He had created a whole universe centered around himself
MANY YEARS ago, When I was just a small boy, filled with curiosity, I went to my father and asked him what heaven was like. Wisely, instead of trying to describe something no one really knows anything about, he asked me this question: “Suppose you were in the kitchen and found the last piece of a chocolate pie. What would you do?”
“Well, I love chocolate pie,” I replied, “so I guess I would eat it.”
“But what if you knew your brother hadn’t had a piece?”
I was trapped. Now, I could see where his questions were leading me, and this was not going to be what I wanted to hear.
“If you were in heaven,” he said, “you would save that last piece of pie for your brother. That’s what heaven is like. It’s a world where we all share and think of others’ needs before we think of our own.”
Well, I decided right then and there that I wanted nothing to do with heaven if that was the way it was going to be. Even though a part of me understood how nice it would be if that degree of harmony was possible, another part of me just couldn’t give up that last piece of pie. Looking back, I can see that I’ve spent enormous amounts of my time and energy arranging people, places, and things in order to get that piece of pie. And not until I nearly destroyed myself with alcohol could I see that my way wasn’t the road to happiness after all.
Not long ago, in an AA discussion meeting, my sponsor was talking on self-centeredness. He quoted from the Big Book: “Selfishness–self-centeredness! That, we think, is the root of our troubles.” My sponsor declared that all of us probably had that phrase underlined in our Big Books. Well, I didn’t know if I had or not. Believe me, when I got home that night, I looked it up, and–what a relief!–I had it underlined in my book, too.
But at the time I underlined it, the real significance of the statement had not been clear to me. Sure, I could admit that on occasion I had been somewhat selfish–staying out all night, spending the grocery money on booze–but it wasn’t until I finally got around to doing my Fourth Step inventory that I could see how much self-centeredness had contributed to my failure at life. It was on every page of my inventory. I had created a whole universe centered around me and what I expected out of life. I was my own God; therefore, I really had no God. How miserable life was when I saw the world only through my own eyes! I was unable to reach out to others, and they were unable to reach me. The wonderful experience of peace of mind eluded me until I found the program of Alcoholics Anonymous. Self-centeredness is a poison to my emotional system. It frustrates my every effort toward a comfortable and happy existence. A terrible chain reaction begins. Fear sets in. Anger, resentment, and self-pity become my guiding forces. My only escape is to put this awful selfishness aside and become involved with the world around me.
Alcoholics Anonymous is the perfect solution for our selfishness. This program gives us a purpose and a vision of something much greater than self. We work with others daily. We are forced to become involved with the problems of the newcomer. As a result, our own problems just naturally pale in comparison. When I haven’t been to a meeting in a while, simply talking to one of my friends always helps.
Discussion meetings are my favorite cures for reducing this magnified image I sometimes get of myself. There is a magical power that works around those tables. I can go to a meeting wound up tight as a drum, and about ten minutes into the meeting, I invariably begin to feel better. Whatever the problem was may still be there, but my attitude toward it has changed. Sometimes, the only place on earth that makes any sense to me is a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous.
But old habits are hard to break. Occasionally, I still catch myself saying something like: “Why is this happening to me?” or “What is it ever going to take to finally make me happy?” Blinded by my selfishness, I perceive things that way. But in truth, I don’t believe it takes anything to be happy. It is an inside job, something I choose, or refuse to choose, for myself. Circumstances outside myself have nothing whatever to do with it.
Anytime I feel that life isn’t treating me right, and that everything is against me, then I’m trying to play God again. The longer I’m in this program, the more convinced I become that I really have no idea what’s best for me. Who would have imagined that becoming an alcoholic would be something to be grateful for? But indeed I am. Had I not become an alcoholic, I would never have found this way of life that I have always wanted so desperately. My surrender to alcoholism was necessary to open my heart and mind to the healing love of God.
When I joined Alcoholics Anonymous, you told me that if I would walk with you, I would be a free man; that I would never have to drink again if I would only follow twelve simple Steps. But. you told me that in order to keep what I had found, I would have to give it away. I would have to work with others, put their needs before my own. Sometimes, I don’t feel like doing this. I’m still a very selfish person. But I know that if I want to remain sober and free, then these are the things I must do. “Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us!”
I know that my life is no longer my own. My life now is in the hands of “a new Employer.” Even though I still complain now and then about the working conditions and sometimes have trouble getting along with my fellow employees, it’s a great improvement over the way things were when I was in charge. Although I sometimes take my sobriety for granted, I am never ungrateful for it.
Today, I still don’t know that much about heaven, but I’ve learned some valuable lessons about life on earth. For so many years, I had always believed that the important thing was to be able to draw other people’s attention toward me. I felt I had to have this attention in order to establish my self-worth. This was my only means of security. Today, I know that the opposite is true. The real gift of love is to be able to give it to others. The ability to love can never be taken away from me, except by me. When I can get myself out of the way long enough to love another human being, it’s the best feeling I know of. I guess you might say it’s heavenly, just the way my dad described it many years ago.
This quote from Dr. Martin Luther King arrived in my inbox this morning as I was thinking about this article and using it as our lead for today’s meeting:
“He took it as axiomatic that the attitudes of nonviolence were finally impossible without an infusion of agape love from God and our reliance upon that infusion. He defined agape love as willingness to serve without the desire for reciprocation, willingness to suffer without the desire for retaliation, and willingness to reconcile without the desire for domination. This is clearly a Divine love that the small self cannot achieve by itself.”
I think the program in its ‘pay it forward’ philosophy beautifully embodies the aspect of agape love of willingness to serve without reciprocation. And the experience of this , which is so common in AA , makes an indelible imprint in our hearts of the ‘not of this world’ possibility of our lives being fueled by what we can’t create ourselves but can experience together.
“The heart itself is but a small vessel, yet dragons are there, and there are also lions; there are poisonous beasts and all the treasures of evil. But there too is God, the angels, the life and the kingdom, the light and the apostles, the heavenly cities and the treasuries of grace—all things are there.”
St. Macarius (H.43.7)
“ Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains… an unuprooted small corner of evil. ”
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Fear of loss and failure—of losing what we have or not being able to get what we want—does not by and of itself constitute self-centered fear. The 12& 12 suggests a narrower and more specific definition. The suggestion is that fear becomes self-centered when we become possessive of what we have and demanding about what we want.
Both possess and demand, therefore, can be rightly read as forceful terms in the characterization of self-centered fear. This raises two crucial questions. How do we go from just having to possessing, from simply wanting to demanding? And how does this turn fear into a self-centered emotion?
To become possessive and demanding suggests that the problem of self-centered fear arises from a distortion of the value that we place on the things we have and desire, and of our consequent concern to keep the ones and secure the others. The terms connote excess and inordinacy: becoming too attached to the good we have, too desirous of the good we want.
Being possessive and demanding reveals a disordered concern for the things we have and want. That is the basis of the disorder in self-centered fear. What might otherwise be a normal fear of loss and failure becomes abnormal.
The disorder takes two closely interconnected forms. One is excess. We eat, we drink, and we grab for more of everything than we actually need says the 12& 12, for fear that we will never have enough (S4, p. 49). We live upon the basis of unfulfilled demands and in a state of continuing upheaval and aggravation (S7, p. 76). Because when something becomes too important to us, we can never have enough of it. We always want more. The more we have, the more we have to have. It becomes an addiction.
The other form of the disorder warps the relationship between the various goods we have or desire. We put second things first, a lesser good before a greater good, a lower love above a love that is higher. When we looked at a job as no more than a way to make money rather than a good opportunity to give service, we read in the 12& 12, when acquiring money and becoming financially independent seemed more important to us than a right dependence upon God, we remained the victims of irrational fear (S12, pp. 121–122). When something becomes too important to us, we put it first. It is that simple. We subordinate other things to it, neglecting what we should not neglect, making sacrifices we should not make, and taking chances we should not take.
The 12& 12 text points to another higher good in relation to work. It declares that dependence on God comes before dependence on money. Money can be properly seen as a means to financial independence. But the good of financial independence can become for us a substitute for a higher good, indeed for the highest and ultimate good, which is God. If we are financially secure, we might tacitly assume, we will be emotionally secure as well. We will be able to handle anything. We won’t have to depend on anyone. In practice, “anyone” ends up including God.
The above comment is taken from an excellent article about doing our 4th step inventory of self centered fear. This can be read in its entirety from this link:
https://gugogs.org/2022/11/17/4th-step-fear-inventory-practice-these-principles-by-ray-a/
Some quotes from Victor Frankl … who stayed and survived a Nazi prison camp despite opportunities to escape because he found purpose and meaning as a doctor attempting to serve and address the incredible needs for medical attention at the concentration camp.
He observed people living and dying on the basis of what choices they made about what gave their lives purpose and meaning.
In 1946, he wrote a tremendously successful and impactful book ‘Man In Search Of Meaning’ that has become a classic selling over 16 million copies. Some powerful and relevant quotes from his book:
“Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose”
“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”
“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”
God
Won