Part III: The Spiritual Connection begins with Trust and Faith. Recovery needs Spirituality and Belief.

Spirituality often becomes a stumbling block in recovery, largely because we misunderstand what it truly means. This transformative episode explores the essence of spiritual connection beyond religious dogma and rigid beliefs.

What does it mean to have faith in recovery? It's not about church attendance or following specific religious practices. Rather, it's about fundamental questions of trust and faith that help us release control and find genuine serenity. We examine how generations have increasingly disconnected from spiritual foundations, creating challenges for those seeking recovery. With only 25% of self-identified Catholics attending weekly services today compared to 75% in the 1960s, many enter recovery without any spiritual framework whatsoever.

The key breakthrough comes when we recognize that faith begins where reason ends. By exploring deeper questions—Who do you trust? What do you believe in? Can you have faith in yourself?—we discover that spiritual connection transcends intellectual understanding. This isn't merely philosophical; research consistently shows that people who embrace spiritual practices heal faster and experience fewer complications in their recovery journey. That sensation of "feeling God in my blood" represents the profound peace that comes from connecting to something greater than ourselves.

Developing gratitude, letting go of control, and embracing trust are practical spiritual principles that transform recovery from a struggle into a journey of growth. Have you considered how your relationship with trust and faith might be affecting your recovery? Join our Recovery Freedom Circle community to explore these concepts further and discover how spiritual connection might be the missing piece in your recovery puzzle.

Chapters

• 0:00 Spirituality in Recovery: Common Struggles
• 0:41 The Recovery Freedom Circle Community
• 1:38 Spiritual Disconnect and Recovery Origins
• 3:51 Trust and Faith: Recovery Essentials
• 6:58 Finding Spiritual Connection and Gratitude
• 10:14 Conclusion and Season Wrap-up

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:02

A spirituality is a complex word and it trips people up, especially in early recovery and even people that want to sustain their recovery. Welcome again to another episode of the 1% in Recovery podcast, where we encourage you to laugh every day, to work hard, work hard in your recovery, work hard in your relationships, work hard in your job, your business, in school just work and to love unconditionally. Just put much more love out there and watch all this love return to you Tenfold Now out. What we encourage you to do is join the Facebook group Recovery Freedom Circle. It's where we talk about the steps. It's how we see the steps change your character, change your life, how to live your best life. We talk about anything inspirational, motivational, anything that you have a problem with, that you're struggling with, that you need clarification, and just let the community heal you, let the community impart their wisdom and their experience so you may grow and not stumble as much, that you are not alone. Join the Facebook group Recovery Freedom Circle.

Speaker 1: 1:35

Now let's jump into this week's episode. This is the last episode of Season 6, where we are talking about how important relationships and oxytocin and bonding is to recovery and how to start loving yourself and growing. Then we started last week, started talking about the subconscious, your mind, the words You've got to feed your brain each day. Have that personal mantra each day. Have that personal mantra. Now, this is the other piece where the 12 steps truly originated about talking about spirituality, talking about a spiritual disconnect, not understanding your relationship with God or a higher power, on how that is the key to recovery and almost putting in the whole onus, is that being the biggest key? It is not the biggest key To me, it's part of the solution. It is part of what you need to address, what you need to explore, because if you know what I know about addicts over 25 plus years of going to meetings, of talking, of living amongst them, loving them, hearing their ideas around higher power, hearing their ideas around God, their ideas, like I like to say, the great mysteries they usually come from a place of a lot of people like me grew up going to some type of church, some type of service, week in, week out, and then they got to the point where they were dealing with some type of trauma, some type of emotional issue, and then they started to accelerate their addiction and then they stopped going to getting any type of spiritual relief, some type of calm, some type of serenity, some place where you could pray, where you can meditate, and they walked away from either just even talking about God, much less actually going to some service where you could feel the community of that religion, the community of some type of being that, just like what we talked about before the bonding, and that is actually one of the beautiful things of going to a specific religion.

Speaker 1: 3:51

Now, the negative thing is is every religion has their very specific dogma and what they believe and almost trying to force feed it where you have to swallow everything they say. That is why so many people me growing up Catholic. I didn't like everything about Catholicism. I didn't like everything about Catholic dogma or what would come either out of the Vatican or my specific school or church or parish. I did not like all their different beliefs and their different rules, and so that became where I started to walk away. But instead of actually looking at what I did like and also addressing what I didn't, I just said F this, I'm out.

Speaker 1: 4:32

That's what a lot of people did, and there's also going to be the people that grew up with no semblance of a God, and it's becoming more and more of each generation, because in 1960, you probably had 75% of those people who identified as Catholic were at least still going to church. Now it's 25% of those people that identify as Catholic going to church. So you have 75 percent of the people who say they're Catholic that never attend weekly service. So you have a lot more people not being in tune and not really even, maybe by osmosis, hearing the word of God, hearing some type of scripture, something about how to live your life better, and you have so many more people having to disconnect in each generation where the kids don't go on a weekly basis to at least have that perseverance, that discipline that you're going week in, week out, just like anything. It's about consistency and some ways to learn about higher power in God is to just keep going.

Speaker 1: 5:39

Same thing about going to meetings you don't go to meetings. You're never going to learn anything. You're God is to just keep going. Same thing about going to meetings you don't go to meetings, you're never going to learn anything. You're not going to hear other people's perspective, and so now you have so many people that have zero concept, and so it's easy to say I am agnostic, I am atheist, I don't believe in a God. I don't believe that God exists, and so that makes it so difficult, but here's the thing. And then you have the people that still go, but they still struggle, they still can get into an addiction. So you have all types of people that you are encountering in, let's say, recovery in meetings. But here's the thing. I always like to take a step back.

Speaker 1: 6:18

Instead of talking about spirituality and the spiritual disconnect, ask the two biggest questions trust and faith. Because what I've noticed is is when I started to have more faith and have more faith and more trust, I tended to let go more. See, recovery is about letting go, stop being in control, having more serenity, having more contentment. You know we cannot control others. We can control ourselves, and a lot of times our own ideas are either around faith. See, faith really starts at the end of reason, at the end of fact, and you're going to have to. What do you truly believe in? What do you have faith in? Do you have faith about your parents or family? Do you have faith, even maybe more scientific about, hey, the sun's going to come up and you know every morning there's certain things that will happen in terms of seasons winter and summer and you have to really question and do the work. See, that's why I'm a big believer in character development, character traits, spiritual principles.

Speaker 1: 7:31

I ask people within the Recovery Freedom Circle three questions around faith, because without asking questions around faith, you're not going to know what you truly believe in, and that is so key. You have to see what, truly. Who do you have faith in? Do you have faith in yourself? And a lot of us don't. Do we have faith in our ideas? How can we make more money? If we believe in what we're doing? We can then figure out how to make more money.

Speaker 1: 7:59

If we have more faith in ourselves, we can get a better job. We can get into and have healthier relationships. Have faith that the people that now that we're entering into we can ask questions and if they leave us, that we're going to be OK. We don't need to be around unhealthy people, we don't need to be around toxic people. But you've got to understand faith and you have to have then trust. You've got to trust yourself, you've got to trust God, you have to trust others. Stop trying to control people. You cannot control people. That is the way to true happiness, to true joy, is to let go and really expound upon this. So the way that you know the people who heal better, the people that live better like, let's say, you go to a hospital and you have some type of injury or you have some type of disease the people that have faith, the people that believe in power of prayer and meditation, will heal faster and they will have also less complications because they know that there's almost like some type of superpower helping them, something that's greater than themselves.

Speaker 1: 9:08

So I encourage you, you've got to ask first the questions around trust and faith. Then you start asking the questions is what do you truly believe in? So many people get hung up on step two and three and that's why I say you got to just talk first about step two and three, about you know. Number one, just know that you need help. Number two this is you know, realizes that you know you're no longer alone, and that's why this always encourages.

Speaker 1: 9:34

So I encourage you to grow your spirituality so you connect and break off this spiritual disconnect, so you actually have spiritual connection.

Speaker 1: 9:47

And then, once you start living because right now I feel God in my blood it just feels just amazing to know that, no matter what happens, is that I know, that I'm just grateful and I think of the other pieces you know, start being more grateful, grateful about the parents that you did have, the family that you had. You know how you grew up and then what you can change, and just be grateful that you have the ability to change certain things in your life and to move forward things in your life and to move forward. So with that, I encourage you to ask those questions. Gain more trust, gain more faith, gain in spirituality, grow and realize God loves you, realize that higher power is within you and that there are so many people that are there to cheer you on, whether in the physical form, in terms of humans, as well as angels and spiritual beings. With that, we're going to conclude this episode of the 1% in Recovery and conclude Season 6.