"Humbly
asked Him to remove our shortcomings."
Since this Step so specifically
concerns itself with humility, we should pause here to consider what humility
is and what the practice of it can mean to us.
Indeed, the attainment of greater
humility is the foundation principle of each of A.A.'s Twelve Steps. For
without some degree of humility, no alcoholic can stay sober at all. Nearly all
A.A.'s have found, too, that unless they develop much more of this precious
quality than may be required just for sobriety, they still haven't much chance
of becoming truly happy. Without it, they cannot live to much useful purpose,
or, in adversity, be able to summon the faith that can meet any emergency.
Humility, as a word and as an ideal,
has a very bad time of it in our world. Not only is the idea misunderstood; the
word itself is often intensely disliked. Many people haven't even a nodding
acquaintance with humility as a way of life. Much of the everyday talk we hear,
and a great deal of what we read, highlights man's pride in his own
achievements.
With great intelligence, men of
science have been forcing nature to disclose her secrets. The immense resources
now being harnessed promise such a quantity of material blessings that many
have come to believe that a man-made millennium lies just ahead. Poverty will
disappear, and there will be such abundance that everybody can have all the
security and personal satisfactions he desires. The theory seems to be that
once everybody's primary instincts are satisfied, there won't be much left to
quarrel about. The world will then turn happy and be free to concentrate on
culture and character. Solely by their own intelligence and labor, men will
have shaped their own destiny.
Certainly no alcoholic, and surely
no member of A.A., wants to deprecate material achievement. 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. 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.
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. Quite characteristically, we had gone all out in confusing the ends
with the means. Instead of regarding the satisfaction of our material desires
as the means by which we could live and function as human beings, we had taken
these satisfactions to be the final end and aim of life.
True, most of us thought good character was desirable, but obviously good character was something one needed to get on with the business of being self-satisfied. With a proper display of honesty and morality, we'd stand a better chance of getting what we really wanted. But whenever we had to choose between character and comfort, the character-building was lost in the dust of our chase after what we thought was happiness. Seldom did we look at character-building as something desirable in itself, something we would like to strive for whether our instinctual needs were met or not. We never thought of making honesty, tolerance, and true love of man and God the daily basis of living.
This lack of anchorage to any
permanent values, this blindness to the true purpose of our lives, produced
another bad result. For just so long as we were convinced that we could live
exclusively by our own individual strength and intelligence, for just that long
was a working faith in a Higher Power impossible. This was true even when we
believed that God existed. We could actually have earnest religious beliefs
which remained barren because we were still trying to play God ourselves. As
long as we placed self reliance first, a genuine reliance upon a Higher Power
was out of the question. That basic ingredient of all humility, a desire to
seek and do God's will, was missing.
For us, the process of gaining a new
perspective was unbelievably painful. It was only by repeated humiliations that
we were forced to learn something about humility. It was only at the end of a
long road, marked by successive defeats and humiliations, and the final
crushing of our self sufficiency, that we began to feel humility as something
more than a condition of groveling despair. Every newcomer in Alcoholics
Anonymous is told, and soon realizes for himself, that his humble admission of
powerlessness over alcohol is his first step toward liberation from its
paralyzing grip.
So it is that we first see humility as a necessity.
But this is the barest beginning. To get completely away from our aversion to
the idea of being humble, to gain a vision of humility as the avenue to true
freedom of the human spirit, to be willing to work for humility as something to
be desired for itself, takes most of us a long, long time. A whole lifetime
geared to self-centeredness cannot be set in reverse all at once. Rebellion
dogs our every step at first.
When we have finally admitted without reservation that we are powerless over alcohol, we are apt to breathe a great sigh of relief, saying, "Well, thank God that's over! I'll never have to go through that again!" Then we learn, often to our consternation, that this is only the first milestone on the new road we are walking. Still goaded by sheer necessity, we reluctantly come to grips with those serious character flaws that made problem drinkers of us in the first place, flaws which must be dealt with to prevent a retreat into alcoholism once again. We will want to be rid of some of these defects, but in some instances this will appear to be an impossible job from which we recoil. And we cling with a passionate persistence to others which are just as disturbing to our equilibrium, because we still enjoy them too much. How can we possibly summon the resolution and the willingness to get rid of such overwhelming compulsions and desires?
But again we are driven on by the
inescapable conclusion which we draw from A.A. experience, that we surely must
try with a will, or else fall by the wayside. At this stage of our progress we
are under heavy pressure and coercionto do the right thing. We are obliged to
choose between the pains of trying and the certain penalties of failing to do
so. These initial steps along the road are taken grudgingly, yet we do take
them. We may still have no very high opinion of humility as a desirable
personal virtue, but we do recognize it as a necessary aid to our survival.
But when we have taken a square look
at some of these defects, have discussed them with another, and have become willing
to have them removed, our thinking about humility commences to have a wider
meaning. By this time in all probability we have gained some measure of release
from our more devastating handicaps. We enjoy moments in which there is
something like real peace of
mind.
To those of us who have hitherto known only excitement, depression, or
anxiety--in other words, to all of us--this newfound peace is a priceless gift.
Something new indeed has been added. Where humility had formerly stood for a
forced feeding on humble pie, it now begins to mean the nourishing ingredient
which can give us serenity.
This improved perception of humility
starts another revolutionary change in our outlook. Our eyes begin to open to
the immense values which have come straight out of painful ego-puncturing.
Until now, our lives have been largely devoted to running from pain and
problems. We fled from them as from a plague. We never wanted to deal with the
fact of suffering. Escape via the bottle was always our solution. Character-building
through suffering might be all right for saints, but it certainly didn't appeal
to us.
Then, in A.A., we looked and
listened. Everywhere we saw failure and misery transformed by humility into
priceless assets. We heard story after story of how humility had brought
strength out of weakness. In every case, pain had been the price of admission
into a new life. But this admission price had purchased more than we expected.
It brought a measure of humility, which we soon discovered to be a healer of pain.
We began to fear pain less, and desire humility more than ever.
During this process of learning more
about humility, the most profound result of all was the change in our attitude
toward God. And this was true whether we had been believers or unbelievers. We
began to get over the idea that the Higher Power was a sort of bush-league
pinch hitter, to be called upon only in an emergency. The notion that we would
still live our own lives, God helping a
little
now and then, began to evaporate. Many of us who had thought ourselves
religious awoke to the limitations of this attitude. Refusing to place God
first, we had deprived ourselves of His help. But now the words "Of myself
I am nothing, the Father doeth the works" began to carry bright promise
and meaning.
We saw we needn't always be
bludgeoned and beaten into humility. It could come quite as much from our
voluntary reaching for it as it could from unremitting suffering. A great
turning point in our lives came when we sought for humility as something we
really wanted, rather than as something we must have. It marked the time when
we could commence to see the full implication of Step Seven: "Humbly asked
Him to remove our shortcomings."
As we approach the actual taking of
Step Seven, it might be well if we A.A.'s inquire once more just what our
deeper objectives are. Each of us would like to live at peace with himself and
with his fellows. We would like to be assured that the grace of God can do for
us what we cannot do for ourselves. We have seen that character defects based
upon shortsighted or unworthy desires are the obstacles that block our path
toward these objectives. We now clearly see that we have been making
unreasonable demands upon ourselves, upon others, and upon God.
The chief activator of our defects
has been self-centered fear--primarily fear that we would lose something we
already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded. Living upon a
basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual disturbance and
frustration. Therefore, no peace was to be had unless we could find a means of
reducing these demands. The difference between a demand and a simple request is
plain to anyone.
The Seventh Step is where we make
the change in our attitude which permits us, with humility as our guide, to
move out from ourselves toward others and toward God. The whole emphasis of
Step Seven is on humility. It is really saying to us that we now ought to be
willing to try humility in seeking the removal of our other shortcomings just
as we did when we admitted that we were powerless over alcohol, and came to
believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. If that
degree of humility could enable us to find the grace by which such a deadly
obsession could be banished, then there must be hope of the same result
respecting any other problem we could possibly have.
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