Spiked Spine

Middle-of-the-night impromptu blog post:

I awoke from this dream moments ago. In it I was stopped by the police as I walked down Clayton street in downtown Athens with a spike (think: railroad tie) sticking out of my lower back, embedded in my spine. And even though they insisted I stand competely still and wait on an ambulance, the spike in my back wasn't why they stopped me to begin with. They stopped me because they believed I was drunk and in possession of drugs. While we waited on the approaching ambulance they wanted me to submit to a breathilizer and drug test. (I know, but its a dream so bear with them being so insensitive to my more pressing problem of that moment)

The ambulance came and I said I needed for them to wait just a few minutes while I stepped behind a building to get high before being put on a stretcher and transported to the ER for surgery. They told me one more step could paralyze me due to the position of the spike stuck in my spine. I told them I would take the risk and to please wait on me.

Then i woke up. You're probably thinking, "Well obviously that was just a nightmare. No one in their right mind would really take such a huge risk just to get high..." That would be insanity, right?

Right, no one in their right mind would make such a choice. It is an insane scenario. And, yeah it was a dream so perhaps a bit over the top in the details... but actually not THAT unrealistic when you're talking about addiction. My dream-self, hobbling along with a railroad tie jutting out of my back, didn't see the insanity of it at all. In fact, I'm willing to bet next year's salary that had I not woken up, and had the paramedics and police allowed it, I'd have slipped behind that building before getting into the ambulance. Pretty much guarantee it, actually. And I would have thought it a perfectly logical decision.

Step two: We came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

I’m Maze and I’m an addict.

Jesus, Buddha, and Allah Walk into a Bar...

A friend who is not in recovery and not personally familiar with the 12 Steps asked me how the whole “God as we understand God” thing works. As in, Step 3: “We turned our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood [God] him.” How can a roomful of people meet regularly and discuss God (among other things) and not all be on the same page about who God even is? If one person defines God as Jesus, and the person to her left defines God as the Tao, and the person on her right isn't even yet sure he believes in God, how does that work?

It’s a good question. 

I don’t know that I have the definitive answer to the question, but I have my suspicions and my opinion as to how that works. And let me just say that I’m extremely grateful that it does indeed work as well as it does or I would have walked away many years ago… like, at the very beginning of the journey. Hey, wait, I did walk away several times - and it was largely because I thought “they” were telling me I had to believe in “their” God. I wasn’t interested in any group telling me what I had to believe about God. By the way, there truly is no “they” and no one has once told me that a) this is God and this is how you need to believe, or b) your belief in God is wrong. I find that incredibly amazing, given the fact that I’ve met thousands of recovering addicts and alcoholics in 12 Step programs, each with their own personal belief about God. Now, after the meeting, people gather with those who share similar concepts of God, I'm sure. But while in the meetings, for that hour, it doesn't matter.

There is a reading in Narcotics Anonymous called, “We Do Recover.” In the meeting I go to it is read at the end of each meeting. It goes like this: When at the end of the road we find that we can no longer function as a human being,  either with or without drugs, we all face the same dilemma:  What is there left to do? We can either go on to the bitter ends: Jails, institutions, or death, or, find a new way to live. In years gone by, very few addicts ever had this last choice. Today, we are more fortunate. For the first time in man’s entire history there is a simple way proving itself in the lives of many addicts. It is available to us all. This is a simple, spiritual – not religious – program known as Narcotics Anonymous.

That last line is the key. It is a spiritual program, not a religious program. There is a huge difference. Religions tend to dictate what you should believe, or at the very least, guide you toward a certain dogma or belief system. 12 Step programs do not do this. At all. In fact, the steps encourage every person to figure it out for themselves. That’s pretty much all the guidance you get: Figure it out. Well, and this: Step 2 says, “We came to believe in a Power Greater than ourselves who could restore us to sanity.” So one's concept of a Higher Power should be big enough for that. And there is this: Step 11 says, “We continued to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood him, praying only for the knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out.” This reminds one of how important it is to maintain the spiritual connection that one has built. But that's it. Those are the instructions, those are the only 3 steps that mention God (or Higher Power) specifically (Steps 2, 3, and 11). The rest is up to the individual. I find that simplicity incredibly personal and altogether beautiful.

I’ve shared before that I tried using the God of my childhood, or the Higher Power of my parents, or the concept of God that someone else had formed, and it didn’t work. How could it, really? If I am going to rely on a Higher Power, on God, to keep me clean and fill the spiritual void that is left after I quit getting high – and probably the very void that I tried to fill in the first place once I started using drugs and alcohol – hadn’t I better believe in that concept of God that I'm going to be relying so heavily on? Hadn’t I better trust in that Higher Power? 

Since I kept hitting a wall as I came up on steps 2 and 3, the only thing I knew to do when I got clean this time around, since past attempts didn’t exactly work out for me, was to throw out every single thing I ever believed about God, every single thing I was ever taught about God, every single thing I thought I knew about God… and start from scratch. And that is what I did. In doing so, I discovered new concepts and theologies I had never been exposed to. I added back, slowly, over time, and with meticulous vetting, many things I was taught about God growing up, and I’ve left behind other things I once thought I believed, and I’ve left behind much of the new concepts and theologies I’ve learned along the way. It has been a long process, and it is a process that will never end. However, I am so very, very grateful that I found a safe place to do this because I don’t know that I would have had the courage or the determination to do it without the support and complete acceptance of others doing the same thing for themselves.

Most people in 12 Step meetings don’t talk in specifics when they talk about what they believe about God. What I mean by that is that most people don’t name their God when talking in meetings. They actually do share very specifically about what God means to them, what God does in their lives, how their Higher Power is evidenced in their recovery, and about the vital connection they have with God. But there is no need to give God another name, like Jesus, or Buddha, or Allah, or the Holy Spirit, or the Great Spirit, or the Tao. Naming God is not the point. Figuring out what I, as an individual, believe about God, is the point. And in the end – or for that matter, at the beginning and every step along the way from beginning to end - it all comes down to me and God, anyhow. 

That’s the difference between spirituality and religion, in my opinion. In religion, it usually matters very much what you believe and what I believe and in those similarities. In spirituality, unencumbered by any particular religion, neither the similarities nor the differences are going to influence me, demand anything of me, cause disagreement or tension, drive me away, or turn me off, because they just don’t come into the conversation during that safe, sacred hour during a 12 Step meeting. 

And for this reason, it works... it really does work.

I’m Maze and I’m an addict.

Circling Around God

“I am circling around God, around the ancient tower, and I have been circling for a thousand years, and I still don’t know if I am a falcon, or a storm, or a great song.”   –Ranier Maria Rilke

When I was young I went to Sunday school every week.  As I got older, I started going to church camp and various youth conventions with the church youth group. It seemed that many other children (and later, teens) didn’t have the questions about God that I did. Or perhaps they just didn’t ask them aloud, as I did. Still today, I question what others seem to accept so readily. Is it a lack of faith? Is it doubt? Is it an unquenchable thirst that nothing quite satisfies? I’ve never been able to say, “This is what I believe, without a doubt.” God has always seemed to be fluid and just out of reach, making it impossible for me to commit to any definitive, unchanging concept of God. Nothing is quite clear to me when it comes to spiritual matters. As a young adult, I studied philosophy and many various religions. Later still, once I got into recovery and began studying and applying the 12 Steps in my life, I adopted bits and pieces of all I had learned and incorporated those bits and pieces into my life: a good dose of Taoism, fragments of Buddhism, and the closest thing to a constant in my seeking: the ever-present foundation of Christianity.

For some reason, before “coming to believe that a Power greater than me could restore me to sanity” (Step 2), I believed that there was something wrong with my questioning, my uncertainty, that maybe there was something wrong with me.  I believed that unless and until I could solidly and completely, once and for all, claim something as spiritual Truth, latch on to some version or unchanging concept of God, then I was doing something wrong. I no longer believe this, though. I have come to realize, and accept, that I am a seeker. I will never stop questioning, never stop seeking, never remain stagnant, never be satisfied with what I can see on the surface. I accept that I will never, ever, ever have the answers to the questions. And that no longer feels wrong. In fact, it doesn’t even feel uncomfortable. As Rilke describes in the quote above, I know that I am destined to continue circling around God, circling around the Truth, looking at God from this angle today, and that angle tomorrow… and even if I were to circle for a thousand years, I still wouldn't know. And that is okay. That is more than okay – just ask Paul: “For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as I have been known.”  –1 Corinthians 13:12

For me, the circling, the seeking God, is the one thing that is a constant, the one thing I know for sure, without a doubt, has been unchanging throughout my life.

I’m Maze. I’m an addict.