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Source: Father Dan – An Open Mind in AA and Al-Anon – Date Unknown.mp3 File: father-dan-an-open-mind-in-aa-and-al-anon-date-unknown.mp3 Duration: 00:25:09
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I suppose it's because we who come into AA have such clouded thinking we don't give very much attention to exactly what is meant by keeping an open mind. And just in case that there are other people so dense as myself, now that my thinking has cleared up a bit through the help that I have received in this fellowship, I would like to suggest four areas in which we could do well to keep our minds open and suggest that if we do, we just cannot help growing in this program and becoming better people.
And I think that what I say is not exclusively AA talk, I think that it is Al-Anon talk and that it is Al-Ateen talk also. I think that there are many people who might be able to share this experience with me and grow in hope because of something that I will suggest to them which previously was suggested to me. Now I think that first of all, one area especially in which we have to open our minds, whether we be members of AA or Al-Anon, is with regard to the first step that we take in this program.
In this first step, we admit that we are powerless over alcohol, that our lives have become unmanageable. And I think that in doing this, we have got to completely open our minds and get rid of every reservation that we ever had about alcoholism being a disease. And I don't care who we are in this age, every one of us has been affected so much by the teachings of the past that an effort is necessary on the part of every one of us to get rid of preconceived notions and come to a complete acceptance of the fact that alcoholism is a disease.
Without any reservations whatever. Now I think that it is very often easier for the alcoholic to take this step than it is for the non-alcoholic. I think it is much easier for the alcoholic often to accept that alcoholism is a disease than it is for the non-alcoholic. Because when the alcoholic comes to Alcoholics Anonymous, and here I can speak from personal experience, it is a tremendous relief to hear that alcoholism is a disease.
Most of us who come into this fellowship have grown up with the idea that the ability to consume alcohol safely depends on one's moral character and that excess is always due to lack of character. And for the first time we hear that our inability to control our alcoholic intake is due to something physical in our makeup, something that is similar to an allergy, and that when this is disturbed there is an effect on our mind to such a degree that we have an obsession with regard to alcohol.
And I say that this is a tremendous relief to us, to realize that all the people who have told us that we were morally reprobate and to be able to say to ourselves that we are sick and not lacking in character is a tremendous relief. And so very often with the alcoholic the taking of the first step is not so very difficult. But with the non-alcoholic there is a considerable difference because the alcoholic, or the non-alcoholic I should say, has to accept this not only at an intellectual level but also at an emotional level.
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And there is a tremendous difference between these two things. You can see this very readily with a person who has not an alcoholic in the family. And once they have been educated in what alcoholism is and have acquired the true concept of this thing as a disease, they can look at people lying helpless in the street and whereas before they would have called these people all kinds of reprobates, they will merely shake their head now and they will say that person is sick.
But let the same person have the problem in their home, they might say alright that the person is sick, but there is no emotional acceptance of this situation. They don't treat that person who is alcoholic in the same way as they would treat the same person if he were, say, paralytic because of a stroke, if he had polio, if he was in the advanced stages of cancer. There is a completely different attitude because there has not been emotional acceptance.
Now there is no use saying this if I don't make some suggestion as to how, in my opinion, this kind of emotional acceptance of alcoholism as a disease is to be achieved. And to that the only answer I can give is practice the second step as hard as you can. Pray to a power greater than yourself to restore you to sanity. Now I don't mean that anyone who cannot emotionally accept alcoholism as a disease is insane in the same sense as a person who has to be committed to a mental hospital.
But there is something unhealthy about the person's thinking and that is all basically that the word insane means, unhealthy. And so if you have difficulty in emotionally accepting the alcoholic individual, then pray to God that he will change your thinking, that he will heal your sick mind. Because it is the sickness in your mind that is blocking the way to the kind of compassion which the alcoholic is due, especially from those who are near and dear to him.
I say also that we should have an open mind with regard to ourselves and other people. And I think that this openness of mind with regard to ourselves and other people is only achieved if we take a good fourth step, if we make a moral inventory of ourselves in a fearless way. And I mean fearless, not courageous. There is a big difference between these two words, courageous and fearless. I remember when I had been in AA about a year, someone suggested that it was about time that I was taking the fourth step, that I was taking a moral inventory of myself.
And by that time I had gotten to the state of mind where I welcomed all the suggestions that were made. And so I got down to business, but the kind of inventory I took, while it was courageous, was not fearless. And so I don't think that I came up with honest answers about myself and other people, especially my relationships with them. The trouble with us, I think, when we are taking this inventory is that all the time at the back of our minds there is the idea that we have got to come out of this inventory acceptable to ourselves, acceptable to the creator who made us,
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and if it were to fall into the hands of other people, acceptable to them as well. But we have to take this inventory as if no one else existed, not even our creator. We have got to completely eliminate any desire to be accepted, even by ourselves, because only then can we come at the truth about ourselves. And only if we get down to that rock-bottom truth is there real hope that we can change the things that must be changed if our recovery is to be made possible.
And this is the case with regard to the alcoholic and with regard to the non-alcoholic taking this step, because, let's face it, neither one of us can help the other. Especially, neither of us can change anything in the other. And so the only thing that is important is that we find out about ourselves and that we get busy about changing that. And for that it is necessary to have an open mind. By that I mean that it is necessary for us to see a need for change.
We go through life so very, very often thinking that anything we know is bound to be right, especially if it is knowledge that we have carried with us and made use of through a good part of our life. This was the block in the way of so many of us accepting this alcoholism as a disease, because we were unwilling to change the preconceived ideas that we had. And because we are unwilling to change our ideas about ourselves, then our minds are closed and obstacles are set up to our recovery.
This I am sure many of the ladies and gentlemen in Al-Anon will readily admit. They have gone on for so long saying, there's nothing wrong with me, it's the drunken bum, until they come in here. And as you have heard Holly say tonight, she made amazing discoveries about ourselves. And this any good Al-Anon member will tell you. And so it is necessary for us in both branches of these fellowships to have this open mind with regard to ourselves and with regard to the other.
I remember a very long time ago hearing an old priest preaching a retreat, saying that nearly always the most charitable explanation of any situation is most likely to be true. I never believed that this was true at the time, and then the memory of these words completely disappeared from my mind. But when I came into AA, and especially as I tried to make progress in this program, I have discovered that this is very, very definitely true.
That wherever we can take an opinion about a person that is more charitable than another, in 90% of cases at least, the most charitable opinion is the correct one. And this is especially true with regard to the relationships between the alcoholic and the non-alcoholic. Now, earlier when Kay was speaking, she quoted from the epistle of St. Paul to the Romans. And I'm sure that many of you, when you saw me getting up, would say to yourself, well, we got one quotation before.
Wait till you hear this guy start. Well, I'm not going to quote scripture exactly, but I do want to venture into the area of what
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is sometimes called the spiritual part of this program and say that the other two areas which I have in mind where an open mind is necessary is in the area of prayer and in our ideas about God. I think that most people, even those who have no problem with alcohol, are wrong in their ideas about what prayer is. I think that most people think that saying prayers to God is a kind of speech making to God. And you can imagine what it would be like if you were courting somebody and you tried to make speeches to them to convince them of how much you respected them and how much you loved them. Or even worse, if you got the works of William Shakespeare and got all the great love poems and speeches and read these to your beloved, they would tell you to clear out. If you couldn't tell them in your own words what you thought of them, they didn't want to hear somebody else's rubbish. And yet so often this is how we treat God. We go and we spend large sums of money on expensive prayer books to throw at God somebody else's words, which can't be part of us at all.
And this God doesn't particularly want to hear. God's relationship with us is that of father to child. And he wants us to talk to him as loving children. And so we have to get rid of all these crazy ideas we had about prayer. That it is a speech making to God. That it has got to be done in fine words, in poetic phrases. That is not the kind of prayer that God really wants from us. God wants us to speak from our hearts, just as we would speak to someone for whom we had a high degree of love and respect, but in our own simple fashion and from our hearts. And unless we can change our thinking about prayer, again the open mind, to such an extent that we will work on ourselves and strike up a relationship with God whereby we can converse with him in this way, there is little hope that we will ever be able to do what is suggested in the 11th step and increase our conscious contact with God. And in trying to increase this conscious contact with God, we have especially, and this, and it is in this area that I would like to emphasize what I say most, that we have to change in many, many instances our thinking about God. You stop the average person in the street, if you can get away with it, and ask them what does God mean to you. Ask your next door neighbor, and you will be amazed at the different ideas that people have about God. Our program suggests that we speak to God as we understand him, but it is evident from the way our program is phrased, and it is evident from what is written in the big book, that if our thinking progresses as it should, we should pretty well all end up with the same idea about God. And this idea about God is expressed in just a couple of words in the second tradition of our
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program, where it speaks of God as a loving God. Love is the word. Love is the important word. And unless we can change our thinking and get rid of all those terrifying concepts that we had of God, many of us from our childhood, then there isn't any hope of us striking up a happy relationship with God and having the kind of conscious contact with him which will improve our way of living. How can you love anything that you fear? Children who fear their father don't love him. And any wife who fears her husband cannot love him either. Fear and love are contradictions. And yet, the God of our AA program is a loving God. And unless we get a true concept of him, unless we are prepared to change our thinking about him, then we are not going to get what this program can bring. And how do you get an idea of a loving God? And the simple answer to that simple question is, just read about him. Read, for example, the New Testament. Is there anything in the life of Christ? Is there anything in the compassion that he showed to suffering mankind to inspire fear? No, all the fear concepts that we have of God come not from God, come not from the writings of sacred scripture, but from people who misused the idea of God in order to establish a wrong kind of authority over us. The kind of people who, when we were young, would say, don't do anything behind my back, God is watching you. The kind of people who said, when there is thunder and lightning, that is God expressing his anger because you told a lie to sister in school. And here I must point out that I believe that the alcoholic, because of some mysterious, fearful characteristic in his makeup, is more susceptible to developing this kind of fear concept about God than the average person. You talk with any alcoholic, as he is recovering, and tell him about the love of God, and show him the love of God apparent in this fellowship, in the charity of its members, and you will see that he will almost melt like ice in the sun. Because some block in his mentality, in his psychological makeup, has prevented him from seeing the warmth and the love of God, and has emphasized all the fearful aspects of God that he has ever been told about. I know this from experience because I grew up in a large family, and I have discussed with them since I came into AA, and learned something about the love of God. I have discussed this with the members of my family, and none of them, although they had the same kind of training I had, the same kind of religious upbringing and education, had this fear concept of God. But I think that it is much more common than many people realize, and I think that many people are walking about with this concept of God without realizing that it is a false concept, and that because of this they are prevented from sharing in his love. So if you are afraid of God, correct your thinking by opening your mind, and let the light shine in, because with that light there will come warmth, and with that warmth there will become love. Thank you for listening.