If you caught yourself smiling over this caption, maybe it’s because you have been conditioned to see Humility as a virtue you should be modeling but finding yourself failing miserably or at least being woefully inconsistent at it. The Big Book refers to Humility in a few contexts: “But they had not learned enough of humility, fearlessness, and honesty in the sense we find it necessary until they told someone else all their life’s story.” and “It is a striking thought that God never forces anyone to do His will, that his help is ever available and has to be sought in all earnestness and humility.”

Just writing about Humility should disqualify one from being able to claim its virtues. If you think you are Humble than instantly, you have identified yourself as prideful about being humble. Perhaps the only safe approach to personal Humility is to admit that pride is your natural condition, but that you are seeking through God to have that condition gradually, albeit not permanently removed.

But some of us go around claiming how lowly we are even negating every kind and well-meaning compliment we receive. Somehow by constantly belittling ourselves, we are declaring a sort of moral superiority over our outwardly prideful brethren. In my early years of sobriety, I represented this character until my gig was up. “Bob, it isn’t that you think so well or so poorly of yourself; it’s that you think CONSTANTLY of yourself.” So maybe part of the key in approaching Humility is to increase our thoughts of others, particularly in the context of serving their needs quietly and even anonymously at times. One of the best recommendations I ever received was the approbation that every day I should do at least two good turns for someone else and not get found out.  If I did it wouldn’t count.

But maybe Humility isn’t the opposite of pride and it’s more extreme form in arrogance. Shame seems a much better candidate for the role of pride’s opposite.  And Humility isn’t turning ourselves into a worm, but a middle position that we might describe as a more realistic view of ourselves-some would say “right-sizing”.  In doing our Fourth and Fifth Steps, the Big Book says we are learning the habit of accurate self-appraisal. I can remember fearfully blurting out my innermost secrets to a minister in Huntington Beach and then hearing his reaction, “Is that all there is?” I’m not sure what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn’t the come back he gave me. At first, I felt rejection because of his lukewarm reply, but later that turned to relief that I was just another flawed human being like everyone else in the world.

One of the spiritual or religious underpinnings of Humility is that in attaining it, by default we are glorifying God. A word that we post-moderns might better identify with is credit instead of glory. All I ever wanted was credit. Mostly, I wanted credit for brilliant and penetrating analysis, innovative new ideas, and occasionally for a well-timed retort that brought down the house in laughter. I can’t say that much has changed in that regard over the years and I don’t think I am alone in this respect. For I have found when I can stop and really listen to somebody else’s ideas and then enthusiastically (and with real spontaneity) call them out for such a great approach I see the hunger in their eyes being satisfied-somebody finally noticed!

If we accept as a premise of the program that we have equal access to a God of our understanding, then even we lowly alcoholics must all be comparable if He responds to each of us on request. Maybe our Humility should be based on the equality of the relationship we can have with God if we reach out to Him and develop a real connection through the completion of the 12 steps. However, we know the world does not work that way, and there is a distribution of talents varying in kind and amount. Are we not to acknowledge that? Since these are God-given talents, we certainly don’t want to be in the position of being either ungrateful or denying God Himself the use of abilities He has granted us. And we feel that His will is for us to use and develop our talents, becoming Co-Creators with Him. To venture forth trying to do His will, we need at least a modicum of confidence or if circumstances demand, even a whole lot of confidence. So how can a confident but not cocky demeanor co-exist with Humility?

Two names for the position we must straddle are Confident Humility and Humble Confidence. That is to be humble in our equality before God as His children but confident in all the attributes that God has bestowed upon us, and that He expects us to use to his rightful credit.

The question I would ask is whether the difference between these two descriptors is just semantic or does one better describe the tone of the attitude that God wants us to bring “in all our affairs.”?

Every member who follows the AA program realizes two foundational things are being asked of him to surrender over-first is the admission of powerlessness over alcohol, and second is the unmanageability of their life.

We must accept that we are not going to regain power over alcohol, but likewise nowhere in the Big Book do the authors state that your life will eventually become manageable. By inference, their description of the person who expects the benefits of managing well will be disappointed. As recorded in Chapter Five of the Big Book, “Is he not a victim of the delusion that he can wrest satisfaction and happiness out of this world if he only manages well? Is it not evident to all the rest of the players that these are the things he wants? And do not his actions make each of them wish to retaliate, snatching all they can get out of the show? Is he not, even in his best moments, a producer of confusion rather than harmony?”

But my personal experience and observation of many others are that slowly and subtly as sober years in AA move along a member can absorb the idea that he should be demonstrating that he is successful in integrating back into a healthy life- often witnessed as he is successfully managing his life again.

The road does narrow for us. By that, I mean behavior that was once acceptable is no longer so. But we find that the prescription to turn our will and our life over to the care of God is not something that we can permanently check off our list. It’s part of our daily challenge as our rising success and confidence act against it, convincing us (along with the chorus of approbation from the World) that we can go it alone by managing well.

So, what slowly happens is that the very competency we gained by the daily practice of the principles of the program becomes the reason we no longer do it. Oh, we may acknowledge that we need our Higher Power to stay away from the first drink, but in all the other areas of life, we have regained our former mastery [or in some cases like myself, acquired it for the first time.]

Over time this produces the pressure for a “Second Surrender.” This can either come about from some bitter disappointment or setback or more often as a growing sense that things are just not the same as the buoyancy we experienced in our earlier sobriety.

What’s the remedy for this? How do we get back the sense of excitement and expansion that was so defining of our beginning years in the program-or can something else replace it?

The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous in the chapter, We Agnostics, discusses a dilemma most of us faced when confronted with the reality that we were both powerless over alcohol and that our lives had become unmanageable. “Arrived at this point, we were squarely confronted with the question of faith. We couldn’t duck the issue. Some of us had already walked far over the Bridge of Reason toward the desired shore of faith……. We were grateful that Reason had brought us so far. But somehow, we couldn’t quite step ashore. Perhaps we had been leaning too heavily on Reason that last mile, and we did not like to lose our support ?…… Did we not have confidence in our ability to think? What was that but a sort of faith? Yes, we had been faithful, abjectly faithful to the God of Reason.”
I would suggest that we face some strong cultural biases that continue to influence us and limit our reliance on our Higher Power. In the Christian religion, for instance, when was the last time you heard someone describe Jesus with the adjectives of smart or intelligent? Dallas Willard, a recently deceased professor of philosophy at USC, shocked the religious community when he referred to Jesus as “…the most intelligent man who ever lived.”
Many of us, myself included, stop at the water’s edge when prideful reliance on our own reasoning ability comes into conflict with relying on our Higher Power. My Higher Power might be indispensable in keeping me away from the first drink, but almost inconsequential in helping me to navigate the complicated waters of my own occupation, for instance. But the question is, how can I really turn my will and my life to a higher power whose intellect I value lower than my own, and whose input on weightier or complicated matters I almost treat as irrelevant?
God created us with fantastic reasoning ability, and he expects us to use it. But when we value His intelligence below our own, we enter the character defect of Pride and take over running the show again. We need to humbly ask God to remove this shortcoming and to daily make us aware of his superior intellect in all of our affairs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recent investigations into the mind illustrate the power of Gratitude in the healing of chronic diseases.  “Double Blind” drug trials have long baffled drug researchers when the placebo group often have similar recoveries to those taking real medicine.  Speculation is that the minds of the placebo takers assume that it’s the real McCoy, which acts to reduce stress-producing hormones such as Cortisol, in turn, reducing inflammation and other symptoms.

The Big Book and our witness of the lives of fellow members tell us that we have no permanent cure from alcoholism, only a daily reprieve based upon the maintenance of our spiritual condition.

12 Steps and 12 traditions.   “Learning daily to spot, admit, and correct these flaws is the essence of character-building, and good living Hazleton Betty Ford Center supports a webpage that extols the Gratitude practices of one of its long-term associates. He was told as a newcomer to get a notebook, write down ten things he was grateful for, and then add three new items on the list every day-He stopped numbering when passing  5,000 items for which he was thankful.”  Is this an extreme practice or something we program people should all be emulating?

Our famous serenity prayer (formerly attributed to St. Francis of Assisi) but more recently credited to Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr, of Union Theological Seminary), is the most consistently said prayer along with the Lord’s Prayer at most AA meetings across the country.  The serenity “to accept the things I cannot change” has become the mantra of most program members granted any meaningful amount of sobriety when dealing with challenges small and large

The Big Book,  and the 12 and 12, (twin Bibles of AA) both refer to gratitude although sparingly “….My health is better, I enjoy a fellowship which gives me a happier life than I have ever known, and my family joins me in daily expression of gratitude.” And more prescriptively, “Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God’s will into all of our activities.  An honest regret for harms done, genuine gratitude for blessings received, and a willingness to try for better things tomorrow will be the permanent assets we shall seek.”

A sign hanging in The First Step House of Orange County, a men’s detox and recovery outreach, is much more unrestrained about the virtues of Gratitude-“Grateful people are happy people-those that aren’t, aren’t.”

To me, encouraging an “attitude of gratitude” in ourselves is a critical component of attaining the most important thing we as alcoholics have got to possess and that is a “…a daily reprieve based on the maintenance of our spiritual condition”.   This is a crucial component of what the Twelve Steps of Alcoholic’s Anonymous wished to accomplish in our infamous Spiritual Awakening. 

In my experience, the cultivation of an outlook of gratitude on life has involved in a more intentional approach and has become a cornerstone of my daily reflections, prayer, and meditation.  An observer might describe my daily “gratitude” routine as a spiritual practice. My own experience of keeping a journal every day for five years, which among other disciplines, lists everything I can be grateful for from the previous day has produced enormous benefits in my happiness. I might even go so far as describe it as the “Peace which surpasses all understanding” referred to by Paul in Philippians 4:7.

 

There is no reason to over intellectualize the subject of resentment. Understanding is not necessary for the effective removal of resentments but taking action is. Like any other defect of character we need only identify it; disclose it to God and another person; become willing for God to remove it and then ask him to do so. But some resentments are more persistent than others, or more delicious to our state of being and therefore exceptionally hard to give up. So what to the unafflicted so called “normie” may be obvious connections may remain hidden to the alcoholic whose brain has developed the ability to keep many important observations compartmentalized and unconnected.

An important offender of these is the problem of jealous comparison. This subject is explored in depth by two students of Carl Jung, the famous psychiatrist who himself was a major thought contributor to the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. In Beyond Success and Failure we grow learning to make comparisons one after another until we come out second best thereby creating the “jealous” comparison. We are wronged because somebody else’s status or situation is better than ours and we thereby feel “less than”.

The problem of envious or jealous comparison creates problems of forgiveness; courage to confront issues before they become resentments; and most importantly the willingness to give up defects of character fostered by maintaining resentments. These defects can take the form of self-pity, pride and a stance of victimization.