Saturday, June 25, 2011
The Unaided Will…
“When first challenged to admit defeat, most of us revolted. We had approached A.A. expecting to be taught self-confidence. Then we had been told that so far as alcohol is concerned, self-confidence was no good whatever; in fact, it was a total liability. Our sponsors declared that we were the victims of a mental obsession so subtly powerful that no amount of human willpower could break it. There was, they said, no such thing as the personal conquest of this compulsion by the unaided will.”* 12×12 A.A. Page 22
This is helping me to recognize that it isn’t about self-confidence… It is telling me that there is something subconsciously inside of me that’s so subtly powerfully destructing my life that I’ve done my best – that’s why the no human aid or will could conquer it unaided by it’s own strength – it’s trying to help me to realize, “K.C., you’re not going to do any better than what you’ve done and it’s only going to get worse. You’ve done your best. By yourself, of yourself, your self-confidence is not going to do you any good. What you need is God-confidence.” The only way to get God-confidence in there is the removal of Self, and the opinion of Self. Stop listening to yourself and the opinions that you have of yourself or this life that you have because it’s destructive.
Unless it’s positive, you’ve got no purpose in listening to whatever is coming into your head.
When these destructive or concerned thoughts, or this life that we’re living in, becomes a life of worry and prejudice and anxiety that means that we’re in the wrong realm and we’re listening to the wrong person. You’re listening to the character that got you to the point that said: “I need help.” If you’re here or any position in your life – it seems to me that is going to come for every human being: a hand is going to reach out for help. So, if you’re reaching out for help, it’s because what you’ve got doesn’t work. So you’ve got to stop going to you. You by yourself unaided will never get anything more that what you’ve got, and you’re at the best. And not only are you at the best, but it’s progressively by your awareness gotten worse and worse and worse. And that’s what it does. This pain that you’re in can get worse. Take the pain that you’re in, if you’re in discomfort, multiply it by ten and take it to infinity because you can make it as bad as you want.
There is always a way to go down. But the only way to get up is to seek help. To get something outside of yourself because you’ve tried the best method or philosophy that you know and it’s produced nothing but what you got.
I guess for me, it’s that I realized: “Man, I really need to stop going to me for everything.” And not only do I need to stop going to me for everything, I’ve got to find out how I do go for me for certain things and the only way I find out I’ve gone for me is I’m back in that hole again of feeling like the world that I’m living in is a world I don’t want to live in. And then I know, “I’ve taken it all back.” I don’t it know as it’s happening because I can’t see it as it’s happening. What I start to do is learn to see indicators before I get into that massive hole. Those indicators are that knot in my stomach, that anxiety, the lack of sleep at night. It’s like, “Uh oh. I’m taking it back.” I don’t even need to know how I’ve taken it back, but when I’ve taken back, when I can’t sleep at night, that’s an unmanageable life. When I walk around the world I live in and I don’t find fullness in the world that I live in from moment to moment throughout the day – it doesn’t mean I need to be sparkly every day – but if overall I’m feeling kind of dull, I’ve taken it back. What have I taken back? I’ve taken back all my opinions and ideas and I’ve allowed them to project themselves, again, back on me. And I’ve got to stop. There has to come a point where, you know what? I’m going to stop listening to me because the best me could do is feel like I’m in a hole and I can’t get out. That’s the best I could produce. So there has to come a period of time, for a period of time, where I stop listening to me and I start letting life go where it’s going.
And I realize my sole job is to find the goodness in whatever it is that’s happening. That’s my sole job.
But also at the same token, at what point do I stop listening to the input I get from me? When? And what does that mean? How long before I truly am free from the bondage of me and the input that I give to me, consciously and subconsciously – the best I could do is defend myself consciously, but what about the subconscious element? That’s what they’re talking about. That you’re the victim of an obsession so powerful that no amount of human willpower can break it. It’s saying that in your subconscious is where troubles lie and all the human willpower that you have cannot break the trauma, the trouble and the anguish that you put yourself into. That’s where you’re at. And what a great jumping off point. This paragraph signifies: It’s right here where you either go forward or you stop everything. The go forward means that you stop listening to you and if you don’t do that then the bottom line is, none of this matters anymore, there’s no need to go any further until you can realize that you’re the victim of an obsession so subtly powerful that no human willpower can break it. Meaning: your human willpower will not break your trauma, your anxiety, your depression, whatever you get into. It won’t happen.All you do when you’re in a hole is wait for something to happen that’ll let you out of that hole. The bottom line is you’ve got no control of it so what happens is that as you progress in life, you stay in the hole longer and it takes more to get you out of the hole. And as it takes more to get you out of the hole, obviously as a by-product of that you’re going to stay in the hole longer. And it gets worse and worse and worse. We need more magnitudes of things to get you out of that hole, and what it is, is temporary cessation of the pain that you’re in before you get used to whatever magnitude of that situation that brought you out of that hole gets to the point where – maybe it’s a new car. Ninety days later it’s an old car. Now you gotta pay for it. And now the insurance is up and maybe something broke and so the novelty of that’s worn off, got you out of that hole, and now all of a sudden you slowly start to go back because the car has become relative to your life. So, when that happens and that starts to take place it means that I’m at the place – at what point do I say: “No more listening to me for a period of time.”Until I can truly come to believe in a Power Greater than myself and I can really make a decision to call that Power by name and call it God. And I discover what my will is that I’m offering to this God and what my life is that I’m offering to this God. Until then, I really can’t trust what comes to me.
Much love,
K.C.
