Suffering and Spiritual Awakening

"As long as we placed self-reliance first, a genuine reliance upon a Higher Power was out of the question. That basic ingredient of all humility, a desire to seek and do God's will, was missing."

"For us, the process of gaining a new perspective was unbelievably painful."

". . . In every case (however), pain (has) been the price of admission into a new life. But this admission price has purchased more than we expected. It brought a measure of humility, which we soon discovered to be a healer of pain. We began to fear pain less, and desire humility more than ever."

". . . We saw we needn't always be bludgeoned and beaten into humility. It  could come quite as much from our voluntary reaching for it as it could from unremitting suffering." (Emphasis added.)

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, pages 72 & 76

Arctic explorer, Knud Rasmussen, (1879-1933), returned to Europe with stories of the suffering endured by Inuit shamans, the "medicine men" of the High Arctic, in their ritual initiations. One such shaman, Igjugarjuk, told Rasmussen how as a young adolescent he had been taken out on the ice-floes by an elder shaman. There, in the constant dark and cold of a polar winter, he had been left by himself in a snow shelter for forty days with minimal contact in order that he might meditate upon "the Great Spirit," and thereby attain a spiritual awakening.

"Sometimes I died a little," Igjugarjuk said. But, then, he told Rasmussen, "a helping spirit" arrived "in the form of a woman who seemed to hover in the air above (me)." After this, he was taken home by the elder shaman, there to diet and fast for an additional five months under the elder shaman's guidance. Such ordeals, he told Rasmussen, are "the best means of attaining a knowledge of hidden things."

"The only true wisdom," lgjugarjuk said, "lives far from mankind, out in the great loneliness, and can be reached only through suffering. Privation and suffering alone open the mind of a man to all that is hidden to others."

Najagneq, circa 1922

Another shaman, Najagneq, told Rasmussen of his "venture into the silence," an ordeal in which he met the spirit he called Sila - a spirit, according to Najabneq, that "cannot be explained in so many words." "Sila," he told Rasmussen, is "a very strong spirit, the upholder of the universe, of the weather, in fact of all life on earth. (A spirit) so mighty that his speech to man comes not through ordinary words, but through storms, snowfall, rain showers, the tempests of the sea, all the forces that man fears, or through sunshine, calm seas, or small, innocent, playing children who understand nothing."

"When times are good," Najagneq told Rasmussen, "Sila has nothing to say to mankind. He has disappeared into his infinite nothingness and remains away as long as people do not abuse life but have respect for their daily food. No one has ever seen Sila," he said. "His place of sojourn is so mysterious that he is with us and infinitely far away at the same time."

"The inhabitant or soul of the universe," Najagneq said, "is never seen; its voice alone is heard. All we know is that it has a gentle voice, like a woman, a voice so fine and gentle that even children cannot become afraid. And what it says is: 'Sila ersinarsinivdluge,'" i.e., "There is nothing to be afraid of in the universe."

(From Schizophrenia: The Inward Journey, by Joseph Campbell)

The alcoholic addict, in recovery, knows much about suffering - both the untreated suffering of addiction, and the suffering that is frequently endured in sobriety as he or she awakens to to the spiritual power that resides "deep down in every man woman and child." (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 55.)

"Faith is a dark night for man," St. John of the Cross wrote in The Dark Night of the Soul, "but in this very way it gives him light. . . . Like a blind man he must lean on dark faith, accept it for his guide and light, and rest on nothing of what he understands, tastes, feels, or imagines. . . . To reach the supernatural bounds a person must depart from his natural bounds and leave self far off in respect to his interior and exterior limits in order to mount from a low state to the highest."

"When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or avoid," writes Bill W. (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 53), "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?"

Painful as it may be, for every alcoholic addict has a lower or higher pride - be it pride of intellect, pride of independence, pride of person, pride of strength, or even pride of faith - each such person, on attaining true humility, will have passed his or her 'Dark Night of the Soul' and will have attained to a quiet consciousness of the Spirit, or God, that pervades their being and the world around them.

The Ego and Its Resentments: Anger, Anguish and Angst

"It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worthwhile. But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business is infinitely grave. We found that it is fatal. For when harboring such feelings we shut ourselves off from the sunlight of the Spirit. The insanity of alcoholism returns and we drink again. And with us, to drink is to die."

"If we were to live, we had to be free of anger. The grouch and the brainstorm were not for us. They may be the dubious luxury of normal men, but for alcoholics these things were poison."

-- Alcoholics Anonymous, page 66 --

"Anger," according to a Chinese proverb, "is a corrosive poison, that eats away the vessel that holds it from the inside out." In Buddhism, it is recognized as one of "the three poisons," along with lust and ignorance, that produce dukkha (i.e., suffering), and thus blocks the individual from the higher consciousness of nirvana. And, the great Roman philosopher, Seneca, observed that "anger, if not restrained, is frequently more hurtful to us than the injury that provokes it."

Thus, we see that in virtually all traditions, the destructive force of anger has long been recognized; Nonetheless, looking out at the world around us  - from the frustrations of the traffic jam, to road rage, to the seemingly unending wars, terrorism and ongoing strife that are regular features on the nightly news - we seem to see an evermore impatient, fearful and angry world. Thus, we see that the "dubious luxury" of anger is not working out very well for so-called "normal men," and we can be forewarned that it is even more perilous for us.

Anger, anguish, and angst - our distemper, suffering and fears - are all symptomatic of a life lived in the throes of the egoic self, rather than in "the sunlight of the Spirit." Inevitably, if unchecked, these symptoms of our deeper soul sickness will lead the sufferer back into the throes of active addiction. "The spiritual life is not a theory, we have to live it." And we cannot live a spiritual life while harboring anger and deep resentments. Thus, the imperative need to move into the action steps - Steps Four through Step Nine - to strip away the resentments that mask our true nature as spiritual beings.

The inner thought stream of the ego - what Bill once called the "painful inner narrative" of self - will not be gotten rid of (or, at least, deflated "at depth") without our effort. Identifying our resentments, seeing how they affect us, determining our part in them, and then making amends for the hurtful actions that caused or arose from them, are thus essential if we are to live consciously in this spiritual life.

The alternatives to not facing the anger, anguish and angst of the ego may, indeed, prove fatal.

Despair, Hope and the Nature of a Spiritual Awakening

For permanent and contented sobriety, the alcoholic addict in recovery is dependent, first, in attaining a spiritual awakening and, secondly, on the daily maintenance of his or her spiritual condition.

"If, when you honestly want to," we read in the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous, "you find that you cannot quit entirely, of if when drinking, you have little control over the amount you take, you are probably alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be suffering from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer."

[Alcoholics Anonymous, page 44.]

Carl G. Jung
(1875-1961)

But what is the nature of such a "spiritual experience" and what might trigger such a process? In the 'Big Book', Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung, is said to have described such "spiritual experiences" as being "phenomena . . . (which) appear to be in the nature of huge emotional displacements and rearrangements." Importantly, he notes that the existing "ideas, emotions and attitudes" of the alcoholic are replaced with "a completely new set of conceptions and motives."

[Alcoholics Anonymous, page 27.]

A.A. co-founder (and principal author of the 'Big Book'), Bill Wilson, famously experienced just such a sudden and unexpected spiritual awakening just prior to his receiving treatment for his chronic alcoholism at Townes Hospital in New York in December of 1934. At the time, his sudden and profound conversion experience initially scared the formerly agnostic Wilson. He sought assurance from his attending physician that he had not gone completely insane, and was somewhat reassured that he had not. Later, his sponsor, Ebby T., brought him a copy of William James' "The Varieties of Spiritual Experience." Reading this volume, Wilson was further reassured, not only of his sanity, but of the reality and efficacy of the spiritual awakening he had undergone.

"Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it," James observes, "is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different."

"We may go through life without suspecting their existence," he notes, "but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation."

"No account of the universe in its totality," he writes, "can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them," he notes, "is the question - for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness."

"Yet," he observes, "they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region though they fail to give a map. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality."

[Wm. James, "The Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 388.]

William James
(1842 -1910)

It seems probable from Wilson's varied writings, including his account in the 'Big Book,' that there were two stimuli which sparked his sudden and unexpected "spiritual awakening." The first was his attending physician's diagnosis that he would soon die or have to be institutionalized as a result of his uncontrollable drinking. The second it seems, was the hope that his sponsor, Ebby inspired in him. Together with the assurance that he could rely on a God of his own conception, Bill describes how his intellectual reservations melted away when Ebby visited him, and how he "stood in the sunlight at last."

The presence of profound despair and the infusion of sudden hope, it seems, sparked Bill's awakening, and his reaction to these emotional stimuli - i.e, his sudden and profound spiritual awakening - it turns out, was not necessarily abnormal. In "The Varieties of Religious Experience," James describes precisely how such a violent swing of emotions can trigger the emotional rearrangement that he (like Jung) characterizes as the essence of a spiritual awakening or "conversion."

"Emotional occasions, especially violent ones," James observes, "are extremely potent in precipitating mental rearrangements. This sudden and explosive ways in which love, jealousy, guilt, fear, remorse or anger can seize upon one are known to everybody. Hope, happiness, security, resolve, emotions characteristic of conversion, can be equally explosive."

"And," he points out, "emotions that come in this explosive way seldom leave things as they found them."

[Wm. James, "The Varieties of Religious Experience," p. 198.]

Thus, experience shows how it is possible that an alcoholic addict in recovery, sharing at depth with another who is in emotional despair, may help precipitate a spiritual awakening that will relieve the sufferer from his or her addiction.

Of course, as was the case with Ebby and Bill, it is also necessary to show the sufferer exactly what steps he or she must take to assure the effectiveness of such an awakening. For, as William James notes, above, such experiences "open a region (of consciousness) though they fail to give a map."

"Frothy Emotional Appeal Seldom Suffices"

How often do we sit in a meeting and hear it deteriorate into a testimonial of all the good things that have happened to people that have sobered up? "Keep Coming Back!," we are cheerily advised. "Go to 90 meetings in 90 days, and if it doesn't work, we'll refund your misery!," is often glibly added.

While such comments are undoubtedly well-intended, and are of some limited benefit to the new member who is beginning to work the 12 Steps, they do little, if anything, for the still-suffering alcoholic - be they newcomers wondering how they can possibly stay clean and sober, or old-timers who are going through one of the curve balls life throws.

"Frothy emotional appeal seldom suffices," we read in the introductory "Doctor's Opinion" section of the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous. "The message which can interest and hold these alcoholic people must have substance and weight. In nearly all cases," we read, "their ideals must be grounded in a power greater than themselves, if they are to re-create their lives."

While identification with a fellow suffer is crucial, the suffering (or still-suffering) alcoholic addict does not need an assurance that life gets better or easier in recovery, he or she needs concrete advice and illustrations of what he or she needs to do and how to do it. If he or she does nothing but go to 90 meetings in 90 days, be assured that you will not need to refund their suffering, they will be suffering tremendously, if they make it at all.

Bill W. once observed that there was nothing original in the program of Alcoholics Anonymous - i.e., in the Twelve Steps themselves - and that the only thing that was unique to A.A. was the ability of one alcoholic to relate to another alcoholic and his or her experience in depth.

Let's face it, there is quite often a great sense of relief when the alcoholic addict cleans up and sobers up. If he or she has not hit a low bottom, life rapidly becomes "better" almost solely because one is no longer drinking and/or drugging. Initial sobriety, itself, can therefore seem to be recovery itself. (This initial relief is sometimes referred to as a "pink cloud.") But, "the problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind," and the still-suffering (or yet-again suffering) alcoholic needs (a) identification with his or her state of mind, (b) assurance that others have experienced and lived through the mental crisis he or she is facing, and (c) precise directions as to how others have recovered from the same mental distress he or she finds themself in.

"Frothy emotional appeal seldom suffices." Identify with the sufferer, and his or her trials and tribulations. Share your experience with the same challenges he or she faces. Tell the still suffering alky precisely what you did to overcome your difficulties. Offer your help. Help guide the sufferer to the 12 Steps, or back to the 12 Steps. Take him or her through the 'Big Book' and you may save a life. Telling him or her merely to "put the plug in the jug," and that everything will be great in 90 days of 90 meetings, is not helpful and may do irreparable harm.

Life's Inherent Unmanagability: From Fear to Acceptance

"Life is inherently unmanageable," say the Greek Stoics, but this is the antithesis of all we learn, and all we are fed by media advertisers in our modern consumer culture. That "painful inner dialogue" all too often tells us, "With the right investment account, the right shoes, the right hair colouring, the right prescription, you too can enjoy 'the good life!'"

But it is all a fiction. And meanwhile, we live in a manufactured fear that we are not 'winning' in the game of life, that somehow our lives (unlike the lives we see on television, or imagine all around us) are 'unmanageable;' and, worse yet, that there there must be 'something' out there, some product or adventureous 'change', that will magically make our life not only 'manageable,' but somehow flawless, beautiful and majestic - just like the lives that are portrayed to sell such products.

"It is a spiritual axiom," we read at page 99 of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, "that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us." Even if our upset is just a general 'dissatisfaction' with our lives, and a subtle feeling that somehow, some way we should be 'managing' things better, and that better 'things' should be in our life.

This is perhaps the biggest con game that the ego (our self-consciousness) uses against us, and it leads many alcoholic addicts in recovery - and nearly all non-alcoholics - into a state of despair at some point in their lives, even if only at their life's end.

That life is inherently unmanageable is an ageless truth that is addressed in the famous passage on acceptance in the 'Big Book,' and which is also addressed, below, by the best-selling author and spiritual teacher, Eckhart Tolle, a non-alcoholic with profound insights into the addiction we all have to our egoic minds.

“… (A)cceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation - some fact of my life - unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in [this] world by mistake… . (U)ntil I accept life completely on life’s term, I cannot be happy. I need to concentrate not so much on what needs to be changed in the world as on what needs to be changed in me and my attitudes.”

["Alcoholics Anonymous," 4th ed. page 417.]

We learn in Alcoholics Anonymous (or any one of AA's sister 12 Step recovery groups) that our lives do not become suddenly and magically manageable once we give up our addiction, but rather that life becomes acceptable to us, no matter the gains or losses that life hands to us along its path.

On Attachment and Addiction: What Would Buddha Do?

For some, it may be helpful to understand a little of what Buddhist teachings and an Eastern perspective have to say about addiction, as addiction to thoughts, emotions, people, places, and things, in general, are said to be the "root of suffering" in the Buddha's teaching.

In the attached video, Ram Dass (the former Harvard psychiatrist and spiritual teacher, who is no stranger to addiction himself) examines addiction, and its "root cause," our attachments to our mistaken thoughts about just 'who' we are and 'what' will ultimately make us happy.

Ram Dass

"When you look at addictions," says Dass, "it's not like 'evil,' it is just an attempt to 'get back.' The problem is that most behaviours that get you back. . . . It's like Maharaji (Mahesh Yogi) said about drugs. He said, "It will allow you to be in the presence of Christ, but you can only stay two hours." He said, "It would be better to become Christ than to visit it.". . . . And that's what you find out with most addictive things, that they give you a short rush, but they don't allow you to remain 'at home.' They just allow you the taste of it. And then the minute you get thrown out  . . You go back to heaven, but you can't stay because you didn't come in through the right way."

"You end up feeling like, 'I've done something wrong; I'm bad.' And that starts a reaction of mind. You come down, then you feel guilt. 'I must be bad.' 'I should of done something else.' 'Why didn't I do the practices that would have allowed me to stay there, rather than the thing that's short-term?' Because you see your predicament."

"What happens is that the opportunity for the immediate gratification. . . . In psychology, the choice of the 'little candy bar now,' or the 'big candy bar later' . . .  With little children they'll always grab the 'little candy bar now,' because they want what they can get now. They don't have any delay of gratification. And spiritual practices, compared to having sex, or compared to taking coke or something, is more like delayed gratification, rather than immediate gratification."

"So," he says, "when you start to stand back and see your predicament, and see what you are doing, there is a way from a spiritual perspective in which you begin with that slight bit of awareness to extricate yourself from the 'chain of reactivity' (that feeds one's addictive thought-habits)."

"To the unawakened mind," says the Buddha, "life is dhukka, suffering. The root cause of suffering is our addiction or aversion to what we think will makes us happy." And, says the Buddha, "to end the suffering, one must end the addiction, the craving and clinging to what we think will bring happiness." And to end that addiction, he too, like Ram Dass 2,500 years later, recommends a spritual practice. In the Buddha's instance, forming right views and right understanding; engaging in right speech, right action' right livelihood and right effort; and, practicing right meditation and right contemplation."

And such seems to be the shared experience and lessons garnered by alcoholic addicts in the fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous, or its sister programs. In the "We Agnostics" chapter in the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous, we read:

"If, when you honestly want to, you find you cannot quit entirely, or if when drinking, you have little control over how much you take, you are probably alcoholic. If that be the case, you may be sufferinfg from an illness which only a spiritual experience will conquer."

["Alcoholics Anonymous," page 44. Emphasis added.]

 Thus, for millenia, the teaching has proven true, that addictions of the mind and the body, may be broken through spiritual practice and the resultant spiritual awakening which comes with practicing spiritual principles.

The "Still Suffering" Alcoholic

I did not attend meetings or belong to A.A. for nearly five years during my "recovery." Hence I picked up a five-year medallion and a fifteen-year medallion, but no ten-year medallion. The results were enormous suffering for my wife, my children, my extended family, employer and friends, and me.

An influential man from my early sobriety ended this "spiritual drought" by reaching out to me and taking me to my first meeting in nearly five years. Synchronisticly, the meeting was in my old home town and I knew the speaker. However, she was not from that town, nor had I known her when I had been attending meetings regularly. She was the sponsor of one of my then wife's remaining AA friends, and I had met her twice during my prolonged dry spell through this mutual friend.

"Sandy" got up to the podium to speak, but could not. I never did find out what the trouble was that she was going through that evening, but she could not begin her talk. She could only cry. After about five minutes, and after being given the opportunity to pass on giving the evening talk, she finally got it together enough to begin. I will never forget what she said.

Sparingly, and through muffled pain, she said, "When the newcomer comes through these doors, I am responsible and I want the hand of AA to be there. For that I'm responsible. But you can be three months, or three years . . . or thirty years sober and still suffer. And when that happens I want, I need the hand of A.A. to be there."

An electric jolt literally went up my spine. It was a phenomenon I cannot explain, but her words touched me in a way that was unique. Like her, like the newcomer, I was in the grips of very deep and very grave suffering. But, I have learned since then that at any point in time I am either recovering or relapsing, I am either growing spiritually or suffering. And today, I know the choice is mine. Carlos Castenada's spiritual teacher, the nagual Don Juan, told him, "We either make ourselves strong, or we  make ourselves miserable. The amount of effort is the same."

Over the next three-and-a-half years, I worked with an old-timer who took me back through the Big Book and the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, and together we walked a long way along our spiritual paths. The old-timer was slowly dieing, however, and I watched as his one leg was amputated, and then amputated a second time above the knee. And I was at his bedside all through his final battle with lung cancer. And all through our spiritual journey, he would tell me over and over, "For us, the process of gaining a new perspective (is) unbelievably painful."

The words are from Step Seven of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (at page 72), but my friend was not talking about the physical pain. He was talking to the unbelievable pain that comes from first facing and then facing down our egos, and the fears, shame, regret and remorse that our egoic self-consciousness brings up time after time.

I can still hear the deep Scottish brogue coming from the withered little, one-legged Scotsman. "Unbelievably painful," he would say, "not mildly painful, not irritating . . . unbelievably painful!"

Step Seven in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions has a lot to say about the "still suffering" alcoholic in sobriety.

"For us," it reads, "the process of gaining a new perspective was unbelievably painful. It was only by repeated humiliations that we were forced to learn something about humility. It was only at the end of a long road, marked by successive defeats and humiliations, and the final crushing of self-sufficiency, that we began to feel humility as something more than a condition of grovelling despair."

Humility is, in fact as well as in word, the most natural state of simply being "human." The words are closely related and have the same Greek root, humus, meaning 'ground.' We are, it turns out, just small parts of the Ground of Being. And, "(w)here humility formerly stood for a forced feeding on humble pie, it now (begins) to mean" we read, "the nourishing ingredient which can give us serenity."

The definition of "humility" that Doctor Bob kept on a plaque on his desk reads:

Dr. Bob (1879 -1950)

HUMILITY

Perpetual quietness of heart. It is to have no trouble, It is never to be fretted or vexed, irritable or sore; to wonder at nothing that is done to me, to feel nothing done against me.

It is to be at rest when nobody praises me, and when I am blamed or despised, it is to have a blessed home in myself where I can go in and shut the door and pray to my Father in secret and be at peace, as in a deep sea of calmness, when all around and about is seeming trouble.

"This improved perception of humility starts another revolutionary change in our outlook," the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions tells us, at page 74. "Our eyes begin to open to the immense values which have come straight out of painful ego-puncturing."

Again, with the "painful" experience of facing and facing down our smaller "self," the human ego!

It wasn't until many months after we buried my friend, however, that the full import of his warning that dying to 'self' is "unbelievably painful" struck home. There, at the back of Bill's essay on Step Seven, he writes:

"We saw we needn't always be bludgeoned into humility. It could come quite as much from our voluntary reaching for it as it could from unremitting suffering. A great turning point in our lives came when we sought for humility as something we really wanted, rather than as something we must have. It marked the time when we could commence to see the full implication of Step Seven: Humbly asked him to remove our shortcomings."

[Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 75. Emphasis added.]

Thus, we have a choice. We can either make our true "inner selves" strong by humbly facing down the  fears, worries and desires of the small 'self,' or we can hold onto our old, egoic attitude and it's old ideas and "make ourselves miserable." The amount of effort is the same.

When my acquaintance could not begin her talk, it was because she was going through the "unbelievably painful" process of letting go of the ego's story about whatever was "wrong" at that time. I wouldn't come to know for several years thereafter the true meaning and desirability of humility. Just as being honest means that I never have to remember "the story;" so the availability of true humility means I have the choice to pay attention to, or remember the ego, and its unbelievably painful "old ideas," or I can let "it" and "them" go. And, it is in this "letting go" of the ego and its stories, that God removes my defects of character and the "unremitting suffering" that accompany them. This. I believe, is the essence of the AA slogan, "Let Go and Let God."

Three Paths: Self-Examination, Meditation and Prayer

As alcoholic addicts "in recovery" we are blessed people. Most addicts will die without ever knowing recovery . . . perhaps without knowing, or believing, there is such a thing as recovery. Many friends we ran with are already gone. And, even most the so-called "normal" people will go their own graves questioning if there is such a thing as God . . . or, worse yet, 'bargaining' with him. Very few will awaken to the reality that underneath their ordinary ego-consciousness lies the Infinite and the Divine.

"For the most of us the secret of man still remains to be mastered. What has lain dark in the earlier centuries remains unrevealed. . . . The majority of men will die without caring and without knowing whether man has something divine in him or is a mere skin-bag of flesh, blood, bones nerves and muscles. They are strangers to their own selves.
          (Paul Brunton, "Discover Yourself," page 133.)

However, to reap the blessings that recovery offers, it is essential that we work to attain the higher levels of "God-consciousness" that are available within us. The 12 Steps require a concerted and daily practice of prayer, meditation and self-examination to do so.

While prayer - like self-examination and, particularly, meditation - is 'good in and of itself' and "can bring much relief and benefit," It is when meditation, self-examination and prayer "are logically related and interwoven" that they provide us with "an unshakeable foundation for living." ("Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions," page 98.) We begin the process of "self-examination" by writing out a 4th Step moral inventory, and continue to (or continuously) take a "fearless moral inventory" through application of Step 10. In Step 11, both prayer and meditation are required.

Meditation without prayer is mute; prayer without meditation is deaf; either, without an initial and continuing self-examination, are bound to fall short of providing a sane, happy and purposeful life, as one will basically be talking and listening to one's "self."

Without consistent and persistent "self-examination, we are blinded to the spiritual reality that we are far greater than, and separate from, that "painful inner dialogue" of our egoic "self." If we are to establish and build a channel to our higher consciousness (or "God-consciousness," as the more religious call this inner resource), we need to discipline our apparent "self" so that it may be "reduced at depth."

Remember the cautionary warning we are given in Step Three of the "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions," pp. 39-40: "More sobriety brought about by the admission of alcoholism and by 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."

Add caption

Those who work through - and then work on - the 12 Steps are offered a gift that is rare, and perhaps rarer still in the world outside of meetings and our circles of friendships. As Swami Vivikenanda, one of the first and great Eastern spiritual teachers to visit the West in the early 1900s, observed:

" . . . (N)ot one in a million can think of anything other than phenomena. To the vast majority of men nature appears to be only a changing, whirling, combining mingling mass of change. Few of us ever have a glimpse of the calm sea beneath."

* * * * *
The alcoholic addict in recovery is truly a blessed person . . . and all our suffering was just a blessing we could not see at the time!

Addiction and Aversion - The Root Causes of the Ego's Suffering

"We are not allied with any sect . . ."

We are so fortunate that Bill, Dr. Bob and the collective consciousness of A.A. as a whole chose not to ally our movement with "any sect, denomination, politics organization or institution." Since they did, it allows the alcoholic addict who is an A.A. member to explore all of the world's religious and wisdom traditions to find what they may have to add to his or her sobriety. (Remember, "we have no monopoly" and we ought to be "quick to see where religious people are right.")

The Foreword to the Second Edition of Alcoholics Anonymous, first released in 1955, tells us that there are a broad range of A.A. members from many religious backgrounds: "Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Hindus, and a sprinkling of Moslems and Buddhists." The same Second Edition of the 'Big Book' also includes the Spiritual Experience Appendix for the first time. In it we read that, of the then 150,000 or so members, "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."

It was the majority view that this "unsuspected inner resource" (after all, who would think to look in "there" for a Higher Power, much less God?) was seen as "the essence of spiritual experience." And, we are told, that  the "more religious" A.A. members of the time called it "God-consciousness."

This is great news, really, as a bevvy of scientists, philosophers and ardent spiritual seekers - from William James in his Varieities of Religious Experience, to Bill Wilson's friend Aldous Huxley in his Perennial Philosophy - have identified this inner religious or spiritual experience as a universal phenomena amongst all of the world's wisdom traditions, in all ages.

I had such an experience the night I put down the bottle and the bag. Yet, it was another 15 years (four-and-a-half of which I spent outside of A.A.) before I would experience this for the second time. Fortunately, an old-timer who reached out to me, a renewed interest in Buddhism, and the only 'enlightened' member of A.A. (or any non-member, for that matter) that I've ever met, were able to help me understand what this experience and its potential was.

I was urged to "study all religions" until I could see the "sameness" in them all. Turning to my interest in Buddhism and the Advaita Vedanta (a Hindu yoga school), I began to practice meditation, with instruction from my enlightened friend who had been a daily meditator for 35-odd years. Through this, I came to understand the nature of my mind (an epic "alcoholic mind") and the cause of all my suffering: my "think, think, thinking!" Buddhist teachings helped me to clarify the nature and cause of that suffering, together with the "common solution" that is offered to us all in A.A.

Our alcoholic addiction drives the sufferer to look for a "solution" to his or her problem. And we are presented with a "common solution" to the underlying problem of our alcoholic addiction: a power greater than the human "ego" or "self" that drives us blindly.

In Bhuddist teachings, the Buddha identifies "addiction" and "aversion" as the root causes of 'suffering,' or, what he called dukkha (i.e., the feelings of insufficiency, impermanency and insatiable emptiness that results from the things, peoples, places, roles and all the ideas which we cherish, being ultimately incapable of satisfying us). What the Buddha meant by "addiction," however, was an addiction to the self-absorbed thoughts (Bill's "painful inner dialogue") of the "ego."

In the normal sense of addiction, we think of a person who must constantly and continuously take a drug - and, yes, alcohol is a drug, even though it is in a liquid form and legal in most countries - failing which, he or she suffers 'withdrawal' symptoms; physical distress accompanied by mental anguish and suffering triggered by the body and mind of the addict not having the substance it is used to in its system. These symptoms, of course, kick in and cause a craving that the addict will pay almost any price to fulfill. Anyone who has long witnessed another going through detoxification knows that to say that an addict suffering withdrawal from alcohol or any other such physically addictive drug is "irritable, restless and discontent" is quite the mild understatement of the hard truth.

If the alcoholic addict gives in to the cravings of the withdrawal symptoms he or she picks up, with "little or no control" over how much is consumed. And, we know that one more is never enough. Of course, all addicts are naturally adverse to the consequences - both physical and mental - that result from the non-fulfillment of the craving, so many 'pick up' and once again begin to chase the ever-elusive high that once relieved all suffering. Only when the alcoholic addict is free from the physical cravings, can he or she begin working on the real problem; the addiction of the mind to its self-centered, self-conscious way of thinking, and the seemingly imperative need to act on these thoughts despite the potential effects they have for herself or others.

"A double-minded man is unstable
in all his ways." (James 1:8)

Self-examination and meditation allow us to become familiar with the specific thoughts that repeat themselves over and over, as well as the way that we are conditioned to think (i.e., our "attitudes," or habitual way of thinking; and God only knows, we love a habit!). With familiarity, we can then face, and face down, the skewed thoughts that keep us "irritable, restless and discontent" until they are dealt with. We find that there are really two "selves" - the narrow "self" of ordinary human egoic self-consciousness, and the higher "Self" of an enlightened (or if you prefer, God) consciousness.

End the addiction and adversion, the Buddha taught, and you end suffering. But to do so, one needs to see that the addictions and aversions are fruitless and non-realistic, figments of the smaller "self." Our addictions to the thoughts of the people, things and ideas that we must 'get' or 'hold onto' is illusory. All things are impermanent, and in any event they are ultimately unfulfilling and insufficient to permanently satisfy our addiction to what they represent to us. ("It is divinely impossible to satisfy the human ego," the inimitable Chuck C. used to say.) The new car you must have, is only satisfying until someone dents it with their car door. Then it is suddenly problematic and - presto! - you are once again suffering.

Similarly our aversions can never be permanently averted. In life everything is impermanent, and we will eventually lose everything, even our lives. Cars break down, as do relationships. We lose family and friends, either due to indifference or death. Looks fade, the heat of a true love cools to something deeper or evaporates, and the money will be spent. We will all have to face and face down our fears, sooner or later.

But how to end the addictions and aversions and, thus, the suffering? The Buddha lays out an eightfold path to the end of suffering (the fourth of his Four Noble Truths); Judaism has the Ten Commandments and 633 mitzvots; Christianity has the Golden Rule ("Love God, and do unto others as you would have them do unto you"); A.A. has the Twelve Steps. All are legitimate means to treat the conditions of suffering caused by the human ego.

" . . . self-examination, meditation and prayer . . ."

We are fortunate people. The 12 Steps give us a "spiritual tool kit" and specific directions, so that we may build happy and purposeful lives.

In Dr. Bob's simple admonition, we learn to, "Trust God, Clean House, and Help Others!" Working the Steps on a daily basis, and engaging in the interwoven and logically interrelated practice of "self-examination, meditation and prayer" gives us what Bill describes as "an unshakeable foundation." It is a foundation shared by all the world's great wisdom traditions, as is the spiritual or religious experience of higher, God-consciousness that it is designed to produce.

Fear, Desire and Suffering

Re-reading, yet again, the Seventh Step in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, I was struck anew by (a) how profoundly fear, desire and suffering are interrelated, (b) how integral the realization of suffering is in order to gain the humility necessary for removal of our character defects, and (c) how closely the commentary on Step Seven - whether knowingly or unbeknownst to Bill - reflects the simplicity of the Buddha's primary spiritual teaching. It teaches the nature of our suffering and how to remove it.