What follows is a post I hastily scrawled on a Sunday morning at an atrocious trucker motel in Connecticut that reeked of smoke and would be the last place you’d want one of those blue light thingys that allow you to see bodily fluids hidden to the naked eye. Recognizing the implicit machinations of one's ego has helped me immeasurably, insofar as being that ultraviolet light to see what's really happening in our relationships, so I pass it on only to pass on what may be invisible to those that have never gone through the breaking down of one's ego, which occurs when one goes through all 12 steps.
Although Bill Wilson's 12 steps have been thought of as an antidote to everything from booze to overeating, all the way to even racism in 2020, it's not like they automatically work, and that's why most 12-step programs will usually tacitly admit only a 50% success rate.
Wilson even acknowledged this: no one would willingly submit to having a “naked lunch,” like Burroughs wrote, sitting there taking a hard look at yourself where the prescription is always the same, “I did this…”
Certainly not entirely all our fault, but do we not owe it to ourselves and our fellows to admit exactly how much of this was due to us setting the ball rolling? “Clean our side of the street,” as they say.
AA is “the meetings” & “the Program,” unfortunately most just use AA as a new social sphere as being around positive people is good, although AA has been used way too often by predators, so there's that, but if you never “do the work,” you're likely to be a very sober and clean, but still a quite crazy, control freak, a “dry drunk" as they say.
That coupled with our culture's uncomfortableness with religiosity/spirituality and the rather unsure way we navigate the future as a spiritual person, knowing full well that most organized religions have arguably wrought just as much shittiness in our world as good. AA, in its infinite wisdom has a motto for this too, “take what you want & leave the rest…”
Yes, AA does wind up sounding like a cafeteria Catholic who has adopted a pro-choice position, but that doesn't make it any less so.
As i’m sure you've figured out by now: Spiritual sickness is a plague right now and that manifests itself currently as the Control Freaks trying to control. SOME, of course,
are powerless to control anyone else, and some being powerful enough to control millions. This is the most important thing right now. To combat this, we first must understand explicitly that the ONLY thing I can control is myself, my thoughts and actions, and the way I react to the the controllers attempts to control me. The moment I imagine I have enough juice to control what you do is when I've lost the plot.
This isn't rocket science, it's the simplicity of spiritual principles that are always true because they are: from Freud to Jung to Bill Wilson, all the way to Alice Walker and David Icke's framing of ego dynamics as evidence of reptilian takeover. I personally choose to see all conspiracy theories the same way I view religion, as exquisite metaphors until further evidence presents itself. I always played with the Grateful Dead ethos when I thought of what I utilized in AA, a “working man's Spirituality…”
What AA did for this egomaniac was what seems to be baked in to a lot of folks, those normal folks I always envied while I was actively screwing up my life. It leveled my pride, allowed me to forgive, to be grateful, and have some small level of humility, but my Facebook tl would certainly make you scoff at that claim. What I now know is it was never the substances, for me it started with food & fantasy, continued with cocaine and alcohol, but it was always about this square peg trying to fit in the round hole.
When we see our political and cultural adversaries as nothing more than sick friends, how could we not know that our ideas, of course, will win out in a world of spiritually sick control freaks, who half the time can't even see what they're doing?
Here's the OP:
DISCLAIMER: A LOTTA WORDS, but if you're struggling read with an open mind because it worked for me ---
One of the reasons JLP, (EDIT: Jesse Lee Peterson or Professor Peterson) makes so much sense to me is how he talks about using common sense spiritual principles to overcome problems in real life, and that's what AA's program always proved to me...
Everything I learned that is useful for navigating personal relationships I learned in AA, not regulation AA, but when you go really deep into the spiritual/religious part of the program...
As a person whose been "trapped" in a morbidly obese, and/or drug addicted body, the moment I realized that although my mind will always lie to me & my body clearly was inundated in the lie that was my life, my Spirit knew there was a better way...
The moment I realized this, ironically while high on acid in 1997 at a Phish show in Limestone, Maine, was one of the reasons I was able to accept a spiritual solution to my problems in late 2002, early 2003.
My SPIRIT was always there, it is your gut, that little still voice, the one that's characterized as the angel on your shoulder, it's the one that will never fail you, in other words it ain't your mind, because your "hamster wheel" mind is your ego, and it'll ALWAYS choose the easiest way. My ego always says, "this is fine..."
My Ego is my dark side, it's never content, always restless, always looking for a problem where there is none, always looking to separate myself from everyone else, "No, you don't understand, my case is different..."
RIGHT NOW your mind may be living in the past, and/or an intolerable future, but if you search for that quiet, still voice, deep underneath all your dramas of life, your Spirit knows there's a better way. It's always there reminding us that if we live in the Now, we can be free, we are free no matter what our mind lies to us about...
I work in an awful, oppressive place, almost all the adults are central planning authoritarians, even if they don't know that, their actions show me who they really are, their minds have created a place where their fears have transformed their reality, & they'll never be happy because they are RESTLESS, IRRITABLE, DISCONTENT & NEVER SATISFIED
I am there too, in my fake mask, and I watch them & I watch myself. I know that their insanity could be mine, but my SPIRIT refuses to believe my mind because my mind will always default to fear & suspicion & all the bullshit that fear based decisions create for us - we are living in a boomer nightmare world where everyone's collective fears have transformed the world into this...
Safety v. Freedom, central planning v. decentralized, control freaks v. everyone else...
Ego dynamics drive this all, BUT if you keep your self balanced (& based) you can overcome these times. In AA they talked about a three sided triangle & I share it here as only a suggestion, but it definitely has worked for me as an inventory, or a good barometer of where you're at:
Imagine a three sided triangle, body, mind, spirit, in AA it's unity, service, which leads to recovery..
Unity, or the body, is keeping up with your fellows, service, calming the mind, is what you're doing for other people, constant thought of what you can do for other people, and SPIRIT, training yourself to trust your Higher Self & not the Ego, which will always take the easier, softer way and will complain the whole time and tear apart whoever organized the thing to boot, is the recovery, as you experience a new peace & the ability to transcend your circumstance, no matter what is going on around you.
Hope this helps!
Prayer, meditation, and actions, doing a lot of things you don't necessarily want to do are the keys!
P.S. - No, is a complete sentence!