Humility: A Healer Of Pain

I’m grateful for returning to meetings after a brief hiatus as I’m already feeling the relief of wisdom gained in these rooms impacting my life outside them. I’m grateful for the pithy advice someone gave on how to navigate pain. I’m grateful for reconnecting with a fellow I haven’t seen in a while and making plans to meet up soon. I’m grateful for our internet outage forcing us to change our traditional nighttime activities oriented around the TV. I’m grateful for the reminder to send support to a newcomer who has been struggling. I’m grateful AA is generally a safe space of people who are genuinely trying to better themselves – it’s truly a gift to have access to this on the regular. I’m grateful for a new game of intense catch with Harper that tires him out fairly quick. I’m grateful for exercising the tenet that esteemable acts build self-esteem. I’m grateful for taking stock of what is working in my life and truly feeling content about that rather than focusing on how the grass can always be greener. I’m grateful for digging into why I’m becoming more of a shopaholic of late – while I don’t have the answers or haven’t quite rectified my behavior, I’m glad to be in the process of honest investigation rather than deliberate avoidance.

I took a short hiatus from attending meetings as regularly as I usually do for a variety of reasons – both reasonable and not so much. However I’m glad to have attended one yesterday evening where the topic was “pain”. Granted the subject is intense, especially in our AA circles, I truly appreciated how solutions-focused the majority of shares were.

One of them in particular hit me hard because I haven’t heard this tidbit of wisdom in a long while. The fellow said for us to get through pain we must practice humility. My ears immediately perked and I turned up the dial on the “active listening” part of my brain. He said there is no magic eraser that can simply or quickly wash away our troubles. We have to accept them, just like we need to accept the rest of life on life’s terms, and that involves believing in humility as a healer of pain. Not everything (or much for that matter) can be eradicated with a bottle. We need to experience necessary character-building in order to gain insights from our past and use them to do better moving forward.

Certainly the above is very reminiscent of Step 7 – especially what is detailed in the Twelve And Twelve (pages. 70-76). The chapter talks about the beautiful evolution of our relationship with humility in this Program. It starts with Step 1, where we admitted we were powerless over alcohol, finally accepting how messed up we become when we imbibe. That realization for many sadly comes after tremendous fatigue and hardship. Then as we go through the Steps the embrace of humility transforms from something initially sought because of despair (“forced feeding on humble pie” as the 12 & 12 says on pg. 74) into a “nourishing ingredient which can give us serenity”.

As our egos get punctured, we realize how much can be gained from the character-building of going through suffering emotionally sober and not fleeing at the smallest slight. Each instance of doing this successfully means we are laying the foundation of fearing pain less and coveting humility more. While said foundation solidifies the longer we remain sober, we almost naturally open up our minds to the idea of a Higher Power taking the reins. Relinquishing control to a HP isn’t an arduous task because we realize being the Stage Manager of our life only leads to chaos. It is no longer invigorating to fill the role, but rather quite exhausting. That responsibility belongs to something greater than ourselves – whether it’s God in the traditional sense or, in my case, the mountains I see during my daily run in Cheesman Park.

By embracing the concept of HP more throughly and more regularly, I am able interact with my mind in ways that mitigate the power of familiar defects like fear, anxiety, or ego. Also when pain enters the picture it isn’t a sensation that needs to be avoided at all costs. It is something that needs to be better understood so I can move past it in healthy ways. Of course my HP is always available to assist if I chose to keep the channels of communication clear with an honest, open and willing mind. Ultimately, humility is the key ingredient for ensuring this can happen in as seamless a way as possible.

I’ll end by sharing the last sentence for Step 7 on page 76 in the Twelve and Twelve because it perfectly encapsulates my feelings on how allowing humility to infuse my spirit can be the gateway for discovering broad relief:

If that degree of humility [during Step 1] could enable us to find the grace by which such a deadly obsession [alcoholism] could be banished, then there must be hope of the same result respecting any other problem we could possibly have.

Amen.

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