Old Ideas

What are they and how do we get rid of them...

"Old ideas are always taught to us. They are the cause in our suffering, resentment, fear and anger. These old ideas will keep us stuck, keep us from overcoming our problems and addictions."

I was in a meeting several years ago and the topic being discussed was humility. When I spoke I said that humility, for me, was one of those terms used in the 12 step program I had to look up in a dictionary. I wasn't sure what it really meant and I figured I would need to have a clear definition of humility if I was going to try and practice humility. As with all these principles I'd been reading and hearing about I needed to define them in order to really understand them. I looked humility up in the dictionary and got a lot of definitions. That's because there are a lot of opinions about humility and when an opinion comes to be shared by enough people it's included in the dictionary as a common usage definition. I decided, after some research, that humility was a realistic appraisal of my assets and liabilities. I got this definition from a quote by Gandhi. It fit well as I had been working on my fourth step and trying to make this type of honest appraisal of my liabilities. To me being truly humble is to be truly realistic. I work to discard any fantasies I hold about myself and in doing so live in a more realistic world. This means I don't cast myself as something I'm not. I lose my need to develop, and put forth, an image to impress or deceive others. I become more aware, more real.

This is an example of moving from one mental state to another. Jung referred to it, in the Big Book, as a conscious rearrangement. Whenever we really let go of an old idea we move from one mental state, literally one reality, to another. When we decide to go through the twelve step process and follow the suggestions laid out by those who went before us we have the opportunity to understand our nature. If our work is thorough we expose a good deal of nonsense. It's inescapable. All these troublesome patterns and reactive behaviors come from the ideas stored in our brains. This being the case, all the problems in the world today and since the beginning of man, come from ideas held by the brain. There is no where else for things to come from. If you believe the devil is influencing you for the purpose of claiming your eternal soul it's still, at this point, an idea. In the science and religion department we "know" very little - we have a lot of ideas. We don't know if we came from apes or if we were made out of dirt and there is no one to ask. At some point in our lives we must face the fact that we alone are in sole control of the ideas we hang on to. At this point we become responsible for every aspect of our life. This may seem like just another idea but it's the best idea for getting out of whatever trouble we're in. At least we can start looking for solutions in the right place. I should define trouble here and say that, for me, if I'm suffering confusion, anxiety, loneliness, anger; whatever shape suffering takes, it's trouble and it comes from ideas held in my head.

If you say that someone shooting at you with a bazooka is causing you fear and its not just some idea I would agree. On the other hand the reaction to a bazooka attack is not suffering, its surviving. Natural disasters may not be comfortable, they may be miserable, but it falls in a different category. If you sit in consternation over the possibility of a natural disaster ( or bazooka attack ) and it interferes with your happiness its suffering and trouble and the solution is in the letting go of the associated ideas.


Problems do not go away. They must be worked...through or else they remain, forever a barrier to the growth and development of the spirit.      M. Scott Peck, M.D.

In A.A.s fourth step we're ask to write down who and what we are resentful of. We are ask to say why: what happened to start the resentment. Then what aspect of our lives, or ourselves, is being threatened. What we always find is that these conceived threats are causing us to suffer. It is always our happiness, at some level, being threatened. So what does this tell us? What ideas are involved behind the scenes of the suffering? I've never heard anyone's fourth step without it having at least some resentment over lost or stolen, money or romance. Missed opportunities, situations, circumstances and so on involving love and money. Finance and romance seem to be the main theme in the lives of people in most societies. It seems to be what most people equate as sources of happiness. If we look at the root causes of this we'll find that love and money have a direct correlation to our ideas about security.

What if we had been taught at every stage of life that romantic and financial security, while being fun and pleasurable, had nothing to do with happiness? What would a fourth step look like then? When we read our fourth step to some one they will, if they've figured it out yet, point out the obvious issue of our "dependence on outer conditions" for our emotional well being. It will also be seen that this dependence is the emotional state of a small child. Emotional immaturity is rampant in today's wealthiest societies. The level of kookiness accepted as normal is astounding. Its all part of our education system. This system includes schools, all big people (as seen by children), governments, churches, the media and every source of data one can think of. Some want to lay the blame solely on the parents but they had a similar education. We can understand that the majority of our ideas developed in accordance with what we were taught. It follows that we did not really have control of everything we learned. Knowing that we were taught things that aren't necessarily true doesn't relieve us of much. Knowing our ideas were taught to us doesn't make them go away. If we conclude that we have developed ideas that are not serving in our best interest we might decide to get rid of them. We can do this and see if life without them is more to our liking.

To do this we need to replace the data. Old ideas are based on old data. We might say it's bad data - bad input equals bad output. This inevitable output causes every problem we have or will ever face. Remember - problems here don't include lighting bolts or earth quakes. Of course we need to explore this deeper but first lets see how it plays out in the 12 step process. It's not difficult to see that our ideas are products of input data. We don't know of any other way to develop an idea than this. We'll want to be absolutely clear on this as it is another key to the complete restoration of out sanity. That said, we remain responsible for straightening things out. But wouldn't we rather speed up the process by focusing on cause? I'd like to introduce what may be a new idea for some. Below is a statement by a Doctor involved in working with trauma clients. He was surprised by a patients reaction to a certain drug.

"That a drug should trigger most of the post-traumatic stress symptoms in many of those who suffer from the emotional aftermath of trauma is but one of several pieces of evidence pointing to a new and surprising scientific consensus: Traumatic events - even a single episode like Jerry's - can alter the brain's chemistry.
"Our hypothesis is that people who have been through intense trauma may never be the same biologically," says Dennis Chamey, M.D., chief of clinical neuroscience at the National Center for PTSD, in West Haven, Connecticut, and one of the investigators in the yohimbine study."

At one point in our life on earth we were nothing more than an unrecognizable chemical soup. Our brain is a kind of chemical soup. My hypothesis is that incorrect data taken in over time causes trauma that changes our brain chemistry. If what they're saying is true what other ramifications exist? Fear is the trauma that causes PTSD's. Notice above that this persons traumatized brain reacted differently to a drug than those persons not traumatized? Are alcoholics born - Or made? Are there little baby alcoholics? You see where this goes right? So you see how it leaves an opening for restructuring a chemical brain by de-traumatizing it with different data? Isn't that the only natural process available?

The problem with the medicine industry is people. Most people haven't made the connection that we are chemically changing ourselves with everything, including data, we put into our bodies. All data, all environmental factors: Food, thoughts, sounds... from all sources. The Dr's above see the trauma related connection. They say this traumatizing is caused by a single or series of catastrophic events. Isn't the constant barrage of bad data a slowly occurring catastrophe? One thing is not debatable - people in the U.S. are not as a whole mentally healthy. If we had healthy unaltered brains like those of a brand new baby human, we'd be screaming at the top of our lungs.

I put forth the following observation to every substance abuser I talk with: these steps...they aren't just useful for addicts. We're not the only ones who have these root problems. We're just the ones whose resulting behavior gets us involved in drunken brawls and DUI's. I don't think the drug addicts are all that different from everyone else. The same dis-ease takes many forms. We are presented with a world that doesn't make sense and our brains (1) can't take it (2) make chemical changes, or (3) shut down. Plus everything in between.

If suffering is present in our lives we are responsible for its negation. The only question should be, "what's the process". If we can accept that old ideas are the cause of our suffering, the cause of the resentment, the fear, the anger it will greatly reduce the time frame for our deliverance. I state often that it is impossible to solve a problem unless we know what the problem is. Sounds obvious, but people try all the time to make changes without addressing cause. We have thoughts like "I'll be happy if/when" or "I was fine until this/they" etc. People try to end their suffering constantly by working to create circumstances they associate with "happy". Ad men understand this psychological syndrome and corporations make billions off of the millions of people who don't - get it.

We have a powerful potential in our youth, and we must have the courage to change old ideas and practices so that we may direct their power toward good ends.
Edwin Land

It's really clear to me that you can't hang onto something longer than its time. Ideas lose certain freshness, ideas have a shelf life, and sometimes they have to be replaced by other ideas.
Alan Alda

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.
Carl Jung

Fear of error which everything recalls to me at every moment of the flight of my ideas, this mania for control, makes men prefer reason's imagination to the imagination of the senses. And yet it is always the imagination alone which is at work.
Louis Aragon

We do not know, in most cases, how far social failure and success are due to heredity, and how far to environment. But environment is the easier of the two to improve.
John B. S. Haldane

Making up your mind does not mean freeing yourself to believe what you want - but examining so closely that you know the result.
Alan Gregg

To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those things that lie beyond.
Hypatia

All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.
Friedrich Nietzsche

Greatness, in the last analysis, is largely bravery - courage in escaping from old ideas and old standards and respectable ways of doing things.
James Robinson

Its not that we need new ideas, but we need to stop having old ideas.