The Caring Heart

PTP4 Excerpts - Emotions

Excerpt

Sections

     The Eyes of the Heart . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .78
     Concerns and Instincts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80
     Secular and Spiritual Views of Instincts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .81
     How Instincts Go Wrong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .83
     The Moral Law . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .  84
     Excess and Disorder . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .87
     Right Desire . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
     Reordered Loves, Reordered Lives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94     

"We can’t see straight and our heart is in the wrong place. That is the twin nature of the problem we examine in the “Cause” and “Affects” sections of our inventory. Placing self at the center, we have a distorted view of reality: that matters only which matters to us.

     John cheats on his wife, drinks on the job, and steals from his boss. When he is found out, he reacts with self-righteous anger. Faced with the consequences, he reacts with self-centered fear. He can’t see what his actions have to do with his situation and the emotions he is feeling. The problem is others. They are the cause of his troubles and his resentments, he convinces himself, blind to the harm that he has caused. 

     Such moral myopia might be chalked up to denial. But denial is only its immediate psychological expression, a defensive, self-protective reaction. There is a bigger and a deeper problem. And this is that John is concerned only with John. He is motivated solely by the things he cares about. His concerns shape his construals. He sees things only in terms of what is important to him, only as they affect what he values. As he sees, he feels, and as he feels, he does.

     In Step 4, this “seeing” and “caring” are the twin factors shaping character and emotion. The Big Book focuses mainly on the first, on the way we look at the “Cause.” It shows us how our spiritual disease distorts our perception, how this leads to harmful emotion and action, and how our vision can be spiritually restored so that we are able to see, to feel, and to act in keeping with the way things really are in the world.

     The 12&12 concentrates primarily on the second, on the things that we most care about and which the “Cause” is seen to “Affect.” It shows us how our spiritual illness distorts the concerns and the desires of our heart, how this leads to feeling and acting in ways that are harmful, and how our heart can be spiritually reoriented so that we may come to value the things of God above all things, re-ordering our lives and re-anchoring our emotions on them.

     The two books focus on two distinct but intimately related aspects of the same disease: warped vision and warped valuation. Our spiritual malady distorts the way we view and value things. It is an illness in which, as Martin Luther once observed, the self “curves” into itself. Selfishness and self-centeredness constitute a disorder wherein pride separates and elevates the self, causing it to lose sight of reality and of what truly matters in life. That is the root cause of the distortion. Self warps both seeing and caring. In so doing it warps our character and our emotions, the things we do and the people we become.


The Eyes of the Heart

     By focusing on the personal concerns listed in the “Affects” column of the sample inventory, the 12&12 seeks to build on a concept that is implicit in the Big Book. This is the understanding that the problem of perception originates in the heart rather than in the eyes. Or, if you will, in the eyes of the heart. It is with the heart that one sees rightly, suggests Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, what is essential is invisible to the eye. It is also true, however, that it is with the heart that one sees wrongly. That which is essential is then rendered invisible by that which is not. The disease starts in the heart. It spreads from there to our vision, our emotions, and the rest of our faculties, infecting reason and volition, intellect and will.

     It is in the heart also that the healing begins. It is there that the first stirrings of a spiritual awakening take place, almost always in the case of us alcoholics the gift of despair. Beaten and shaken to the very depths of our being, something suddenly shifts inside, and our perspective simultaneously shifts with it. A new world opens up before our eyes. The scales fall off, as Bill W. recounts, and we see.

. . .

     A searching and fearless moral inventory entails an examination of our vision and of our heart. We cannot examine our defects of character and emotion in a vacuum, but within the framework of the ways we care about people, places, and things and the ways we see these affected at different times and in particular situations. For that interaction is the dynamic which produces those defects.

     To identify their root cause in the eyes of the heart then, we have to look behind each defect on each occasion and ask ourselves some questions. What is it about this situation that is driving me? What is it about it that matters so much to me? How do I see that thing being affected? How is that leading me to feel X (e.g., fear), be Y (e.g., dishonest) and do Z (e.g., lie). What second things am I putting first? What am I placing ahead of God and his will for me to be the person he wants me to be and do the things he wants me to do? Having identified the distortions of heart and eye, we will be able to identify the distortions of character and emotion, and with that their antidotes in the virtues.

     Toward that end, Part II of this book will discuss the relationship between concerns and construals on the one hand, and defects of character and emotion on the other, with a focus on emotions and some of the emotional handicaps we would typically examine in our inventory (column 4 of our guide). Part III will correlate those handicaps to specific defects of character (column 5). Part IV will refocus on their correctives in the virtues (column 6), a task which in one way or another occupies us throughout this work.

     The reorientation of our heart which is the ultimate goal of a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves was elegantly described by Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Each Man takes care that his neighbor shall not cheat him,” he wrote. “But a day comes when he begins to care that he does not cheat his neighbor.” Emerson’s choice of words shows that what he is describing is a shift in the man’s concerns and construals regarding himself and his neighbor, a shift in the way he sees their relationship. Some call that a Gestalt or a paradigm shift, as we saw in chapter 5. The shift is fundamentally spiritual. It is a shift away from selfishness and self-centeredness. The man is no longer concerned only with his own welfare, but with that of the other. He is no longer concerned only that his neighbor be just with him, but that he be just with his neighbor. The Moral Law is coming alive in him. He is beginning to align his will with God’s will. He is experiencing a spiritual awakening.

– From Part I: Taking Inventory, Chapter 6: The Caring Heart, pp. 77–78, 95–96


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