Conscious Contact

When I entered the rooms, I skated through the first three steps without giving my higher power much thought. As those months became years and I experienced bouts of sobriety, I came to think of my higher power as a three-legged stool: the program that provided me with a recovery community, meditation to practice being present for my life, and therapy for insights into my past and present.

Over time, my sense of my higher power evolved to a simple binary: things that lead me towards health and healing represent my higher power, and things that draw me towards my negative characteristics and self-defeating behavior are my addiction. When I act out or just spend time in my middle circle, it becomes easier and easier to spiral into further acting out. But when I am solidly in my outer circle, I am naturally feeding my own recovery, and that creates mental clarity that makes it easier to open myself up to additional healthy behaviors.

Still, this kind of black and white thinking is not always helpful, and so, on my best days, I try to let everything in, with the possibility that anything that comes my way could be an expression of my higher power.

A couple of weeks ago, I left work early to take a long bike ride. In the first couple of hours, I listened to a Tara Brach podcast on anger and transformation (youtube), and then joined a regular group accountability call. After that I switched to music (spotify), which is a very direct and powerful voice of my higher power.

When I came off the Forest Preserve trail and headed home, I was feeling strong, healthy, happy. Counting Crows were singing (youtube), “daylight fading, come and waste another year, all the anger and the eloquence are bleeding into fear,” which reminded me of what I experienced in my fourth step. As I passed the Wright-Way pet adoption agency, the parking lot was filled with kids and dogs, and I could see the excitement for those kids and those dogs that were finding each other, finding their family. All of a sudden, I was flooded with tears of joy, at the way my body felt, at the deep meaning of the music, at the happiness I could see around me, and the happiness that I could feel within myself.

For a long time in recovery, I was afraid that I’d never feel anything as powerful as my addiction. I know now that there is true joy and meaning in my life to rival my past acting out. My recovery community is the foundation and home for that. My higher power is all around me, and I’m grateful to experience that as a gift of my recovery.

-Anonymous

How Do I Create Conscious Contact With My Higher Power?

In step one I realized that I was powerless over the past and over the future, that my mind wanted to control the past through resentment and fantasy, and the future by cunning manipulation. People who didn't give me what I wanted in the past were demonized and those who had something I wanted in the future were seen as targets.

The only step I have to do perfectly is the first step, and the only time I can take the first step is right here and right now in this perfect moment.

In step two I didn’t really come to believe much of anything, as a matter of fact I found that belief itself was the problem. I believed that there were good people and bad people and that there was a right way to do things etc. What I came to see, as opposed to believe, was that belief itself was causing suffering in my life and in the lives of others. I also came to see that there was a way out as evidenced by the people around me who were completely changed through the process. Who instead of believing took action. 

You can act your way into right thinking but you can’t think your way into right acting.

In step three again I didn’t have to believe in anything really, more so I just had to commit to following these principles: I committed to not causing others harm, to explore what it means to bring higher power into my life and to continue in my commitment to deepening that connection. Step three is a day by day, minute by minute commitment to working the program and surrendering what I want for what might serve others.

If you’re going through hell, keep going.

In step four I got clear about what things in my life were getting in the way of keeping this commitment. How the obstacles I had put in the way of my connection to these higher ideals were of my own making. These obstacles also kept me from a better way of life, and from bringing the promises in. I saw how through keeping my step three commitment I might stop doing that.

If you’re thinking without writing you only think you’re thinking.

In step five I opened up about this stuff to another person, opening up my life for the spirit to enter through my connection, both real and symbolic, to this other person. I experienced the emptying of my thoughts out on the table to be sorted through with the help of someone who has done the same. As I cleared the boxes away from the windows and sorted them through, the sunlight of the spirit could shine through. Together in the light of HP both myself and my sponsor could see my wreckage with new eyes.

Together we heal / You’re only as sick as your secrets

In step six, through the help of my sponsor, I was given the blessing of some insight into all of the ways that my patterns of behavior had stacked those boxes in front of the windows. How on a day to day basis I put up blockages between myself and HP. I saw how I did this through my choice of behaviors that caused myself and others pain and suffering, and how I still do. 

More will be revealed

In step seven I reaffirmed my commitment to clearing away this wreckage by not living in those patterns. I asked this higher power who’s light shone brighter in my life, “Take these things away, I don’t want them anymore.” The hurt, the pain, the desire, the lust, the “never enough” was being replaced with something beyond words. My cup was being emptied.

Let go, let god

In step eight, I pretty much just took my step four list and started clearing out more wreckage. That connection became stronger and stronger. Moment by moment I could see and feel something… Maybe some call it God, or god, or good orderly direction, or the sunlight of the spirit… Words don’t really describe it, whatever it is… Really it’s the words and the concepts that I got attached to that created all of these problems in the first place. I made the list and again, through the help of my sponsor, I became willing to connect more deeply with the ideals of the program, of the steps, and of what I found to be my most purposeful way of being.

Progress not perfection

In step nine I went out and made amends with people I had harmed, many of whom had harmed me. I started to see this “god” in their eyes, in their faces, in the deep acknowledgement that the pain and suffering of what passed between us was experienced by both of us and that we didn’t have to carry it anymore. In putting it down that connection was deepened. God for me is a giving away, an emptying of the cup, a release from worldly things. I’m still stuck on step 9, but I work 10, 11 and 12 regularly as well and these also keep me connected to HP.

My side of the street.

My step 10 inventory leaves those burdens on the page, or with the good folks who I am lucky enough to share my inventory with. It keeps those boxes out of the windows, stored on the shelves, and gets rid of the things that don’t serve me. Funny when I’m working step 10 daily, I don’t carry much resentment in my heart, mostly it's just love and peace day by day.

H.A.L.T - Hungry, angry, lonely, tired.

Step eleven encourages me to deepen my connection in a very purposeful way. To set time aside every day for peace and stillness. To allow my body and mind to become transparent to the light and to restate my commitment once again to continue to do the work. In step 11 I deeply examine the objects of my resentment and desire and I ask, “God may things be exactly as they are, help me stop fighting.” As I am so won to do.

Program does slowly and permanently what acting out does quickly and temporarily.

These steps together give me a vehicle with which I can pass into a heavenly realm beyond pain and suffering where I can just be. But I cannot stay in heaven forever; I must return to earth to do my work here. I repeat the first 11 steps and spread the joy and connection I have found by working the 12th step and giving it away to other people. 

I can only keep what I give away.

Notice I didn’t talk much about my feelings here… Because:

Feelings aren’t facts.

-Anonymous