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The next frontier: Emotional Sobriety
by Bill Wilson, from Language
of the Heart published by the
A.A. Grapevine (c)
"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 in AA, the 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 and
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 right principles in all of 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 begin 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 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's 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 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, upon any act of circumstance
whatsoever.
Then only could I be free to love as
Francis did. Emotional and Instinctual
satisfactions, I saw, were really the
extra dividends of having love,
offering love, and expressing love
appropriate to each relation of life.
Plainly, I could not avail myself to
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 victimized by
false dependencies.
For
my dependence meant demand, a demand
for the possession and control of the
people and the conditions surrounding
me. While those words "absolute
dependence" may look like a
gimmick, they were the ones that
helped to trigger my release into my
present degree of stability and
quietness of mind, qualities which I
am now trying to consolidate by
offering love to others regardless of
the return to me.
This seems to be the primary healing
circuit: an outgoing love of God's
creation and His people, by means of
which we avail ourselves of His love
for us. It is most clear that the real
current can't flow until our
paralyzing dependencies are broken,
and broken at depth. Only then can we
possibly have a glimmer of what adult
love really is.
If
we examine every disturbance we have,
great or small, we will find at the
root of it some unhealthy dependence
and its consequent demand. Let us,
with God's help, continually surrender
these hobbling demands. Then we can be
set free to live and love: we may then
be able to gain emotional sobriety.
Of
course, I haven't offered you a really
new idea only a gimmick that has
started to unhook several of my own
hexes' at depth. Nowadays, my brain no
longer races compulsively in either
elation, grandiosity or depression. I
have been given a quiet place in
bright
sunshine"
Bill Wilson
"Grapevine"
January, 1953.
~~
St. Francis Prayer (11th Step)~~
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Emotional Sobriety
Is When:
1.
I am free of resentments, jealousy, and envy--and
free to forgive quickly.
2.
My emotions are not
so violent that they cause me to
go or be on a dry drunk.
3.
I am able to make normal everyday decisions
without my vision being unduly influenced by my
emotions.
4.
I am able to
identify & live by my personal
values without compromise to emotional
pressure.
5.
I am able to enjoy
life as spiritual principles would
dictate --such as being properly
revolted by ugliness, sin and
suffering, and positively rewarded by
happenings of love, beauty and
principle.
6.
I am happy when others do things better or
quicker than I have done them.
7.
My emotions are in
sync with my intellect and both are in
synch with God's Will.
8.
I can live freely without being emotionally
subservient to another human being.
9.
I can move freely between the emotional states of
child, adult and parent.
10.
I derive genuine, healthy pleasure from helping
others without thought of reward, money, prestige or station.
~~Author Unknown~~
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12 Signs of a
Spiritual Awakening
( Source Unknown )
1. An increased tendency to let things happen rather than make them
happen.
2. Frequent attacks of smiling.
3. Feelings of being connected with others and nature.
4. Frequent overwhelming episodes of appreciation.
5. A tendency to think and act spontaneously rather than from fears
based on past experience.
6. An unmistakable ability to enjoy each moment.
7. A loss of ability to worry.
8. A loss of interest in conflict.
9. A loss of interest in interpreting the actions of others.
10. A loss of interest in judging others.
11. A loss of interest in judging self.
12. Gaining the ability to love without expecting anything in
return.
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