I think that
many oldsters who have put our AA "booze cure" to severe but
successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety. Perhaps they
will be the spearhead for the next major development of much more real
maturity and balance (which is to say, humility) in our relations with
ourselves, with our fellows, and with God. Those adolescent urges that so many
of us have for top approval, perfect security and perfect romance, urges quite
appropriate to age seventeen, prove to be an impossible way of life when we
are at age forty-seven or fifty-seven.
Since AA began,
I've taken immense wallops in all these areas because of my failure to grow
up, emotionally and spiritually.
My God, how
painful it is to keep demanding the impossible and how very painful to
discover, finally, that all along we have had the cart before the horse. Then
comes the final agony of seeing how awfully wrong we have been, but still
finding ourselves unable to get off the emotional merry-go-round. How to
translate a right mental conviction into a right emotional result and so into
easy, happy and good living? Well, that's not only the neurotic's problem,
it's the problem of Life itself for all of us who have got to the point of
real willingness to hew to the right principles in all our affairs.
Even then, as we
hew away, peace and joy may still elude us. That's the place so many of us AA
oldsters have come to and it's a hell of a spot, literally. How shall our
unconscious, from which so many of our fears, compulsions and phony
aspirations still stream, be brought into line with what we actually believe,
know and want? How to convince our dumb, raging, and hidden "Mr.
Hyde" becomes our main task.
I've recently
come to believe that this can be achieved. I believe so because I began to see
many benighted ones, folks like you and me, commencing to get results. 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 depression, 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 to be comforted." Here was the formula, all right, but why didn't it
work? Suddenly, I realized 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 perfectionistic 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.
Reinforced by
what grace I could find in prayer, I had to exert every ounce of will and
action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people and upon
circumstances. Then only could I be free to love as Francis had loved.
I recieved this in an e-mail . I read it once before early
in my recovery
this time It means alot more to me. I realized all through my life how I
too always depended on others or circumstances . I love the
St Francis prayer .At my Sunday meeting it is on the wall. I always read it.
I am free Today & Grateful to the people in the rooms of
AA/NA/Alanon.
God Bless and Thank you ds_avalon 7/19/02