'We are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free. We
cannot subscribe to the belief that this life is a vale of tears, though it
once was just that for many of us. But it is clear that we made our own misery.
God didn't do it. Avoid then, the deliberate manufacture of misery, but if
trouble comes, cheerfully capitalise it as an opportunity to demonstrate His
omnipotence.'
Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 133
'When World War II broke out, this spiritual principle had
its first major test. AAs entered the services and were scattered all over the
world. Would they be able to take discipline, stand up under fire, and endure
the monotony and misery of war? Would the kind of dependence they had learned
in AA carry them through? Well, it did. They had even fewer alcoholic lapses or
emotional binges than AAs safe at home did. They were just as capable of
endurance and valour as any other soldiers. Whether in Alaska or on the Salerno
beachhead, their dependence upon a Higher Power worked. And far from being a
weakness, this dependence was their chief source of strength.'
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Step Three
'And as we grow spiritually, we find that our old attitudes
toward our instincts need to undergo drastic revisions. Our desires for
emotional security and wealth, for personal prestige and power, for romance,
and for family satisfactions—all these have to be tempered and redirected. We
have learned that the satisfaction of instincts cannot be the sole end and aim
of our lives. If we place instincts first, we have got the cart before the
horse; we shall be pulled backward into disillusionment. But when we are
willing to place spiritual growth first—then and only then do we have a real
chance.'
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Step Twelve
'After we come into AA, if we go on growing, our attitudes
and actions toward security—emotional security and financial security—commence
to change profoundly. Our demand for emotional security, for our own way, had
constantly thrown us into unworkable relations with other people. Though we
were sometimes quite unconscious of this, the result always had been the same.
Either we had tried to play God and dominate those about us, or we had insisted
on being over-dependent upon them. Where people had temporarily let us run
their lives as though they were still children, we had felt very happy and
secure ourselves. But when they finally resisted or ran away, we were bitterly
hurt and disappointed. We blamed them, being quite unable to see that our
unreasonable demands had been the cause.
When we had taken the opposite tack and had insisted, like
infants ourselves, that people protect and take care of us or that the world
owed us a living, then the result had been equally unfortunate. This often
caused the people we had loved most to push us aside or perhaps desert us
entirely. Our disillusionment had been hard to bear. We couldn't imagine people
acting that way toward us. We had failed to see that though adult in years we
were still behaving childishly, trying to turn everybody—friends, wives,
husbands, even the world itself—into protective parents. We had refused to
learn the very hard lesson that overdependence upon people is unsuccessful
because all people are fallible, and even the best of them will sometimes let
us down, especially when our demands for attention become unreasonable.
As we made spiritual progress, we saw through these
fallacies. It became clear that if we ever were to feel emotionally secure
among grown-up people, we would have to put our lives on a give-and-take basis;
we would have to develop the sense of being in partnership or brotherhood with
all those around us. We saw that we would need to give constantly of ourselves
without demands for repayment. When we persistently did this we gradually found
that people were attracted to us as never before. And even if they failed us,
we could be understanding and not too seriously affected.
When we developed still more, we discovered the best
possible source of emotional stability to be God Himself. We found that
dependence upon His perfect justice, forgiveness, and love was healthy, and
that it would work where nothing else would. If we really depended upon God, we
couldn't very well play God to our fellows nor would we feel the urge wholly to
rely on human protection and care. These were the new attitudes that finally
brought many of us an inner strength and peace that could not be deeply shaken
by the shortcomings of others or by any calamity not of our own making.'
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, Step Twelve
'[It was in the AA fellowship that we had] our first glimpse
of its quite new world of understanding and loving concern. Soon we took a look
at AA's Twelve Steps for recovery, but many of us promptly forgot ten of them,
as perhaps not needed. We bought only the concept that we were alcoholics; that
attendance at meetings and a helping hand to the newcomers would be sufficient
to solve the booze problem, and probably all problems. We looked with approval
on that dear old cliché that says that "drinking is but a good man's
fault." Once off the grog, life would be as pleasant as eating cherries.
By happily warming our hands at the AA fire, all seemed well.
But by degrees certain dissatisfactions set in, even with
our own group: it was not as wonderful as we had first supposed. There was,
perhaps, some rock-throwing at a scandal, or a distressing row over who would
become the group's next chairman. There were people we simply did not like, and
the ones we did admire failed to give us the attention we thought we deserved.
At home we were also shocked. After the pink cloud had departed from the
household, things seemed as bad as ever. The old wounds weren't healing at all.
Though impressed with our sobriety, the bank nevertheless asked when were we
going to pay up. Our boss likewise demanded in firm tones that we "get with
it."
So each of us looked up his sponsor and regaled him with
these woes. Our resentments, anxieties and depressions were definitely caused,
we claimed, by our unfortunate circumstances and by the inconsiderate behaviour
of other people. To our consternation, our sponsors didn't seem impressed
either. They had just grinned and said, "Why don't we sit down and take a
hard look at all of AA's Twelve Steps? Maybe you have been missing a lot—in
fact, nearly everything."
Then we began to take our own inventories, rather than the
other fellow's. Getting into the swing of self-examination, we finally began to
discover our real responsibilities toward ourselves and toward those around us.
Though a tough assignment, it did by degrees get easier. We began to make
restitution to those we had harmed, grudgingly at first, and then more
willingly. Little by little, we found that all progress, material or spiritual,
consisted of finding out what our responsibilities actually were and then
proceeding to do something about them. These activities began to pay off. We
found that we didn't always have to be driven by our own discomforts as, more
willingly, we picked up the burdens of living and growing.
Then, most surprisingly, we discovered that full acceptance
and action upon any clear-cut responsibility almost invariably made for true
happiness and peace of mind. Moreover these durable satisfactions were redoubled
when we realised that our now better quality of willingness made it possible in
meditation to find God's will. At last we discovered that we joyfully wanted to
live responsibly.'
Language of the Heart, p. 328
'Last autumn, depression, having no really rational cause at
all, almost took me to the cleaners. I began to be scared that I was in for
another long, chronic spell. Considering the grief I've had with depressions,
it wasn't a bright prospect.
I kept asking myself, "Why can't the Twelve Steps work
to release depression?" By the hour I stared at the St Francis
prayer—"It is better to comfort than be comforted." Here was the
formula all right, but why didn't it work?
Suddenly I realised what the matter was. My basic flaw had
always been dependence—almost absolute dependence—on people or circumstances to
supply me with prestige, security, and the like. Failing to get these things
according to my perfectionist dreams and specifications, I had fought for them,
and when defeat came, so did my depression.
There wasn't a chance of making the outgoing love of St
Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and almost absolute
dependencies were cut away. Because I had over the years undergone a little
spiritual development, the absolute quality of these frightful dependencies had
never before been so starkly revealed. Reinforced by what grace I could secure
in prayer, I found I had to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off
these faulty emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA (indeed!) and upon any
set of circumstances whatsoever.
Then only could I be free to love as St Francis had.
Emotional and instinctual satisfactions, I saw, were really the extra dividends
of having love, offering love and expressing a love appropriate to each
relation to life.
Plainly, I could not avail myself of God's love until I was
able to offer it back to Him by loving others as He would have me, and I
couldn't possibly do that so long as I was victimised by false dependencies.
For my dependency meant demand—for the possession and
control of the people and conditions surrounding me.'
Language of the
Heart, p. 237
'Twelfth-stepping, talking at meetings, recitals of drinking
histories, confessions of our defects and what progress we have made with them
no longer provide us with the released and the abundant life. Our lack of
growth is often revealed by an unexpected calamity or a big emotional upset.
Perhaps we hit the financial jackpot and are surprised that this solves almost
nothing; that we are still bored and miserable, notwithstanding.
As we usually don't get drunk on these occasions, our
bright-eyed friends tell us how well we are doing.
But inside, we know better. We know we aren't doing well
enough. We still can't handle life, as life is. There must be a serious flaw
somewhere in our spiritual practice and development.
What, then, is it?
The chances are better than even that we shall locate our
trouble in our misunderstanding or neglect of AA's Step Eleven—prayer,
meditation, and the guidance of God. The other steps can keep most of us sober
and somehow functioning. But step eleven can keep us growing, if we try hard
and work at it continually. If we even expend five percent of the time on Step
Eleven that we habitually (and rightly) lavish on Step Twelve, the result can
be wonderfully far-reaching. That is an almost uniform experience of those who
constantly practice Step Eleven.'
Language of the Heart, p. 240
'these … miseries, all of them generated by fear, became so
unbearable that I turned highly aggressive. Thinking I never could belong, and
vowing I'd never settle for any second-rate status, I felt I simply had to
dominate in everything I chose to do, work or play. As this attractive formula
for the good life began to succeed, according to my then specifications of
success, I became deliriously happy. But when an undertaking occasionally did
fail, I was filled with a resentment and depression that could be cured only by
the next triumph. Very early, therefore, I came to value everything in terms of
victory or defeat—all or nothing. The only satisfaction I knew was to win.
This was my false antidote for fear …
… we of AA place … emphasis on the need for faith in a
"Higher Power", define that as we may. We have to find a life in the
world of grace and spirit, and this is certainly a new dimension for most of
us. Surprisingly, our quest for this realm of being is not too difficult. Our
conscious entry into it usually begins as soon as we have deeply confessed our
personal powerlessness to go on alone, and have made our appeal to whatever God
we think there is—or may be. The gift of faith and the consciousness of a
Higher Power is the outcome. As faith grows, so does inner security. The vast
underlying fear of nothingness commences to subside. Therefore we of AA find
that our basic antidote for fear is a spiritual awakening.'
Language of the Heart, p. 267
'… our very first problem is to accept our present
circumstances as they are, ourselves as we are, and the people about us as they
are. This is to adopt a realistic humility without which no genuine advance can
even begin. … Provided we strenuously avoid turning these realistic surveys of
the facts of life into unrealistic alibis for apathy or defeatism, they can be
the sure foundation upon which increased emotional health and therefore
spiritual progress can be built. At least this seems to be my own experience.
Another exercise that I practice is to try for a full
inventory of my blessings and then for a right acceptance of the many gifts
that are mine—both temporal and spiritual. Here I try to achieve a state of
joyful gratitude. … I try hard to hold fast to the truth that a full and
thankful heart cannot entertain great conceits. …
In times of very rough going, the grateful acceptance of my
blessings, oft repeated, can also bring me some of the serenity of which our
prayer speaks. Whenever I fall under acute pressures I lengthen my daily walks
and slowly repeat our Serenity Prayer in rhythm to my steps and breathing. If I
feel that my pain has in part been occasioned by others, I try to repeat,
"God grant me the serenity to love their best, and never fear their
worst." …
These fragments of prayer bring far more than mere comfort.
They keep me on the track of right acceptance; they break up my compulsive
themes of guilt, depression, rebellion, and pride; and sometimes they endow me
with the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the
difference.'
Language of the Heart, p. 269
'Bill W said, "Trouble is not what it seems. At least,
not when you have been in AA for a while. You somehow begin to see that life is
just a short day in a great school. In the longer perspective, it matters not
much whether the lessons are easy or difficult. The point is, do we learn, and
do we transmit to others what we have found?
The only people that I can be genuinely sorry for are those
who have no idea of why they are alive or where, if any place, they are going.
They cannot possibly have the longer perspective which would so greatly comfort
them in times of adversity. They spend their whole lives long avoiding trouble
or complaining about it when they get it.
When you stop to think about it, Alcoholics Anonymous is a
society which is founded, not so much upon success, as upon failure. The only
reason I know is that I once failed myself—I drank so much bathtub gin, I
nearly died. The capitalisation of that failure, and of many others, is the
foundation upon which Alcoholics Anonymous is built." '
Grapevine, March 1971
'Just for today I will not be afraid of anything. If my mind
is clouded with nameless dreads, I will track them down and expose their
unreality. I will remind myself that God is in charge of me and mine and that I
have only to accept His protection
and guidance. What happened yesterday need not trouble me today.'
One Day At A Time In Al-Anon, p. 328
'Sometimes it seems to us we have more than a fair share of
problems. We're so submerged in them that we can't imagine any way out. It's
like trying to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps to raise our thoughts out of
this frantic state.
We can do it, though, if we learn to use the leverage of
God's help. It is always with us, ready to give us the lift we need. What
happens then is that we are enabled to see
beyond what seems to be. In Al-Anon, we call this getting a perspective on our troubles, instead of
pinpointing our thoughts on the trouble.'
One Day
At A Time In Al-Anon, p. 148
'Forgiveness can sometimes make the difference.
Unfortunately, forgiveness is often confused with judgement: I will examine the
ways in which I feel you have injured me and find you guilty. Then, out of my
generous, spiritual heart, I will condescend to absolve you of guilt. This is
not forgiveness, but arrogance. If we have judged, forgiveness can be the means
by which our minds are returned to humility—and thereby to real freedom: we can
remember that we are in no position to rule on the worthiness of another. Every
person, simply by being a child of God, is worthy of love and respect. By
shifting the focus from the other person's "wrongs" to our own, we
can take responsibility for having expressed condemnation. Then we can forgive
ourselves. We are human. We sometimes make mistakes and may have to make amends
for you behaviour. Nevertheless, we have no more right to condemn ourselves
than to condemn others. We deserve to treat ourselves with honesty and love.'
… In All Our Affairs (Al-Anon), p. 210
'There is no better way to keep our spiritual benefits than
by giving them away with love, free of expectations, and with no strings
attached. Giving away our material goods depletes our supply (if I give you
half my lunch, I will have less than before). When we give away what we have
received in Al-Anon, most of us get back far more than we give.'
… In All Our Affairs (Al-Anon), p. 209
'Some decisions are not simply choices between something
good and something not-good, but more like: "Which kind of pain can I live
with most readily?" I have found that this applies to every area of my
life, including my marriage to a recovering alcoholic. There are times when I
have to hurt through a situation. When this happens, the choice is not whether
to hurt or not to hurt, but what to do while I am hurting. I can function
productively while I heal or I can turn my face to the wall and hide a while. I
have done some of both, but at least I know now that I have the choice.'
… In All Our Affairs (Al-Anon), p. 172
'I was first reminded that for the alcoholic, drinking is
not the problem—it's the solution. Alcohol had served as the source of his
security, courage, and serenity. Today he is often in a state of panic because
he has not yet found other sources for these very real needs.
Al-Anon does not promise to save marriages, but it does offer
sanity. If you do want the marriage, they told me, then accept the fact that
you will not get healthy behaviour from a sick person or logical statements
from an illogical person. This includes me, too. I expected myself to be well
immediately. Now I know that I may never be, but that I can be increasingly
better, and I can be gentler with both of us.
I was also reminded that we do not accept the unacceptable,
and what is unacceptable varies from person to person. What I could not live
with for five minutes, others could perhaps tolerate with good grace, and vice
versa.'
… In All Our Affairs (Al-Anon), p. 78
'… specific, concrete, how-to-do-it suggestions …:
1. Build an invisible shield between you and him, a shield
of love. Use it when the abuse begins, and the words will hit it and roll off
without touching you. Visualise it keenly; make it vividly real in your mind.
2. Remember that he is only one or two years old in AA, that
he is much like a real baby of that age who slaps out at people who are holding
him. We don't slap back. We just hold the baby off far enough that he can't hit
us.
3. When he is holding forth with these torrents of vicious
words, they told me, picture him saying these things out the window of a mental
hospital. Would they hurt then? No, I thought, because I would know he was sick
and that they weren't aimed at me personally. They suggested that I mentally
draw a window around him whenever this started and detach myself as if he were
really hospitalised. It worked amazingly! I can't tell you how many hundreds of
times I drew the window around him and felt the release that came as a result.'
… In All Our Affairs (Al-Anon), p. 79
'I once read an anecdote of the Far West that carries a
wonderful metaphysical lesson. It appears that a party of hunters, being called
away from their camp by a sudden alarm, left the camp fire unattended, with a
kettle of water boiling on it.
Presently an old bear crept out of the woods, attracted by
the fire, and, seeing the kettle with its lid dancing about on top, promptly
seized it. Naturally, it burnt and scalded him badly; but instead of dropping
it instantly he proceeded to hug it tightly—this being Mr Bruin's only idea of
defence. Of course, the tighter he hugged it the more it burnt him, and of course
the more it burnt him the tighter he hugged it, and so on in a vicious circle,
to the undoing of the bear.
This illustrates perfectly the way in which so many people
amplify their difficulties. They hug them to their bosoms by constantly
rehearsing them to themselves and others, and by continually dwelling upon them
in every possible manner, instead of dropping them once and for all so the
wound would have a chance to heal.
Whenever you catch yourself thinking about your grievances,
say to yourself: "Bear hugs kettle," and think about God instead. You
will be surprised how quickly some long-standing wounds will disappear under
this treatment.'
Find And Use Your Inner Power, Emmet Fox, p. 28
'T-2.VII.1. You may still complain about fear, but you
nevertheless persist in making yourself fearful. 2 I have already indicated
that you cannot ask me to release you from fear. 3 I know it does not exist,
but you do not. 4 If I intervened between your thoughts and their results, I
would be tampering with a basic law of cause and effect; the most fundamental
law there is. 5 I would hardly help you if I depreciated the power of your own
thinking. 6 This would be in direct opposition to the purpose of this course. 7
It is much more helpful to remind you that you do not guard your thoughts
carefully enough. 8 You may feel that at this point it would take a miracle to
enable you to do this, which is perfectly true. 9 You are not used to
miracle-minded thinking, but you can be trained to think that way. 10 All
miracle workers need that kind of training.'
A Course in Miracles
'W-pI.190.5. It is your thoughts alone that cause you pain.
2 Nothing external to your mind can hurt or injure you in anyway. 3 There is no
cause beyond yourself that can reach down and bring oppression. 4 No one but
yourself affects you. 5 There is nothing in the world that has the power to
make you ill or sad, or weak or frail. 6 But it is you who have the power to
dominate all things you see by merely recognizing what you are. 7 As you
perceive the harmlessness in them, they will accept your holy will as theirs. 8
And what was seen as fearful now becomes a source of innocence and holiness.'
A Course in Miracles
'If you want to know what it means to be happy, look at a
flower, a bird, a child; they are perfect images of the kingdom. For they live
from moment to moment in the eternal now with no past and no future. So they
are spared the guilt and the anxiety that so torment human beings and they are
full of the sheer joy of living, taking delight not so much in persons or
things as in life itself. As long as your happiness is caused or sustained by
something or someone outside of you, you are still in the land of the dead. The
day you are happy for no reason whatsoever, the day you find yourself taking
delight in everything and in nothing, you will know that you have found the
land of unending joy called the kingdom.
To find the kingdom is the easiest thing in the world but
also the most difficult. Easy because it is all around you and within you, and
all you have to do is reach out and take possession of it. Difficult because if
you wish to possess the kingdom you may possess nothing else. That is, you must
drop all inward leaning on any person or thing, withdrawing from them forever
the power to thrill you, or excite you, or to give you a feeling of security or
well-being. For this you first need to see with unflinching clarity this simple
and shattering truth: Contrary to what your culture and religion have taught
you, nothing, but absolutely nothing can make you happy. The moment you see
that, you will stop moving from one job to another, one friend to another, one
place, one spiritual technique, one guru to another. None of these things can
give you a single minute of happiness. They can only offer you a temporary
thrill, a pleasure that initially grows in intensity, then turns into pain if
you lose them and into boredom if you keep them. …
The day you are discontented not because you want more of
something but without knowing what it is you want; when you are sick at heart
of everything that you have been pursuing so far and you are sick of the
pursuit itself, then your heart will attain a great clarity, an insight that
will cause you mysteriously to delight in everything and in nothing.'
The Way To Love (Fire On The Earth), Anthony De Mello