“We are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free.” (Chapter 9, Big Book)
Let’s take this to be true.
This means that this is God’s will.
If I’m not happy, joyous, and free, I am not doing God’s will.
Axiomatically, if I am not doing God’s will, I am doing my will.
The question of unhappiness, therefore, is fundamentally a moral question, not a psychological question.
When I am unhappy, I have concluded something is wrong.
How?
My own reasoning process!
To be unhappy is therefore:
- To gather the ‘facts’
- To assemble those ‘facts’ into a picture
- To analyse the picture
- To judge it as wanting
My unhappiness, such as it is, is self-reliance, pure and simple: I have usurped God’s faculty of omniscience. To be unhappy requires me to believe I have seen all there is to see (at least all that matters) and therefore know.
I do not know, is the truth.
As Sandy B’s sponsor said to him, when he, Sandy, complained he was unhappy:
“But what if you’re wrong?”