I wonder if we're really asking for the serenity up front, or just the *presence* and beingness to accept the things we can't change, and the result is serenity? I can try to meet the things I can't change with all the serenity in the world, but that just seems like a phony greeting. There's an attitude I experience as different from serenity from which I am able to accept the things I cannot change. Then the result seems to follow sometimes, eventually: serenity.
Not to overthink it. Or anything.
So how much fight do you have in you? When I look back on a lot of my life, I honestly was just fighting every damned thing almost all the time. Really not capable of accepting things I could not change. I always figured the reason I could not change things I found unacceptable was because I was a failure- that I could find a better strategy, manage better, manipulate better, get tougher and push harder and argue better, or be more passive, accommodating and "nice," and somehow, some day, find the magic formula. Through all of this effort, whatever I found unacceptable would somehow magically be transformed and I would finally be happy. If I couldn't change the "outside world," I discovered I could *definitely* change how I felt. Since the world is fucked, in order to survive let alone function, I found ways to at least change myself-- drugs and alcohol, sex, "falling in love," spiritual highs, endorphins from exercise, food, moving to a "new" place, even the pursuit of money and power, which I'm not very good at.
A few things are blindingly obvious about this weird way to live, in retrospect. First of all, it takes a lot of energy to try to change things that are just not budging. My irrational, rebellious force meeting an immovable object made for a lot of wasted time and effort. Because immovable really does mean immovable. As in, immovable.
A simple example might be the character of another human being. I might have a mountain of unassailable evidence that this other human being is dishonest, manipulative, toxic, unprocessed, selfish and dangerous. But if I am attached to this person-- if I have something at stake-- I will try to change all of these things somehow. These things are not going to budge as a result of anything I do. Or the odds are just extremely low. Imagine a gigantic roulette wheel with millions of slots, all of which but one are the usual shitty behavior. Spin that thing! You might hit that lucky number! (Not going to get too much into the motive force behind wanting to change sick people, which is almost always narcissistic overestimation of one's own value-- it is hard to face the fact that we have attracted a manipulative and abusive sack of shit into our lives, since we are such good people).
A friend of mine recently, with absolute finality, broke up with his partner and the partner responded: "I don't accept that." This is a perfect illustration of the impulse.
There are so many both blatant and subtle ways that we try to move the truly immovable. It's especially weird because it's not as if the immovable is just difficult to move-- if we were only stronger, or had more power, or loved better, or were smarter, or had the right lever, we could move the immovable. No, we couldn't. It's actually immovable. Not able to be moved. Non-negotiable.
So it seems to me I need a whole hell of a lot more than serenity to accept the things I cannot change. I need an entire fundamental shift in my relationship to reality, which, for me, is a spiritual practice that is fundamental to my life and leads eventually to a complete change of perspective, values and where I turn my attention. The *result* is serenity, in rare moments, in glimpses, in hints and guesses, fits and starts. TS Eliot: "A condition of complete simplicity (costing not less than everything)." (Four Quartets, Little Gidding)
For me, one significant action that begins to make this possible is sitting meditation. Simply taking the time every day to be still with my mind and watch the breath. I have been doing this for ten minutes almost every day since July, and even just at 10 minutes a day it has definitely, palpably shifted my relationship to reality.
Reality grant me the reality to accept reality. The courage to know fearlessly and without fighting, what I can change and get to work on it. The wisdom otherwise to abandon myself to what is.
Beneath this, it's not even about me at all, of course. This is the truth of the prayers that arose directly out of the program-- they are self-centered prayers. They are all about me. Not to be unkind, but Bill's essential narcissism (and the essential narcissism of Western spirituality) is clearly revealed in these prayers. The "I" stands right in the center of them all. If you compare with the Brahma Viharas, for example, it's even more obvious. Take, for example, the 7th step prayer: "My creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, good and bad. I pray you now remove from me every single defect of character that stands in the way of my usefulness to you and to my fellows. Grant me strength as I go out from here to do thy bidding. Amen." Imagine the fundamental shock a person would experience if they were literal and very attached to this prayer and had to face the fact that they do not exist? That the "I" they are willing to offer to their creator is a delusion? How would these prayers work if we removed all of the "I"? It's an interesting exercise.
By contrast, the Brahma Viharas: May all sentient beings have happiness and the causes of happiness; may all sentient beings be free of suffering and the causes of suffering; may all sentient beings never be separated from bliss without suffering; may all sentient beings be in equanimity, free of anger, bias and attachment."
Where's the I? What does that have to do with ME and ME being SPIRITUAL and having a PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP with the infinite?
Well, nothing at all.
Of course we have to start somewhere. Probably the appeal of the kind of spiritual awakening Bill is promoting is precisely that we are still involved in it. I don't think many selfish, self-centered, narcissistic, dishonest, fearful and grandiose alcoholics would take to being told their true spiritual path involves completely transcending every single one of their delusions about themselves and reality. (This, in spite of the fact that the great goal of late stage alcoholism is total obliteration and oblivion-- but on *our* terms).
The prayers of the program do progressively approach the a dissolving of the self (with the so-called St. Francis prayer including "It is by self-forgetting that one finds...."). But Bill and AA in general are a product of the West, and of course, as a result, even with its gnostic and mystical elements, AA is completely grounded in the essentially identity-conditioned spirituality of the West, where each individual has a God personal to him or her and, if saved, will live forever.
Such a weird idea.
Flattering, but weird.
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