First, there is Me. I am quite normal if only thanks to the voices sitting on either side of each ear. Believe it or not, such personal shoulder squatters come as standard equipment. I am convinced our entire species is similarly equipped. AA’s “Big Book” notes the sole exception: people unable to get honest with themselves. I have nothing to offer those poor souls lacking an angel on one shoulder. One cannot negotiate Grace’s path without that steering wheel of conscientious truth.
What defines “Me” are my thoughts, feelings, and actions, each informed by my perceptions. Occasionally, what I think, feel, or do is grounded by an authentic awareness. My ego insists that all my thoughts and actions are reality based. My Self is an umpire who does not call balls and strikes as it sees them. It instead insists each game’s pitch is being called precisely as thrown. My Self demands its perceptions be received by the world as the truth.
That stood out as the first lie I had to stop telling. Whatever I’d previously concluded as truth had all too often proven not only inaccurate, but a false choice drawn from a lopsided internal argument. This left me with no alternative but to extinguish the notion that I know best. Personal decision-making had been wrested away by a hidden dimension to my state of being.
I’d spent years in recovery convinced that I had, in fact, surrendered my sense of self-will. Through an earnest attempt to learn humility, I thought I’d stopped managing my life. But without a higher power, I had nothing to surrender my self-will to. I thought it would be enough to turn my will over to others -- the Group or Sponsor – for recovery purposes. But throughout that time, a spiritual reawakening remained outside my grasp. Any notion of establishing conscious contact with a higher power had failed.
Talented therapists and Twelve Step support certainly saved me. With such assistance, I’d had stopped drowning and was functioning with greater clarity. But after all that time swimming in recovery’s ocean, I remained both far from shore while feeling emotionally exhausted.
Why hadn’t I made more progress? I discovered it was due to my reliance on a defective guidance system despite having a fine mind. What began as an effective operating system later became infected with lines of bad code. The result was that my previous strokes had carried me away from land rather than towards it. Until I could learn how to distinguish between the two voices banging around inside my head, nothing would change.
What does a smart guy like me rely on most of all? My brain. When functioning objectively, my intelligence arrives at sound conclusions based on observation and evidence. I trusted its superior processing ability to solve my life’s problems. Of course, now I know such an expectation was not only delusional, but eminently self-destructive.
My problem boiled down to how I utilized that intelligence. When I used my brain as a slave solving for X, it became a helpful tool. However, that same brain would morph into a narcissist master when called upon to make a life choice. Suddenly, those lines of bad code would kick in, seizing control of my operating system. My internal computer screen flashed black while a voice boomed out demanding my complete attention while announcing an agenda that I must follow forthwith, and to the exclusion of all others.
No longer merely an observer, I must assume the role of referee, adjudicating the demands of my ego-driven self against the quieter insistence of the other voice which, although speaking clearly, remained harder to identify. Sometimes the debate is not just distressing but downright destructive. The volume gets turned up so high, I become paralyzed. Decision-making grows difficult if not impossible. Fear develops as that internal argument grows ever louder. What began as low-grade confusion has quickly fanned into a twisted form of internal terror.
Fortunately, I made an important decision early on Grace’s path. Day-to-day functional choices would remain within my brain’s domain. But when it came to mediating internal conflict, my lofty intelligence was a wolf in sheep’s clothing. It had provided Me little in the way of traction along life’s road thanks to ceding control to my Self’s driver. My choice was clear; I must start listening for the other voice, the angel on my shoulder, to guide Me.