“For every complex problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” Lee Thayer

We are all familiar with the quote attributed to Mark Twain and the term “Old Ideas,” as read from Chapter Five of the Big Book at the beginning of every meeting.  Would you be surprised to find out that Mark Twain never made any statement that remotely resembles the above?  So even in examining a quotation that tells us we are relying on what many call mistaken certainties, we find out that an essential part of that quotation itself isn’t true-Mark Twain never said it.

The Big Book mentions the term “Old Ideas” only briefly.  One of those times we all know by heart is in Chapter 5, How it Works-“Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas, and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.”  Probably the most extensive concentration of “Old Ideas” is in the preceding Chapter 4, We Agnostics, showing us how rational a spiritual orientation and reliance upon a God of our understanding is.  Even those with a religious background discover what we need to do to gain access to a power greater than ourselves to deal with our alcoholism and return to our relationship with that God with a new dedication.

But this process of discovering and then letting go of our “Old Ideas” is never over as we achieve spiritual progress, not spiritual perfection, another new idea itself.   It is a one-day at a time process of uncovering, discovering, and discarding the false narratives that undergird our belief system.  Although I have returned to the religion of my youth, I often don’t see this same practice by the people who surround me at church.  It’s impressive when you think about the cohesiveness of AA, barely 80 years old,  in that it has held together without fragmenting into multiple sects.

Part of accomplishing this is our daily practice of peeling the onion and finding new variations of character defects that we then ask their God to remove.  One of my old ideas was to look outside myself whenever I was upset by something or somebody. The new idea that replaced it was from the 12 and 12.  It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is something wrong with us. This caused me to look internally, taking follow-up inventories, consulting my sponsor and other wise owls in AA, and most of all, asking God to show me where I was wrong.

What are some of your old ideas and the new ideas that replaced them?