Step 2 2008

I find myself finishing my yearly step 2 meditation in the midst of the Lenten season. This month I have reflected on giving up my unhealthy dependencies that I may experience a renewed conversion. Last Sunday my spiritual literature was about the concept of God as The Living Water. I need fresh, cleam, pure water for restoration and regeneration. God is the "Living Water" which restores and regenerates my soul. Most of all with the Living Water comes inspiration, hope, love, meaning, and wholeness.

This Lent I gave up flavored drinks except for a glass of morning orange juice. Every time I have desired a flavored drink I have looked at the glass of water and thought of regenerating my dependence upon God. Then I take a refreshing drink of water. By renewing my faith in God I renew my restoration to sanity and increase the opportunity for inspiration.

I have used the image of a bottle of the Living Water as my spiritual focus point in the midst of selfishness, dishonesty, resentment and fear.

I also reflected a lot on the idea that reason is complimentary to faith.

This month I noticed that the "Daily Reflections" text did not delve into step 2 nearly as deeply as I thought or thought possible. I felt like I did not meditate as deeply as I would have liked to from the perspective of 12 step recovery.

The idea came to me to create a list of daily readings that focus specifically on the step. Perhaps I will do this with step 3.

What Happened?

"What happened to me"? How many times I found myself asking this question. Then I would focus on what happened looking for the key to solve the problem. Bu there was never a solution to be found, only causes for misery.

Later I found the key to solve the problem but I did not like it. This was the idea of a chronic, fatal, progressive disease that meant abstinence would be required.

Later I found that solving the spiritual malady was important but that the trauma of the past was not a requirement to have a spiritual malady. That some people who have childhood trauma and deprivation avoid a lifelong spiritual malady and some who have perfect childhood formation acquire a spiritual malady.

The only common factor is a separation from Source.

The Nature of The Disease

I just finished my January Step 1 Meditation and I had a renewed experience with the concept of the nature of the disease, that it is Chronic, Progressive, and Fatal.

The deaths of a couple of members of our fellowship confirmed this for me. I dedicate this post to Dave and Jennifer.

"These allergic types can never safely use alcohol in any form at all; and once having formed the habit and found they cannot break it"

Chronic - In medicine, a chronic disease is a disease that is long-lasting or recurrent. The term chronic describes the course of the disease, or its rate of onset and development. A chronic course is distinguished from a recurrent course; recurrent diseases relapse repeatedly, with periods of remission in between. As an adjective, chronic can refer to a persistent and lasting medical condition. Many chronic diseases require chronic care management for effective long-term treatment.

"We are like men who have lost their legs; they never grow new ones. Neither does there appear to be any kind of treatment which will make alcoholics of our kind like other men. We have tried every imaginable remedy. In some instances there has been brief recovery, followed always by a still worse relapse. Physicians who are familiar with alcoholism agree there is no such thing a making a normal drinker out of an alcoholic. Science may one day accomplish this, but it hasn't done so yet."

Progressive - A progressive illness is an illness that gradually progresses and changes mode, generally to the worse. In contrast, non-progressive illnesses are relatively constant.

"We alcoholics are men and women who have lost the ability to control our drinking. We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control. All of us felt at times that we were regaining control, but such intervals usually brief were inevitably followed by still less control, which led in time to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. We are convinced to a man that alcoholics of our type are in the grip of a progressive illness. Over any considerable period we get worse, never better."

Fatal - bringing death.

"The persistence of this illusion is astonishing. Many pursue it into the gates of insanity or death."

"Though a robust man at retirement, he went to pieces quickly and was dead within four years."


"Most of us have believed that if we remained sober for a long stretch, we could thereafter drink normally. But here is a man who at fifty-five years found he was just where he had left off at thirty. We have seen the truth demonstrated again and again: "Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic." Commencing to drink after a period of sobriety, we are in a short time as bad as ever. If we are planning to stop drinking , there must be no reservation of any kind, nor any lurking notion that someday we will be immune to alcohol."

Putting First Things First

Today we started the story "Gutter Bravado". I noticed that in this story there was no childhood dysfunction. There was no childhood abuse or tragedy. There was no deprivation or poverty. The story teller had a spiritual upbringing. Yet he still became an alcoholic.

I observed in this and other stories that people with both good and the bad backgrounds can develop a spiritual malady or the disease of alcoholism. All that is necessary is the physical factor and human nature. In Gutter Bravado the story teller has a well formed upbringing. There is no abuse, no trauma, no poverty, no disease, no tragedy, nothing except a rebellious nature.

I found that I have to always put powerlessness first. I always have to see the lack of power, choice and control. It doesn't matter how I got that way or what started the ball rolling. I must always address powerlessness first.

It's not that past dysfunction is not important. It is about addressing the present condition first. I might need to find resolution to the past eventually but it's not what is required to get sober. In fact I can't find resolution from the bondage of the past until I find freedom from my present bondage of self.

It's about putting first things first.

Responsibility

My biggest experience with responsibility in recovery is to take responsibility for my own recovery.

In my first attempts at working the program I took no responsibility for it. I would wait for my sponsor to call me before I would call him. I would get angry that my sponsor was a hypocrite because he didn't call me. I would put other life maintenance ahead of doing my step work, then I would do the work on my sponsor's time. I would wait until somebody called me and showed they "cared" before I would get back to meetings. I would go to meetings and wait for someone to inspire me before I would try to share and I would leave dissatisfied if the meeting was "sick". I would blame my wife for not making sure I had quiet time for prayer and meditation. Worst of all I would wait for someone to ask me if I wanted to go to carry the message at H&I and I rarely got to do this. Then I would complain that no one asked me to sponsor them.

I couldn't stay sober.

When I came back this last time I was so desperate that I was willing to change everything starting with my initiative to work the program.

I didn't wait for the "right" sponsor or the popular sponsor. I grabbed a guy with 30 days who I heard come out of the Big Book and I asked him if he could sponsor me. I prioritized my step work ahead of everything else, my wife and job and my hobbies to make sure I was ready when it was time to meet with my sponsor. I would call him ahead of time and make sure that he could meet and that he remembered.

I had to do this because I was a chronic addict.

Today it is my responsibility to make time for prayer, meditation and evening review. I am responsible to stay accountable to my sponsor. I am responsible for teaching my sponsees to work a program and rely upon their higher power not on me. I am responsible for doing my part in meetings to share from my experience with this program so that there are no bad meetings. I am responsible for seeking out H&I meetings and reaching out to those who are trying to get sober.

My parents taught me responsibility when I was a kid but I lost that character trait in the years of my disease. The program has given this back to me in my life. Today I am presented with a great deal of responsibility in a job that I love. Today I get to be responsible for the care and formation of 4 beautiful little children. Today I get to be responsible for being a good husband to a loving wife. Today I get to be responsible for a home and a few vehicles and some finances.

Most of the time today my motivation to work this program is because it inspires me. Sometimes I have to do it because I am a chronic addict.

The Spiritual Experience

The Spiritual Experience for me was like having my programming rewritten to become attuned to the directives of the Universe.

Sobriety was the reason I became willing but what I received was the key to the greatest life I could imagine.

The steps were like quantum shifts that combined to form the greater experience. The quanta sometimes came suddenly, the greater experience came over a longer period of time.

In the first step i had an awakening to the truth. I experienced total acceptance of my condition. The walls of denial and delusion were smashed.

In step 2 I experienced a reversal of paradigms in which reason became the construction of faith not the antithesis to it. It suddenly made more sense to believe than not to.

In step 3 I experienced power for the first time, power that removed the obsession to use.

Steps 4 through 9 got me reconnected to the stream of life and power began to flow through me.

Steps 10, 11 and 12 are where i experience growth and regeneration of the experience.

The experience happened in waves but is also something I must to keep active. It is "vital" in both the sense of "critical" and the sense of "alive".

My experience continues to be re-vitalized. Sometimes there's banging and heat and sparks fly, and clouds explode. It doesn't feel good while I'm being re-forged. But when I get through it is something new and entirely more effective.

Today I feel like God has given me everything I need, power, peace of mind and a sense of purpose. With that have come a wife, beautiful kids, great friends, and a good livelihood. The circumstances in my life are often difficult but my relationships and my acceptance are wonderful.

Oh yeah, and I don't have to shoot dope today.

What Caused the Spiritual Malady?

Lately I've been looking at the degree to which we focus on the early dysfunction of our lives as the events that shaped our disease.

The early parts of our stories often contain of lot of dysfunction that may serve to point out the spiritual malady was there before drinking ever happened. Perhaps this is a good reason to discuss this.

However, just as with reasons to drink, we don't need bad circumstances to have a spiritual malady, just something between us and God. This can be something bad or too much of something good, or just an absence of a spiritual life.

We all want to look at the circumstances and glorify them as the cause. perhaps this is because it is a distraction from looking at the absence of God in our lives. If we look at the absence of God more as the problem then this would make the connection to God More important.

Perhaps I should develop my story around this idea. I should show how there was this time when all was right in the world, all was complete, all was love. Then my faith in the divine changed and my will became more important than God.

When I was a little child I had complete faith in God, my parents and in Love. I didn't have the doubts about the existence or Power of God. I was obedient to my parents and they were the control limits for my will. Love for others was open, easily given and untainted by lust and narcissism.

I always attributed the loss of this to growing out of the naivete of childhood. But naivete of itself was not the reason for this blissful state. The real reason was the loss of faith, control, and connection to others.

The 12 Step process helps me get back to the state of connection to God that I had as a child.