Spiritual Messages from FaceBook -- Twelve Steps to Spiritual Living

For me, FaceBook has become a wonderful source of daily inspirations and spiritual Presence. I am very grateful to the wonderful people who share their personal experiences, strengths, and hopes – allowing me to listen to my God in their words …… and in my own responses to their words. My God is always speaking …. It is really helpful –blessings and gifts -- to have so many friends who are willing to be Their messengers….

I would like to share some of my experiences with you …..

Hope – or Not…..

Keli: “Hope is an extension of our Faith that God will fulfill his promises” ~ Givens ( From "The
Dopeless Hope Fiend")

Will: For me, hope can be a preoccupation with a mentally induced fantasy/delusion of what could happen .... like a child who believes in the myth of Santa Claus and is expecting a desirable outcome based on their fantasy .... a mental distraction .... loss of consciousness ….
Or hope can be the intuitive sense of okness, wellbeing and loving closeness that comes from a steadily ... improving "conscious contact with God" .... a peace that passes all understanding .... a joy unspeakable and full of wondrous Presence .... a hope that is not disappointing because Their love is being poured generously and steadily into our hearts ..... a spiritual awakening as a result of these Twelve Steps --- living spiritual principles of hope and healing.....
Where our brains stop thinking and "drinking" …..stops using some mood altering human actions –
here our hearts begin to experience .....Presence..... the ultimate spiritual "guarantee" ..... that all will well in this life ….. and in the hereafter ….



Can You?.......

Michael: “You must do the thing you cannot do.”~~Eleanor Roosevelt

Will: The problem is that we can't do what we cannot do ..... maybe that's why we need a God of our conscious contact and personal experience .... They restore us to an ability to do what THEY can do .... If we could "do it", we would not need Them .... what an incredible loss that would be .... In our weakness we are made strong in them …. we have closeness with them ..

The basis of human shame and spiritual illness is the message and belief that we can – and should – do things we cannot do. Others have held us accountable and responsible for perceptions, reactions, actions -- and outcomes -- that we could not control. I experience that my God looks not at my actions and outcomes but at my “heart” …. And Their perception of me – and others – is that we are special, good enough – in fact wonderful – and unconditionally loveable and worthy of being cared about by Them …. They reprogram my brain to see me and others through Their eyes and “mind”….

Simple … But Not Easy ….

Keli: A simple program ~ The program is simply sharing, working the Twelve Steps, attending meetings, and practicing the principles of the program.
Our complicated lives can be made a lot less complicated if we concentrate on a few simple things sharing our experience, strength, and hope with others, regular meeting attendance, and practicing the principles of the program in our daily lives.
By sharing our experience, strength, and hope with others, we provide a powerful example for newcomers to follow. The effort we put into helping others also helps keep self-centeredness, the core of our disease, at bay.
Many of us pick one group, a home group, whose meetings we attend faithfully. This regularity gives some routine to our lives, and lets others know where they can find us if they need us.
Practicing the Twelve Steps in our daily lives makes the difference between a balanced recovery and simply not using. The steps give us some much-needed guidance in managing our everyday affairs.
Yes, we are complex people. But Twelve Steps programs simplifies our lives, enabling us to live a life free from active dependence. Our lives can be filled with serenity and hope when we live by the guidance of the simple principles of our program.
Just for today: I will remember that, while I am a complex person, Twelve Steps is the simplest way for me to make my life less complicated.
Copyright © 1991-2010 by Narcotics Anonymous World Services, Inc


Will: I do a 12 Step Spiritual Maintenance group on Thursdays, and today we were sharing about this subject: the Twelve Steps program is simple but not easy. The reason for this is that the intellectual concepts and directions are mentally "simple" and easy to understand by the cerebral cortex part of the brain. But dependency, and addiction are not located the intellectual cerebral cortex part of the brain. It is located in the involuntary, non-cognitive primitive part of the brain. So we can literally know what to do that is healthy and right, and be totally incapable of doing it or of responding rationally to that knowledge.... Literally, the basics of recovery are intellectually simple --- but virtually impossible to practice .... by me .... That's why we start with Step One: we admitted (and experienced) that we were powerless -- helpless to override the perceptions and reactions of our wounded brains .... powerlessness and helplessness becomes the basis for and beginning of true spiritual experience -- conscious contact with God .... This is my experience, strength and hope ....


We Need to Lose Our Minds ……

Thinus: Sometimes you have to lose your mind before you come to your senses...

Seren: So strange, I was just thinking that. Kind of like "hitting bottom"?
Thinus: Yup that's it.
Seren: Not my favorite memory, but definitely the catalyst for grace.
Nurse Mary: yea and we must always remember our bottoms have a trap door!!
Bronwyn: So that's what is happening to me - and I have so much to look forward to - finding my senses and coming to them! yay! Can't wait!


Will: My experience: "hitting a bottom" was losing my mind .... otherwise, my thoughts would be still anesthetizing my feelings -- my " senses" ..... and I would be convinced that "I can and should handle ‘it’." .... "it's just not that bad" .... thinking is more mood altering than drinking or drugging .... Most people never really recover because they are never able to “lose their minds” ….. and experience the truths of our helplessness without steady, conscious interaction with our God ….

The Need to Fall Down to Look Up ….

Angie: "When you fall down, look around. You may discover something you couldn't see when you were standing up.".......................

Will: If I had never "fallen", I would never have "discovered" – or experienced consciously -- my God's loving Presence .... to grow in Their Presence, I must continue to “fall” ….. from my humanness….
If we are not careful, our brains will use our appearance of success with certain outcomes as proof that we can and should understand and control “our lives”…. The gifts of “failures” are awarenesses and conscious experiences that we are powerless … alone …



Theodore: Confront the dark parts of yourself, and work to banish them with illumination and forgiveness. Your willingness to wrestle with your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel, as a reminder of your strength.” --Wilson(via Denise)


Will: My experience: to confront my "dark selves" can be like attacking a wounded and cornered animal ..... dangerous at best .... our dark selves are lost selves who were wounded by separations and abuse ... they need to be loved and nurtured into God's love light, and brought home to be restored to our truest Self .... they don't need anymore rejection and abuse ....
(As I journalled about my dark or shadow selves, I realized that these are parts of me that are the furtherest from conscious Presence with my God … the most wounded, terrorified, enraged – instinctively self protective …. They are not bad – but very, very hurt …. and abandoned ….)


Being Perfect ….

Loretta: The word "perfect" doesn't mean that we have to do everything just right and live without making a mistake. Thank God, b/c we can't to that! It means "devoted" ~ a heart dedicated, loyal and faithful to God. The Word tells us that God shows Himself strong in behalf of those whose hearts are "perfect" toward Him (2 Chron.16:9)

Will: For me: "perfect" is an expression of the attitude of unconditional love and care -- and clarity of perception -- that God has toward us .... They do not see us as wrong or bad ... in Their eyes, we are "perfect" .... They would only like for us to stop abusing our selves with our shame, and self-abuse ..... Perfectionism is the state of being unable to accept that we are already perfect .... at least in Their eyes .... In our human eyes. we generally "suck", never good enough, always wrong and bad – in one way or another ..... Maybe being "restored to sanity" includes beginning to see our selves through Their eyes.... not through the painful separation of our diseases of humanness and dependency .... Conscious intimate contact with out God clears away the unhealed distortions of the past …
Maybe the closest to a mistake we can be is to perceive that we are mistakes.....

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Waves of Returning Selves -- Spiritual Awakening

Motions. Massive, massive motions.

Waves and waves of flowing, fluid sensation –

from somewhere –

sometime – elsewhere –

washing .... washing across –

over -- the neural pathways ....

patterns ....of my brain ..... repeating ....

replaying .... recurring .... patterns of sensation .,,,,

lost in the past of unremembered silence ....

and desperation .....

seemingly disconnected .....

seemingly abandoned ...

struggling to stand alone, erect

against rising tides of past selves ....

rushing forward, toward .....

into depths and shallows of my soul.

I am being flooded with what I cannot see .....

overwhelmed by what I cannot remember ....

crowded deep into narrow crevices of my mind,

vacant corridors of long forgetting..... then .....

from somewhere from beyond comes that Voice –

narrowed sounds within my heart .....

expanding into lightening and softening reminders ....

we may not be alone – unloved – forgotten....

invited to follow the waves .... Their waves ....

going home

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.

Love Heals -- Spiritual Healing and the Twelve Steps

Love cures people, the ones who receive, and the ones that give it, too.
Karl A. Menninger

“Love” is an interesting word in our culture. People can love ice cream, clothes, movies, TV shows, vacation places – and other people. Somehow the same word does not seem to mean the same in each situation.

And yet, the impression we can get from others is that everyone knows exactly what the word means. Frequently this seems to really be a case of “missing identity.”

Dr. Menninger describes “love” as the cure for people. I agree with his statement, only I believe we have to clarify what aspect of spiritual healing “love” involves.

Perhaps a place to start is with what “illness” does humans have that needs to be “cured” – why do we need spiritual healing at all.

In my experience, all human illness is caused by separation – from God, from others, and most acutely from ourselves. The condition of humanness is one of loneliness, guilt, fear, pain, anger – and sadness. All of these symptoms are directly related and proportionate to our level of our personal separation and sense of abandonment.

So what does love do that can cure our disease of humanness? Maybe “love” is about being intimately reconnected to God, to others, and to ourselves.

My experience is that God interacts with humans by means of Presence – an unconditional availability and flow of “loving” interpersonal energy which could be the definition of “love”.

Perhaps, if we were to interact with others using unconditional attentiveness and companionship, and gifts of caringness – spiritual presence to others -- maybe we would find people who responded to this spiritual treatment, and experienced spiritual healing of their human condition. Maybe like Dr. Menninger said, we would also find ourselves experiencing spiritual healing and spiritual enlightenment as well.

Let’s try and see.

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Poem: "Re-emerging Selves" -- Twelve Steps

My silence pounds walls of repetitive wordings,
living encapsulating in blocks of sound,
flashes of remembering
the unforgotten swirls of past moments –
events and experiences in the “Now”
of my human beingness.
Every object, event, coated
in emotional energy and glistening
with presence and absence – won and lost.
My mind has fashioned,
constructed…
reconstructed…
demolished….
and reconstructed…
so many selves of experience…
into narrow streams of solidified thought….
Dammed by survival…
resisting possible fluidity…
walls of blindness created in desperate silence…
I am….
We are…..
Reemerging…..
from desolation and destruction…..
looking … for what is still hidden…
so deep….
in the presents of the past.

From my Journal: March 5, 2008

Step Three of Twelve Steps: Spiritual Maintenance through Surrender: Workbook

STEP THREE: Active Surrender of Perceptions, Reactions, Actions and Outcomes to Our Caring God

Made a decision to turn our wills and our lives

over to the care of God as we understood Him.

One Day at a Time February 9th

When living with an alcoholic overwhelmed me, I didn’t know which way to turn or how to make a decision. I rejected God because I resented what I considered unfair punishment. Yet I found that “going it alone” made matters even worse. At a still later stage of desperation, I turned to Him again and placed my life and my will in His hands. Once I had surrendered, trusting Him completely, my burdens were lightened. I cannot profess to understand how such things happen; I want never to forget that he is ready to befriend me, but only to the degree that I trust Him.

If instead of trusting in God I trust only my own intelligence, my own strength and my own prudence, I will not find my way to Him and His help. He has offered me the gift of faith. In accepting it, I must put aside my own human will and trust in Him. Dante, in the Divine Comedy wrote: “In His will is our peace.”

Trust in the Lord with all thy heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding. In all thy ways acknowledge Him and he shall direct thy paths.

Proverbs

There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening, we shall hear the right word. Certainly there is a right for you that needs no choice on your part. Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which flows into your life. Then, without effort, you are impelled to truth and to perfect contentment.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Before Step Two, we are unable to make sound decisions, and especially to follow through with them with our actions. So we always begin, after the first two steps, to make better decisions and to take action relevant and appropriate to trust in God’s care and current circumstances. Otherwise our primitive brain dresses up the same old actions with different thoughts, and we continue to do the same things over and over, hoping for different results.

“Turning over”
Instinctively, under the influence of alcoholics and other unconsciously dysfunctional persons, our primitive instinctive brain took “control” of our lives by constricting the mental and emotional energies our brain was experiencing. Spiritual recovery involves releasing this inner constriction and resistance -- control – by conscious and deliberate acts of faith and trust in a higher Presence of our own personal and individual experience. We reconnect consciously with ourselves and feel our pain and fear – Step One. Then we reconnect intimately with our God’s higher Presence – Step Two. And then we relinquish our control over our perceptions and reactions – outcomes – by taking actions that connects us to the caringness of our higher power.

”Will”
Our “wills” are our perceptions, reactions, and our illusions of our abilities to make decisions. Our brains experiences sensations – sight, sounds, smells, touch, and taste. These sensations are filtered through the constricted pathways of our brains, creating perceptions embedded with wounded and unresolved injuries from our pasts – contaminated organizations of what is. Then, from these contaminated organizations of perceptions, our brain experiences the expression and painful pressure of stored emotional energies – reactions.

Based on this process, the brain is rendered incapable of making sound and healthy decisions. So we and our brains must be surrendered to our God for awakening and empowerment.

“Lives”
The mental illness that results from relationships with alcoholics and other dysfunctional person is one of addiction to outcomes. Our diseased brain is programmed to predict, prepare for, and prevent perceived undesirable outcomes. These painful outcomes are perceived and experienced with the same intensity as death.

In this Third Step, we are relinquishing the control of the outcomes of our lives. We are turning them over to the care of our God. We are developing a serenity network of higher caring Presence to allow us to stop squeezing life events in an attempt to insure an outcome that is perceived as necessary for living.

“To the care of God as we understood Him”
In this step we take the action necessary to have an intimate relationship with a higher Presence, and to release our cares to God’s care.

This understanding is not thought or intellect based, but heart based. Our brains cannot conceptualize such a caring intimacy. It can only be experienced – understood -- with our hearts.


Worksheet:

Before each item, take four deep slow breaths in and out, as an act of trust in your higher power.
1. Identify a relationship or life situation about which you are currently experiencing a conscious level of discomfort.
2. List what you have to date done about the situation.
3. List what you could possibly do about the situation.
4. List what you would be doing if this were not a concern.
5. Discuss situation/relationship with another person (e.g. sponsor). Is there something reasonable that you can do that you have not already done.
6. With help of other recovering person, decide if more action is indicated, and if so what; and decide what you would do if this concern did not exist, and plan/act to do it.

Returning to the Secret Garden of Lost Selves

I was in a spiritual support group today where the topic was Step Five of the Twelve Steps:

We admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs (the nature and symptoms of our emotional illness).

This step is the continuation of Step Four:

We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

The Fourth Step is a spiritual inventory of
1. What we perceive others did to us that was “harmful” to us because they separated themselves from us – some form of abandonment or abuse.
2. Our lasting resentments and anger as reactions to each memory of each separating event or series of events.
3. Our fears that the harm activated and intensified.
4. Our harmful behaviors and actions – our behavioral symptoms – caused by our perception of being “harmed” – separated from others.

This spiritual inventory lists and identifies the symptoms of our human illness.

My experience is that we have experienced “harms” -- separations of abandonment and sometimes abuse – as emotional traumas of varied intensity. When these harms or traumas occurred, our brains responded instinctively to protect us, and our wounded selves were separated – placed in protective custody -- to an unconscious place inside of our brains. These parts were -- and are -- lost selves -- sacrificed and put away from our current self in order to protect them and to protect our current self.


These lost selves are lonely, sad, scared, and angry – lost and disconnected from conscious intimate Presence. When we feel angry, scared, sad, or lonely, we are experiencing a brief, yet frequently powerful contact with one or more of our lost selves. They are the so called “committee in our head” – the voices that we hear in brains -- talking, shouting, crying, pleading for attention, and relief to be restored to the “sanity” of being consciously a part of who we are.

The Fourth Step is an organized way of beginning to identify and re-experience these lost selves by remembering the harm that caused them, by listing the angers and fears that the lost selves are experiencing, and by observing patterns of separation – abandonment and abuse – that our lost selves exhibit as symptoms of their woundedness.

As I listened in the meeting, I experienced my lost selves as being imprisoned in a Secret Garden. The door is hidden by painful growths and debris of past separations. The walls are solid, hardened thoughts mortared tall and strong by obsessive thinking – the protective place of the lost and mostly forgotten selves.

I have experienced the Fourth Step as a starting place in the process of reconnecting with and regaining my lost selves. In Step Four we begin to identify and consciously experience their painful presence again.

In Step Five, we reach out to our God through the flesh and blood of another human being, and together we move away the debris that blocks the door to the Secret Garden, willingly swing the door open, and together, the three of us step inside. With our list of lost selves, we begin to seek those we have identified, and when we find them, we bring them out and allow them to be restored to our Self.

Otherwise, we would be doomed to live the rest of lives without the presence of these parts of our selves – doomed to live the incredible loneliness, pain, and desperation of all our selves being separated and abandoned from each other.

Without improving conscious contact we relive the traumas of the past -- over and over -- without the possibility of “parole”. We must take our God’s hand and return to our Secret Garden of lost selves. We can’t do it alone. And we don’t have to try.
:
A person in the meeting shared about having just gotten a dog. The dog had been used for breeding for six years, and had been kept in a 2 by 4 foot space, had been “debarked” (rendered unable to bark), and had a serial number permanently etched in its ear. I experienced how my lost selves have been imprisoned in a small space, silenced from communicating and being part of my Self, and reduced to a label without a name and without an accepted or recognized personal identity.

The dog seems to be coming back slowly because she is increasingly wagging her tail, and moving happily around – but she is still guarded and easily frightened. The higher presence of her new owners is giving her a chance to come home to love, safety and presence.

We can come home, too. It starts with having an intimate relationship with our God, and can result in our lost selves beginning to ”wag their tails” with the excitement and joy of coming back home -- experiencing being loved, cared about, and safe – empowered to be and to become who we really are.

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