Passing It On - By Bill W.

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Passing It On

(The following was written by Bill W., co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous for
"The Road Back," a bimonthly publication by the Dublin, Ireland, group, and
is reprinted therefrom.)

By Bill W.

I think we oldsters who have put the A.A. booze cure to such severe tests,
yet still find we lack emotional sobriety, are probably the spearhead for the
next major development in AA **** the development of something like real maturity
and balance (which is to say, humility) in our relations with ourselves, with
our fellows and with God. Those adolescent urges for top approval, perfect
security and the perfect romance, urges quite appropriate to age 17, prove to be
an impossible way of life at 47 or 57.

Since AA began, I¹ve taken immense wallops in all these departments because
of my failure to grow up, emotionally and spiritually. How painful it is to
keep insisting on the impossible, and how painful to discover that we have the
cart before the horse. Then comes the final agony of seeing how wrong we are,
but still finding ourselves unable, seemingly, to get off the merry-go-round.
Problem of Everyone. How to translate right intellectual conviction into right
emotional results and so into easy, happy, active and good living that's not
only the neurotics problem. Its the problem of life itself for all who have got
to the point of willingness to hew to right principles. Even then, as we hew
away, peace and joy still elude us. That's the place so many of us AA oldsters
have come to. How shall the unconscious **** from which 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 the final task. I¹ve recently become to believe this can be done. I
believe so because I began to see many benighted ones, folks like you and me,
commencing to get results. Last fall, depression, having no really rational
cause at all, took me to the cleaners. I began to be scared that I was in for
another five-year chronic spell. Considering the grief I¹ve had with depression,
it wasn't a bright prospect. I kept asking myself, "Why cant the twelve steps
work to release depression?" By the hour I stared at the St. Francis prayers.
It's better to understand than to be understood Its better to love than be
loved. It's better to comfort than to be comforted" Here was the formula. But why
didn't it work?

Suddenly I realized what the matter was. My basic flaw had always been
dependence, absolute dependence, on people or circumstances to supply me with
prestige, security and romance. Failing to get these, according to my still childish
dreams and specifications, I had fought for these things. And when defeat
came, so did depression. There wasn't a chance of making the outgoing love of
Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and really absolute
dependencies were cut away. Because I had undergone a little spiritual
development the absolute quality of these frightful liabilities had never before been
so starkly revealed. Therefore, reinforced by what grace I could secure in
prayer, I found I must exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these
emotional dependencies upon people, upon A.A. **** indeed upon any set of
circumstances whatever. Then, only then, would I be free to love as Francis could.
Emotional or instinctual satisfactions, I saw, were really the extra dividends of
having love, offering love and expressing love appropriate to each relation of
life. Must Offer Love To God. Plainly, I could not avail myself of Gods love
until I was able to offer it back to Him by loving others as He would have me.
And I couldn't possibly do that so long as I was victimized by my dependencies.
For dependencies meant demand; demand for possession and control of people
and conditions. While the words "absolute dependency" may look like a gimmick,
they were the ones that triggered my release into my present stability and
quietness of mind which I am now trying to consolidate by having love and offering
love, regardless of the return. This is the primary healing circuit; our
outgoing love of Gods creation and is people, by which we avail ourselves of His
love for us. But the real current cant flow until our dependencies are broken
at depth. Only then can we have a glimmer of what adult love really is.
Spiritual calculus, you say? Not a bit of it. Watch any A.A. of six months working on
a new 12th step case. If the case says, "the he!! with you," the 12th stepper
smiles and turns to another case. He doesn't feel frustrated or rejected. If
his case responds and starts to give love and attention to other alcoholics,
but returns none to the sponsor, then the sponsor is happy anyway. He still
doesn't feel rejected. And when his case turns out in later time to be his best fr
iend (or romance), then the sponsor is joyful. But his happiness and joy were
byproducts, and no more. The real stabilizing thing was having the offering
of love to that strange drunk on the doorstep. That was Francis at work,
powerful and practical, minus dependency and minus demand. In my first six months of
sobriety, I worked hard with many alcoholics. Not one responded, but they
kept me sober. It wasn't a question of their giving me anything. Stability came
out of giving, not of receiving. Thus I think it will work out with emotional
sobriety. If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we can find
at the root of it some sort of unhealthy dependency and consequent demand. Let
us hack away at these chains, begging Gods help. Then we shall be set free to
love. We shall then be able to 12th step ourselves and others into emotional
sobriety.

I haven't offered you a single new idea **** just a gimmick that has started to
unhook my several "hexes" at depth. My brain no longer races compulsively in
either elation, grandiosity or depression. I have been given a quiet place in
bright sunshine.