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

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myself, to learn and to be corrected or changed. My attitude is then one of docility,intense attention, expectation, hope. I will call this attitude positive Godfeeling. Ireact negatively when I reject the self-sickness because I wish to stay “put” and,as a means of doing so, proceed to cover up my actual state both from myself andothers. I then defend myself by direct or indirect self-explanation or self-laudationand by fear, suspicion or scorn of whatever provokes the revolutionary urge in me.My self-defence may consist of any one of an infinite number of negative attitudesranging from flagrant self-assertion and violent destructiveness at one end of thescale to boredom or pathological taedium vitae* at the other. Any one of these I willcall negative Godfeeling.Everyone of us at every moment has either negative or positive Godfeeling.COMPREHENDING GODWe comprehend God when we understand such truths as those embodied in thestatements which have here been put forward in the definition of God. That is tosay, when we understand that all instances of absolute love or wisdom, for example,are instances of the same love or wisdom, that all the absolutes are one, that theirnumber is infinite and that each of them is infinite. This is the comprehension ofthe unity of God—of the fact that all the many glimpses are revelations of thesame perfection—and of His infinity. It is got by reflecting on and comparing manyintuitions of absolute love, power, wisdom, etc., and is an affair of the intellect orthe “head” rather than of the “heart.” Nevertheless, it comes to us clearly only aswe progress in that changing-healing-making process in which God purifies ourhearts, perhaps because only in that process do we attend enough to instances ofabsolute love, power, wisdom, etc. To behold God even intellectually we must bepure of heart.I may sum up by saying that so far I have shown that God is a fact because wesee Him, because we feel Him and because we comprehend Him. To show that Heis also a fact because He acts on us we shall have to look closely into the changinghealing-making process to which I have up to now only referred. Before we can dothis we must examine the term correlative to God, namely myself, since, as I said atthe beginning, either term can be understood only by the side of the other. To thisexamination we shall now proceed.* stepstudy’s note: “Taedium vitae” means “weariness with life.”46
IIMYSELFI AM NOT GODThe objection likely to be most commonly brought against what I have said willprobably run as follows. “Of course what you have defined as God stands for a fact,but that fact is something in yourself and other selves. There is no need to supposea power outside yourself. It is yourself.”Now, the fundamental distinction between man and God is, I have already said,that man is finite and God is infinite. But to work out that distinction we should haveto examine the notions of finite and infinite and of time and eternity, and this wouldtake us away from our purpose of describing in order to help men understand, desireand make progress in, the changing-healing-making process which is the experienceof God. Here it will be right to confine ourselves to those distinctions the making ofwhich will forward that purpose.With that experience in view, then, I will say that, since God (that is, absolute love,wisdom, etc.) and myself (as distinguished from my body) are not things in space,God is neither in me nor outside me, literally speaking. Speaking metaphorically,God is certainly not outside me: the experience of Him at its best is best describedby the phrase “God in me, I in God,” the meaning of which can only be understoodif we have had the experience.The part of the objection which calls for consideration is the statement that Godis just myself. (I pass over the possibility of His being my fellowmen but not myself,because, if I am convinced that he is not myself, I—resembling in this everybodyelse—will have no difficulty in believing that He is no one else amongst humanbeings.) Now, much as it would flatter me to be taken for God, I must decline thecompliment in the interest of intelligibility. For I can only describe my experienceof God by saying that I appeal to God and that He helps me in a way in which Icannot appeal to myself or be helped by myself. What is more, I cannot have thatexperience, or at least not to the extent to which it is possible to have it, so long as Ihave at the back of my mind the inhibiting idea that that way of speaking about Godis only metaphorical and that God is really myself, just as I could not have full andsatisfactory relations with my fellowmen if I thought that these were really myselfor projections of myself, in which case my relations would be so unsatisfactory thatI should probably be put away in a lunatic asylum. I must therefore emphaticallyinsist that God is not myself, in the sense that I can appeal to Him and that He cananswer and help me, just as I must insist that another human being is not myself, inthe sense that I can appeal to him and that he can answer and help me.47
Page 1 and 2: The Philosophyof Courageor The Oxfo
Page 3 and 4: fear of being creative and being ou
Page 5 and 6: truly were. There was also a spirit
Page 7 and 8: Comparison with Bill W. and A.A.on
Page 9 and 10: I must embrace my own feeling of so
Page 11 and 12: Alcoholism and addiction asforms of
Page 13 and 14: specifications as to how that is to
Page 15 and 16: perfect serenity. By shutting off a
Page 17 and 18: The act of total surrender allows t
Page 19 and 20: this. But you do not have to be any
Page 21 and 22: NOTES ON CHAPTER 3. SHARING OR SPRE
Page 23 and 24: [chapter 3, section II]If I am succ
Page 25 and 26: NOTES ON CHAPTER 4. CHANGING SOCIET
Page 27 and 28: The Oxford Group and Alcoholics Ano
Page 29 and 30: view Press, 2000) 28. “Sick origi
Page 31 and 32: INTRODUCTIONThe world is going mad,
Page 33 and 34: TRUE RELIGIONWhy are you cowards, p
Page 35 and 36: CONTENTSIntroductionTrue Religion31
Page 37 and 38: to do the same for the term “pixi
Page 39 and 40: the power which is God or from God.
Page 41 and 42: God. The reader who is asked to con
Page 43 and 44: these qualities and on the relation
Page 45: y the power of God. But it is not n
Page 49 and 50: DISEASE OR FEAR: MANIAWhat is wrong
Page 51 and 52: impurity which is denoted by the si
Page 53 and 54: occasions when he is threatened wit
Page 55 and 56: IIIHEALTH OR PASSIONPURE DESIRESinc
Page 57 and 58: PASSION AND PARTICULAR DESIRESNot b
Page 59 and 60: Chapter 2DEMONSTRATION BY EXPERIMEN
Page 61 and 62: to desire passionately to be health
Page 63 and 64: Conformity with the commandment aga
Page 65 and 66: IITHE CRUCIAL EXPERIMENT ORTHE QUIE
Page 67 and 68: and hypocrisy, that judged by absol
Page 69 and 70: not meant; that the fool was not as
Page 71 and 72: hands I commit my spirit.”With th
Page 73 and 74: that God the Highwayman is really a
Page 75 and 76: I obey guidance to go and see a man
Page 77 and 78: foreseen or seen as I have represen
Page 79 and 80: AN ILLUSTRATIONBecause the checking
Page 81 and 82: IVTHE QUITE TIME AND THEH WORKING D
Page 83 and 84: NEED FOR AN ADEQUATE PSYCHOLOGY OF
Page 85 and 86: only to poets. But to judge from on
Page 87 and 88: For the first time passion or the r
Page 89 and 90: HEAVENWhat I have come to is Heaven
Page 91 and 92: For Heaven is now no longer a dream
Page 93 and 94: I am contiguous with other selves i
Page 95 and 96: expanses of self, seem to be experi
Page 97 and 98:
IITHE STRATEGY OF THE LARGER SELFGO
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FEAR CONCEALS FEARNow the procedure
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exposure of the “universe.” Tru
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IIITHE STRATEGY AGAINST THE LARGER
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his own. The miracle of self-consci
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usiness, for government, for the na
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and then make him follow its course
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importance to the Company. However,
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of smugness, self-satisfaction and
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PREOCCUPATION WITH SYMPTOMSWhen “
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channel through which collective gu
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abyss and the area coincide. It is
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IVTHE ECONOMIC PROBLEMTHE ECONOMIC
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that need or greed, and not the cap
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VPOLITICAL SCIENCEUNCHANGED POLITIC
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it, by blaming other people instead
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VIPHILOSOPHY AND ARTTHE SINS OF THE
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For expression or projection is the
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DENYING THE SEPARATION BETWEEN THE
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which the errors are designed to pr
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A PERSONAL NOTEThe philosophy given
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the formation of sacred stereotypes
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