The Spirituality of Recovery
An interpretation of the 12 Steps as written
in
Alcoholics Anonymous
Narcotics Anonymous
Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions
Spirituality
• from the Latin word for breath, "espirit",
meaning the essence of life
• occurs when people help people
• is about forgiveness and the tolerance of
imperfection in ourselves and others.
"The spiritual part of our disease is our total
self-centeredness." (page 20, Narcotics Anonymous)
An addict spends the day focused on their
addiction.
• This requires minimizing time around the family.
• Addicts allow people to be in their life for what
they can do for them.
• Concern for others is minimal - the addiction’s
needs always taking priority over the needs of
themselves and others
• Healthy friends leave because they are tired of
being used.
The Ego
• Your ego is your identity and is only concerned
about you as separate from others.
• Your addiction needs your ego to be in total
control of you in order to be alive and well.
• Righteous indignation, lust, greed, envy, pride,
and other “sins” are products of the ego and
keep you separate from being able to love
others
“Spiritual Experience"
An addict’s “spiritual experience” is anything
that gives them pleasure or relief from the
stresses of life.
Getting high is the most important experience in
an addict’s life.
Even if an addict believes in God, their addiction
is what they worship. Their addiction is their
god which is a false idol.
Step One
Admit Powerlessness and unmanageable
• An addict may intellectually know that the
continued use of his substance is not good for
him.
• Through rationalization and minimization he
believes he can manage his addiction.
• One day the unmanageability of his life becomes
intolerable.
• He then realizes he is helpless by himself to stop
his addiction.
“Power greater than ourselves…”
• Recognizing that there is a power greater than
our self does not have to be a complicated
concept.
• If you are not able to do something such as
move a heavy object, and there is someone
there that can help you, all you have to do is
ask for help.
• Once the job is done, you may realize that this
was a power greater than you alone
Step 2 – Higher Power
Belief in a Power greater than ourselves
• Awareness of a Power greater than our self is
the essence of spiritual experience.
• Asking for help and letting people help you is
to “walk the walk” of Step 2
• Understanding this Power requires
willingness, honesty and open mindedness
which are the essentials of recovery.
• Being honest with others requires being
honest with yourself.
"Came to believe that a Power
greater than ourselves could restore
us to sanity." (Step 2)
Spiritual growth in recovery:
• Occurs when you:
- are concerned about the welfare of others
- help other people
- ask for and allow people to help you
• Requires you to practice your spirituality.
(in the same way as guitar practice, football practice, and
learning to speak Spanish.)
- attending at least 90 meetings in first 90 days of your recovery
- work actively with your sponsor
Why is this Important?
• Recovery from the active phase of an
addictive disease does not occur without
spiritual growth.
• The spiritual part of recovery begins when an
addict lives life in community with others.
• Living in community means:
- You care about the welfare of others.
- You ask others for help in your pursuit
of recovery.
- You let people help you to find recovery.
Obstacles to the Higher Power
People relapse because of the lack of a Higher
Power.
• You cannot expect an addict to abstain from his
substance if he does not replace that substance with
something better.
• A “belief in God” is not enough. Most addicts
believed in God before they started addiction.
• You must understand how God communicates with
you and your personal relationship with God
Relapse Risk Factors
1 - Problems in your relationship with God
• Worthlessness – You are not worth God’s love. If
you prove you are worthless then it does not
matter if you get high.
• Shame and Guilt – You do not deserve God
because you are so bad.
• Trauma - You cannot trust anyone including God
• Transference of hurts or neglect from your
parents. You identify God as a parent.
2- Proving God does not exist:
• Self-esteem – You need to prove you can do it
by yourself
• Narcissism and Grandiosity -Inability to be
humble (Step 8 - shortcomings). You deal with
the stresses of life by proving that you are
more capable than others and do not need
their help nor the help of a mystical god.
God-consciousness
"Most of us think this awareness of a Power greater
than ourselves is the essence of spiritual
experience. Our more religious members call it
"God-consciousness." (page 568, Alcoholics
Anonymous)
Spirituality is the energy that drives recovery.
God-consciousness is a spiritual
transformation from an egocentric
consciousness to a concern for others.
It is a consciousness expanding experience
which requires:
- Admitting you are powerless (acceptance)
- A willingness to seek out this Higher Power
- Asking for help
- Accepting God's direction (surrender).
You
• Your ego is your personality based on your
past experiences, your culture, your family.
• Your soul is the immortal essence of you and
is somehow connected to God.
• As you develop a God-consciousness and feel
the presence of God (that has always been
there), you realize that God loves you in the
same way that he loves everyone else.
• When you recognize that this Higher Power is
the same for you as it is for others, then you
realize that we are all one in God.
Separate versus Oneness
• You are now able to see others without seeing
them as a threat to you.
• Judgments and the stories your mind created
around the judgments are not necessary so
you can live in the present and not in the past.
• Keeping yourself in the present, you can love
others in this moment.
• You will want to help those who are in need
which allows them to help you.
God
- The ultimate authority figure
No one can describe God. We can only describe
some of the aspects of God and even then
most of the time these descriptions are from
our personal relationship with God.
As close as you can understand a
relationship with God
is a relationship with authority figures
• Your relationships with those in authority is
affected by a transference of your relationship
with your parents.
• You relate to God in the same way that you
relate to your parents.
Step 3
Made a decision to turn our will
and our lives over to the care of
God as we understood Him.
• First action step of the 12 Steps. (First 2 Steps
are preparatory steps.)
• An Addict has to make an informed decision
(or all he saying is just words).
• Having a God-consciousness is not enough.
• Making this decision requires that he knows in
general what God is, how God communicates,
and he is in the process of developing a
personal relationship with God.
Transference
• We transfer our conflicts with our parents
onto our relationship with God.
• We make judgments about God and our
perception of how God sees us based on this
transference.
• We weave stories around how God thinks
about us based on these judgments.
• These judgments and the stories are based on
our past experiences with our parents (not on
how God loves us).
When bad things happen
• You finally begin to trust that God is on your side and
you “surrendered” your will and your life.
• You make this decision each day.
• When something bad happens such as the death of a
spouse in a car accident, you will see if you truly trust
God.
• If you have a transference with God around your
father, who always let you down, it is going to be hard
to turn your will and your life over to God “who”
allowed your spouse to die.
• Not dealing with your anger with God is a relapse in
the making.
Serenity Prayer
Accept the things I cannot change
Change the things I can
Have the wisdom to know the difference
• A belief in a Higher Power, admitting
helplessness, and asking for help is the beginning
but more is required.
• You have to change the things that you can
change which includes how you are dealing with
your past.
• The Fourth Step requires looking at all the
traumas that have happened in your life which
became obstacles to finding and becoming a
part of a Power greater than yourself.
Step 4. Made a searching and fearless
moral inventory of ourselves.
First, do a timeline of your life:
• events from birth
• things you did - bad and good
• how you felt about all of this
• You are beginning the process of realizing the
hurts of the past so that you do not allow
them to affect you in the present
Steps 4 through 10
Dealing with being human
Moral inventory (Steps 4, 5)
• Understanding how you were hurt and how you hurt others
• Admitting this to God, yourself and to another person
Amends to others, sin, forgiveness, responsibility
(Steps 6,7,8,9,10)
• Making amends to those we have harmed
• Asking God to remove our shortcomings (Humility)
• Continued personal inventory and admitting we are wrong
when we are wrong.
Step 11
Sought through prayer and meditation
• to improve our conscious contact with God
• as we understood him,
• praying only for knowledge of his Will
• and the power to carry that out.
The basic ingredient of all humility
is a desire to seek and do God's will.
Spiritual Maintenance
A relationship with God functions under the same
universal principles as a relationship with a
spouse.
• Daily communication – (prayer)
• Thankful for what God does for you
(do not take God for granted)
• Show through your actions that you need God
by not trying to do those things you cannot do.
• Do not have “an affair” by being more in love with
clothes, cars, jewelry, and power than with God.
Step 12
Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these
steps,
• we tried to carry this message to alcoholics,
• and to practice these principles in all of our affairs.
A spiritual awakening is the love of God
expressed through you.
You + someone else + God will be able to
deal with anything that arises
Spirituality restores
the Humanness
Pathways in our Brain
Right Parietal Lobe
Responsible for spacial orientation – “I am here
and you are there.”
Separateness and organization is necessary for
each of us to take care of our self and our
environment which is necessary for addiction.
~25% of the mental activity of the brain of most
people in western cultures (Europe and United
States)
Limbic System
All sensory input to our brain first goes to the
Limbic System
• Decides if the input suggest there is a danger
or if the input should be stored as memory.
• Controls endocrine reactions:
-“fight or flight”, increase anxiety and fear,
insomnia, physical pains
- release of pleasure centers to give relief
• Coupled with overactive Parietal lobe results
in a need to protect yourself from others.
Left Frontal Lobe
5% of mental activity of brain in Western
cultures
Where we feel and think instead of react:
• concern for others; we do not see ourselves as
separate
• close to someone; realization that we are the
same; without feeling separate we have joy in
the present moment for just being alive
Recovery is
Balanced Brain Activity
• Before recovery most brain activity had shifted to the
limbic system (pleasure to relieve anxiety) and the
parietal lobe (me as separate from others)
Self-gratification, being alone, empty, loss of
purpose, no relationship with God
• After recovery there is less brain activity in the
parietal and limbic areas and more in the frontal (up
to 20+%.
Self is now part of the whole, concern for others
aware of consequences of behavior, relationships
with others and with God
"The Promises" on pages 83-84, in the book
Alcoholics Anonymous
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Have a new freedom
Have a new happiness
Not regret the past
Not shut the door on the past
Truly understand serenity and will know peace
See how our experiences can benefit others
Not feel useless or have self-pity
Lose interest in selfish things
Gain interest in our fellows
Have a completely different outlook on life
Not fear people
Not fear economic insecurity
Know how to handle situations which use to baffle us
Realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves
In recovery, a great transformation takes
place in us and we radiate love and
compassion.
___________________________
Through our awareness of the love of God
• we feel the joy of life
• are able to live in the moment;
• to live with what is; to live life on life's terms
• Regrets of the past and fears of the future will
not cause us to waste the joy of each moment.
As you take this knowledge to other
addicts and to non-addicts, they will feel
your joy of life because of your spiritual
awakening which is the love of God
expressed through you.