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.

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.)

Resentment: Digging One's Own Grave One 'Old Idea' at a Time

Resentment  (or 're-sentiment') is to experience all over again the feelings of anger  - towards someone, something, or some situation  - that we once felt in the past each time that we think such "old ideas" anew.  It is, we read in the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous, the "number one" offender, and that "(i)t destroys more alcoholics than anything else," and that "(f)rom it stem all forms of spiritual disease."

"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 worth while. But with the alcoholic, whose hope is the maintenance and growth of a spiritual experience, this business of resentment 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 alcohol 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 are poison."

[Alcoholics Anonymous, page 66.]

At the beginning of the "How It Works" chapter of the 'Big Book,' we read that "many of us tried to hold onto our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely." We cannot afford, it seems, to entertain (or hold onto) the old ideas about people, things or circumstances that still anger us. That may well be the "dubious luxury" of so-called normal people, but nothing will change for the alcoholic addict in recovery unless he or she at least tries to get rid of such old ideas. That is what Steps 4 through Step 9 are specifically designed to do.

It has been said that anger is a corrosive acid that eats away the container that holds it from the inside out. In Steps Four through Step Nine, we list discuss, forgive and make restitution in order to get rid of, or at least neutralize, those corrosive old ideas that continue to crop up as a large part of the painful inner dialogue that is our ordinary 'self' consciousness or 'ego'.

In describing the type of vital spiritual experience that can enable alcoholics to attain and maintain sobriety, Carl Jung noted that "ideas, emotions and attitudes" that are the "guiding forces" of the alcoholic addict are "cast aside." The thoughts of past, future or imagined wrongs that a person, place or circumstance brings to mind are old 'ideas'. The resentments (or 're-sentiments')  are old 'emotions'. And, our vengeful and obsessive thought patterns that are shot through with righteous (or supposedly righteous) indignation are old ''attitudes. We must be free of all these if we are to lead a spiritually awakened life.

"If a man goes out seeking revenge," the Daoists said, "he had better dig two graves." For us, to mentally turn the thoughts of what and who has offended us over and over again in the mind is to seek revenge, if only mentally. If we continue to do so instead of forgiving and making whatever restitution might be necessary to get rid of such old ideas emotions and attitudes, we are obsessively digging and perfecting that second grave.

Thus, revenge, even the imagined mental revenge that we mental 'blowhards' are prone to obsess over, is therefore not a dish best served cold, but a dish not served (or even prepared) at all. Resentments can and have killed many an alcoholic addict.

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.