The Spirituality of Recovery

An interpretation of the 12 Steps as written in

Alcoholics AnonymousNarcotics Anonymous

Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions

Spirituality

• from the Latin word for breath, "espirit", meaning the essence of life

• is not just a concept • occurs when people help people • is about forgiveness and the tolerance of

imperfection in ourselves and others.

Why is this Important?• Recovery from the active phase of an

addictive disease does not occur without spiritual growth.

• Spirituality is when an addict lives life in community with others.

• Living as part of community means: - You care about the welfare of others. - You ask others for help to be in recovery. - You let people help you to find recovery.

“Spiritual Experience"An addict considers a “spiritual experience” to be anything that makes him feel the pleasures of life.

•Getting high•Cup of good coffee•Sex•Chocolate•Snow skiing

These are not spiritual experiences.

"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 with the

addiction’s needs always taking priority. • Healthy friends leave because they are tired of

being used.

Step One

An addict intellectually knows that the continued use of his substance is not good for him but through rationalization and minimization he believes her can manage his addiction

• One day the unmanageability of his life becomes intolerable.

• He realizes he is helpless by himself to stop his addiction.

• He asks someone to help him and he is able to receive their help.

Step 2

• Awareness of a Power greater than ourselves is the essence of spiritual experience.

• Understanding this Power requires willingness, honesty and open mindedness which are the essentials of recovery.

• Being honest with others requires being honest with yourself about your acceptance that you are powerless over your addiction

"Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore

us to sanity." (Step 2)

Spiritual growth • Occurs when you are concerned about the welfare of

others• Requires an active spiritual workout like physical

exercise is required for physical growth• Recommend At least 90 meetings in the first 90 days of

your recovery• Happens when you help other people and• Ask for and allow other people to help you

"God-consciousness" is the awareness of a Power greater than ourselves.

(page 568, Alcoholics Anonymous)

In order to realize this Higher Power, you must first realize • you were powerless• another person gave you help. • Both people received something that neither

had individually.

Spirituality is the energy that drives recovery.

Spirituality restores the Humanness Pathways in our Brain

Right Parietal Lobe – You are a separate entity • need to protect yourself leaves you alone and empty• controls endocrine reactions to perceived threats

• Any concerns for others may leave you vulnerable

Left Frontal Lobe - Where we feel and think• concern for others; we do not see ourselves as separate• close to someone; realization that we are the same • Without feeling separate we have a joy for just being alive

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)

God-consciousness is a spiritual transformation from an egocentric

consciousness to a concern for others.

• It is a consciousness expanding

experience which requires a willingness to seek out this Higher Power, ask for help, and accept God's direction.

• Surrender and Acceptance

Obstacles to the Higher Power

• People relapse because of the lack of a Higher Power. You cannot expect that an addict can be abstinent from his substance and not replace that substance with something better.

• Recovery is the process of finding one’s conscious and unconscious relapse risk factors.

• Everyone has obstacles to being able to turn their will and their lives over to God.

The Major Relapse Risk Factors

• Worthlessness – If they prove they are worthless then it does not matter if they use. At least they feel good.

• Shame and Guilt – They do not deserve God.• Trauma - They cannot trust anything or anyone. • Self-esteem - They have to prove they can do it

by themselves.• Narcissism and Grandiosity -Inability to be

humble (Step 8 - shortcomings)• Transference of hurts and loses around parents

onto their relationship with God.

Serenity Prayer

• Accept the things I cannot change• Change the things I can• Wisdom to know the difference

• A belief in a Higher Power, admitting helplessness, and asking for help is not the whole picture.

• You have to change the things that you can change which includes how you are dealing with your past.

• Doing the Fourth Step is looking at all the traumas that has happened in your life which are the obstacles to finding and becoming a part of a Power greater than yourself.

God• all encompassing, • without form, • the ultimate authority figure• impossible to describe

As close as you can get to understanding a relationship with God

is a relationship with any other authority figure

• Your relationships with anyone in authority is affected by a transference with your relationship with your parents.

• You relate to God in the same way that you relate to your parents.

Understanding the Obstacles to Step 3

Step 3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.• Surrender, acceptance, following universal laws

of nature and of life are all affected by your relationship with your parents.

• Your “Suffering” changes from not being able to use your drug to not being in a relationship with God.

• 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.

• 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.

When bad things happen• You finally begin to trust that God is on your side and

have surrendered your will and your life.• Acceptance and surrender is a different story when

something bad happens such as the death of a friend in a car accident.

• If you still have a transference with God around you’re the parent, who always let you down, it is going to be hard to have a close relationship with the one Power that allowed your friend to die.

• You have to work through how you are transferring your mistrust of your dad onto God or you will relapse.

Step 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

First, do a timeline of your life: • events • 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 10Dealing with being human

Moral inventory • Understanding how you were hurt and how you hurt others• Admitting this to God, yourself and to another person

Guilt, shame and forgiveness• Asking God to remove our shortcomings• Making amends to those we have harmed• Continued personal inventory and admitting we are wrong

when we are wrong.

• Without the judgments and the stories your mind created around the judgments, you can love others in the present.

• Loving others stimulates you to help those who are in need which

allows other people to help you.

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 3 is an Action Step Turn your life and your will over to God means 100%

If you do not cultivate your relationship with your spouse,

One day you will come home and your spouse will not be there.

If you do not stay in an active relationship with God, One day you will not have a God – consciousness

But you will not realize this until after you have relapsed.

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

Recovery Balanced Brain Activity

• Before recovery most brain activity had shifted to the limbic system (pleasure) 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. Self is now part of the whole, concern for others and consequences of behavior, relationships with others and with God

"The Promises" on pages 83-84, in the book Alcoholics Anonymous

• 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.