Plowing the soil

There is a solution. Almost none of us liked the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the process requires for its successful consummation. But we saw that it really worked in others, and we had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it. When, therefore, we were approached by those in whom the problem had been solved, there was nothing left for us but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet. We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.  - Alcoholics Anonymous, p.25

They that are whole have no need of a physician. - Matthew 9:12

There is no need for a solution when there's no problem. From the very beginning, when I inwardly knew that my drinking was far from normal, I would comfort myself in the knowledge that alcohol wasn't causing me any problems. And I harbored the delusion that if it ever did become a problem I would start drinking "normally." But it never did. Not that alcohol wasn't creating havoc and hurting everyone around me. I just made the definition of "problem" a moving target that was always conveniently worse than what happened to be going on at the moment.

In his Guest House talk, Bill talks of the soil, the climate and the light. And by the soil, I believe he refers to the receptiveness of the alcoholic mind. The image is like that in the parable of the sower and the seed. The seed only takes root in soil that has been prepared by being broken. (I guess you could say that we actually were getting "plowed".) But it's a brokenness that is of no value unrecognized. The alcoholic has to finally come to the realization that he has passed beyond the point of human aid, that all the resources he can bring to bear on the problem fail utterly. And it is in that state where the soil can receive the seed.

Bill spends most of the chapter up to this point doing precisely that. It's a sweeping survey of the utter hopelessness of the alcoholic condition. And it is a strategy that he and the other early AAs utilized in approaching a new prospect. They made certain that any hope the new man might have of solving the problem on his own was thoroughly destroyed as they recounted their own futile attempts to pull off the impossible. Bill recounts that, when Roland returned to Karl Jung after his horrible relapse, Jung's admission that he had nothing further to offer him added "agony to despair."

But then, suddenly, a sliver of light penetrates this intolerable darkness There is a solution!  Bill recounts that it swept through him like a mighty wind. But those "moments of clarity" we have experienced are no less valid and by no means less profound.

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. - Isaiah 9:2

You must excuse me for getting so biblical on you, but I only do so to point out that we alcoholics are not experiencing something new. God's been doing this from the beginning. If I were more conversant in other religions, I might be inclined to cite examples from those traditions. I'm sure there are many.

We saw that it worked in others. There is the source of the light. My friend Bruce M. would paint this picture. A ship sinks and I am struggling to stay afloat. And around me people are clinging to big hunks of concrete but I refuse to do so because logic tells me that concrete doesn't float. Yet it works for them. So I think to myself "to hell with reason, I'm finding me a piece of concrete."

I remember vividly the moment in Sacred Heart when the idea entered my mind that this might work for me. And the feeling that I got was that it was going to be OK. And it was.