this is a letter from the a a grapevine january 1958
written by bill wilson i think that many ulsters who have put our a a booze cure to severe
but successful tests still find they often lack emotional sobriety for perhaps they will be the
spearhead of the next major development in aaa the development of of a much more real maturity and
balance which is to say humility in our relations with ourselves with our fellows and with god
those adolescent urges that so many of us have have for top approval perfect security and perfect
romance urges quite appropriate to age 17 proved to be an impossible way of life when we are at age
47 or 57. since a.a began i've taken immense wallops in all these areas because of my failure
to grow up emotionally and spiritually my god how painful it is to keep demanding the impossible
and how very painful to discover finally that all along we have had the cart before the horse
then comes the final agony of seeing how awfully wrong we have been
but still finding our son's selves unable to get off the emotional merry-go-round
how to translate a right mental conviction into a right emotional result
and so it is into easy happy and good living well it's not only the neurotics problem it's
the problem of life itself for all of us who have got to the point of real willingness
to you to write principles in all our affairs even then as we hew away peace
and joy may still elude us that's the place so many of us a a oldsters have come to
and it's a hell of a spot literally how shall our unconsciousness from which so many of our fears
compulsions and phony aspirations still stream be brought into line with what we actually believe
know and want how to convince our dumb raging and hidden mr hyde becomes our main task
i've recently come to believe this can be achieved i believe so because i begin to see
many united ones folks like you and me commencing to get results last autumn several years back
depression having no real rational cause at all almost took me to the cleaners i
began to be scared that i was in for another long chronic spell considering the grief i've i've had
with with depressions it wasn't a bright prospect i kept asking myself why can't the
12 steps work to release depression by the hour i stared at the saint francis prayer
it's better to comfort than to be comforted here was the formula all right but why didn't it work
suddenly i realized what the matter was my basic flaw had always been dependence almost
absolute dependence on people or circumstances to supply me
with prestige security and the like failing to get these things according to my perfectionist dreams
and specifications i had fought for them and were defeated and when defeat came
so did my depression there wasn't a chance of making the outgoing love of saint francis a work
workable and joyous way of life until these fail and almost absolute dependencies were cut away
because i have over the years undergone a little spiritual development the absolute
quality of these frightful dependencies had never before been so starkly revealed
re reinforced by what by what grace i could secure in prayer i found i had
to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies
the dependencies upon people upon a a indeed upon any set of circumstances whatsoever
then could i be free to love as as francis had emotional and instructional satisfactions
i saw were really the extra dividends of having love offering love and expressing love a pro
appropriate to each relation of life plainly i could not avail myself of god's love until i was
able to offer it back to him by loving others as he would have me i couldn't possibly do that
so long as i was victimized by false dependencies for my dependency meant demand a demand for the
possession and control of people and the conditions surrounding me while those words
absolute demand may look like a gimmick they would they were the ones that helped
to trigger my release into my present degree of stability and quietness of mine
qualities which i am now trying to consolidate by offering love to others regardless of the return
to me this seems to be the primary healing circuit an outgoing love of god's creation and his people
by means of which we avail ourselves of his love for us us it is most clear that the current
can't flow until our paralyzing dependencies are broken and broken at depth only then can
we possibly have a glimmer of what adults of what adult love really is
spiritual calculus you say not a bit of it watch any aaa of six months working with a new 12-step
case if the case says to the devil with you the twelfth stepper only smiles and turns to another
case he doesn't feel frustrated or rejected if his next case responds and in turn starts to give love
and attention to other alcoholics yet gives numb back to him the sponsor is happy about it anyway
he still doesn't feel rejected instead he rejoices that his one-time prospect is sober and happy
and if his next following case turns out out in later time to be his best friend or romance
then the sponsor is most joyful but he well knows that happiness is a byproduct the extra dividend
of giving without any demand for a return the real stabilizing thing for him was having
having and offering love to that strange drunk on his doorstep
that was francis at work powerful and practical minus defend dependency
and minus demand in the first six months of my own sobriety i worked hard with many alcoholics
not a one responded yet this work kept me sober it wasn't a question of those alcoholics giving me
anything my stability came out of trying to give not have no not out of demanding that i receive
thus i think i can work out with emotional sobriety if we examine every disturbance
we have great or small we will find at the root of it some unhealthy dependency
in its consequent consequent unhealthy demand let us with god's help continually surrendering
surrender to these hobbling demands then we can be set free to live in love
we may then be able to twelve step ourselves and others into emotional sobriety
of course i haven't offered you a really new idea only a gimmick that has started to unhook several
of my own hexes at depth nowadays my brain no longer races compulsively in either
elation grandiosity or depression i have been given a quiet place
in bright sunshine again that's bill wilson from the grape pine january 1958