“Selfishness—self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.” (Chapter 5, Big Book)
“So our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making.” (Chapter 5, ibid. )
Someone recently talked about giving their troubles to God.
Troubles presumably have an external element.
“The chances are that we have domestic troubles”, (Chapter 6, ibid. )
“If he is in a serious mood dwell on the troubles liquor has caused you”, (Chapter 7, ibid. )
“Everyone knows about the others’ alcoholic troubles.” (Chapter 9, ibid. )
These three quotations all use troubles with a partially or entirely external sense.
But is that all? Clearly there are external problems in a person’s life that are not of one’s making, whose root is not selfishness.
What must trouble be, for the first two statements above to be true?
Clearly: the disturbance at the situation, not the situation itself.
The book makes this distinction clear later on:
“Though a situation had not been entirely our fault” (Chapter 5, ibid.)
Thus, a situation has multiple factors feeding into it.
A trouble, internally, has one factor feeding into it: me, specifically my perception.
Back to ‘giving one’s troubles to God’.
What I am supposed to turn over is two things: my will and life.
This means, to take them in reverse order, I cease to be personally concerned with or invested in external facts, circumstances, situations, courses of events, or outcomes. These are in God’s hands.
My will, like a magnetic needle, has been pointed in the wrong direction, towards the perceptions and promptings of the ego. It needs to be reset so as to be pointed towards True North, God’s will. The content of will is not originated by me. Will is what I assent to: the content proposed by the ego or the content proposed by God. To turn my will over to God is to make a decision to seek to do God’s will not the ego’s will (= self-will) in all situations.
As a result of this, the troubles automatically drop away, firstly because I am now single-minded, and, if I do not have a notion of how things should go, there is no cause for upset. The response to everything is, “Very well; very well!” Secondly, they drop away because God’s will, pragmatically speaking, is way more effective in the world. Over any considerable period of time, life is far smoother, far more efficient and harmonious, and far more satisfactory in terms of achieving worthwhile things.
This is a far cry from ‘giving my troubles to God’, like asking a waiter to remove a toad from my plate.
God is not there to do things for me. I am there to do things for God. I am showing up for duty. I’m abandoning my mud pies and pulling people’s hair, hearing the school bell, and rushing inside to learn my Greek verbs. God does precisely nothing with my troubles, either external or internal. He plots a course of action, I follow the course of action, and the troubles cease to exist. He offers me a new attitude, and, when I adopt that attitude, I am at peace. The emotional trouble, in that moment, automatically vanishes. Nothing is done with it. The illusion is merely dispelled (the trouble being the result of a spell cast by the ego). The practical trouble, in that moment, automatically vanishes. External factors resolve either into facts I must accept or situations I must change through my practical contribution (or withdrawal).
God cannot see troubles or problems. Externally and internally, they are constructs in my mind, not God’s. And I certainly cannot give them to God in the sense of giving someone a cheesecake, which results in my having less cheesecake and God having more. God does not need troubles, mine or anyone else’s. God needs my time, attention, energy, and resources to be channelled along new lines. To God, there is only God’s will, and either I cooperate or I do not. If I do not, I will have trouble. Such trouble is not to be returned to God (as it did not originate in Him) but is to be abandoned, like the mud pie. I do not give God self. I abandon it for God.
Where the book talks about placing problems in God’s hands, that is really shorthand for asking God for God’s will in terms of precisely how I should look at the situation and what I should do. I am not relinquishing something, and God is not taking something. I am lost in a maze and God is calling out instructions for how to exit the maze: turn left, turn right, turn right, turn left. The maze is of my own creation, not God’s, and does not enter into God’s possession. But God does have a solution to the problem I created, and it is to follow His direction, however mad it may seem materially.