“The Al-Anon program really works because it helps us to get away from ourselves. When we think constantly about our grievances and the ‘faults’ of the alcoholic, our minds are too confused to accept new ideas. I will drop this fruitless worrying and concentrate on strengthening myself to accept each day along with whatever it brings.” (ODAT, 2 April)
For a long time, I did not want a solution. I wanted to complain about the alcoholic, about the outrageous thing they had just done, and how upset they made me, because I got a perverse satisfaction out of it, especially the sympathy, compassion, and solidarity I would elicit from others. The merely sympathetic and compassionate were not helping me with their sympathy and compassion. The merely sympathetic and compassionate were merely trying to make me comfortable in my discomfort. The helpful people pointed out my suffering was coming from my reaction and showed me how to change that reaction.
I love that ‘faults’ is in inverted commas in this reading. This is because the alcoholic is just doing what is in their present nature. Even once they’re sober, their action reflects their inner condition, as with me. Wherever they are is wherever they are. Wherever I am is wherever I am. I can seek progress for myself but must leave others to seek theirs, or not, as the case may be. They are exactly where they are meant to be, as am I. If I don’t like it, I can part ways. If I’m staying, there’s a prize. Their faults are not the problem: they’re the price I’m willing to pay for the prize.
The Al-Anon solution:
- Stop thinking about them
- Stop thinking about me, too
What should I think about?
- My day, and what wonderful activities to fill it with
- God
But, in doing so, am I being inauthentic to my feelings, stuffing them, causing them to squeeze out elsewhere, abandoning myself, denying my grief?
Obviously, if I happen, in a particular moment, to feel a feeling, well and good, it’s gone in a moment, but the feeling is the flipside of a thought. Compassionate with the feeling, brutal with the thought, that’s the motto. It’s impossible to stuff a feeling. There is no mechanism for doing so. Feelings are simply felt. What is stuffed is the thought. But I’m not ‘stuffing’ truths, I’m ‘stuffing’ lies. In turning away from negative, critical, judgemental, and fearful thoughts, I’m not running away from a merciless god, I’m laughing at the absurdity of the ego.
The talk I used to engage in of ‘abandoning myself’ was really my ego’s defence: it told me, “If you apply the programme, you’re abandoning me.” It got me to reclassify self-pity, gloom, and obsession with the past and with other’s ill treatment of me as grief. My ego is not my amigo. The ego must be abandoned, starved of oxygen.
So, no, turning away from the devilish thoughts is not abandonment of the self but the embracing of my true self by cutting away everything that is concealing it, and it is the ego that is concealing the true self.