Self-Confidence and Will Power When we first challenged to admit defeat, most of us revolted. We had approached A.A. expecting to be taught self-confidence. Then we had been told so far as alcohol was concerned, self-confidence was no good whatever; in fact, it was a total liability. There was no such thing as personal conquest of the alcoholic compulsion by the unaided will. << << << >> >> >> It is when we try to make our will conform with God's that we begin to use it rightly. To all of us, this was a most wonderful revelation. Our whole trouble had been the misuse of will power. We had tried to bombard our problems with it instead of attempting to bring it into agreement with God's intention for us. To make this increasingly possible is the purpose of A.A.'s Twelve Steps.
To add to this, our "will power" was instinctual, which is problematic as our instincts are influenced by our self centeredness. IE: if I get sober I'll get something or keep something, instead of I'll live to be a better person, parent, child, neighbor, employee....
St. Thomas Aquinas is considered by most, Christianiety's greatest Philsopher..His Summa Theologica a cornerstone of Christianity...The intellect perseves a thought by reason and revelation...The will performs, executes the act based upon the information from the intellect..
The cornerstone of my respective recovery through AA has been along spiritual lines..having learned that my Alcoholism is a physical, mental and physical ailment..As I grew along spiritual lines as we must, well stated in the Big Book..the information received by my intellect (the methodology unimportant here) has become elevated to a plane of non-alcoholic thinking...more aligned with the mind of God...ie through a transcendance of reason & revelation..This is also reflected in the steps.. .. take a look at step 11 and 12...11 Reason and revelation..step 12 the execution..an act performed by the will.. our Sober way of living
This concept was particularly important in the early stages of my sobriety...having minored in Philosophy in College...and having studied it in Europe..
As a Christian AA and sobriety comes easy.. at least to me...to an atheist very difficult...constantly trying to plug holes that he dug.
Please don't argue with me about it..argue with St. Thomas..my namesake...he died though in the latter part of the 13th. Century..LOL
But it's a good working concept of how the Will interacts with a concept of God..and how the Will can be restored to sanity in the second step..The elevation of thought ie through the intellect and execution of that rreasoning through the will.
