Clipper Stad Amsterdam by Ebroh
Having been in AA since 1976, I have heard a lot of people comment on the spiritual “part” of AA. They generally say that they have a “problem” with the spiritual part. I always want to ask which part is the spiritual part. I believe that all 12 steps are spiritual and that we need a power greater than ourselves to help us to accept our need for change and growth.
Many of Bill Wilson’s (the co-founder of AA) early influences were by people who believed spirituality to be the foundation. Two of those people were Carl Jung and William James. I have included the thoughts of these two men below.
William James is considered the founder of psychology.
These articles about William James and AA show the influence James had on helping to mold the early addiction recovery ideas that Bill Wilson had.
The Religious Roots of Alcoholics Anonymous and the Twelve Steps
William James and Alcoholics Anonymous
History of Alcoholics Anonymous
Big Book Theology: “We Agnostics” and William James
The Varieties of Religious Experience
Bill Wilson’s Letter to Dr. Carl Jung, Jan. 23, 1961
Spirituality as a cure for alcoholism–the following three paragraphs are included from Wikipedia and contain other links in the article:
“Jung recommended spirituality as a cure for alcoholism and he is considered to have had an indirect role in establishing Alcoholics Anonymous.[57] Jung once treated an American patient (Rowland Hazard III), suffering from chronic alcoholism. After working with the patient for some time and achieving no significant progress, Jung told the man that his alcoholic condition was near to hopeless, save only the possibility of a spiritual experience. Jung noted that occasionally such experiences had been known to reform alcoholics where all else had failed.”
“Rowland took Jung’s advice seriously and set about seeking a personal spiritual experience. He returned home to the United States and joined a Christian evangelical Re-Armament movement known as the Oxford Group. He also told other alcoholics what Jung had told him about the importance of a spiritual experience. One of the alcoholics he brought into the Oxford Group was Ebby Thacher, a long-time friend and drinking buddy of Bill Wilson, later co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Thacher told Wilson about the Oxford Group, and through them Wilson became aware of Hazard’s experience with Jung. The influence of Jung thus indirectly found its way into the formation of Alcoholics Anonymous, the original twelve-step program, and from there into the whole twelve-step recovery movement, although AA as a whole is not Jungian and Jung had no role in the formation of that approach or the twelve steps.”
“The above claims are documented in the letters of Jung and Bill W., excerpts of which can be found in Pass It On, published by Alcoholics Anonymous.[58] Although the detail of this story is disputed by some historians, Jung himself made reference to its substance — including the Oxford Group participation of the individual in question — in a talk that was issued privately in 1954 as a transcript from shorthand taken by an attender (Jung reportedly approved the transcript), later recorded in Volume 18 of his Collected Works, The Symbolic Life (“For instance, when a member of the Oxford Group comes to me in order to get treatment, I say, ‘You are in the Oxford Group; so long as you are there, you settle your affair with the Oxford Group. I can’t do it better than Jesus.’” Jung goes on to state that he has seen similar cures among Roman Catholics.[59])”
Boats by kimdokhac
I have believed for years that addiction is cured only when we learn how to reparent ourselves, This includes not only healing our inner child but also healing all the children we have within.
I have written the following posts about the inner child and/or reparenting:
Our Inner Child is our Eternal Child
Recovery Means Healing All Your Inner Critics
Your Childhood Pain was a Gift
Learn to Listen and Guide Your Inner Voices
Helping Others to Learn Reparenting
According to Dr. Tian Dayton, children who grow up with alcohol or other drug abuse may experience:
• Loss of Trust and Faith Due to deep ruptures in primary, dependency relationships and breakdown of an orderly world.
• Distorted Reasoning Due to convoluted attempts to make sense and meaning out of chaotic, confusing, frightening or painful experience that feels senseless.
• Easily Triggered
• Development of Rigid Psychological Defenses When this person develops long term ‘charactor armour’ to defend against letting pain in.
• Desire to Self-Medicate When this person attempts to quiet and control their turbulent, troubled inner world through the use of drugs and alcohol or behavioral addictions.This can be part of how addiction gets passed down through the generations.
Boat by MorBCH
“In my eighty years, I prefer to call that the forty-first anniversary of my thirty ninth birthday, I’ve seen what men can do for each other and do to each other, I’ve seen war and peace, feast and famine, depression and prosperity, sickness and health. I’ve seen the depth of suffering and the peaks of triumph and I know in my heart that man is good, that what is right will always eventually triumph and that there is purpose and worth to each and every life.” [the last portion of this quote is inscribed on his gravestone]
-Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan Library Opening Ceremonies
Each of us has an inner guide to show us when we are off target. To sin is to miss the mark. Becoming a valued person takes patience and willingness to accept the responsibility of treating others with the same respect.
But love begins with loving and accepting ourselves. And paradoxically, that means accepting what Carl Jung called our shadow self. Jung believed (from Wikipedia):
“In Jungian psychology, the shadow or “shadow aspect” is a part of the unconscious mind consisting of repressed weaknesses, shortcomings, and instincts. It is one of the three most recognizable archetypes, the others being the anima and animus and the persona. “Everyone carries a shadow,” Jung wrote, “and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”[1] It may be (in part) one’s link to more primitive animal instincts,[2] which are superseded during early childhood by the conscious mind.”
“According to Jung, the shadow, in being instinctive and irrational, is prone to project: turning a personal inferiority into a perceived moral deficiency in someone else. Jung writes that if these projections are unrecognized “The projection-making factor (the Shadow archetype) then has a free hand and can realize its object–if it has one–or bring about some other situation characteristic of its power.” [3] These projections insulate and cripple individuals by forming an ever thicker fog of illusion between the ego and the real world.”
“Jung also believed that “in spite of its function as a reservoir for human darkness—or perhaps because of this—the shadow is the seat of creativity.”
I try very hard to not bad and good in my self-appraisal because I have made the decision to accept the job of making my emotional choices based on self-acceptance. That means loving others now that I have found how to love myself.
The following links offer different ideas about learning to value ourselves and others. From these feelings of value, empathy is born and grows.
Social media marketing (not marketing: conversations
Your money or your life–a summary of Chap. 11 from 50 Prosperity Classics: Attract It, Create It, Manage It, Share It (50 Classics)
Saving 200 runaway girls from prostitution
Coachology: Finally, the men place high value on personal life. Get on the bandwagon
