Mr. SponsorPants

Willingness and How To Develop an Open Mind -- which can then help you develop willingness.

In the book "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions" (commonly referred to as the 12&12), it states on pg. 40, in the essay about the 3rd Step:

"... it appears that there are certain things which only the individual can do.  All by himself, and in the light of his own circumstances, he needs to develop the quality of willingness." 

A good sponsor can help motivate you, but motivation just makes being willing easier -- I would suggest that it is not actually willingness itself.

I have to say, on this point the 12&12 just sort of leaves you hanging -- so many other places in AA literature offer clear cut instructions as to not only what needs to be done (as in this particular case, the need for the individual to become willing) but also how to do it.

Involving the help of a Higher Power -- whatever that may mean to you -- is likely a critical component in this process -- and the discussion of the 3rd Step in the 12&12 is all about giving yourself over in that way.  But in reading this essay recently with someone, when we got to this paragraph they asked the very pointed question, "how, then, if I'm supposed to do it all on my own, am I supposed to 'develop the quality of willingness?'"

I started to make a flip answer along the lines of, "Well, you need to start doing things differently.  If you want different feelings you have to take different actions."  And yes, that's true -- very true, in fact.  To put it in Fischer Price terms, healthy actions bring healthy thoughts and feelings, sick actions ... you get it.

And over the years I've heard this truism expressed in a number of ways:  "Esteemable acts bring self esteem" is one of my favorites, for example.  You might even extrapolate this point out to a cornerstone of how AA itself heals me.  As I've both heard and shared in meetings, I have never been able to substantively change my thinking with other thoughts -- I've only been able to change my thinking with actions.  In fact, trying to change my problem thinking with more thinking is trying to use the problem to fix the problem -- not generally a successful strategy.

But it struck me that in some ways the willingness to do something often sort of precedes the new action.  And from what we just read in the 12&12, it sort of felt like the literature was, in this passage anyway, saying, "Ok, kid, this part is key.  Critical!  But you're on your own.  Good luck with that!"

So I gave it some thought, and sipped my coffee (ah, caffeine, boon to my inspiration!)

I think that for me, developing the quality of willingness has been predicated on developing an open mind.  I have to sort of be open to the idea that this new thing/behavior is going to work, before I become willing to give it a go.  It's not wholly a mental exercise of course, there is a "just do it" element, an "if you want what we've got, do what we did" thread running through this when we're new to AA.  But still, for me, an open mind has I think been hand-in-hand with my willingness.

Now, the good news is, developing an open mind is actually really easy.  There's only one word I've ever needed to do so, and even if I use the word grudgingly, or dripping with scorn, or laced with sarcasm, it still seems to work.

The word is:  Maybe.

If I try to embrace that word, however falteringly, it can allow a slender, needle-thin shaft of light to penetrate the tightly shuttered darkness of my closed mind.  (Oooh, how writerly!  Metaphors. Images. Fancy!)

Embarrassingly, in those times in my head, it can look like this:

Maybe I'll feel a little better if I try -- God knows, I couldn't feel much worse.

Maybe this won't completely suck.

Maybe at least one thing here can help me.

Maybe one of these people will say something useful.

(In that last one, the word "people" is not the word I probably used.)

If I can get to maybe, I have opened the door a crack.  And once I open the door a crack, I can reach through and grab hold of a tiny piece of willing.

From there, for me, that's how it builds.

My life has been transformed not with blinding white light experiences, although I believe some people have had such things.  No, for me, my life has been transformed most often by these tiny, infinitesimal, almost grudging, shifts in attitude and then eventually, consciousness.

Words shape my thoughts, my thoughts start my actions, then my actions reach back and change my feelings and my thinking.  It's a powerful process, and as with anything powerful, I can use it to help or harm.

But I don't have to be fully motivated at the outset.  When I start, I don't have to believe 100% in the power of this process to change me. 

To begin, I just have to get to "maybe."

Money makes the world go around -- some thoughts from Step 7

Step 7: "Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings."

  

From the book "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions" (AA's 12&12), Step 7, pg. 71 -- (italics are direct quotes from the "12&12" and straight text is my sorting it out):

"Certainly no alcoholic, and surely no member of AA, wants to deprecate material achievement."

We're not saying that making money and buying stuff is bad.

"Nor do we enter into debate with the many who still so passionately cling to the belief that to satisfy our basic natural desires is the main object of life."

We're not here to argue with anyone over whether job/ambition/career/wealth is the most important thing to do with your life.

"But we are sure that no class of people in the world ever made a worse mess of trying to live by this formula than alcoholics.  For thousands of years we have been demanding more than our share of security, prestige, and romance.  When we seemed to be succeeding, we drank to dream still greater dreams.  When we were frustrated, even in part, we drank for oblivion.  Never was there enough of what we thought we wanted."

One thing that we're clear about is that alcoholics, when they make material or personal achievement the main goal of their lives, are a disaster, and become either greedy messes or spoiled brats having tantrums at the slightest thing, using all of it as an excuse for their behavior and their drinking.  Winning or losing, whatever we got, we wanted more. 

"In all these strivings, so many of them well-intentioned, our crippling handicap had been our lack of humility.  We had lacked the perspective to see that character building and spiritual values had to come first, and that material satisfactions were not the purpose of living." 

Often we were just trying to provide a good quality of life for ourselves and our families, but we couldn't see that for an alcoholic to be happy, for our lives to work successfully on every level, we had to make a spiritual practice and living by spiritual principles our first priority, before any material goals, even practical ones.

__________

Poverty is not ennobling.

Wealth is not degrading. 

AA doesn't suggest that money is bad, or ambition is wrong, or wanting to be successful in your chosen career -- even wanting to be the best in your chosen field --  is bad.  Pursuing those things can even be a celebration of the gifts you've been given and a testament to recovery.

BUT, when we pursue those things ahead of sobriety, or ahead of/instead of practicing spiritual principles in all our affairs (including our business and financial affairs) alcoholics tend to get twisted up inside, and generally that leads us back to a personal hell, both metaphorically and literally.

Or, more simply, placing ourselves and our ambitions ahead of all else eventually leads an alcoholic to self destruct -- even with millions in the bank.

(Though if you have millions in the bank when you self destruct you do tend to get a better quality casket.)

Hitting Bottom: The First Step and Grieving the loss of your good friend, Booze.

Allow me to pull out a few key points, in sequence, from the essay on the First Step in the book "Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions,":

"Who cares to admit complete defeat?  Practically no one, of course.  Every natural instinct cries out against the idea of personal powerlessness." -- pg. 21

"Alcohol ... bleeds us of all self-sufficiency and all will to resist its demands ... our bankruptcy as going human concerns is complete." -- pg. 21

"In AA's pioneering time, none but the most desperate cases could swallow and digest this unpalatable truth." -- pg. 22

"Many less desperate alcoholics tried AA, but did not succeed because they could not make the admission of hopelessness." -- pg. 23

"Alcoholics who still had their health, their families, their jobs, and even two cars in the garage, began to recognize their alcoholism." -- pg. 23

"Since Step One requires an admission that our lives had become unmanageable, how could people such as these take this Step?" -- pg. 23

"It was obviously necessary to raise the bottom the rest of us had hit to the point where it would hit them.  By going back in our own drinking histories, we could show that years before we realized it we were out of control, that our drinking was no mere habit, that it was indeed the beginning of a fatal progression." -- pg. 23

So it goes like this then:

It feels unnatural to admit that you are completely beaten by something -- even when you're diagnosed with a powerful illness (cancer, diabetes, alcoholism) we fight the admission.

The more I think about my own First Step, the more I listen to people in meetings talk about being powerless, about hitting bottom, about what brought them to AA and how they "worked" the First Step -- the more I believe that the famous Five Stages of Grief -- first proposed by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross:  Denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance -- are a fair reflection of what someone first really confronting their alcoholism may go through.  After all, aren't we grieving the loss of an illusion?  The illusion that we can control our drinking?  Grieving the loss of our best friend, alcohol?  Grieving the loss of that most Western of ideals: The image of ourselves as unbeatable, as able, with enough grit and determination, to achieve any goal, overcome any obstacle?

But the fact is, if you believe that alcoholism is a disease, something that, just like any other disease, has powerful symptoms (a lack of "all will to resist its demands" for example) and, like any other disease, powerful, toxic, and even potentially fatal consequences ("bankruptcy as going human concerns" is not just poetic, it's chilling, when you consider what it can really mean), then you begin to acknowledge that on your own you cannot treat this illness, just like, on your own, you could not successfully treat a tumor or a broken bone.

And if you don't fully admit this state of hopelessness, then you won't be able to successfully treat your illness.  Just like being diagnosed with cancer and deciding that you know better than the doctors how to treat it, and will in fact do so completely on your own, with your own ideas as to how to go about it and get the best result.

Imagine the conversation one might have, explaining that to someone:

DUMPLING: I just found out that I have a spot of skin cancer.  It's pretty bad, they say.

GIBLET: Oh my God! That's terrible! What are you going to do? Surgery? Some kind of radiation? What? Do you need me to drive you anywhere? Oh my God!

DUMPLING: No, they recommended surgery to treat the cancer, yeah, but I'm just going to move to a different city.  I think the problem is where I live.

GIBLET: I'm sorry ... what?

DUMPLING:  Yeah, I figure if I move then this thing will just clear itself right up."

Insane, when framed in that way, but if you substitute "alcoholism" for "skin cancer" and put the dialog in someone's mind instead of aloud, it's not that far off from what some alcoholic's treatment strategy may be.  They're going to "figure out" how to "handle this on their own."

Thus the admission of hopelessness is the admission that on my own I am unable to treat the illness.  There is no hope of a successful treatment without help.

But what if I can catch the illness before it becomes malignant?  What if I can see the symptoms of a disease's progression and believe the evidence based on many other people's experience that my symptoms match theirs, but I am a bit earlier in the downward trajectory they suffered.

That's raising the bottom.  That's what can happen in Open AA meetings, or with an intervention, or even harsh consequences (jail, loss of a job, etc.)

That's why it is important for people in AA meetings to share their drinking history, to talk about their own experience in the downward spiral of real and chronic alcoholism.

Yet even with all that, one of the most profound symptoms of alcoholism is its ability to convince you that it does not exist, that your case is different, that it's not so serious...  the biggest symptom of alcoholism is its ability to get you to ignore the symptoms of alcoholism.

No wonder if you can't admit complete hopelessness and helplessness you can't get sober -- who could overcome that?