THE SPIRITUAL LIFE

Some of us find something hard to define that is very real to us. That reality just is. I accept that I can't do it alone. There are some times even loving, caring people can‘t help me cope. By trusting our yearning, we find something that had been buried in the rubble of our addiction. A spirit! This spirit just may be the reason we are alive today. All the times we wondered what got us through that one or this one. Inventory is how we catch ourselves before we make the next big mistake. We can learn to easily and naturally access our higher power. We call that conscious contact. Getting and maintaining conscious contact is the biggest part of what grants us the new life clean. We can't get it under our own power, so we get in touch with a higher power. Our lives are filled with unaccountable miracles. Through the Twelve Steps of NA we come to live by the grace of a loving and caring God.

The messages we are sent by a higher Power come through many modes of communication. We begin to get in touch with that inner light that is used to guide us in our recovery. By taking a posture of love and humility, by asking for knowledge of God's will and the power to carry it out, by meditating and listening for the answer, we are touched and our inner light becomes a beacon rather than a flicker. As our beacon shines, we find peace in the messages we are sent. It may be that we need to turn loose of control. We may have a child struck down by a life-threatening illness; our spouse may become disabled; our mother might have a heart attack; or all of this could happen. We may have been flickers of light, but as we accept our inability to control we become beacons of God's will. This light grows brighter with each surrender and the truth in the process of recovery is seen by others. We find the quality of our communication determine the quality of our life. If we give out loving concern that is what we will get back. Communication is not only what we transmit but what we're capable of receiving. What we can say and hear is a blueprint or layout of our personal condition. It is a reflection of the reality of what we can realize or experience.

Our Tenth Step gives us a constant reminder to focus on self-improvement. One of the first blessings we receive in recovery is a new viewpoint. We identify with those who admit their need for help and are willing to do something to benefit others. Our wrongs no longer supply us with anything we need. They only cause us problems and embarrassment in our newly awakened lives. Where we have gone wrong, we are able to correct ourselves and make amends to those we have wronged without letting the problems grow into massive concerns. By regularly going over what we do and how we do it, we make steady inroads on the type of behavior that used to typify addicts. Now a days, we have clean addicts! The willingness to act, behave, and think in new ways is crucial to our recovery. We accept that there are times when we may have doubts about who we are or what we should be doing with our lives. We could not remain as we were.

Our Eleventh Step allows us to enter into the world of spiritual reality and accumulate real spiritual experience that we can use to guide us past activities that used to waste our time and energy. We can explore thoughts and feelings in ways that used to sound like fiction. We can aspire to and attain spiritual fitness that seems reserved for people who were ‘better’ than us. Prayer gives us a way to look at what we're asking for. Prayer may open a hole in reality to let our dream come through. It certainly opens our hearts to accept the dream if it should come true. Meditation serves the place of prayer for many members and allows us to take a walk with God inside or take a spiritual excursion while conscious and wakeful of what is happening to us. Meditation may come to refer to a whole range of experience instead of sitting with your eyes and legs crossed.

The Twelfth Step takes us from the internal struggle into the world of application. We actively apply the principles we have been using in our personal recovery to all areas of our life. Just as our world shrank in active addiction, our world expands in recovery. We each get a steady flow of new ideas to absorb, situations to deal with and demands to satisfy. Carrying our message gives us a clear direction where we had none. We can't avoid painful experiences entirely. They are part of life. We can get better at dealing with them. Ours is a savage disease of selfish pleasure. It betrays us by seduction. Just by knowing this, we have a chance. Then the idea of God ignites our desire for spiritual knowledge, a certain fission occurs. It begins to achieve a life changing energy level. While the gravity of everyday worries will exert a drag on our spirituality, we need always keep contact with the eternal. While don't ignore the gravity, there are other forces in our lives. As we become a part of life, we need to fit in with what is happening around us. If there are other good people around, we will want to be known and recognized as a positive force.

As we begin to grow in this way, we realize this is what we were hungry for all along. Our disease robs us of people as much as peace of mind and body. As we reinforce and expand the positive connections we have with other people, it is actually the beginning of a new life. We are bound to pass through a series of growing experiences, some painful. There will almost always be those who have gone before to help us and our growing spiritual awareness will rescue us many times. At some point in our growth, we will begin to use our minds to do our part well and be less critical of others. The recovery process leads us from hopelessly despondent and rebellious to positive, spirited wakefulness. We are free to go our way where we had become lost. Our spirituality is born of acceptance of God's will for us and our growth is proportionate to our willingness to live that life.

Much of the Narcotics Anonymous program has the effect of countering our negativity. This is why we feel badly when we miss meetings. Our inventories give us a chance to reexamine out boundaries and in some cases remove barriers that no longer have function or purpose in our lives. We can go more places and do more things clean than we ever could using. Loaded, we could hardly keep our attention focused on subjects that bore no direct relationship to our next usage. Taboos, by definition, are ways we avoid certain things without thought or choice. They come from a fundamental social wisdom or feeling so deep, we can't even talk about them. This doesn't mean that taboos are always right. Usually, they are based on emotional issues that at some past time became unusually important either through a powerful leader or a disaster. Fortunately, the similarity to other defective phases of our lives carries through here. We can talk, at least with home group members or sponsors, about anything that may be bothering us. Don't blurt out something as a test to those who may be suffering as badly as you. Just don't let something keep bothering you without seeking relief.

Most addicts are blessed with the ability to see what someone else should be doing. If we are sincerely asking for help, an answer will come. Maybe not in the form we would expect or from the person we would like, but it will come. Cultural taboos have an valid place in human culture. The taboos we're bringing into the area of discussion here have to do with feeling unrealistic boundaries. "I can't talk to my boss about the raise I was promised" may have the vague air of a taboo. That to be open with our boss may bring us ‘bad luck.’ While timing can be important, we shouldn't wait to ask forever. Certain dysfunctions in families are treated as if discussion of a family members effect on our lives is taboo. We may need to line up support before crossing some of these lines. Sponsors can help us decide if we have a point or are just complicating a simple issue.

Maybe there was a moment when we were really happy years ago. Perhaps it was in our childhood or as teenagers. Maybe someone was kind or respectful to us after a childhood of shame or neglect. This memory is associated with feeling real, counting for something and being a vital part of life. Our mistake may be to seek to replicate the past or avoid replication of something painful. These two keep us from dealing with the ordinary reality right in front of us. It is likely that we found our moment of memorable happiness as a by product of growth and other activities that may have seemed unconnected to the good feelings we enjoyed. Do we want to be chained to our recalled happiness forever, bound by fears, taboos and missing out on life today? Can we not learn to enjoy life again on a daily basis and build up our capacity to accept good things into our lives?

What got us to recovery? Our spirit! What is our spirit? Is it that part of us that has the instinct and will to survive and prosper? Our disease wants to destroy that part of us at all cost. The reawakening of that spirit through our recovery can be exciting, inspiring, and frightening all at the same time. It wants to live; it wants to prosper; it wants to grow. But how? Our addiction was a wall that prevented us from a constant contact with the God of our choosing. Instead, contact was a total self-indulgence of our addiction. It takes time we are told. Let your spirit speak; let your addict go; get with God and He will be with you. When He does, a wonderful thing happens and if continued, something even more wonderful will happen.

Realizing we have a choice about using and recovering from the disease of addiction is often the first and fundamental of our spiritual awakenings. Sometimes this is taken for granted. It is only in retrospect that this realization becomes tangible. Our experience has shown us that our steps, prayer and meditation, and sharing with each other allows us to grow. Sometimes this growth is painful. Letting go of the only way we knew is painful. Fear of the unknown and blind faith doesn't go together well, but we must go through it and let our spirit get in tune with the spirit we call God. Basic living lets us move beyond some of the simplistic problem areas that once overwhelmed us. By solving the basic problems, we graduate to other problems. The vitality of ordinary reality is essential for spiritual growth. Stagnation is the beginning of regression into old patterns of thinking. Plato said, "I think, therefor I am." Realistically, I am what I think. So, if I am not vital into the heartbeat of spiritual progress, I set myself adrift. Old character defects resurface and rears its ugly head.

Ordinary reality gives us chances to practice spiritual principles. Sometimes we will fail in making what we feel are ‘correct’ choices. The reality is that the ‘failure’ is a spiritual lesson that can direct our behavior. At the end of our drug use we were forced to find a new way of life. That choice moment was vital. We knew without a doubt that the drugs were killing us. Other lessons are not quite as important. The term ‘learning to live’ implies we will experience some short term failures. When we become aware of better spiritual living arrangements and do not wish to regress, a new way of life becomes a more attractive alternative. As our daily living choices improve, new adjustments and goals will change. We will seek out new horizons and possibilities. What were only dreams before, now become reality: we start relationships, buy houses, maintain jobs, get involved in civic activities, etc. The new reality is ours to have. We no longer have to live in the woods, under bridges and at the mercy of the elements. We have to read the spiritual road signs. Those events in our lives that shape who we are, what we are, and where we are going.

We may come to a place in our recovery where we realize everything that has happened to us has had a purpose. Nothing has been wasted. The seemingly random occurrences were all parts of a pattern we could not see while it was happening to us. These times occur between ends and beginnings so they are not so frequent. It is knowing this that may help us surrender and continue to do our part even when all looks hopeless. Once we admit we are powerless over our addiction; that our lives are unmanageable, we have nothing left to lose. Powerless in recovery, all good comes from God, as if God is a great river. Recovery allows us to become part of the river. After we do so, we can see it is all one river. This vision is what makes us seek phony, unsatisfying substitutes for the real thing. It's when we let go that we can begin a spiritual path of freedom. Freedom to make choices with the tools provided in the Steps.