Nature always takes you at your own valuation. Believe that you are the child of God. Believe that you express Life, Truth, Love. Believe that Wisdom guides you. Believe that you are a special enterprise on the part of God — and what you really believe, that you will demonstrate.
Emmet Fox
If your mind becomes firm like a rock
And no longer shakes in a world where everything is shaking,
Your mind would be your greatest friend
And suffering will not come your way.
The Theragatha
Until you make peace with who you are, you’ll never be content with what you have.
Doris Mortman
Recent reflections have dealt with the need for transformation to take place from the inside out. This was underlined yet again this week in a series of exchanges with clients and friends who were struggling with a series of day-to-day challenges, which in many ways reflect my own.
The pattern that emerged in each case was one of trying to regain or maintain sanity by influencing the outer world so that it aligned with our wishes, expectations, even our fears. When we attempt to re-arrange the world around us to feel safe and secure, we are destined to generate even more discomfort, anxiety, harm, and pain.
It is astounding how often we need to get reminders on this point. On a good day, I remember, surrender, then move forward in ease and flow for a short while, only to discover that my old, ingrained attempts to choreograph the affairs of the world have been re-ignited.
After initially admitting we are powerless over our addictive impulses and that life is unmanageable, we proceed to the second of the Twelve Steps of AA, a set of principles and practices which are now used by millions around the world as a programme of self-actualisation. This second step states: We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
Here it is interesting to note that we are restored to sanity, we do not do it ourselves. Also of note is that this programme does not prescribe any particular image of God, or this `Power greater than ourselves´, instead encouraging each of us to find our own. Hints are provided, in that this could be a loving force and that it has often been discovered as an `unsuspected inner resource´ by those who have already been walking ahead of us on the path of Twelve Step recovery.
These hints have proved useful to me. The God image prescribed by my Irish Catholic upbringing was exclusive, harsh, and punitive.
Exclusive in that we were taught that the Catholic way was the only true path, that, if followed thoroughly, it might take us to heaven while those who lived outside the boundaries of our pre-eminent religion were sure to burn in the eternal conflagrations of hell.
Harsh, in that the world created by this God could include such phenomenon as Hell, Purgatory, and Damnation. Also, we were taught that this God was constantly taking note of out actions and even our innermost thoughts, compiling a list which would, on the day of judgement, decide our fate, — heaven, or hell. It was clear to me from the get-go where my journey would probably take me.
Punitive, in its dogmatic moral compass and the dearth of unconditional love. What irony, seeing — as is now clear to me — that this unconditional love is the essence of all the great spiritual traditions known to humankind. The Saints and Mystics have been doing their best over millennia to get this message across, with mediocre results.
Their voices have been drowned out, for the most part, by well-meaning and misguided people, people who, themselves, lack access to the truth. This access had been blocked off, as was the case, in turn, with their respective parents, teachers, and caregivers and so on, back across many generations.
The original Twelve Step fellowship was Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). It was founded when two alcoholics met in 1935 and discovered that they could stay sober by helping each other tune into a Higher Power of spirituality and surrender, in terms of subsuming the egoic power of the human will to this newly discovered force field. They sensed that they had stumbled on a workable template which could be applied to many of the challenges of the human condition.
Since 1935, numerous related fellowships have been formed to deal with a wide array of addictions and compulsions, both substance and process related. Overeaters Anonymous, Sex & Love Addiction Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Co-Dependents Anonymous, and Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA) are a few that come to mind. These are the fellowships I have come to know best, through direct participation or indirectly, by sharing the journey of recovery with active members thereof.
All religions and spiritual belief systems of the world are represented in such communities. We make no judgment on which religion is better than the next. We encourage, instead, our group members to seek the fullest spiritual life possible to make the greatest gains in recovery. The goal is to transcend the bondage of addiction and to grow in the realm of emotional sobriety.
This involves tuning into the higher frequencies of loving-kindness, awareness, and natural curiosity while extricating ourselves from the identification with fears, anxieties, and the like, which formed as coping mechanisms to ensure our survival when we were growing up in circumstances of adversity.
While it is now clear that I am not this Power greater than myself, a dis-identification with the power of the egoic will is now also taking place. These `higher’ and `lower’ powers are merely streams of energy which flow through us in proportion to our choice as to which energy we embrace. We then become amplifiers of those energies in our thoughts, emotions, and actions. It is a constant back and forth, depending on what level of awareness we bring to life’s ever-changing circumstances.
As in my case, many members of the recovery community have suffered religious abuse. This often includes harsh treatment at the hands of well-meaning, misguided people. The sheer concept of a God who would condemn us to the eternal fires of hell is abusive. I still shudder at the thought of such inculcation in my first decade of childhood.
Some of us have also been sexually abused by priests or other church figures and had carried the wound of betrayal for many decades of silence until we found a safe refuge where we could work through our experiences. This begins with the breakthrough of denial by simply hearing ourselves sharing our experiences with others. This is the birthplace of true compassion.
The emotional and spiritual damage created by such acts of betrayal are staggering for some. We urge these fellows to keep an open mind, to be gentle with themselves as they work the steps to find the God of their understanding.
Other forms of spiritual abuse include the adults in our lives appearing righteous in public while behaving in cruel and abusive ways behind closed doors. This models yet another conflicting view of God in which the child gets confused because she believes this to be the actual face of God. The first authority figures of childhood represent, in their actions, the prototypes of what becomes our default image of God.
What has helped me greatly is my deep connection and sense of wonder for the world of Nature. This has always been my favourite manifestation of the Great Spirit. Once we realise the love of the Great Spirit, we can relinquish the defiance born of our wound of betrayal (Where were you, God, when this happened to me?) which then enables us to then take the next step (Step 3) wholeheartedly.
Step 3 involves making a decision to turn our will (outcomes) and our lives (behaviour) over to the care of the Higher Power, in my case the higher frequencies of loving kindness, compassion, and a firm `yes´ to life, as life is.
In this recovery process, we acknowledge that many of us have been spiritually abused and struggle with the concept of God. We also wrestle with the results of our vain attempts to protect ourselves by means of controlling the unmanageable.
We believe our best hope is in seeking a spiritual solution in concert with other recovering fellows. We come to believe that we are Children of the God of our understanding, or even beyond our comprehension. We have come into this world through our biological parents, whereas our true parents are to be found in this energy field of the Spirit.
Over time, as we heal, we will grow in compassion. This is extended to our biological parents and other caregivers who may have also experienced religious abuse, been hampered in their own experience (or lack thereof) of spirituality, and did not have access to the wide array of recovery resources available to us today. Some of these are innovations, such as trauma therapy, which have been developed in our lifetime.
Finding a Power of our understanding, a `Power greater than ourselves´, is essential for long term recovery and real inner transformation. We cannot shrink from the task of seeking such a Source earnestly regardless of what we may have been taught.
Dis-identifying with the lower self, or ego, is equally important. With practice, we come to the realisation that we are conduits of energy, that we get to decide which energies flow through us. It can be the infinite energy of the Spirit or the finite energies of matter.
As Albert Einstein pointed out: „Everything that can be counted does not necessarily count; everything that counts cannot necessarily be counted.“
There is spiritual power in the Twelve Steps. With the help of the fellowships which continue to form around such steps as we work them, augmented with focused counselling and a regime of conscious self care, can help those who have been abused, religiously, physically, sexually, or emotionally, find a way back home to the Source. In doing so, we can find a way to connect to the true parent, the God of our understanding.
