On the other hand, we can be too quick to cut off conversations that some of us need to have in order to reconcile our recovery with our other beliefs. A member confessed, “I have had a struggle with my faith since coming to NA. I still practice the faith I grew up with, and have been very active in it since I got clean. But when I came into the rooms and shared about my spiritual awakenings, I felt shut down. I left for a while to follow that path, but I realize I need to be here, too—so I find a way to make peace with the gap between them.” Without that effort we risk alienating people, or limiting our own understanding of the connections between our spiritual development and our experience in recovery.
Spiritual growth may be a struggle sometimes, but that doesn’t mean it’s going badly. That struggle is often how we get to a spirituality that works for us. Our beliefs grow as our spirits awaken. When we actually experience our beliefs, they become more vital. For some of us, that means finding a style of prayer that resonates with us; some of us find other ways to make a conscious contact that suits our beliefs. But the key to spiritual growth is that it is growth—which means it changes, and it’s going to change us. A member shared, “When I had around ten years clean, I realized I wasn’t being honest in my relationship with God because I was pretending I wasn’t angry. I realized if I wasn’t honest in that relationship, how did any of my other relationships stand a chance?” Each time we recognize an opportunity for spiritual growth, we experience a reawakening of hope.
A Spiritual Journey
Seeking a God of our understanding is a personal experience, but we need to know we are not alone in our search. There is a part of this that is very private, unspeakable in a wonderful way. There are times when we must walk alone with our Higher Power. As we study the traditions, we learn that nothing which affects our personal recovery is an outside issue, and also that our unity must come first. These spiritual principles are not in conflict, but it might take some thought or prayer to reconcile them. When we are living spiritually, awareness and empathy guide us in our recovery and in our sharing. In the Eleventh Step we ask for the power to carry out God’s will for us. In that spirit, we may ask for the words we need to talk about our experience without creating separation or disunity around us.
We need to be able to open up about our journey. It doesn’t matter so much what names we give the markers along that road. When we learn to share about our feelings and experiences without naming names, we discover the freedom anonymity has to offer us. We may be surprised at how much we have in common with others who seem to be on very different spiritual paths. When we begin to see the things our journeys have in common, we find that our differences really can help us along the way, instead of creating barriers between us.
It can be difficult to express our spiritual experience in words. Because we are talking about things unseen, concrete language usually falls short of what we experience, and the language we have to talk about our spiritual experiences with is often borrowed from other places. It takes practice to make it our own. When we are struggling to find words for our experience, the last thing we need is to be told we are doing it wrong. We listen to one another with an open mind and an open heart, and we share our experience with the understanding that it won’t necessarily be shared by everyone else. In the same spirit, we understand that it’s hard for other people to share about this, too, and that sometimes we are going to hear things that ask us to be objective and nonjudgmental.
We each find a way to surrender, but that does not mean we all come to believe in God. Many of our members have been clean for years as atheists. For some of us, coming to believe that NA can accommodate our atheism has itself been a leap of faith. We are welcome no matter what we believe. NA has no opinion on how our members define or practice spirituality. Our individual challenge is to find a definition of spirituality that makes sense to us. By listening carefully and with an open mind to a range of members’ opinions and experiences, we form our own understanding that we can use in our own recovery. A member shared, “I didn’t hear anyone talking about atheism as a legitimate path in recovery, but I accepted that. I did with spirituality what I was learning to do with other aspects of the program: I took what I needed and left the rest behind. Over the years I have accepted that other people’s ideas about spirituality, ethics, and God are much different from my own. Part of the strength and beauty of NA is that there is room for all of us. What others call spiritual principles, I call ethical principles.”
Whatever they are called, the principles in the steps and traditions lead us away from active addiction, self-centeredness, and fear. When we help someone who is struggling, we break free from our self-obsession. When we give back, we cannot be greedy. We have found no limit to the possibilities of recovery for any member who practices the principles of NA, whether we call these principles spiritual or not.
For some of us, the spiritual is simply the unseen or the intangible. Each of us has complete autonomy and anonymity in whatever concept we find for ourselves. The phrase “as we understood Him” can be a sticking point for many of us. We do not have to understand or accept a Higher Power in order to live spiritually. No one else has the right to judge that or tell us our beliefs are right or wrong. What is important is that we are willing to accept one another’s experience with an open mind, and to share our experience without an effort to persuade one another of what is right or true. What keeps one of us clean might not work for someone else. We simply share what works for us.
Being open-minded about our own beliefs as well as those of others frees us from the traps we set in our own minds. We can see our spirituality making a difference in our lives when we do the right thing for the right reason. This is what our Basic Text calls “goodwill.” We are able to listen to the voice inside instead of all the chatter around us.
When we get tangled up in our differences and reservations, it’s easy to forget why we bother with spirituality in NA. The Basic Text reminds us simply, that “We ease the pain of living through spiritual principles.” Addicts feel life so acutely, and it’s often this pain that drives us to use even when we know it won’t actually make it better. We have been willing to trade even a moment’s relief for a lifetime of hardship. Surviving our own lives seems impossible when we get here, but we learn, gradually, to face reality and make friends with the truth. The spiritual principles we practice help to take the edge off that pain, and the more we practice, the more we find that those principles are the keys to freedom. Our lives get easier as we “get clean” in all our affairs. As we practice honesty, integrity, and fidelity, we no longer have to keep track of our stories or cover our tracks. We may be surprised to find that it is actually easier to live this way. We can love our lives, find joy in being alive, and face the world with genuine excitement.
Just as we get fleeting glimpses of God’s will for us, we get fleeting glimpses of our own spirituality. Our spiritual condition is always changing. All too often we think we are “unspiritual” because our conscious contact comes and goes, or because we still have unkind thoughts, or because we still act out in ways we wish we didn’t, even after many years clean. When we fall short, it doesn’t mean that we are not spiritual—it means we are human. After all, if we never fell short, we couldn’t practice our Tenth Step! Giving ourselves permission to be human means that we allow ourselves room to keep growing. We are living spiritually long before we know that’s what we are doing.
Spirituality is a relationship with reality. As we develop our spiritual lives, we find that reality becomes less frightening and less rigid. We learn to live with our freedom. We come to see that a change in our perspective can totally shift the way we understand our situation. When our lives are based in spirituality, our perceptions and responses are based in an ever-evolving relationship to something greater than ourselves. Self-obsession gives way to humility. We understand that we are not the main character in every play, but that our supporting efforts can make a real difference i
n the lives of those around us.
As our spirituality develops, we become increasingly grateful for our lives and the people in them. The more good we can see in the world around us, the more grateful we become for the power that brings us to that awareness. When our bodies, minds, and spirits are in harmony, our lives show the difference. We are able to live in balance.
Spirituality Is Practical
As our behavior is more consistently aligned with our beliefs, we come to a new sense of who we are. Even though we have a disease that requires us to be vigilant about our thinking, we can see both good and bad about ourselves. When we take inventory and practice paying attention to our actions and our motives, we sometimes feel like we are defined by our character defects. The most unpleasant things about ourselves are the things that can seem to be the most true. But even though we may see some painful things about ourselves, we know that’s not the whole truth about who we are.
We learn that our spirit is not apart from us; it is a part of us. We gain awareness of the exact nature of what is right about us. Our fractured personalities come back together into an integrated whole. Integrity is the state of being fully integrated: Our actions, our thinking, our feelings, our ideals, and our values all match up. It takes a long time for a lot of us to get here, and longer still for us to feel like it’s real. More and more, we are able to bring our behavior into alignment with our values and beliefs rather than our feelings and reactions.
When we allow spirituality to be simple, we allow it to be universal. Whatever we believe our Higher Power to be, or even if we don’t have one at all, we each have a spirit—the light on the inside that animates us and makes us who we are. “My spirit was the only thing alive in me,” said a member. “It was dragging my body around like a reluctant pet. Those times I thought my spirit was dead, it was fine—we just weren’t on speaking terms.” Newcomers sometimes ask when their spiritual awakening is going to occur.
By the time we ask, it has already started to happen. We may not be able to pinpoint a single moment of spiritual awakening, but we know we are awake now.
As we clear away the clutter that keeps us from the truth, we find that our light shines more and more brightly. It’s the beauty we see in the eyes of someone who’s really “got it”—a newcomer on that pink cloud, or an oldtimer whose radiance seems to fill a room. We feel it in a meeting, as well. Many of us have walked into a building where several events were happening, and noticed that the room with the NA meeting in it “felt like home.”
In the same way, we learn that finding God’s will is often just a matter of showing up. When we show up for life with willingness and an open mind, the next right thing tends to present itself. We don’t have to look that hard to find it. A sponsor suggested, “Introduce your feet to the floor when you wake up in the morning. Show up to the shower to wash. Show up to your appointments and respect your commitments. When you hit a wall, turn left and find an opening.” We learn to listen to our conscience—that still, small voice within that tells us if we’re heading in the right direction. The opening is often where we least expect it, leading us to a path, an opportunity, or a miracle we weren’t looking for at all.
There is more to creative action than just getting out of the way. Once we start to live, we have infinite choices on where to go with our lives. It begins with showing up for life, but it doesn’t end there. Another member shared, “I invite my Higher Power into each moment. Asking for help with my daily routines helps me to love them more. I believe God’s will for me is to live in gratitude, even for the little stuff.” The ability to accept life on life’s terms is an essential part of our spiritual awakening. We can either accept it or stay miserable.
Living spiritually is about recognizing that there is room to grow. A member shared, “It’s not a big eureka moment; it’s this calm understanding that I am not doing the negative stuff I used to do. I feel myself in alignment with my world.” We begin to experience awareness and empathy with others. Our confidence and strength are restored. We see ourselves as part of something greater, and seek to live in harmony with it.
None of this means that we automatically get what we wish for. Our relationship to a power of our understanding is too important to think it can only thrive in good weather. Life gives and takes, and it’s not personal. The recognition of our awakening spirit includes being okay with life unfolding exactly as it does, but many of us have moments when we are not okay with what is happening around us. We are in pain, we are frightened, and often we are angry. Sometimes we get confused and think that to live spiritually means that we are happy and get what we want, and that if we’re not happy or don’t get our way, something is out of balance. It would be nice if that were true, but recovery is not a fairy tale. When we experience loss or disappointment, when we find ourselves faced with news we don’t want to hear or situations we’d give anything not to experience, it doesn’t mean our spirituality isn’t working. In fact, it is at times like these that we can see it most powerfully. Our response to events and our sense of our role in them becomes more proportional and appropriate. We can respond to events without having to under- or overreact. We can live in the present moment.
Walking the Walk
If our relationship to a power greater than ourselves is to be of any use to us, it must be honest. Learning to share our fear, disappointment, and anger takes courage. We pray in different ways. Many of us begin to talk to a Higher Power using formal prayers, and these can be incredibly powerful tools. “I’ve said the same prayers every day throughout my recovery,” one member said. “They worked really well in the beginning. But now, twenty years later, they have a richness and meaning I could not have imagined.” In addition, we learn to talk to our Higher Power in less structured ways, sharing our feelings, hopes, fears, and ideas.
It can be important for us to remember to separate the words of a step from what people say about that step. Similarly, our relationship with a Higher Power, as it develops, may not adhere to the model set before us by others, and it may be very different from what we once imagined it to be. In this way, it really is like our relationships with human beings. Intimacy isn’t predefined or predictable.
Many of us share that one reservation we have about a Higher Power is that a powerful God would not allow things to happen as they do; what we saw as we endured the hell of addiction could not possibly have been the creation of a loving power. There are a thousand ways out of this corner, and it’s not our place to choose one for all of our members. What we find is not that our Higher Power spares us the hardships of life, but that we receive the grace to get through them clean. We can find the lesson in difficulty. We may find that some of the painful situations we once wanted to blame on God are a consequence of our own actions and decisions. Perhaps most importantly, the pain we endure can be transformed into a tool to help others. As we recover and carry the message, we discover that everything we have experienced can be a resource for us to find acceptance, empathy, and the words we need to help someone else find a way up and out of despair. We are powerless over our addiction, but in our surrender we become powerful tools for transformation.
That transformation for each of us begins with surrender. Over and over we find that acceptance helps to free us from pain and suffering. We begin by accepting that we are addicts. From the first time we admit that we are powerless over our addiction and our lives have become unmanageable, we begin to feel relief. And that relief is the very beginning of the gratitude that will guide us throughout our recovery.
Gratitude is not just a mood. It is a course of action, a way of setting ourselves in relation to the world. Sometimes it’s a discipline: It can take work to hold ourselves in that attitude, especially when we are used to seeing the world through our filters of entitlement and resentment. Humility and gratitude walk hand in hand. We practice saying what we are grateful for whether or not we feel it. The feeling may not come naturally at first, but when we practice saying “t
hanks” we start to recognize how much we have to be thankful for. Many of us start with the fact that we’re not in withdrawal today. When we start to see how fortunate we really are, our questions don’t frighten us as they once did. They may not be answered right away, but we start to see that our questions about the nature of God are much less important than the rewards we get from building the relationship even if we don’t understand it or fully believe it.
Spiritual principles seem abstract until we put them into action. Our values are the principles we adopt to guide us. They may change over time, but when we change them for convenience or to please others, we know it. We make that mistake a few times before we learn to recognize it. We may stop acting on our defects, not because it’s wrong, but because it just gets too uncomfortable for us. We can’t stand the way it makes us feel.
Often we act on spiritual principles before we internalize them simply because we want to save our lives. In the beginning, we learn principles by acting on suggestions. As we integrate spiritual principles into our lives, they become values—that is, we come to value some of them enough that they become part of who we are. When we are learning, we may be very rigid in our practice. As our practices become more integrated into our lives, we find that we can soften a little. “My understanding of honesty was so rigid,” said one member, “that I couldn’t even be tactful to spare someone’s feelings. One day I was caught in a conflict between two sponsees: One called and confessed that he’d done great harm to another, who happened to be in my home at the time. Brutal honesty with either of them would have made the situation much worse. I learned to balance the principle of honesty with the principle of anonymity. Since then I’ve learned to balance it with kindness and compassion as well.”
Living Clean Page 6