The Big Book talks about the relationship of the alcoholic to alcohol:
Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their alcoholic life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by taking a few drinks—drinks which they see others taking with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to drink again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.
Let's adapt it:
Men and women resent essentially because they like the effect produced by resentment. The sensation is so elusive that, while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after a time differentiate the true from the false. To them, their grievance-filled life seems the only normal one. They are restless, irritable and discontented, unless they can again experience the sense of ease and comfort which comes at once by projecting a few ills onto others—ills which they see others projecting with impunity. After they have succumbed to the desire again, as so many do, and the phenomenon of craving develops, they pass through the well-known stages of a spree, emerging remorseful, with a firm resolution not to resent again. This is repeated over and over, and unless this person can experience an entire psychic change there is very little hope of his recovery.
Resentment is not 'about' its 'content'. Its apparent content is merely the form the resentment presently takes and is dictated by the circumstances of the individual, the ease with which particular resentments can be generated for historical reasons, and how well the circumstances lend themselves to the underlying narrative.
Resentment is the all root of spiritual disease:
Resentment is the “number one” offender. It destroys more alcoholics than anything else. From it stem all forms of spiritual disease ...
What is it about?
Escaping peace. Escaping the terrifying borderland from which God is almost visible, and the physical world is abandoned as home. Terrifying because we're scared God will 'get us' for our attempted usurpation of His creative power. Of course, the father loves the prodigal son, and there will be a feast, not retribution, but until the father is espied, the trepidation persists. Now, if this transition is complete, we don't die. We do stay here, but our presence here is transformed.
W-pI.155.1. There is a way of living in the world that is not here, although it seems to be. 2 You do not change appearance, though you smile more frequently. 3 Your forehead is serene; your eyes are quiet. 4 And the ones who walk the world as you do recognize their own. 5 Yet those who have not yet perceived the way will recognize you also, and believe that you are like them, as you were before.W-pI.155.2. The world is an illusion. 2 Those who choose to come to it are seeking for a place where they can be illusions, and avoid their own reality.
In this borderland, the old insane desire to see sin in others, to get rid of the original sense of sin, guilt and fear stemming from apparently usurping God's role as creator of the self (with the big 'S' dropping down to become the small 's' of the vulnerable physical self, protected only by the vicious ego), remains a while:
T-19.IV.A.7. The little insane wish to get rid of Him Whom you invited in and push Him out must produce conflict. 2 As you look upon the world, this little wish, uprooted and floating aimlessly, can land and settle briefly upon anything, for it has no purpose now.
How is this borderland reached? The first nine Steps. People re-enter the first nine Steps when the spiritual disease triggered by resentment gets too much and the person rock-bottoms. The Steps detox the individual and restore them to health.
At this point, a person can go forward or back. Forward into heaven:
We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.
... through the utter self-abandonment of Steps Ten, Eleven, and Twelve:
My wife and I abandoned ourselves with enthusiasm to the idea of helping other alcoholics to a solution of their problems.
We have entered the world of the Spirit. Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness. This is not an overnight matter. It should continue for our lifetime. Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear. When these crop up, we ask God at once to remove them. We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone. Then we resolutely turn our thoughts to someone we can help. Love and tolerance of others is our code.
If the beginnings of resentment's resurgence are not allowed to settle; if the illusions are laughed at ..
T-27.VIII.5. How willing are you to escape effects of all the dreams the world has ever had? 2 Is it your wish to let no dream appear to be the cause of what it is you do? 3 Then let us merely look upon the dream's beginning, for the part you see is but the second part, whose cause lies in the first. 4 No one asleep and dreaming in the world remembers his attack upon himself. 5 No one believes there really was a time when he knew nothing of a body, and could never have conceived this world as real. 6 He would have seen at once that these ideas are one illusion, too ridiculous for anything but to be laughed away.
... no harm is done. The little wisp of resentment's seed continues to fly around like a bit of fluff.
T-19.IV.A. The little insane wish to get rid of Him ... 4 Now it is aimless, wandering pointlessly, causing no more than tiny interruptions in love's appeal.
T-19.IV.A.8. This feather of a wish, this tiny illusion, this microscopic remnant of the belief in sin, is all that remains of what once seemed to be the world.
So everything's fine, right?
Wrong. The game's not over:
If this feather of a wish is allowed to settle, drop roots, and grow, it will take over again. Just like with drink: if I permit it, I will be on another spree, and, once the spree has taken hold, I'm off to the races again, and the spree will take its course, destroying peace of mind, and perhaps even radiating out into every other part of my life, causing upset and havoc to others.
Sometimes, the recovery process is merely respite before the next onslaught. The ego wants me back in the world, fighting. The recovery process is misused to toughen me up for the next level of the fight.
I rework the Steps, and in fact do so once a quarter, but I do so in order to clear the decks, swiftly and simply. I look but do not stare. Why? If the sponsor is unhealed, the process will make the nightmare real:
T-9.V.4. Some newer forms of the ego's plan are as unhelpful as the older ones, because form does not matter and the content has not changed. 2 In one of the newer forms, for example, a psychotherapist may interpret the ego's symbols in a nightmare, and then use them to prove that the nightmare is real. 3 Having made it real, he then attempts to dispel its effects by depreciating the importance of the dreamer. 4 This would be a healing approach if the dreamer were also identified as unreal. 5 Yet if the dreamer is equated with the mind, the mind's corrective power through the Holy Spirit is denied. 6 This is a contradiction even in the ego's terms, and one which it usually notes even in its confusion.
[Here, psychotherapist would denote not just an unhealed psychotherapist in a formal sense but any confidant, practitioner, spiritual teacher, or sponsor: a 'person who treats the mind.' There are, of course, (relatively) healed psychotherapists, confidants, practitioners, spiritual teachers, and sponsors: they smile and wink, knowing that the world is not real, but helping us to deal with it temporarily as though it is, in order, hopefully, to transcend it. They recognise that the structure espied is a mirage to be approached and seen through, not a fortress to be stormed.]
The last part of this is important: at the point at which the nightmare is identified, if the dreamer of the nightmare is identified as the ego, healing is possible, because we realise that the images dancing across the wall are coming from the projector behind us, and the wrong reel has been loaded in the projector.
Note the phrase to prove that the nightmare is real. How often have I resorted back to childhood hurts or tapped a reservoir of grievance and had the impression that 'Now I'm getting somewhere! Now I'm getting to the truth! Now I'm getting to the nub of things!'
Let's look at the difference between casting the ego as unreal and casting the mind as unreal.
If the ego is unreal, the film reel in the projector is a fiction, a fantasy, and the film can be turned off. The wall is restored to its heavenly purity. No images of hell are projected any longer.
If the mind is unreal, the fact there is a projector is lost, and the suffering playing out on the screen is the only reality there is. It must simply be adjusted to, or fought against. Even the Serenity Prayer can be co-opted to this end:
Accept my suffering: 'Life doesn't stop happening just because I'm sober.' 'Life's not a bed of roses.' 'Life's life.' '... but at least I have somewhere to come and talk about it.'
Or fight back: 'Get a big life', 'Make changes', 'Set boundaries', and the thousand other ways we 'change the things we can', which means to launch back into the world, convinced it is real, and fighting for a more secure, a more prestigious, a more comfortable place in it, by negotiating, forcing, cajoling, or manipulating others' compliance. Playing the game better.
We're back in the dream (actually the nightmare), and the dream is happening to us. The mind has no agency. The mind did not create it. There is no mind. The body was simply born into it, to suffer, and eventually to die. 'Mind' is simply a phantasmagorical correlate of the physical brain; there is no mind to adjust, only chemicals and electrical signals to manipulate by external means. We are literally no longer there: obliterated.
[Let's leave why this is a contradiction in the ego's terms for another chat, but basically: the ego would have us be God's usurper, powerful in the extreme, the creator of the self, but this system also requires the individual not to be a creator but to be a victim of the world they see, powerless against its onslaught. This is the uneasy contradiction.]
This peeling of layers of the onion, this endless rehashing of the events and hurts of past worlds through a thousand practices, therapies, rituals, processes, contemplations, and introspections will never get anywhere. It operates in cycles, just like the stages of a spree, but unless real examination reveals the strings of the puppets to lead to hands outside the drama, unless the puppeteer (the ego) is deactivated, the passion play will repeat indefinitely, from birth through to crucifixion, and the illusion of progress within this system of sprees and 'recoveries' actually makes the problem worse. 'When I was new, I was upset about a lot of really superficial things, but now I'm starting to uncover the truth about what is going on inside me.' The passage of time and the repetition of the process can actually induce the individual to believe that progress means the increasing reality of what is found.
What is the solution?
Firstly, the above system must be seen through. Start peeling a psychic onion, and all you'll find is layer upon layer. There is no core. There is no last layer. It's onion all the way down. But capture the insight that the first layer was not real, the second layer was not real, etc., and eventually the penny will drop that the onion is not even there.
The first nine Steps can achieve this.
Secondly, the decks must be kept clear. Any incipient flowering of resentment must be eliminated promptly and recognised for what it is: not a reaction to the world, not a reactivation of childhood hurt, but the recruitment of both to escape the uneasy sense that the world is not the ultimate reality, in fact is not real at all, by projecting out the sense of sin, guilt, and fear and locating them in others. 'If this were different, I would be OK'.
If I laugh, I'm healed. If my brow furrows with Profound Discoveries and Deep Truths, I'm sunk.
Nothing has really happened. Heaven is there, all around, and the only thing standing between me and my awareness of it is projected grievance:
T-26.IV.6. This tiny spot of sin that stands between you and your brother still is holding back the happy opening of Heaven's gate. 2 How little is the hindrance that withholds the wealth of Heaven from you. 3 And how great will be the joy in Heaven when you join the mighty chorus to the Love of God!
So, once the Steps have been completed, beware of picking up again, not just alcohol, but grievance, for that is where all of the trouble begins.