting self-consciousness that the drink and/or the drugs relieved us of. "We loved the effect alcohol had on us" precisely because of the extemporaneous internal relief from the constant thinking and emotions which arise through our self-consciousness; relief from the sense of being an 'actor' on stage without his or her lines.

But if we are to let go of our "old ideas" and the attitudes that foster them, if we are truly able to admit the fundamental unmanageability of the whole of life by us and "turn our will and our lives over to the care of God" as we understand (or grasp to understand) God, what will become of us?

To accept that we are powerless to run our own lives goes against all the instincts of the ego and the 'lessons' we've learned in life. We have been taught, in a certain sense, that life is a problem to be figured out, and that we must somehow figure out how to figure it out.

Turning our 'will' (our decision-making about what we will do or say) and our 'lives' over to the care of an 'innermost reality' that we have - let's face it - very little understanding of goes against all the inner emotional pressure we face to 'appear' just like so-called 'normal people' and everybody else; that is, firmly in control of ourselves and confident in our inner core at all times. (Small wonder, then, that we so often hear how our fellow alcoholic addicts talking about having wished they felt like other people looked.)

So what is the result of this big, existential and fundamental challenge we face? Usually, unless we can truly "admit complete defeat," as it says in Step One of the "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions," it is a profound reluctance to "Let Go and Let God," and an internal, reluctant dialogue and rationalization that goes much like this:

"Yes, respecting alcohol, I guess I have to be dependent upon A.A., but in all other matters I must still maintain my independence, Nothing is going to turn me into a nonentity. If I keep on turning my life and my will over to the care of Something or Somebody else what will become of me? I'll look like the hole in the doughnut."

("Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions," page 36.)

And this is the point. The hole is the essence of the doughnut. The rest is eaten, but the hole remains. In turning our will and our lives over to the care of a Power greater than ourselves and our egoic, self-centered thinking are we ready to trust (even on an experimental basis) that we can rely on the essence of our being?

In the great Taoist treatise, Lao Tzu's "Tao Te Ching," we read:

"The thirty spokes converge on one hub, but the usefulness of the cart is a function of the 'nothingness' inside the hub. We knead clay to shape a pot, but the usefulness of the clay pot is a function of the 'nothingness' inside it. We construct windows and doors to make a room, but the usefulness of the room is a function of the 'nothingness' inside it. Thus, it might be 'something' that we attain that provides function and value, but it is by the virtue of  'nothing' that we can put it to use." (Tao Te Ching, XI)

In a very real sense we construct our own mental prison that locks us into our alcoholic, self-centered and self-absorbed attitudes. "What will become of me? I'll be like the hole in the doughnut," the ego cries out. It is precisely this thinking that perpetuates alcoholic suffering, active or inactive.

"This," we read, "is the process by which instinct and logic seek to bolster egotism and frustrate spiritual development." To overcome this process, it is necessary to face and face down our instinctive fears of not being able to survive without trying to exert control over our world and the people in it, To overcome this process we need to slow down and quiet our logical processes that tell us we will find a solution that will take care of our illusory problems if we just give it enough thought.

And it is precisely here that the practice of Step Three needs to kick in. Every time we do not know what to do and our emotions are in overdrive we need to recognize, through the practice of self-examination, just what a perilous situation our egoic minds have once more put us into. Then, just as it says in the "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions," we are able to pause, recenter on the essence of our being, and from the quiet and stillnes of that essence, simply say:

"God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference."

"Thy will, not mine be done."

There is only one thing we can "change" in an instant, and that is the level of our thinking. To know the fundamental difference between the  thoughts of the ego and our inner essence - between the doughnut and the doughnut hole - and to recognize that the function of the quiet void below the raucous 'noise' of the ego is to provide "serenity" and safe haven, is true "wisdom" that is indeed worthy of the Tao.