MY TWELVE STEP TESTIMONY

And we have the word of the prophets made more certain, and you will do well to pay attention to it, as to a light shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning star rises in your hearts.  2 Peter 1:19

My own spiritual awakening began in my early to mid twenties during the mid 1960s through an extended reflection upon the harm I was doing to myself and others as a result of my constantly living in conflict with basic natural, moral and spiritual laws and through not getting what I wanted out of life.

My motives (trying to figure out what life was all about and to be happy) were OK but the results were increasingly not what I wanted.

I was unsure about what I really wanted out of life and thus about where I was ultimately headed. But at least I knew there was no ‘going back’ to where I had been, and that gave me comfort. I was determined not to do any sort of “U” turn.

Because I put myself and my own short term plans and needs at the centre of the universe everything and everyone outside myself was expendable or open to manipulation without scruple.

My own determination to ‘have my own way’ at any cost lead to an ever-widening web of deceit which in turn fed upon the measure of failure OR success I found myself experiencing.

I was trying as hard as I could to be in control of other people (who, of course, resisted) my own future and everything around me.

I was doing my best to ensure that everything and everyone met my needs and conformed as closely as possible to my concept of the world as I understood it.

One problem was that my understanding kept changing the further along the path I went and the further away from home I got.

The result was an increasing  loneliness and despair but also increasing anger, defiance. and a new found recklessness which launched me out onto a genuine, if at times, a somewhat extravagant quest for the truth.

But the quest was undertaken in dead earnestness close to the edge of madness and I found myself regularly anaesthetising my mental pain through ingestions of large amounts alcohol and other mood-altering chemicals.

Not getting what I wanted or expected out of life and by getting more and more of what I did not want, along with my principled  refusal to accept the status quo as any sort of ‘answer’ to the questions I was asking of life was a severe but effective schoolmaster relentlessly leading me to ‘ higher ground’ even though I was unaware of that.

Through these paradoxical processes I learned a lot about myself, about our Western industrial technological society and culture (this was at the hight of the Cold War) within which I was making my own Great Refusal.

I also learned a lot  about my own unhealthy attachments which were binding me through a hundred ties to the toxic reality and set of assumptions (my own, my culture’s) I was trying so desperately to reject and overcome.

I was eventually forced to confront and confess the spiritual darkness which lay not only at the centre of my own heart but at the centre of the Zeitgeist driving the modern world towards the edge of destruction .

This painful discovery (my own heart of darkness driving my best intentions, hopes and dreams) was part of my taking the First Step towards a spiritual awakening.

This discovery came with the power and urgency of an authoritative wake-up call .  It wonderfully awakened and concentrated my mind and set my heart on fire .

As I result a whole new range of perspectives and choices began to open up before me.

The point is this: it is an often observed fact  which lies at the heart of the worlds Wisdom Literature that:

Suffering (however experienced or defined) can force a new perspective on life and a new perception about what reality is and what the human condition is, and thus a point from which new growth becomes possible.

More specifically, it is an often observed fact that while going through a life threatening illness, financial ruin, the loss of home and livelihood, a long period of job insecurity or actual  unemployment, or while experiencing a major breakdown in our relationships, or going through a bereavement, a personal tragedy, or finding oneself in the grip of some life controlling problem such as addiction to drugs or alcohol or a chronic mental health problem...the list could go on and on......some of us (not all) move deeper into ourselves and begin to ask some serious questions about the meaning and purpose of our lives and what is most important to us and what we really want in life. 

This new perspective and the posing of these ‘hard questions’ and making these observations awakened me to the fact that it was not so much events themselves which most disturb or overwhelm us, but, rather, it is our own reactions to and interpretation of these events.

This aspect of my  journey has been described in 12 Step literature as descent into an ‘ego deflation at depth’. 

Without an ego-deflation (often repeated) I would have remained trapped forever inside my own inflated, claustrophobic head-strong self-centred world, a world ultimately doomed to perish along with my physical body and the biological neurology which supports it .

So what happens  during and in the ego-deflation? 

And, more importantly, what happens or what is supposed to happen on the ‘other side’ of the deflation?

For me, true surrender came about when my ego defences, ranging from denial to grandiosity, become so confused and frustrated that I at last become ready to let go of them all and in fact did let them all go as well as my ‘map’ or understanding of the world and how it worked.

There could be no half measures. These were, and remain, make or break issues for me. These were and remain, life or death issues for me. I began to realise that my most severe ‘character defects’ were in fact the flip side of my own most powerful and entrenched ‘ego-defences’ which were fuelling my angry defiance against living life on life’s terms.

So Step 1, the admission of powerlessness, is perhaps the most difficult Step for anyone to take and it was and remains so for me. 

Taking this Step contradicts a huge assumption in our culture, the belief that we are immensely powerful and that we can do anything we want or have anything we want and that all we need to do is go out and get it....which, of course, is a half-truth. But it is a only a half-truth which requires many qualifications........

Step 1 is a very difficult Step to take because if I remain in denial it will be impossible for me to recognise the powerlessness, unmanageability  and lack of freedom manifested in the lives of those people I most envy, or look up to and greatly admire. We just do not see the ‘dark side’ of our role models until it is....too late.

These are those people we see as very successful , people would like to emulate because they seem to be ‘living the good life’ as defined by our own criteria of success, and they also seem to be very well adjusted to our money and success-oriented culture and are clearly enjoying it along with all the rewards of financial or professional success .

But if we honestly examine ourselves we will easily see the things which are outside both their and our control. In addition to this we will see more clearly how we all get trapped in our culture’s value system to the point of being unable to live a healthy spiritual life, which, of course, impacts every other area of our lives.

Of course I was very much a child of my age (1960s - 1970s) with a strong belief in the absolute autonomy of my own ‘self’ .....a belief strongly reinforced by much of modern Western philosophy and the USA Zeitgeist, otherwise known as The American Dream.

And yet, the problematic nature of a supposedly autonomous self subject to nothing but itself driven exclusively by its own perceived needs and demands operating through purely rational means to manipulate other people and the environment to meet those needs and demands....

........has been noted by all the world’s major religious traditions as a source of great folly, evil and suffering, not a power for genuine liberation.

On this reading, according to the anthropologist  and pioneer in cybernetics and communications theory Gregory Bateson: the alcoholic or drug addict is not enslaved to drugs but, rather, to the false premises and assumptions of a materialistic, consumer -based society, from which the power of a mood-altering chemical provides temporary relief or liberation.

The old Latin maxim In vivo veritas, from the Greek “Ἐν οἴνῳ ἀλήθεια” (There is truth in wine), therefore contains  a disturbing truth, according to Bateson (1972). Steps to an Ecology of Mind, pp. 309-337.

“ The [AA] member was never enslaved to alcohol. Alcohol simply served as an escape from personal enslavement to the insane ideals [or values] of a materialistic society. It is not a matter of revolt against insane ideals around him but of escaping from his own insane premises, which are continually reinforced by the surrounding society.” page 311

What is disclosed here is the paradox of admitting powerlessness over a problem or a set of circumstances as the necessary pre-condition, the ‘first step’,towards re-gaining the right kind of self control in which we voluntarily surrender ourselves to a moral and spiritual reality greater than ourselves.

This “power greater than ourselves” or what the 12 Steps call ‘God as we understand Him’ brings the ‘God Issue” right into the foreground. It can no longer be ignored or kept safely in the background. 

The mere possibility (the conditions necessary for it to happen) of my own or anybody elses spiritual awakening is clearly related to each persons’ honesty and willingness to be open to God and to take certain steps.

According to the Narcotics Anonymous (NA) basic text page 18

“There is one thing more than any other that blocks our spiritual growth and recovery: this is an attitude of indifference or intolerance towards spiritual principles.”

In 12 Step programmes the idea or conception of God is at every point subordinate to our experience of the power and reality of God’s Spirit at work in our lives and personal circumstances.

This is what is meant by the phrase ‘God as we understand Him.” Granted we all have different degrees of light in terms of our experience and understanding of God. 

Even the hardened and angry atheist or the ‘sitting on the fence’ agnostic has some divine light bearing witness to the reality of God, and an internal witness of the Spirit which they are forced to keep ‘at bay’ and out of sight. See Romans 1:18-32

But whatever our degree of light, we need a spiritually awakened and renewed heart and mind in order to see and experience it and that requires a willingness on our part to take certain steps..

So when I surrendered (and continue to surrender) all to God without any qualifications, without any pre-conditions, it is not my unaided self-will doing  so.

I found (and continue to find on a daily basis) myself in conscious contact with a loving power greater than myself who helps me and empowers me to believe and will and to do things I would not otherwise will, believe or do.

Step 11 Says

We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.

My will has now become a chastened will, a self-will fully ‘turned around within itself’ and re-oriented within a greater spiritual horizon in union and communion with the Creator and Redeemer of the universe.

But it is SO MUCH MORE than this!

The restoration to sanity of Step 2 involves a REAL (not an imagined) influx of divine power, life and wisdom into our newly opened hearts and minds (opened, initially through suffering and tragedy) and from there it is worked out to positively transform not only individuals but communities, occupations, social structures and the very fabric of life and nature itself. See Steps 10,11 and 12

To conclude: What is a spiritual awakening?

A spiritual awakening is to be awakened as if from a deep sleep to see to feel, to hear and to experience the love and grace of God and, in that context, to know the truth about oneself, the truth about the human condition, and the truth about God and His will for our lives and the universe within which we live.

WHAT IS A SPIRITUAL AWAKENING?