Wednesday, 24 June 2009 11:51
Spirituality
There is a cliché that says, “Everything you ever needed to know about recovery you learned in your first 90 days” or something like that. I somewhat believe that, first impressions are so important. I was very, very fortunate to be given a series of first impressions in my first 90 days.
I had a mentor. A spiritual teacher although this person didn’t represent herself as such. She was just another addict, but one that made an enormous impression on me. She talked the talk but more so she gracefully walked the walk and was consistent without ever getting distracted from living by spiritual principles. Had I not been so exposed to such a living example I don’t know if my life and recovery would of evolved the way it has.
Everything I ever needed to know about
Surrender
Faith
Courage
Honesty
Service
Humility
Trust
And loyalty, I learned in those first 90 days.
The first time I completed the 12 steps I was disappointed I was of the belief that I would receive a “spiritual awakening” I didn’t feel awakened, I didn’t have any great revelation, I didn’t see of felt I knew God any more than when I first started on this journey. So I filed a complaint to this woman and asked her why? I thought something was going to happen, and nothing did, sure I stayed clean, and yes I discovered many things about my self but why didn’t I get a spiritual awakening?
I will never forget her response. She laughed. Then she smiled and said “Tommy, you already got your spiritual awakening the day you walked in the doors of Narcotics Anonymous, what you will be doing for the rest of your life is understanding what the hell happened to you”.
40 years later I am still in awe of what has happened to me and what continues to happen to me.
What started out as a promise of freedom from active addiction has evolved into the chance of finding many other freedoms?
To me a spiritual awakening is a process, maybe it is “the process” I woke up, but I had to get out of bed less I go back to sleep again, I had to get out of bed and into action.
I think the path for me started out like a baby, with a child like understanding, limited because of my level of experience. In a sense I started off drinking spiritual milk from the safety of a mothers breast. Nurtured by the fellowship and those I knew were spiritual warriors. (You can tell which ones they are). I got to do this for a while, if I could of I would of stayed right there sucking away and taken in all I could. But part of the process is to become a spiritual warrior too. So I had to be weaned and I had to be fed spiritual meat. Spiritual meat is not as easy to digest as spiritual milk, as a matter of fact if you just lay around it doesn’t digest at all. A head full of spiritual knowledge will result in spiritual obesity if you don’t get off your ass. No one really wants to become a spiritual fat head.
“Practicing these principles in all our affairs” is a sort of exercise regiment, it is what develops spiritual muscles and this wont happen with out a program. In spite of popular demand recovery and spiritual growth doesn’t just happen to us. We have to make it happen.
There are spiritual awakenings and rude awakenings; the latter comes as a result of not working through the 12 steps.
From week one, I daily prayed and meditated and I’ve kept a spiritual journal. I sometimes joke about my prayer and meditation. I don’t really know if I am doing it right or if I am truly doing it, all I know is I get up and I sit alone and I say “good morning God” I guess that is bingo: conscious contact. Then I stare and try not to drift away into mundane things. I will often just repeat over and over “God is all there is, God is all there is” to keep me somewhat focused. I have convinced my self that this time is for God, He, She or it gets to do with me as it wants. I am just going to sit there and shut up. I have either completely fooled my self for 40 years or I have simply found what works for me. It is with out a doubt things are different when I don’t do it, I feel disconnected and feel like I am running on my own power which is very limited.
I have studied most of the religions of the world and delved into many different spiritual approaches. From the organized, the mystical, metaphysical, esoteric and bazaar. Most of it just added to my spiritual fat head, pieces of it enriched my understanding and practice. Most of it was the same message; love without a price tag or without judgment. But anything that involved a group of like-minded people usually ended up in a dogmatic belief system that I either had to buy into or walk away. That just never appealed to my “spirits rebellious” temperament.
“Religion is for people who don’t want to go to hell. Spirituality is for people who have already been there”
If I were to say what I have learned over the course of my recovery in regards to this topic I would say I have learned to stop searching, I know what I know and I know what I don’t know. I can search and search for meaning, “to understand the universe” who am I, what am I, why do I exist? But I am not Greek. I am just an Irish man who has found his own way.
I would also say that I have learned that my God has a sense of humor, that laughter and Joy are as spiritual as prayer and mediation and selfless loving service, true enlightment is having learned to lighten up on ones self.
Even though I have rebelled against organized religion I have learned a lot from them, there is no denying the beautiful wonderful acts of kindness and demonstrations of their beliefs. In some ways it is not a whole different from NA, there will be some who will put this program into action and others who think it they just show up they will doing the program.
Applying, to me that is where it all leads, if I can’t apply this knowledge to my daily life then what is the use of it? All of our spiritual principles are actionable principles; they are not just attitudes or great ideas. I like the word applying better than practicing.
To have wisdom one has to have the experience of ones knowledge. Just because I heard or read it or have even imparted it myself doesn’t turn it into wisdom.
“Pity the poor heart that is slow to learn what that quick mind picks up at every turn”.
I have had my periods of being stuck in my head, to he point where it ached. Tempering my intellect to some level of humility has been some of the most difficult things I have gone through. The old parable of it being easier for a camel to crawl through the eye of a needle is such a great metaphor, The eye of the needle was an opening through the walls of a mid-evil desert city, the opening was built so low that a camel had to get down on its knees to enter.
Just this weekend I discovered an analogy after getting stuck in the sand while on a camping trip, I had been driving down these dirt roads at the end of my island, there was a section where the sand had covered the road, I picked up speed and tried to jam through it but it didn’t work, I bogged down and was stuck. My friends in the program said all I needed to do was to let out the air in my tires to about 15 lbs. I did it and sure enough it gave me plenty of traction and I drove right out. But it made me think about how the spiritual journey is like this; we are cruising down the road with our tires inflated at 35 lbs. and then for whatever reason we get stuck. We can stay right there or we wait until someone rescues us or we deflate our little egos and move on with out delay.
I have to practice these kinds of metaphors when I find myself getting judge-mental and intolerant at meetings. I remind my self I am here because there is a healing Grace that affords us all freedom, it matters not if I am being entertained or intellectually stimulated or inspired, I must listen for the music with my heart. It is always there, has been from the beginning and still is today.
Some of the most spiritual people I know are not articulate, yet they can run circles around an icy intellect just by their shear actions in applying these principles. They are usually the most trusted and loved. They reek of wisdom and you know if you need them they will be there for you. They do it without fanfare or recognition and are usually caught off guard when they are acknowledged.
Mental tendencies cast their shadows before you. Learning to change my self-talk and becoming aware of the patterns of my negative thinking played a huge role in my changing the way I looked at God. Just by being aware of little sentences like “this just my luck” or “God dam it” had an effect on the kind of relationship I had with my God. As much as there are laws of the land, laws of the physical world there are also spiritual laws that cannot be violated without consequences. If I am being judgmental and critical of others then it is without doubt I will be that way with my self and that will reflect on the image and the concept I have of God. There is an inner reality and an outer reality. Before this journey began most of us focused on the outer reality, but as we have awakened the journey is more about what goes on within. The un-seen part is as a result of putting the spiritual first our physical world seems to fall into place.
In my first week clean I asked a lot of questions, I didn’t know what spiritual meant? I was told it meant “un-seen” then it was explained to me that much of what goes on in this process of spiritual growth is un-seen. I asked how do I get spiritual? I was told I was already spiritual and that the 12 steps would be a process by which I would learn to uncover and re-discover my spirituality. My true nature, my true self.
I asked why does there have to be pain and suffering in spiritual growth? I was told that pain was often necessary but suffering was often the result of the little ego resisting change or the result of old ideas and concepts of a higher power that was contrary to a new way of life. Letting go of old belief systems was hard because I didn’t really know what I believed? Yet in my inner guts I still lived by some of these beliefs, particularly the ones of a God that was punishing and keeping score, that was going to make me pay for every mistake I ever made.
Which leads me to my next question? I asked “if “ there is a God. Then what does this God have planned for me, what is It’s will for me? The answer I received helped me to form the concept I have today of a Higher Power. I was told that God’s will for me was to live, love, laugh and to be happy and to do this for God’s sake as well as my own. It was explained to me that I was an expression of God, and that this higher power uniquely expressed its self through me as a channel. It was explained the 12 steps were the means by which I could open this channel, that all my fears, resentments and false pride were what was choking the channel shut thus cutting my self off from the ability to be spontaneous, creative and free. Mind you that I was only a week clean. But I believe I was so ready to hear this. I was like a sponge.
So of course I was anxious to get spiritual as quick as I could. I started reading and doing all sorts of things, I didn’t like hearing that it was going to be a long road. I also didn’t like hearing that in order to accelerate the pace I would need to get into self less loving action, service as we call it now days.
I think this is phase two of the process, getting out of self. It’s also a funny paradox; the motive for getting out of self is based on self-interest. Fortunately the principle of becoming self less is not about having no self it is about having less self or self-interest. But again these are actionable principles and putting them into action requires action. For me the only way of getting to a place in my life where I would be of self-less loving action was to ask to be given the gift of selflessness, the gift of thoughtfulness. I don’t believe one can turn this corner with out a power greater than them self’s making it possible, at least if you were as self centered as I was. Because it really is about getting in concert with God. I didn’t learn this in my first week. I think it was somewhere around my first ten years.
Being of loving service is living the spiritual life. I believe the program initially gives us an abundance of freebees, we get love acceptance, friendships support help in all sorts of ways, we get hope and we get free of the monkey on our back. All at no cost. I think this what excites people so much about early recovery, coming from the gutters most of us feel like this is paradise, and we have found the only sanctuary in the world for drug addicts. But then there comes a time when we discover there is no more to take, nothing more to get. This usually is when people begin to fade away and start to say the program doesn’t work any more, or I am not getting anything out of going to meetings and they begin to rationalize that they need to seek recovery where it will meet their needs. This is the danger zone if you have the disease of addiction, but it is also where the rubber meets the road because now the real stuff begins, you can only get at the real stuff by learning to give back and to give forward. Interestingly enough giving back is gratitude for what has been given to us, giving forward is gratitude for what will be given to us. One comes from our belief and the other comes from our faith.
In the disease of addiction I believe there are many train station stops along the way, The will power stop, the jail and prison stops, the treatment center stops, the falling in love stops, the someone dying stop, the I got religion stop and eventually the NA station stop. What I said earlier about getting all there is to get? That happens at the NA station stop, those who don’t leave the train station and start the journey by foot will eventually become disillusioned and stop believing in NA, what is so dangerous about this is the train waits at the station, and we see our members getting back on and we know there might not be another NA stop down the line.
There is a theory that most relapses are the result of our failure to enlarge our spiritual life.
Someone once said in the 11th step the most important word was to “improve”. I think this was a tough one for me, I had established a conscious contact and a habit of doing my 11th step everyday, but that can get stale, A conscious contact is no different than a relationship, meeting a person every day at the same time and place is certainly a good beginning in getting to know someone. But to improve that relationship it takes a much deeper level of intimacy, walking hand and hand through thick and thin is what really reveals who someone really is and what they are made up of. But it means one has to be willing to take some risks to try God out, another words to be willing to get out of our comfort zones, to continue to stretch our spiritual mussels and never settle for a “convenient “ recovery.
I have always described my recovery as magical; the things that have happened to me cannot be described in any other way. Our saying that God will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves has proven itself time and time again. It has taken me way, way beyond what I could ever believe could be possible. I have been on countless adventures that have been absolutely fabulous, always with abundant purpose and meaning, always life changing for myself and more so for others.
I think there is also a part of this that is very private, things that are un-speak able in a wonderful way. In spite of this being a “we program” this relationship is personal, “we” do walk alone with our God.
There will always be the chatter between my ears, but it gets quiet when I learn to listen to that still small voice in our hearts.
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