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CHAPTER FOUR
SPIRITUALLY CLEAN
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Lit 4 - March 24th, 2006
CHAPTER FOUR
SPIRITUALLY
CLEAN
If we view the term �clean� as just freedom from active drug
addiction, we may miss the whole concept of recovery. In NA we not only get
physically clean from drugs but spiritually clean, emotionally clean, clean on
the inside, clean in the way we deal with the world. Spirituality is an inside
job and we need to heal our insides to be able to achieve true freedom.
How do we change those parts in us that have consistently negative
functions? How do we learn to let go of those parts that have little or no use?
We developed a protective lifestyle as children and while using that kept us
alive but in recovery it keeps us sick. While using, dishonesty kept us from
going to jail, trouble with our loved ones, etc. In recovery, we say that we are
�sick as our secrets.� We need to get honest to stay clean and grow.
The coping skills we learned while using appear as character defects in
recovery. Often surrendering these defects makes us feel like we have lost
something. We may even experience a period of disorientation. We have been
living our lives based on these distorted visions and so we have become
comfortable with them and they may not even appear painful or negative to us. We
have to learn that changing things that are truly hurting will be in our best
interest.
One
addict says, �In reality, there is no pain in change. There is no pain in
growth. The pain comes in the resistance to the change or the resistance to the
growth. Man�s two biggest fears are 1. fear of death and 2. fear of change.�
We believe that without our �coping skills,� we will be
nothing, that we are giving away that which makes us, us. We have been our
defects for so long, many of us �know not who we are.� We are children of
God and in fact, by letting go of our defects we suffer no actual loss at all!
We are only giving up those things hat have kept us down and we no longer need
them to survive. When we let go of our old ways, it allows us to become who we
truly are: loving and caring human beings, at peace with ourselves and the world
around us.
While using, we learned to stuff our feelings and deny that still quiet
voice inside that most call our conscience. We may have been raised in families
where wrong was right, and right was wrong, or even forced to raise ourselves by
guessing at what life was all about. Through using, we may have nearly
extinguished that light of a conscience deep within us. In recovery, we learn to
pay attention to the feelings that tell us when something is wrong or is hurting
us. Our job in recovery is to bring forth that still quiet voice called
conscience and learn to align our life with it. In the 11th Step , we
seek to improve our conscious contact. May be we need to consider this as also
meaning �conscience� contact.
One
addict said, �This too shall pass, this too shall pass, not this gets buried!
We put an emotional band aid on it and we stuff it back down. The answer in
recovery is �this too shall dissolve.� It�s healed, it�s gone. If we
write an inventory it won�t come up again because it is no longer and issue in
our lives, unless we choose to make it one again.�
Our addiction may make us
think that we are experiencing relief by avoiding our instincts, our conscience.
In reality, whatever is hurting us just goes on to do more damage. It is quite
healthy to experience pain and discomfort, or just a general feeling of unease,
when something is not right! It may not even be a big deal, it�s just a
feeling that something isn�t okay. Our feelings become our own red lights�,
green lights, yellow or even flashing light indicators in life. While active, we
didn�t use over events but the feelings associated with those events. We used
to avoid feelings. In recovery they become the tools we use to build the life or
our dreams.
Our addiction tells us that our character defects are just
pleasant or whimsical likes or dislikes that lend color and variety to our
lives. It would have us believe that they are personal touches that may be
strange or mildly irritating but certainly not harmful. We continue this
delusion even when getting clean. Our disease tells us that those who complain
about these irritating aspects of our personalities are not really our friends.
If we have experienced more good results than negative behind these
characteristics and are pleased with them, we ask, �Why should I change?�
Why would we even consider it? However, if we are not happy, totally happy, we
may be in denial and need to face these defects of character, instead of
stuffing them one more time. If we have hurt, suffered, failed, and adapted to a
life of pain or felt lost and beyond hope, it might just be time to revise the
way we live.
Oftentimes, addicts think that if they are hurting they are doing
something wrong, when in fact, they just might be doing it right, no pain, no
gain. Pain can be the motivating factor to get us off our fat asses and move
from the problem into the solution.
We don�t �take something,� to relieve our negative feelings.
When we use, we interrupt the recovery process. We have found that there are no
answers in dope, just more problems. We learn to deal with the things in our
lives that are producing our pain and discomfort. Better living through
chemistry never worked for us. Why should it now? We are all familiar with the
line in our readings at meetings each night, �The sooner we accept our
personal responsibilities, just that much faster do we become acceptable,
responsible, productive members of society.�
One dictionary definition of clean is �no interior flaws
visible.� this is a clue that recovery is an �inside job.� We can spend
years arguing with our sponsors or other NA members about the symptoms of our
disease but if we treat our addiction by working the Steps, we will begin to
notice that many of our symptoms tend to go away on there own. In recovery, we
heal the insides and that always shows positively on the outside.
Pain and discomfort are signals that our conscience is working and
the pain will not stop until the situation is corrected. When we first get here,
we require extra help with admitting fault, gaining a belief system, and
becoming self-aware. Once these concepts become realities for us, we can begin
to adjust to our new-found accurate perceptions.
We find that whether we are mad, glad, sad or serious, we
can see that the sources for these feelings generally come from our unhealed
past. Inventory is how we catch ourselves before we make the next big mistake. A
dumb man never learns from this mistakes, a smart man learns from his, while a
wise man learns from the mistakes of others. This is our eventual goal; to stop
repeating the same mistakes expecting different results and become open-minded
enough to learn from the mistakes of others.
We stay clean even when our disease tells us to die. We survive
all of the emotions that go along with personality change. Man of us have felt
such intense fear and pain; we cannot imagine our lives ever getting better. We
gain a great advantage when we can begin to differentiate who we were in active
addiction, from who we can become in recovery. When we first got here our view
was so limited. We had been living at the animal level or subsistence level for
so long that we could hardly grasp the concept of living a responsible,
productive life. We could barely see ourselves living clean let alone living in
clean clothes. It was beyond our belief system at the time, to see ourselves
changing who we are on a deep level.
After we get clean from drugs, we can now begin to clean up in
other ways. We remove those things that hold us back or make us feel dirty and
unworthy. We have learned that it is okay to back our of
a bad deal or situation. We learn that we have a choice today. Not only
do we have a choice to use or not to use, recovery gives us choices in every
area of our lives. For most of us, we were taught that we had a choice when
someone was mistreating or shaming us. due to our low self-esteem or feelings of
unworthiness., we thought we had to sit there and take it. Because of our
backgrounds, we may not realize that we�re repeating past mistakes until the
situation gets bad. As we work through the Steps, we learn to recognize the
actions and patterns that have brought us pain in the past. We get clarity that
our actions in the past didn�t work then, and most likely won�t work now. So
we put the brakes on and tried something different. This is the way we surrender
old habits and form new healthy ones.
Today, by working the
program, we learn that we have choices in every situation. We have the choice of
leaving, or speaking up for ourselves and saying this is not okay. That
doesn�t make us a quitter. We may not believe it yet but it is perfectly all
right to say, �Wow, look at the time, I�m sorry but I have to go.� We can
detach with love. If our partners in the drama choose to go on without us, so be
it. If they put us down or laugh at us later - so what? We stayed clean, kept
our dignity and our serenity. As sponsors, we need to teach our sponsees about
personal integrity, and dignity.
Recovery is not black and white; we learn that there can be grey
areas. We can learn to disagree without being disagreeable. We learn that we can
negotiate with people and stop being a doormat in life. With the appropriate
level of open-mindedness, we can even think outside the box today by finding
solutions that no one else thought of. Learning to creatively cope with
difficult life situation and come out clean on the other side is the true
manifestation of our recovery.
The concept of being clean is not restricted to �just not using.�
Begin clean is a state of mind It is a conscious choice. It is about keeping our
spirits clean as well as not doing drugs in one form or another. When we have
these two things in place, the rest follows. Staying clean allows us to explore
our new lives fully,. Many of us have learned that cleansing our bodies,
environments, and habit patterns brings us to a new life. We often have fear of
losing some part of us but we find surrendering these core beliefs allows us to
see that what remains is often far better than we expected. Being clean is
becoming new again. Clean is removing the accumulated dirt that is a natural
part of life. We work Steps 10, 11, and 12 to maintain our inner peace. However
we are only human, we don�t take a ramp up to spiritual peace and bliss,
recovery is a process that happens over time.
One difficulty we face is that emotional relapse can undermine our
willingness. The fear of having to do in depth Step work again can make staying
clean seem to be too difficult or impossible. We keep returning to the power of
surrender that we found in our initial recovery and we get results. If we find
it hard to turn to that power, we talk about it at meetings and with supporters
of our recovery. One sure sign of eventual relapse is being critical and
uncharitable of others who are hurting. even when our H.A.L.T.S. gets out of
whack, we tend to be hyper-critical. We have found that �hurting people hurt
people.' If we have lost compassion for our fellows, it is a red light indicator
that we are in need of outside work.
We find some of the things that we thought we had lost forever.
Guiding spiritual principles begin to replace negative values; courage dispels
cowardice, honesty replaces dishonesty and faith replaces fear. Self-improvement
is possible if we are willing to take the time and make the effort. With God�s
help, we work the 12 Steps and are restored.
We have an internal witness called conscience that keeps us on
track. Our conscience is our memory of what worked and what hurt. We never lose
these memories; however, we do forget where we put them at times. We may simply
choose to ignore them.
God�s goodness is available to us through gratitude. Our
relationships improve when we give freely.
New Entry:
What I did find was the following; In the paragraph that begins "As we reinforce the beginnings of a new life" it goes on to say; If we are sincerely asking for help, as answer will come. (I believe it should read an answer not as answer) and then the next sentence read
Maybe not in the form we would expect of from the person we would like, but it will come.( I believe it should read or from the person instead of "of").
Please do not take me the wrong way I am very grateful to have come across your site and know I will be spending time there hopefully for a long time.
Just another Addict
Lynne M
Reprinted from the
N.A. FELLOWSHIP USE ONLY
Copyright � December 1998
Victor Hugo Sewell, Jr.
N.A. Foundation Group
1516 B Live Oak Drive
Tallahassee, Florida 32301
[email protected]
All rights reserved. This draft may be copied by members of Narcotics Anonymous for the purpose of writing input for future drafts, enhancing the recovery of NA members and for the general welfare of the Narcotics Anonymous Fellowship as a whole. The use of an individual name is simply a registration requirement of the Library of Congress and not a departure from the spirit or letter of the Pledge, Preface or Introduction of this book. Any reproduction by individuals or organizations outside the Fellowship of Narcotics Anonymous is prohibited. Any reproduction of this document for personal or corporate monetary gain is prohibited.