I’m grateful for an excellent meeting. I’m grateful for new ideas and ways of seeing things. I’m grateful for a really early morning and coffee. I’m grateful for the light filing my apartment. I’m grateful to be sober today.
I kind of semi-believe in things like manifesting stuff. Maybe more than that. Not that I can scrunch my nose up and make things I want, magically appear before me. That’s called “witchery” and I think it’s better I keep a healthy distance from that. This was, however, an important part of my youth:1
But back to the manifesting things stuff; I was referring to the belief that if you believe hard enough that something will happen, it will eventually happen. I think there is some truth to this in terms of negative thinking patterns. If I believe hard enough that someone doesn’t really love me and will leave me sooner or later, that apparently I can manifest. Believing in the nonsense my alcoholic brain generates is sometimes capable of bringing those monsters to life. I don’t think it works exactly like this, though2:
That’s certainly one way the Steps work, by helping to dispel the negative beliefs about ourselves and being able to see the source of those inner monologues. Maybe you can’t get the judgy voices in the head to stop completely, but you can get them to sing a little quieter. I think it’s a little trickier on the positive side and choosing what to believe can be a significant choice.
Let me see if I can explain what I’m thinking. I often imagine what the future could be, and I have very little skill at estimating how probable these outcomes are. Historically, I’m really bad at this. Which then actually feeds one of my negative thinking pattern loops—but let’s not go down that rabbit-hole, yet. When I was younger drinking, I had some pretty fixed ideas about what I thought should come to pass in my life. There were events in the future that I thought I had already earned, and when they didn’t happen? Well, things went badly, let’s just say that.
Here’s the thing: Who told me I should believe in those things? I did. My super-sized alcoholic ego thought it could predict the future, or bend the Universe to my will in order to make that desired event happen. To be honest, there were times when I pulled it off. When I set my sights on a certain kind of house or lifestyle or car or vacation, well, those things were achievable with a certain amount of sacrifice by me and, well, others. My very virtuous sacrifices required libations, like all good sacrifices. We got to the burnt offering part a little too often.
Sobriety happened for this alcoholic as I reframed my beliefs. Instead of swanky motor-homes and jet-skis, I needed to find something else to believe in.3 Et Voila, the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous provides a step to help that process along:
Came to believe a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity
I broke down the constituent parts of this last week:
That actually leaves the main question most un-answered:
What should I believe in to get sober?
We had a fabulous meeting last night:
We read two more stories from the “Back of the Book,” “The Missing Link” and “The Housewife Who Drank at Home.” Some of these were written a while ago, and the titles may not have aged so gracefully, but they are still pretty great stories. Something that struck me last night was a common theme, at some point, the recovered alcoholic said something like:
I’m living a life I couldn’t have imagined.
There are words to this effect in the Big Book and it’s not just a common thing you hear at AA meetings, it’s something you hear over and over again. Sobriety helped me live a life I couldn’t have imagined. I have come to believe, that it is a connection to the Universe, the greater world around me, that provides the sparks of inspiration, intuition, creativity and imagination. Letting the course of my life more closely follow the currents of the Universe then logically leads me to a life I couldn’t have imagined. I talk about my lost decade as a failure of imagination, but it might more correctly be described as a failure of connection.
But wait, what is it that I’m supposed to believe in, this thing that’s going to restore me to sanity?
This is the hard part. There’s not really an answer for that. It starts by simply believing that there IS a Power greater than ourselves AND that it is capable of restoring us to sanity. How that happens and what exactly will happen are not questions that are answered. There is a section in the Big Book that I love very much and it’s actually entitled “How it Works,” and how it works is getting you to trust in something you can’t understand, see, feel or touch at first. Then waiting patiently as the magic happens somewhere off-site and then gradually begins infecting one’s consciousness as it is re-introduced in a very different, probably unrecognizable form.
That’s all you have to believe in. There was a part of the standard Protestant liturgy where God is described as a force that “passeth all understanding.” That phrase basically says the same thing—we are simply not capable of “understanding” or fully comprehending that Higher Power, what it is and how it works. You have to come to believe that this Power exists and that it can help you, without too much else to go on.
This is a very long way of saying that an important part of Step Two is deciding what to believe in—or at least explicitly deciding what not to believe, because that is far more knowable. I just have to stop listening to myself so much and listen to others. I have to just stop deciding what’s best for everyone, what should be happening in my life, what constitutes success and what constitutes failure.
I was trained as a lawyer and did jury trials and the whole thing, I very much believe in the power of questions as a force capable of driving a narrative. Learning to ask the right questions is the essential skill in that effort. The questions I ask myself are the things that actually guide me now. What are my actual intentions and motivations? What is the other person feeling or thinking? What is it I’m feeling? Am I connected? How can I re-connect? Am I being of service? Am I listening?
I got sober by coming to believe there was a Power greater than myself that could restore me to sanity. I stay sober by letting go of my other beliefs, the ones I manufactured, and having the courage to be guided by the principles I’ve learned from the Steps and the Big Book, to be satisfied just asking the right questions. Because I’ve learned that in this courtroom, when you ask the right question you always get the next right answer.
Ginger/Mary Anne wasn’t the only defining choice one was put to in the 1970’s. There was also the two Dicks of Bewitched. I made that phrase up. It refers to Dick York and Dick Sargent as Darrin.
Speaking of the “Mystery Button,” it could lead in a variety of directions. Sometimes even germane content…I think I’ve either come up with the perfect way to maximize engagement on the buttons or completely destroy their value.
I’ve never owned either of those, just like the way it sounded.
The promises come true in different ways for everyone. But they come true in sobriety.🙏