The Philosophy of Courage - Alcoholics Anonymous. AA, Meeting ...

Communist Party USA was formed about the same time, during the years 1919-1921, and had periods of enormous influence in the United States until FranklinD. Roosevelt was elected president in 1932. Roosevelt began working to encouragethe formation of labor unions which rejected Marxist doctrines and were linked tothe non-Communist AFL movement instead. Roosevelt’s brilliant solution quicklybegan destroying the power of the Communist movement in the United States, butwe must remember that many people in the Oxford Group were factory owners orotherwise connected with the capitalist class in ways which made them often so antiunion,that they failed to appreciate the skillful way that Roosevelt had preventeda Communist takeover of the United States. So the Oxford Group would put onplays, for example, which attempted to portray labor union leaders as simply troublemakers who were trying to raise up strife and hatred amongst the working class.In May 1938, Frank Buchman began describing the Oxford Group in a differentkind of way, referring to it as a movement of Moral Re-Armament. 13 Theybegan to see their major goal now as one of remaking human society as a whole,and trying to bring a new spirit of peace and love to all of the world’s governmentsand social institutions.Was this an insane goal? Philip Leon responded by saying that, when we haveGod’s power to draw on, “defeat comes from limiting expectations.” Poverty andwar are only symptoms of selfishness. If we can change individuals, then we canchange whole societies. [chapter 3, section I]Defeating the larger self throughconfession and sharingThe larger self—that is, the combined force of all of the fear and selfishnesswhich infects all of the human selves around me—is the enemy. I will be defeatedby this enemy if I allow myself to fall into fear, such as for example, the fear of selfexposure.I may feel fear at the thought of standing up before others and honestlyadmitting my own fear, sin, and trouble. [chapter 3, section I] But confession, thatis, honestly sharing with others who I really am, and exposing my own self for whatit really is—a mass of fear and diseased selfishness—is the only way I can communicatemy own God-consciousness and my own spiritual experience of God to otherhuman beings.If the other people begin accusing me of “hypocrisy, cowardice, immorality, stupidity,unreason, etc.,” instead of becoming defensive, I should simply let them keepon talking. Perhaps some of their charges are true, or at least partially true. TheseI need to admit immediately. But most of these charges will be the other peopletrying to project onto me what are in fact their own guilts and inadequacies. If Iavoid defensiveness and let them keep talking long enough, I will be able to carryout the work of a good psychotherapist, and eventually lead them into seeing thattheir greatest problems really lie within themselves, not with me or other people.22