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Looking for God in a House of Mirrors

Kyle T

They say don’t make any big decisions in your first year of sobriety, but no decision in life is bigger than what is proposed when we come to Step 3. We are asked to make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God was we understand God. If you’ve ever really stopped to contemplate that, it’s a bold suggestion to completely rearrange our way of life. This can be, at first examination, an overwhelmingly metaphysical and existential proposition, but its rudiments are actually quite simplistic. Our will and our life can be translated to our attitudes and behaviors, or thoughts and actions, if you will. But what exactly does that mean, and how can a person live up to such a tall order?

A God of our understanding starts with the faith that brought us physically in to SLAA. That act in itself was proof that we believed in something better, a higher form of living, a reality that existed beyond what we had hitherto experienced. Our lives were small and we wanted to expand them; we were in tremendous pain and torment, so we took a risk and stepped into an SLAA meeting. Although it doesn’t seem like much, its a watershed moment in the trajectory of our lives. It’s an act that can potentially disrupt our entire way of life as we know it. But I’ve heard it said that SLAA is the last house on the block, and God is the last room in that house.

I had fallen into disgrace because of my sex and love addiction, and I sought something to restore me. I felt a longing to reclaim my innocence, and so I dragged myself into SLAA to begin the process. That’s “God of my understanding” right there in action, because at face value, I had no interest in becoming moral, I just wanted to unknot the knot inside my chest that felt like it was getting ever tighter. I would still act out if there wasn’t something inside of me telling me its wrong. That voice never used to be there until, one day, it just appeared. I believe that’s my higher power working through me. It’s giving me new directions and pointing me towards a new path, one I never knew existed.

What perplexes and vexes me is when I relapse—especially when I don’t want to relapse. I wonder how I can go from feeling the divine presence of God one day, to shamelessly acting out the next day. It reminds me of when I was a child—my favorite carnival game was the House of Mirrors. I don’t know why I loved it quite so much—I just loved getting lost, mixed up, turned around. I liked the idea of being trapped in the House of Mirrors forever. I remember so vividly a young boy around my age at the time, maybe eight or nine, running towards what he thought was finally the exit and slamming right up into a clear panel of plexiglass and falling over. I don’t know why I was so satisfied with that—maybe because I liked the idea of others being trapped in the House of Mirrors with me forever. I guess the representation of the mirrors is the idea that the only one watching me is me, and there’s no higher power in the first place. Sometimes what I thought was the divine inspiration of God was just another mirror. Sometimes I know I can see the exit and I don’t want to take it. Sometimes it feels safer being lost in the House of Mirrors.

I learned that it is because it is easy to fall back into old patterns and behaviors. It takes great effort and strength to stay out of what I’ve come to know as my default mode. My default mode is where I slip back into old selfish thinking and behaving. It starts with little things like being too important to fellowship or make phone calls, skipping meetings, showing up late to meetings, being disruptive, clamoring for attention at work, putting my own educational and professional agendas in front of recovery, thinking I’m the be all, end all of the universe, and seeing everyone else as obstacles in my way. A major defect of mine is elitism. I see very rich people and I want to be part of this exclusive culture I’ve projected onto them. I feel like I’ve been left out of Paradise when I see the way the very rich live. Then I feel like God doesn’t love me as much as God must love them, since they’ve received such lavish gifts. Then I feel like the only way I’m going to make is it without God’s help since God isn’t giving me what I want—my attitude turns from trusting God, to turning completely against God. For some reason, I believe that if I’m not part of the elite culture, I won’t attract a good mate, and I won’t produce strong offspring, and my existence is weak and meaningless. Character defects go deep. But when I’m at that level of fear, I’m apt to act out.

Up to this point in the Big Book we have explored the nature of the illness and the insanity that precedes acting out in our addiction. Our insanity stems from “strange mental blank spots” wherein we are seemingly unconscious of the disease. But how do we get lulled back into such a state of unconsciousness? My experience is that unconsciousness always proceeds from states of great selfishness. My aforementioned default mode of thinking is when I’m slipping back into unconsciousness. Before you know it, I’m chugging coffee while speeding in my car, honking at pedestrians and bikers, talking on the phone at the same time, thinking nine or ten moves ahead, and only focused on what I need to accomplish for me to advance myself. I’m applying to several new jobs, working out twice a day, buying new clothes, looking at everything that needs to be improved. At this point, acting out is looming behind me like a thunderstorm. I cannot survive in this state of insanity, and I will inevitably return to acting out.

I have come to understand by this point that my disease is rooted in selfishness and self-centeredness, and that my salvation lies in my constant thought of others and how I may be of service to them.

This is no small task in a culture where selfishness and self seeking are the primary driving force of our economy and individual livelihoods. This goes back to my concerns about security, elitism, and prestige. However, I believe what happens in my pursuit of self is that, if I chase something long enough—be it money, prestige, reputation, or power—it eventually concludes in acting out in sex and love addiction; because whatever I pursue that is not God is ultimately bound to fail me, leave me feeling empty, and I’ll need that insatiable yearning for a refill alleviated.

Or what happens is, during my mad selfish pursuits, I acquire what I was chasing, and it fails to provide a lasting euphoria and I become afraid of the evaporation of the good feeling, so I end up acting out to hold on to my petty accomplishment—even if the accomplishment is something highly laudable like professional success or educational advancement—if it is not rooted in unselfishness and service, it’s bound to leave me feeling empty.

I find that my default mode is to use my successes and advancements not as ways to promote community but to deflect community so I can be on my own. Hence the need to be a financial elite.

This gets confusing, I know. I spend a lot of my day gauging where I’m at in my selfish pursuits. Sometimes I play the game where I’m balancing the Spiritual Checking Account. I will do a series of good deeds so I can go ahead and justify my selfishness. I’ve found that this pattern is particularly risky, as hypocrisy always is.

Two lines from Bill’s Story are important summations of my experience with feeling the presence of God—the Nearness of my Creator, and what is the lynchpin of step three.

On pp. 12 in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous, Bill is recounting how he came to experience a God of his understanding. He writes, “The real significance of my experience in the (Winchester) Cathedral burst upon me. For a brief moment, I had needed and wanted God. There had been a humble willingness to have Him with me—and He came. But soon the sense of his presence had been blotted out by worldly clamors, mostly those within myself. And so it had been ever since. How blind I had been.”

I have had stretches of sobriety where I felt the undeniable presence of God in my life—during which my sex and love addiction seemingly vanished; I could say no to every temptation that came my way, and I walked a free, morally upright man. But I will add that it is scary breathing in all that fresh air and feeling that surge of health because I am used to darkness, insanity, chaos. Hence remaining in the House of Mirrors, rather than exiting to the sunlight.

Then there have been times where I have felt an absence of God in my life—during which depression came to me in waves, nothing gave me solace, the meaningless of life haunted me like a spector, the world seemed a cruel and unjust place, rife with random acts of violence, with little to no rhythm or purpose. During those times, acting out and other character defects become particularly rampant for me. My old cynical default mode became my primary way of thinking. Nothing has been so painful as making the capricious and unreliable nature of my mind my definition of God—like looking into the mirror and believing the only God is the man who stares right back at me.

Another line from Bill’s Story, from pp. 13, describes what a God-centered person looks like, in thought and behavior. “Common sense would thus become uncommon sense. I was to sit quietly when in doubt, asking only for direction and strength to meet my problems as He would have me.”

This hopeful line proves to me that I don’t have to run around life unconsciously clamoring for this and that, a veritable trainwreck of selfishness and self seeking. The scariest part about my selfishness is that I’m the last person to find out about it. But everyone else can easily see my agenda, which is why pp. 60 goes on to say, “The first requirement is that we be convinced that any life run on self-will can hardly be a success. On that basis we are almost always in collision with something or somebody, even though our motives are good.”

I must test my God consciousness on a daily basis, and ask myself this question when I’m starting to feel manic, depressed, anxious, excited, or angry—Am I being selfish? If I’m feeling uncomfortable, nervous, anxious, or if I’m hit with a strong inclination to start acting out, it’s almost guaranteed that my behavior is along a selfish plane, rather than an altruistic plane. When I’m in the mode of “What can I get for myself” rather than “What can I bring to the stream of life,” I’m going to be met with a hard fall.

There is great news in Step 3. We no longer have to run the show. We no longer have to slip into bouts of cynical nihilism or social condemnation. We no longer have to scramble about with a mindset of competitive Darwinism. We can align ourselves with the ease and simplicity of life with a God in it. We can catch ourselves in negativity and insanity and re-align ourselves with what we know—and what we have always inherently known—is good and right and just. It’s a beautiful thing to reclaim one’s innocence. The world is easier going, the flux of life isn’t so overwhelming and frightening, resources seem bountiful rather than scarce, people seem friendlier—and you may not even realize it, but you’re living in the stream of life, the stream of God consciousness we’ve been desiring our entire lives, what we’ve been looking for in sex and love addiction; that it was available all along, so long as we remain in a state of awareness, rather than our default mode of going through life asleep, dreaming we’re awake. Or, if you will, remaining forever trapped in the House of Mirrors.

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