Journalling --October 31, 2009 -- Twelve Steps and Listening

Nearly twenty-five years ago, I was in counseling with an Episcopal priest, who gave me an assignment to write a letter to God. In the next session, I read and we discussed my letter and my relationship to “God”. For the next session, the priest gave me the assignment of writing a letter from God to me.

It seemed very strange and awkward, but I was in enough pain to be willing to do anything he asked. At the next session, we processed my letter and my experience and insight in writing the letter. As I was reflecting on my writing, it occurred to me that the amazing experience that I had with this assignment might be “useful” as a daily spiritual activity.

Almost every day since then, I have done this very thing – a “letter” to God about what was going on in my life, my feelings, and what I was struggling with – and a “letter” of what I felt God saying to me. It has been a wonderful and life changing experience of spiritual enlightenment – of increasing conscious Presence with a loving God, whom I have learned to call “Mom and Dad”. I would like to share some of this experience with you here.

October 31, 2009
Mom & Dad,
Good morning! Everything is moving in on me with this cruise coming. I feel anxious, pressured – afraid that I will not have prepared coverage for K’s practice adequately. Please help me and lead me. What do I need to know and do today?

Listening. Always, always learning to listen. We are “hear” – hear and feel our breathing Presence within you.
Your course swings in and out. Questions trigger inner undisclosed wounds – energies stored in stasis chambers (of your brain – near your heart. Connection and separation – swinging in and out – listening for our voices – through the darkened walls of your mind.
The entrance to new places emerges from the debris of old experiences – mangled pieces of discarded selves – like the valley of dry bones (Bible) – and as you stand – open – in our Presence – the “bones” begin to come together and life begins to regenerate inside of you. Living tissue – blood vessels full of spiritual Presence – flowing – throbbing – then beating smoothly – life flowing and beating as you become – alive – loved and nurtured by our caring and unconditional Presence.
Lifeless becomes lifefull.
We are here.

"A merry heart doeth good like is medicine,

but a broken spirit drieth the bones."

Proverbs

(Inspirational life quote from a meditation book):
“Intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but simply points the way.” Florence Scovel Shinn
“We will intuitively know how to handle situations that used to baffle us.”
Seems to me that if “spiritual” means higher Presence, then energy from intimate closeness with you fills the mental voids (of my brain) created by past injuries of separation.

As a human, you want to “know” things – clear, dependable, usable information. Nothing that is knowable is real – they are only thoughts – fixed patterns of neural energy within the brain. Thoughts are created out of space and time – which are also, “not real” – only perceptions of the brain.

The necessity and importance of “love” is that in its truth, experience and thought forms -- creates a bridge from thought to our Presence – an emerging consciousness called intuition – spiritual enlightenment, awareness that exceeds the facility and use of words. Words are only as real as the presence experienced through them. Eventually – as you move and become closer to us, words will dissolve into the nothingness that they are – and what will be left is an intimate connection which can be best described from this side as “love”.

Love is greater than faith, because it is the highest level of faith. Faith is most frequently thought. Belief means one thinks a certain statement to be true. Love means one experiences such an intimate connection with us that thoughts and words disappear and all that is left is conscious Presence, closeness, unconditional acceptance and companionship – with us – to others. There are no longer explanations – thoughts and words – because you have transcended matter –becoming spiritually Present – intuitively “knowing” things that your brain can not know or process.

Flow.

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Illusions Of "Control" and "Knowledge" -- Practicing Twelve Steps

……..the human condition is able to have a remedy. All it takes is having the control of it…….. and to know…….. Voltaire

“Control” and “know” are interesting concepts in modern and non-modern thought. They assume that we and our brains have abilities and freedoms that contradict severely the history of the disease of being human.

If we have control – if we chose – why would we choose to suffer and die horrible lives – or survive the experience under the anesthesia of blinding distractions and mental obsessions? Why would we inflict such incredible pain on ourselves by harming others? We are one – I cannot hurt you without destroying me.

The concept that humans can somehow achieve control over themselves and their lives and outcomes is really unsupportable by observable human experience.

What the masters of sleight of hand, and mirrors and fog try to use to confuse and shame us is the periodic ability of humans and “heroes” to seemingly rise above instinct and disease to do and become the extraordinary – or ordinary. Because the brain does not always reject desirable behavior or action does not prove that if we try hard enough, we can achieve control. Humans can fly – if they have a plane or jet pack. Otherwise, they are ground dwellers.

And some days we manage to be unconscious enough to achieve the illusions of happiness, when really our brain has simply suppressed our ability to feel pain.

If we have control, we should never have to be unhappy, sad, or disappointed again. Show me someone for whom this is true – who is emotionally conscious and not medicated by some drug or outcome.

“Know” – a human derivative of the illusion of “control”. Knowledge is the creation of the cerebral functions of the brains neuroprocessor – the cerebral cortex. It is believed by the brain that what it perceives, it knows as facts, and understands, and therefore it is able to control behavior, reactions, and outcomes. The problem is that the cerebral cortex operates at the “pleasure” or pain of the primitive part of the brain. So it “knows” only what it is allowed to know. The primitive brain automatically and involuntarily controls the operations of the brain in order to maintain stability. We know nothing – we only have perceptions – and reactions – that are controlled without our conscious input into their occurrence.

Hence, the power and significance of the First Step of the Twelve Steps: “We admitted that we were powerless – that our lives had become unmanageable.” We cannot control or know anything.

When we truly experience this truth, and connect with a higher Presence (Step Two), we no longer need to know or control – we are restored to a “sanity” – an emotional balance and a spiritual awakening – that no longer requires knowing or controlling – just the consistent maintenance of an improving conscious intimate contact with Them. The rest becomes history – and Presence.

Twelve Step Spiritual Life Management --Workbook

Click here for Introduction to Twelve Steps Spiritual Life Management

Click here for Step One -- The Neurophysiology of Powerlessness



Click here for Step Two of Twelve Steps: the Spiritual Treatment of Our Disease



Click here for Step Three of Twelve Steps: Spiritual Maintenance through Surrender

Introduction to Twelve Step Spiritual Life Management

The following is the result of my experience, strength and hope. My experience is that I have a disease – maybe a group of diseases – which renders me powerless – and my life unmanageable -- and which will destroy the very fiber and quality of my existence if I do not – regularly and routinely – practice certain spiritual life principles.

My strength and perception is that this spiritual practice takes different specific forms and frequencies of activity, depending on the current and changing levels of the personal symptoms of my disease(s). I have gone to 90 meetings in ninety days, meditated, and journalled daily for over twenty years. I don’t believe this is necessary for most people – but it was necessary for me -- if I am to feel a reasonable level of serenity and well being.

What I have attempted to do in this workbook is:
1. To put together an organized understanding of the spiritual principles involved in Steps 1, 2, 3, & 10, 11, &12 of AA and Alanon.
2. To present an organized means of developing spiritual life skills using these spiritual principles.
3. To assist in finding a personalized daily lifestyle of spiritual maintenance, by first practicing and then living these specific spiritual principles.

This workbook is only the product and expression of my experience, strength and hope, and is not intended in anyway to imply a standard that all recovering persons should follow to practice spiritual recovery.

It will, I believe, only be as helpful as one’s level of conscious pain, and one’s ability to relate to others’ experience, strength and hope.

Also. I recommend that persons read the chapters on each step in the books Paths to Recovery, and Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, and consider the insight questions that are provided. Also, it has been helpful to me to look in the indexes of books like The Courage to Change, and read the readings relevant to each step. Again, how much one reads and prepares will be personal and unique to each individual’s needs.

Twelve Spiritual Principles of Daily Inspirations And Spiritual Enlightenment: Part Two

Introduction
My life is the product of my level of spiritual enlightenment, created and maintained by a steady diet of daily inspirations, and supported by spiritual coaching. In maintaining my spiritual life, I need spiritual principles – living guidelines – which direct and fashion my spiritual journey toward the spiritual enlightenment I am seeking. This is an introduction to these spiritual principles.

(These spiritual principles were adapted from the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous using my experience, strength, hope, and daily inspirations)

First Spiritual Principle: We admitted we were powerless – that our lives had become unmanageable.

Our species is addicted to living, and therefore to outcomes that seem to determine our survival -- existence and comfort – we are addicted to Control and Outcomes. With control of outcomes being a major life task of humans, we begin to believe that we are responsible for all outcomes. Such beliefs are encouraged by the following myths:
1. “You can be or do anything you want, if you put your mind to it, and if you try hard enough.”
2. “A person is just about as happy as he makes up his mind to be” (attributed to Abraham Lincoln).
3. Everyone’s ultimate success is determined by his or her “choices”.

Shame begins as we judge and evaluate ourselves by these myths.

Many will struggle with this concept in specific situations, which will be addressed later. For now, let’s follow a simple course of consideration: Our perceptions and reactions to life ultimately determine the quality of our lives – not the specific events and outcomes of life. Research has shown that the major perceptual filters of our brain are actually controlled by a primitive part of our brain that does not operate in thought, facts, reasoning, or judgment. It operates simply in neural impulses.

So when my brain perceives a person, thing, or situation, the major filters that the sensations go through are unconscious to my thinking brain. Therefore, my “happiness” or “success” is not based on reality or fact, but on the unconscious programming that was created either genetically, and/or by prior life experiences stored as suppressed neural energy within the brain.

We are powerless over our mental perceptions and over our emotional reactions and therefore the experience of our lives is unmanageable. Spiritual enlightenment requires that we start here and move forward with finding daily inspirations that begins to address our powerlessness.

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