Why Meditation? Isn't Prayer Enough?

". . sought through prayer and meditation to
improve our conscious contact with God . . ."

In discussion groups, I hear much about prayer. But I hear little about prayer's "bigger brother," so to speak, meditation. In Step Eleven of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Bill describes our program as an ongoing process of "self-examination, meditation and prayer." Self-examination without prayer is mute; yet, prayer without meditation is deaf. We need all three.

But if we are to initially effect a "conscious contact" with God - and thereafter improve that "conscious" contact - we need to adjust the level of consciousness in which we live and 'make our decisions' (i.e.,  exercise our will). Remember: "We found that Great Reality deep down within us. Ultimately, it is only there it may be found." (page 55, Alcoholics Anonymous.) Thus, if we are to effect a conscious contact with God, we must practice going to a deeper level of consciousness, below the ordinary self-consciousness of the ego, a level of consciousness in which our mind co-mingles with the mind we share with a Power that is greater than "self."

If we were to listen to the mind of an "ordinary Joe" - not alcoholic, not a drug addict - it would sound something like this: "Hmm. . . .my feet hurt. . . . Damn, I'm gonna be late!  . . . WTF is that guy up to? Moron. . . . Erin thinks I'm fat. . . . And, then I'd say to her . . . Man, I love coffee . . . Dah-dah-dah . . . da-da-da-da, Hey Jude . . . we slipped the bonds of earth . . .  stupid politicians!"

Our "ordinary Joe" is just as 'self-conscious' as we normally are, and suffers from exactly the same self-centered thoughts of "calamity, pomp and worship of other things," only he (or she) is not likely not drink him/herserlf into a blackout, or drive into a highway abutment, in order to still what Bill calls this "painful inner dialogue." Ordinary people can live fairly 'normally' and 'happily' while self-absorbed with their continual inner dialogue, for alcoholic addicts it is liable to be fatal.

Jiddu Krishnamurti, the renowned spiritual commentator, had this to say about 'ordinary' egoic self-consciousness:

The I, as one observes, says "I must have that," a few days later it wants something else. There is the constant movement of desire; the constant movement of pleasure; the constant movement of what one wants to be and so on. This movement is thought as psychological time. The I who says, "I suffer," is put together by thought.  Thought says, "I am John, I am this, I am that." Thought identifies itself with the name and with the form, and is the I in all the content of consciousness; it is the essence of fear, hurt, despair, anxiety, guilt, the pursuit of pleasure, the sense of loneliness, all the content of consciousness. When one says, "I suffer," it is the image that thought has built around itself, the form, the name, that is in sorrow.
                      (Krishnamurti, "The Wholeness of Life," page 153.)

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986)

All the world's great wisdom traditions and spiritual teachers say essentially the same thing about the seeming 'reality' of ordinary ego-consciousness. Jesus asked, "Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit to his stature?" (Matthew 6:27). It's a rhetorical question, however. None of us can. We only diminish ourselves and others through with these ordinary and habitual ego-centric thought processes.

So what is the solution? Prayer is the asking for the solution, while meditation is finding it. Jesus advises us to "seek ye first the kingdom of God" (Matt. 6:33) - the "kingdom of God" which "is within" us (Luke 17:21) - while A.A. advises a period of quiet time and meditation in the morning, and again each evening. An effective meditation practice is, in my experience, necessary if I am to be able to practice Step 10 and detach from the dialogue of the ego whenever I catch "myself" thinking self-consciously without awareness during the day.

Krishnamurti, in the following passage from "The Wholeness of Life" (p. 142), elaborates on how meditation relieves this acute self-consciousness we all "suffer" from:

Meditation implies the ending of all strife, of all conflict, inwardly and therefore outwardly. . . . In uncovering what one actually is, one asks: Is the observer oneself, different from that which one observes - psychologically that is? I am angry, I am greedy, I am violent; is that I different from the thing observed, which is anger, greed violence? Is one different? Obviously not. When I am angry there is no I that is angry, there is only anger. So anger is me: the observer is the observed. . . . Part of meditation is to eliminate all conflict inwardly and therefore outwardly. To eliminate conflict one has to understand this basic principle; the observer is not different from the observed, psychologically. When there is anger, there is no I, but a second later thought creates the I and says: "I have been angry" . . . When anger occurs and there is no observer, no division, it blossoms and then ends - like a flower, it blooms, withers and dies away. But as long as one is fighting it as long as one is resisting it or rationalizing it, one is giving life to it. When the observer is the observed, then anger blossoms, grows and naturally dies - therefore there is no psychological conflict in it.

One lives by action; action according to a motive, according to an ideal, according to a pattern, or habitual and traditional action, all without investigation. A mind that is in meditation must find out what action is.

"Know the truth, and the truth will set you free!"

"Know Thyself!," is the age old admonishment. Those who meditate come to know both what "self" is, and how to overcome it. Those who don't . . . in my experience,  don't.

Every old-timer (and new-comer) I've ever met and talked to who has that peaceful, yet intense and joyful look that comes with the very real presence of God in their consciousness tells me they practice meditation. On the other hand, virtually all the bitter old-timers who still manifest the "irritability, restlessness and discontent" we all know too well, usually scoff at meditation, or worse, tell me all I have to do is "ask not to drink" in the morning and say "thank you" at night.

I've tried it both ways - and my own way - in my 20-odd years of sobriety. While one can look successful, happy, even enviable, on the outside, it is all too easy to stay "dry" in A.A., if one neglects meditation - even when one prays. I've tried it and suffered the consequences. Unfortunately, you can ask my children and my ex-wife what that is like.

Yet, when I consistently practice the "self-examination" of Step 10, and interweave it logically with the prayer -  and meditation - suggested in Step 11, it truly affords me a happiness and purposefulness (and a new sense of awareness and belonging to this world) that I never had before, during or after my drinking career - until I earnestly began a meditation practice. I can only thank the God of the old-timers who shared this vital message with me.

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.

Continuing to Take Inventory: An Evening Contemplation

We are told quite clearly that "we are never cured" of an alcoholic addiction; and, that what we really have in recovery is "a daily reprieve" from addiction and all its incumbent suffering "based upon the maintenance of our spiritual condition." (Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 85) An interesting choice of words. "Maintenance," of course, means we have 'work' to do, while "condition" reminds us that we are training our mind and our being, just as an athlete engages in physical 'conditioning.' But how to do so?

A combination of Steps Three, Seven and Eleven form one part of our conditioning regimen. Through the rigorous application of the process of "self-examination, meditation and prayer," which Bill refers to in his essay on Step 11 in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, we work at establishing, maintaining and improving our "conscious contact" with the God of our understanding.

To do so, each time we become aware that we have once again slipped back into narrow 'self-consciousness' with its accompanying emotional disturbance, we pause and say a quick prayer of affirmation and invocation. (I prefer to use a quick remembrance that "God is everything" rather than "nothing", and a mental recitation of a snippet of the Third Step prayer: "Relieve me of the bondage of self.") Then we proceed with a renewed and re-focused contemplative frame of mental reference, the internal quiet found in meditation which may, in reality, be the initial stage of "God-consciousness."

Of course, for all but those rarest of individuals who have slipped the bonds of narrow self-conscious and "slayed" the ego, this is an ongoing form of "spiritual warfare" that needs to be repeated scores or hundreds of times per day. However, when we are unsuccessful in this process and so do or say something (or omit to do or say something) that harms another, we need to "promptly admit" that once again we have erred and make what amends we can to set things right with others we have harmed - asap.

This "continuous" inner moral inventory of the state of our consciousness and the prompt admission of any wrongs done, as well as the ongoing amends we make for these wrongs, is one facet of Step Ten. But, it is only one facet. In the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Bill suggests (in the following paragraph) that we do a nightly inventory, weighing up the positive aspects of the daily progress in consciousness and behaviour we have made, along with the negatives.

At page 92 in the Twelve and Twelve, Bill writes:

"When evening comes, perhaps just before going to sleep, many of us draw up a balance sheet for the day. This is a good place to remember that inventory-taking is not always done in red ink. It's a poor day indeed when we haven't done something right. As a matter of fact, the waking hours are usually well filled with things that are constructive. Good intentions, good thoughts, and good acts are there for us to see. Even when we have tried hard and failed, we may chalk that up as one of the greatest credits of all. Under these conditions, the pains of failure are converted into assets. Out of them we receive the stimulation we need to go forward. Someone who knew what he was talking about once remarked that pain was the touchstone of all spiritual progress. How heartily we A.A.'s can agree with him, for we know that the pains of drinking had to come before sobriety, and emotional turmoil before serenity."

Sri Yogananda (1893-1952)

So how do we then go about taking this nightly inventory which is the second facet of Step 10? Many alcoholic addicts keep a journal, which is a great tool for tracking one's spiritual growth. For those not comfortable with writing out a nightly inventory in ink (red and black), I have found that the following contemplation set out by Paramahansa Yogananda is a quite effective means of putting the day to bed mentally and surrendering one's thoughts to the renewal of sleep:

 "Each worldly person, moralist, spiritual aspirant and yogi - like a devotee - should every night before retiring ask his intuition whether his spiritual faculties or his physical inclination of temptation won the day's battles between good and bad habit; between temperance and greed; between self-control and lust; between honest desire for necessary money and inordinate craving for gold; between forgiveness and anger; between joy and grief; between moroseness and pleasantness; between kindness and cruelty; between selfishness and unselfishness; between understanding and jealousy; between bravery and cowardice; between confidence and fear; between faith and doubt; between humbleness and pride; between desire to commune with God in meditation and the restless urge for worldly activities; between spiritual and material desires; between divine ecstasy and sensory perceptions; between soul consciousness and egoity."

 Like the Eleventh Step Prayer and our invocation to be comforting, understanding and loving, rather than demanding to be comforted, understood and loved, continued practice may aid the process of "self-forgetting" and "dying to self" which we need to live freely in the Eternity of both this world and in the realm of our dreams.

* * * * * * * * * * *

"Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting:
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star,
     Hath had elsewhere its setting,
          And cometh from afar:
     Not in entire forgetfulness,
     And not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
     From God, who is our home"

William Wordsworth, "Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood"

Bill's Reflections on A.A. . . . Its History, Message and Solution

"Three Talks" Pamphlet

Of all the pamphlets published by Alcoholics Anonymous, perhaps the most helpful - at least for beginning members who have taken Step One and admitted their alcoholism and personal powerlessness - is the "Three Talks to Medical Societies by Bill W., co-founder of AA," pamphlet. Certainly, it is the only pamphlet that is referred to directly in the Big Book (in Appendix III, "The Medical View on A.A.") The "Three Talks" pamphlet provides beginners with a brief, yet concise, history of A.A., its message  and "solution."

Taken from Bill's 1958 presentation to the New York City Medical Society on Alcoholism, the first of the "Three Talks" is particularly helpful, giving a precise synopsis of how A.A. came to be formed, how the program works, and just what A.A.'s "solution" for the suffering alcoholic is.

After preliminary remarks, Bill dives right into the history and message of A.A., relating how Carl Jung told Oxford Grouper to-be, Rolland H. (that "certain American business man" described on page 26 of the Big Book) that once in a while a "vital spiritual experience" will remove an alcoholic's mania for drink. Bill describes this as the moment when "the first taproot of A.A. hit paydirt."

Importantly, Bill includes Dr. Jung's description of precisely how these "huge emotional displacements and rearrangements" affect the psyches of alcoholics:

"Ideas, emotions and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them."

(This, of course, is what happened to Bill when he had his sudden and abrupt "spiritual awakening" in Townes Hospital, a number of years after Jung spoke to Rolland H.)

Next, Bill relates how Rolland carried this message to the man who would become Bill's "sponsor," Ebby Thattcher, thereby establishing "the second cardinal principle of A.A." - the "identification at depth" of one alcoholic with another. (Elsewhere, he would call this principle, the only original idea in A.A.'s 'program,' everything else being "borrowed" from other sources, ancient and modern.)

Bill then tells how Ebby visited him at his home (the night that Bill's "gin would last longer than his preaching"), and he then sets out the simple, "word-of-mouth" program of action that Ebby had been working and offered to Bill, in the following manner:

1. Ebby admitted that he was powerless to manage his own life.
2. He became honest with himself as never before; made an "examination of conscience."
3. He made a rigorous confession of his personal defects and thus quit living alone with his problems.
4. He surveyed his distorted relations with other people, visiting them to make what amends he could.
5. He resolved to devote himself to helping others in need, without the usual demand for personal prestige or material gain.
6. By meditation, he sought God's direction for his life and the help to practice these principles of conduct at all times.

 (Bill later explains that, "For the sake of greater clarity and thoroughness, the word-of-mouth program which my friend Ebby had given me was enlarged into what we now call A.A.'s 'Twelve Suggested Steps for recovery.'")

Note that the only reference to "a Higher Power" is in Ebby's last point, that "by meditation" direction and help was sought. Of course, A.A.'s Step 11 says that it is "through meditation and prayer" that we seek "to improve our conscious contact with God" as we understand that conception. Yet, how many times do we hear continually relapsing A.A. members - and even season veterans - relating how they pray, pray, pray. And how many times do they mention meditation? This is no small point. Oxford Groupers and early A.A. members had a sustained practice of meditation or "quiet time" in the morning, before they made their plans for the day, and a similar meditation time at night.

"By meditation, he sought
          God's direction for his life . . ."

If all we do is "talk" to God - affirming and invoking God's presence and power in our lives - but never "listen" in meditatioin, how are we to effect a conscious contact. It is through meditation that we gain the ability to change the level and focus of our consciousness (from self-consciousness, which is the problem, to God-consciousness, which is the solution).

At Step 11 in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Bill describes  how an interwoven and logically interrelated practice of "self-examination, meditation and prayer" will provide us with an "unshakeable foundation." Prayer, while beneficial in and of itself, is not sufficient. Meditation must be a part of our practice to gain the ultimate benefits that A.A. offers.

Finally, Bill relates his own sudden spiritual awakening, how William James' Varieties of Spiritual Experience confirmed the reality of his experience, and how the Varieties outlined that "ego deflation at depth," or "a complete defeat in a controlling area of life," is a necessary precondition for a true and effective spiritual experience.

The balance of the Three Talks pamphlet describes the contribution of Townes Hospital's Dr. Silkworth, his contribution that clarifies alcoholism is both an allergy of the body and an obsession of the mind, and the further growth of the A.A. movement.

Of course, alcoholism and addiction are no less a problem now than they were in 1958. Yet Bill's closing remarks to the medical professionals of New York is no less relevant. He concludes by making a pledge that "A.A. will always stand ready to cooperate" with the whole medical community. "When our combined understanding have been fully massed and applied," he presciently predicts, "we of A.A. know that we shall find our friends of medicine in the very front rank - just where so many of you are already standing today."

This last remark stands out when we consider that "detox" and "rehab" were not a part of the larger vocabulary in 1958. And yet, it clarifies the point that both A.A. and the medical/treatment center communities have a vital role to play in providing a "solution" to the still suffering alcoholic addict.

"Where" I Found the God of My Own Understanding

"Lack of power," we read in the We Agnostics chapter of the Big Book, "is our dilemna." To explain exactly "where" and "how" to find a Higher Power sufficient to relieve the sufferer's alcoholic addiction and to make his or her life livable again, we are then told (at page 45), is the whole "purpose" of why the Big Book was, in fact, written. How did I miss that?

If, like so many (including myself), you read the Big Book with an attitude of spiritual "contempt before investigation" and preformed, or prejudiced, views of what "God" is, or has been portrayed as, you may be liable to skim right over the paragraphs that explain exactly "where" we are able to find "a Power greater than ourselves," just as I did. (At the end of the Spiritual Experience appendix, Herbert Spencer, the great scientist and philosopher, warns the reader that, "There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments and which cannot fail to keep a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt before investigation.")

When my first sponsor told me I had to look at Step Two, my immediate question was, "What is God to you?" His answer was what I have heard many time since then: 'Good Orderly Direction.' With that answer in hand, I set out with all my driven self-will to get a little "good orderly direction" into my life. (The question that I should have asked, looking back, was: "What is "self?")

Never underestimate the power of self-will, however. We are, indeed, "driven people." While remaining sober, attending lots of meetings and fulfilling my 'roles' as a good sponsee, sponsor  and group member, this was (as Bill notes in his essay on Step Three in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions) "very good indeed," but it proved to be "a far cry from permanent sobriety and a contented, useful life."

In the first five years of sobriety, my wife (who had stopped drinking to help me out) went to rehab, got off the pills and joined our Fellowship. We made our mortgage payments and had another daughter. I held down my job and worked lots of overtime, while returning to university part-time and earning a degree. I made the Dean's list and enrolled in law school. I became, as my sponsor pointed out to little or no avail, "a human doing, rather than a human being."

With the premature death of my sponsor, moving to another city to attend law school and focusing all my destructive self-will on finishing in the school's top ten, I drifted away from A.A. Still a nominal "member" of a group in my new hometown, I spent little or no time on prayer or meditation and the day-to-day anger and fears I went to bed with hardened into resentments and mania as I avoided the Tenth Step altogether.

Moving, yet again, to practice law with a top 'blue-blood' corporate law firm, I began putting in gruelling hours at work for the benefit of my growing family (and, of course, for me). Three months after beginning my new law practice (and nine-and-a-half years into my 'sobriety'), I made a conscious decision to stop attending A.A. altogether. I wasn't worried about drinking or drugging again. Booze and drugs were, to me, a "non-factor" at this point in my life.

This dry, dry period of my life lasted almost five years. I had no God, no peace of mind, and no "solution" to my evermore vexing problems. Unbeknownst to me, my wife began drinking again shortly thereafter, swearing our girls who had been brought up, quite literally, in A.A. to secrecy. (They had been the little girls sitting quietly at the meeting with their colouring books and crayons.) My mind was obsessed with my not being able to cut it at the prestigous law firm I worked for, despite all the evidence to the contrary. I was barely a member of society at all. In a very real sense I had become the human "race."

I do not know why I didn't drink or drug. After nearly 15 years of training my mind in a "good orderly direction," I began the revolving door of the psychiatric wards. The insanity of alcoholic addiction had returned - writ large - minus the booze and drugs. My marriage shattered, and separated from the roles in life I most valued (that of 'husband' and everyday, loving 'father'), I came within minutes of dieing at my own hand. You see, the problem of the alcoholic addict does, indeed, "center in the mind."

I was very fortunate. The fates (or a God I did not believe in, much less understand) were kind to me. My first sponsor's best friend who I hadn't seen for 6 or 7 years reached out to me, taking me to my first meeting in almost five years. The results were electric, and I promptly got a new sponsor and joined a group just as the obsession to drown all my sorrows again took hold . . . drinking dreams and all!

After years of acute suffering (and inflicting that suffering on the people in my life who were dearest to me), I was once again on a spiritual path, seeking a God of my understanding. Yet still I had know idea of where to look.

A newfound friend who had been working with a wizened old timer kept urging him to talk to me, but to no avail. The oldtimer observed, quite rightly, that I was not done suffering yet. I was still looking for alternatives to make "me" feel better. I entered into a relationship with a beautiful and bewitching woman who had been sober a number of years, but the "defects of character" which manisfested from the deep-seated fears of my "ego" doomed it, and it was short lived.

A week or so after that relationship ended, and really "smarting" from the effect that (yet another) failed relationship had on me, I was with my best friend looking for a new (and better, naturally) apartment to live in. More by happenstance than planning, I found what proved to be an ideal place for me to live.  Almost magically, waves of relief washed over me. All the suffering was gone, the nagging voice of "self-consciousness" (the "ego") silenced for a brief while.

My friend and I were having a celebratory lunch at an outdoor cafe. Everything was wonderful. I felt "the ease and comfort" I had once experienced with drinking and drugging, but this was a "natural high." My friend was conducting a running monologue on the cars, motorcycles and women that passed us by, and I was content just to listen and enjoy the mood and the company.

Suddenly, however, I had a "thought." One thought. I'm not sure if it was about my family, my failed marriage, or perhaps the relationship that had just ended, but with that thought I felt a wave of fear and anxiety wash down through me. Thus, began my spiritual awakening.

I came to the sudden realization that there was nothing "out there" that would fulfill me . . . not a relationship, a home, a job, the best of friends, money, education . . . nothing! I realized in an instant that the problem was "in here" and that the solution must also be "in here."

I believed in synchronicity, rather than fate or the predestined "hand" of God pulling some invisible strings, but be that as it may, help began to pour in thereafter. The very next day the oldtimer who had seen that I had "not done suffering yet" talked to me and gave me the first book of a spiritual nature that my "prejudice" about God or a Higher Power did not reject out of hand.

This oldtimer spent three or four hours later that week and took me through the Big Book, explaining its key passages to me and sharing the "experience, strength and hope" he had gained through practicing what the Big Book outlined.

Most importantly he took me through page 23 (". . . the main problem of the alcoholic centers in his mind."),  page 55 ("We found the Great Reality deep down within us. In the last analysis, it is only there it may be found."), and the Spiritual Experience appendix where it says, "With few exceptions our members found that they have tapped an unsuspected inner resource which they presently identify with their own conception of a Power greater than themselves. . . . Our more religious members call it god-consciousness." (Emphasis added.)

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

Who would have thought? My problem I came to see was the focus of my consciousness. All these years I had been stuck in "self" or "ego-consciousness" when just below that inner narrative, and wholly unsuspected by me, lay a deeper well spring of pure, higher consciousness. My years of drinking and drugging, it turns out, were just my tapping that higher consciousness by silencing the ego of self-consciousness chemically. And now I found that I could do so much more effectively by applying the Steps to rid myself of the "old ideas" that powered that egoic consciousness, and through the constant application of our outlined process of "self-examination, meditation and prayer."

That same week, I heard another humble and frail oldtimer - the only enlightened man I've ever met - say that "at the end of the sixth stage of meditation, he knew." I pressed him to tell me what it was "he knew." Reluctantly, at first, he did. In sharing with me the ideas and books that he had been shown and used, I began a meditation practice and an intense spiritual journey that continues to this day.

As is promised to the true "spiritual seeker," I have been shown "much of God" - a God and God-consciousness that exists within us, and within which we exist - and have found a refuge from the "double-minded" sufferings of self-centeredness, selfishness, and self-absorption in the all-inclusive "Self" that exists beneath what William James called the ordinary "stream of consciousness."

This was, of course, wholly unexpected; and, yet, from all I hear at meetings and in everyday conversation, most people mistakenly continue to look for a God "out there" somewhere, a mistake that nearly cost me my life.

". . . the Kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for behold,
the Kingdom of God is within you." (Luke 17:20-21)

As it turns out, I found that what Paul told the philosophers of ancient Athens (on Mars' Hill, in front of the Parthenon) was and is, indeed, true: 

"That (we) should seek God . . . and find him, though he be not far from every one of us. For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your poets have said, For we, too, are children of God." (Acts 17: 27-28).

Who would of thought to find "a Power" greater than one's "self" underneath one's "self?" Certainly, not me! I had to be shown, before I "came to believe."

Why Must We Write Down, and Face Down, Our Fears?

"Anger," according to one proverb, "is a corrosive poison that eats away at the vessel that holds it from the inside out." And anger, together with lust and ignorance, is one of "the Three Poisons" in Buddhist teachings. Small wonder, then, that anger in the form of 'resentments' is included in our Step Four inventory. Similarly, the powerful emotional weight that sexual improprieties carry makes it easy to understand why we take an inventory of our sexual conduct. But why do we write down all our fears, large and small?

The simple answer is that fear - the visceral reaction that triggers our 'fight or flight' response is, quite arguably, the most powerful of our 'instincts.' And, as Bill writes in his essay on Step 4 in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions (at p. 44), alcoholic addicts should be quite "able to see that instinct run wild in themselves is the underlying cause of their destructive drinking. Moreover, at page 766 of the Twelve and Twelve, we learn that self-centered fear "is the chief activator of all our defects of character."

Fear that we may "lose something" that we already possess or "fail to get something" we demand - in our sobriety, as in our active drinking or drugging - can, quite literally drive us nuts. "Living upon a basis of unsatisfied [and unsatisfiable] demands" for perfect security from these fears, we can live "in a state of continual disturbance and frustrations."

Listing our fears, facing them down through prayer, in meditation and in our actions, we seek to reduce the fears themselves and the amount of time we live in a state of fear. For it is our self-centered, or ego-centric, fears that separate us from "a Power greater than ourselves" and all humankind.

The purpose of the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, we read (at page 45), is to show us "where and how" to find a Power greater than our "selves" - a 'Higher Power' that will restore us to sanity, and through which we can act and live in freedom not only from booze or drugs, but in freedom from egoic "self" and our self-centered fears, and through which we can overcome our defects of character.

That "Power" - the "Great Reality," or "fundamental idea of God" is, as it says on page 55 of the Big Book, "deep down within us" and, ultimately, it is only "deep down within us" that this Power" may be found. The problem, however, is that this Power is "obscured," or blocked from our consciousness, by three things: "calamity," pomp" and "worship of other things."

All three of these 'obstructions' are, in turn, fear based. "Calamity" is our perception of the world when viewed through the lens of the "ego," or "self." ("Oh my God!," we think. "I'm not going to get what I need, and I'm gonna lose everything that I have and need to hold onto.") "Pomp" is what we experience when, temporarily at best, we manage to grasp and hold onto all those "things" we need; while "worship of other things" is the driving force which generates our need to grasp and hold onto these "things."

It is, thus, our fears that choke us off from what Bill so-poetically called "the Sunlight of the Spirit. The word "worrying" - that is, what we do when we are in the grip of our fears - is an Old English expression that comes from the German word 'wurjgan' which means to choke, or seize by the throat. Another synonym, "anxiety," comes from the Latin, 'anxius' meaning to "cause pain or choke." Both literally, and figuratively, we can be smothered by our suffocating fears, choked by the "lump in our throat." Therefore, if we are to lead happy and productive lives, we must face and face down our fears.

A start to overcoming fear is to observe, in meditation, the thoughts of what it is we want or fear losing that course through our ordinary self-consciousness. A quick prayer to be relieved from the all-too-tight "bondage of self" can help when once again we feel the "existential knot" in our stomach, a knot of tension which is caused by what Bill so succinctly described as our sense of "anxious apartness."

Most importantly, we have the Third Step and the Serenity Prayer (set out on page 41 of the Twelve and Twelve). "In all times of emotional disturbance or indecision," every time we are choked or paralyzed by fear, "we can pause, ask for quiet, and in the stillness 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."

In this way we can "face our fears," serene in the knowledge that at this moment in time there is nothing (no "thing") 'out there' that we can immediately change; that the one thing we can change is the level of our consciousness (letting go of 'self' or 'ego' consciousness in favor of a deeper, higher consciousness, or God-consciousness, as some call it); that we are wise enough to know there is a distinct difference between "ego" and 'who' and 'what' we are; and that it is only our runaway egoic, "self" centered thinking that is creating our sense of fear and trepidation.

"With God" - in that inner state of non-egoic consciousness - "all things may be accomplished," even winning freedom from our deepest and most pressing fears.

The Hole In the Doughnut . . . Or, Becoming Whole

Bill Wilson was a very good writer with a gift for to-the-point wording and suggestive imagery. The "juggernaut of self-will" (at page 38 of the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions) springs to mind. Like actions based on self-will, juggernauts - the massive battle ships built for the First World War - once underway take a great deal of power to stop and are enormously difficult to turn around.

My favorite of Bill's images, however, is that of the "doughnut hole." In his discussion of Step Three in the Twelve and Twelve (at page 36) Bill puts words in the mouth of a newcomer who is willing to turn his will and life over to the care of A.A. ("a Power greater than himself") insofar as it relates to alcohol. But that's it! In all other areas he clings to the notion that he must retain control.

"What will become of me? I'll look
like the hole in the doughnut"

 "Yes," the imaginary newcomer says, "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 non-entity. If I keep on turning my will and life over to the care of Something or Somebody else, what will become of me? I'll look like the hole in the doughnut."

The "hole in the doughnut" is my favorite image  because it shows not only the fear and insecurity of, in fact, turning one's will and life over to a still-mysterious "Higher Power" - even on an experimental basis - but it also shows how backwards our thinking can be. To the newcomer, the "hole in the doughnut" is just how it is described, a "non-entity." But, from a different perspective, the "hole" is the essence of the doughnut. A doughnut is hardly a doughnut without its hole.

At a deeper level, too, the struggle of the self-conscious, self-focused, self-centered alcoholic addict is to leave his or her egoic "self" behind in order to become part of the Whole. The nagging question - "What will become of me?" - can be either a compelling obsession to base all one's actions on the self-conscious thoughts coursing through the mind, or it can become the death rattle of the ego. Bill notes that the existential ("What will become of me?") question "is the process by which instinct and logic always seek to bolster egotism, and so frustrate spiritual development."

We hear much talk of fear at meetings and in the fellowship, but we hear far less talk about the flip-side of fear: desire. In Steps Four through Seven in the Twelve and Twelve, there is much discussion of desire, although Bill alternatively talks about it in terms of instincts, drives or desires. We all have "instincts" or "desires" for personal security, financial security, emotional security, sex and the society of our fellows etc., but a nagging sense of lack (or at least an often unrecognized sense that fulfillment of all of these desires is temporary at best) can drive us, as Bill notes, to blindly strive for more and more gratification of these demands of the ego without ever fully satisfying them. (As A.A. pioneer, Chuck C., so often noted, "It is divinely impossible to satisfy the human ego.")

Indeed, we are overtly and covertly taught or accultured to the sense that the fulfillment of these "instincts" is the primary purpose of life. Isn't "the American Dream" of marrriage, the house with the white picket fence, the 2.4 children and a comfortable retirement, not merely securing to oneself the fruits of these "universal" desires? But, as many (although perhaps not enough) people know, even when obtained these "rewards" for hard-work well done, diligence and good fortune are not sufficient in themselves to overcome the ego's insecurity and sense of wanting "something more."

". . . instinct and logic always
seek to bolster egotism . . ."

Indeed, it is in letting go of the ego's constant seeking and planning to get the "something more" or the "something else" that it always seems to need, that we find true purpose and happiness. Letting go of the relentless grinding of "instinct and logic" we are able to grow spiritually, and thus overcome "egotism." In doing so we reconnect with others, with life, and with "a Power greater than ourselves."

In letting go of "ego" and its "self-consciousness," we reconnect with a deeper God-consciousness and the "Essence" at the center of our being. In truth, we become that Essence - an essential part of the Whole - just as the doughnut hole is always the essence of the doughnut.

A "Self-Imposed Crisis" Part 2: Overcoming Self

In a previous post, we have set out just exactly what the "self" or "ego" is.

When we come to realize that the "self" of the "self-imposed crisis" of  addiction we "are faced with" is none other than the human ego - not "ego" as in pride (which is one of the character defects we seek to overcome) but "ego" in its psychological sense," in the sense of what William James dubbed the "stream of consciousness"  - we become ready to "go to any lengths" to reduce or "deflate at depth" that sense of separated "self" and blunt its impact on us, on others and on the Whole.

Ego-consciousness vs. God-Consciousness

To do so, it is first necessary to admit to our own "innermost self" - that greater part of our consciousness beneath, yet higher than, our "self-conscious" stream of thought - that life is, in fact, unmanageable through the thought processes of our "normal" egoic self consciousness. Doing so - at least on a trial basis - we come to believe (or "become willing to believe") that there is within our consciousness a Power greater than the stream of thought - greater than the ego - that can and will restore us to its sanity. (Of course, that requires an admission that our "ego" - that "the human ego" - is in fact insane.) Admitting, again to our "innermost self" that the twisted thoughts of anger, depression hopelessness, fear, plots of revenge etc. that can course through our egoic minds are crazy should not, however, be much of a stretch."

Having passed these initial hurdles to overcoming our "self-imposed crisis" we need to come to a decision: are we willing to turn our will and our lives over to the care of the God of our understanding? That is a difficult decision, mostly because all of us come to the Third Step freighted with ideas, prejudices and more or less vague conceptions of what "God" is or may be. Like many, we may be dyed-in-the-wool atheists. This need not be such a psychological burden if we face the proposition that "God is either everything or nothing," that God either ""is or "isn't." (Some may call that "pantheism' but for others it may just be the universe at large.)

If God is indeed everything rather than nothing, than we too are included within this Universal Being; and, if we work diligently at it, we too can find within us what the Spiritual Experience Appendix says "our more religious members called God-consciousness."

The Big Book is intended, we are told (at p. 45), to show us how and where to find a Higher Power that is greater than our self-centered, ever self-conscious and judgmental "ego" or "self". And, we read in the all-important middle paragraphs of page 55, that we find that "Great Reality" not 'out there' somewhere, but "deep down within us." Once we have looked everywhere else - including to the booze, drugs, money, sex and everything else that once made us feel so good - we find that "in the last analysis" it is within our own Being, beneath our ego/self consciousness, and that an understandable God "may be found."

Of course, even when we find this Power greater than ourselves, this God that we can "understand" or stand under, it is enormously difficult to turn our will and our lives over to its care. We are used to making all our decisions about what we should say or do (or not say and not do) all by "ourselves." In this respect we have relied, in nearly every instance, solely on that stream of consciousness which is the "ego" - for deciding what to do, how to act, and what to say or not say. To decide is the exercise of one's "will," and it turns out (like virtually everyone else in this world) that we have been making all too many of these decisions based on whatever pops into our head and the situation seems to call for at the time. But now, it is necessary for us to develop an ability to make such decisions on a deeper, saner level. It becomes necessary for us to take the pressure of our egoic thinking off of us, so that we can make these decisions at a far deeper and sane level of consciousness. And that is precisely what Step 4 to Step 9 allow us to do.

"Many of us tried to hold on to our old ideas" with the result that nothing changes in our ideas and patterns of thought, within our attitudes. The result? Nothing . . . nada . . . "nil."  Nothing changes until we let go (or work to let go) of those old ideas and thought patterns "absolutely." This is the only "absolute" discussed in the first part of the Big Book.

We need to let go of the the thoughts that have haunted us for years and, eventually, the relatively new ideas that come to disturb us, in order to find and utilize "a Power greater than ourselves." Like a stick of gum, once we have chewed on a thought for a while - a short while, at that - it loses its flavor,  becomes stale and should be discarded. Step 4 to Step 9 is how we discard our old thoughts and way of thinking.

"In dealing with resentments we set them down on paper."

Just as its laid out in the Big Book, we write down and examine our resentments (the "re-sentiments" or feelings we re-experience whenever our egoic thinking drudges up and dwells on our old thoughts about people, situations and institutions). We write down the fears and sexual improprieties that ensnare us and cause us shame. We stop living alone and trying to deal with these ideas and the roller-coasters of emotions they generate by admitting to our innermost selves, to God as we understand God and, most importantly, to another human being, the thoughts which have haunted us in secret for years upon years. (To find relief from the pressures and sense of "anxious apartness" these thoughts generated was, in most instances, why we sought relief through booze and/ or drugs. Such "anxious apartness" is the signature of the "self" in our "self-imposed crisis.") Having obtained some sense of relief from our internal persecutors through sharing what has been bottled up inside us, we seek to obtain an evermore perfect release from all these tortuous thoughts  and the behaviors they generated through Step Six and Seven.

If the "ego" - our internal sense of "self" - were a raging bonfire, Step Eight and Step Nine are like kicking the logs off the fire and smothering them in sand so that the fire is contained and diminished no longer poses further risks ands imperil us or others. Step 10 is assuring that we do not deliberately or inadvertantly throw more fuel on the fire. When we do, we recollect the dangers that an out of control fire poses, and knock the fuel out of the fire and smother it as quickly as we can.

Continuing to take - and, to the best of our ability, continuously taking - an inventory of just what's going on in our egoic self and what we do as a result - we confront our "selves" whenever we slip back into self-centeredness and act in accordance with the whims of our shallow "self" consciousness instead of basing our actions onour deeper consciousness. This process of "self-examination" is perhaps the most arduous task we have ever been confronted with. It requires great discipline of awareness and practice.

Continuous awareness of how, when and where the stream of self-consciousness guides us goes against the way we have learned to think and "reason." Forunately, our emotions - our visceral "feelings" - can act as a sort of internal "early warning system." It is far easier to remain aware of, and attuned to, how we are feeling - anger, jealousy, greed, a wounded sense of pride etc. are, very powerful emotional states - rather than focusing solely on the more subtle processes of just what we are thinking. Because of this subtlety, Step Ten is really a follow-up in the course of daily life to Step Three.

Reinhold Niebuhr, author of "The Serenity Prayer"

In concluding his essay of Step Three in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Bill writes that beginning to practice Step Three is relatively easy. "In all times of emotional disturbance or indecision," he writes, "we can pause, ask for quiet, and in the stillness 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.'" (Emphasis added.)

There is, of course, only one thing that we can do in a single moment and that is to affect a change in the level of our consciousness, to move from the state of self-consciousness to the quiet and stillness of our greater higher consciousness (or, if we prefer, God-consciousness). To do so, however, we need to have both the "wisdom" that there exists within us both the egoic "self" of self-consciousness and the greater "Self" of higher consciousness or the soul. It also requires the "courage" (from the French, cour, meaning heart) to move from a reliance on self-consciousness to a reliance, in that very instance, on higher, God-consciousness.

Figuratively, this change in reliance is a move from the head (ego/self) to the heart (soul/Self/God). To find such wisdom and courage, we need to practice Step 11 on a daily basis, for it is only through prayer and, most especially, through meditation that we find and open up the space within our being that is the place of quiet and stillness our Serenity Prayer refers to. The discovery of this place - really the experiential acquisition of the knowledge that we are much greater than our ordinary ego consciousness - is the essence of a spiritual awakening.

It is useful to keep in mind the central message of the Spiritual Experience Appendix, an addendum  that was only added to the 2nd edition of the Big Book, at a time when there were roughly 150,000 A.A. 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.

Most of us think this awareness of a Power greater than our,selves is the essence of spiritual experience. Our more religious members call it "God-consciousness." (Emphasis added.)

" . . . sought through prayer and meditation . . ."

It is through practicing this process of interwoven "self examination, meditation, and prayer" in our day-to-day life that we become able to deflate the ego "at depth," to keep in check the "self" of our self-imposed crisis. Doing so reins in the obsessive nature of our minds, most particularly the obsession that only booze and/or drugs will relieve our internal pressures or solve our life crises. It is this process that provides us a solution to the existential problems that the ego creates, and it truly provides us with a Road of Happy Destiny that we can walk upon for the duration of our time here, ever perfecting our relationship with God and our fellows. It provides us with an inner Grace which we can share with the alcoholic addict who still suffers, and which we can apply in all of life's affairs.