12SR: Do I Need to Believe in God or Spirituality to get Sober?

Is spirituality a non-negotiable cornerstone on the path to sobriety? Many seem to think so, but our latest discussion peels back the layers of this assumption. Through a blend of personal narratives and insights from the fundamental texts of Alcoholics Anonymous, we illuminate the role of spirituality in the journey of recovery. While I embarked on my own path with little spiritual inclination, the experience in the rooms of a 12-step program introduced a profound shift from the material world to a previously unimagined spiritual dimension. 

This episode isn't just a conversation; it's a passage through the four dimensions of existence, guiding listeners from the tangible to the transcendental. We uncover the transformative power of discovering a higher power within oneself, rather than in the external world. My personal evolution serves as a testament to the possibility of change, offering hope and a new perspective to those at any stage of their recovery journey. Tune in to find out how embracing a spiritual dimension could be the key to unlocking a life free from addiction.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

The question of whether one needs to be spiritual or not in order to get sober or clean or free, in order to engage in recovery is an interesting one. It's called a spiritual program and there's a lot of reference to higher powers and God. So it would be easy for one to think that unless I'm spiritual I can't engage with this program. In my own experience, when I arrived to the rooms of a 12 step program, I could definitely say that my life was not spiritual at all, and if you consider there being the spiritual world and there being the material world, my life very much existed in the material world. As I've come to understand it, the material world is concerned with people, places and things. It's concerned with myself, my drinking, the relationships in my life, money, all of the things of the world that we consider to be material. The spiritual world I really didn't have much experience with beyond conceptual. I'd obviously heard about high powers and gods and different religions and faiths, but it wasn't something that I'd ever really engaged with. The fact of the matter is that, through my own experience, I wasn't getting on very well in the material world. My relationship with people, places and things wasn't bringing me much satisfaction and certainly wasn't bringing me much relief. And in order to be able to cope with the experience of myself and of other people, I would abuse particular substances, which is obviously what led me to the Rooms of a 12-Step Program. So it was explained to me that, in order to be free from the malady that I was experiencing, I would have to embark on a spiritual process in order to introduce this new realm or dimension into my life. In AA, which is the initial 12-Step Program, the author, bill Wilson, talks about being rocketed into the fourth dimension of existence, of which we hadn't even dreamed, and that fourth dimension of existence is this spiritual dimension, and he talks about having not even dreamed of it prior to the experience. So if you're new and the whole spiritual concepts seem far-fetched and unrelatable to you, then this is actually perfectly natural. You're not really meant to have much experience or understanding about all of this stuff in the beginning. The process itself is the one which is meant to bring this into your experience.

Speaker 1: 3:22

So, just sticking with this idea of four dimensions, if we get rocketed into the fourth dimension, the question is, what are the other three? To put it simply, the first one is physical. This is the world of people places things alcohol, drugs, money, anything physical. The second is of the mind. It's your thoughts, your logic, your judgments, your resentments, your opinions, its language. It's anything that needs to be spoken about or explained. The third is a little bit tricky to put exactly into words, but it's your self-concept, it's your emotions, it's your desires. It's what is often referred to in Eastern traditions as the ego, even Western traditions also, but the ego is often also very much tied in with the mind in the West. Anyways, it's mostly to do with your perception of yourself, your relationships and your individual desires. And then this fourth dimension, the one of which, in the beginning we haven't even dreamed, is something that exists outside of all of that.

Speaker 1: 4:36

I'll make a separate tape to go more and more deeply into this stuff, but essentially the idea, the philosophy, is that prior to engaging in the 12-step process, we're very much living only in these first three dimensions and it's not going very well. So physically it's not going well, mentally it's not going well and emotionally it's not going well, and so really the process is just a process of dealing somewhat with those first three dimensions and allowing this fourth dimension to be introduced. It's very easy to get caught up on the ideas of God and a higher power as being something very outside of ourselves and very ethereal and religious. Again, in the AA Big Book, which is sort of the foundation text of all 12-step recovery, they have a chapter called we Agnostics, which really goes into the higher power and God stuff. Towards the end of it it says very specifically where we're going to find God and it doesn't say we're going to find God out in the heavens or in a particular religion. It says, in the last analysis, we're going to find God deep down within ourselves and in fact that it's only there where he may be found.

Speaker 1: 5:59

They go on to talk about how we have to clear away the blockages between us and this higher power that lives within us and how the 12-step process is essentially a process that is trying to do that. It's trying to clear the wreckage and the blockage and the obstacles between this inner being that rests within you that can help to guide your life. And really, when you look at the 12-step process as a spiritual system, as a system of evolution, of a system of raising your consciousness, as a system of going from low energy to higher energy, it's very much the same as any other spiritual system. It's an effort at transforming this sort of lower energy, this stuck energy, and allowing it to flow. So if in the beginning you're a bit hung up on the concept of God or of a higher power, if it seems so much unrelatable to you, this is an effort to sort of bring it very much within you and to say that forget for a moment all of the external concepts and higher powers and things like that and just try to be open to this idea of these four dimensions of yourself Nothing outside of yourself, just yourself. How the first dimension is this body that we have. How the second dimension is this mind that we have. How the third dimension is our perception of ourselves, of this me, of this personality, of these emotions and desires, and that there is possibly, even though you may not recognize it, there is this possibility that there is this fourth dimension, which is referred to as our essence, our awareness, anything that you want to call it, this inner being that dwells within us, all of this kind of stuff. And even though you may not feel that identified with that part of yourself, if you can just be open to the idea that it might be there underneath all of the crap and all of the stuff that we've accumulated along the way. It might be buried underneath there, and so having the willingness to engage in a process which is going to try and help us to develop a relationship with that is really the beginning of engaging in a 12 step process and really has a lot to do with steps two and three. So I hope this is helpful.

Speaker 1: 8:36

I wanted to address a little bit about what is spirituality, what is this higher power stuff? Do you need to be spiritual in order to engage in a 12 step process and where do these ideas sort of come from, historically, within the 12 step philosophy? As always, these are just my thoughts and experiences and understandings. They're not affiliated with anything. I just make them in an effort to be helpful so that you might have a new understanding or perception in your own life that helps you to engage further with this process, which can bring so much peace and freedom. So that's all for today. If you have any other questions, please let me know. If, where you listen to this you can't comment, head over to YouTube and put in a comment there. Happy to answer any questions. If you get anything from this, please like it and share it so that other people can find it. And that's all for today, thank you.