Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
—Step 12 of the Twelve Steps
“You have cured me and given me life, my suffering has turned to health. It is you who have kept my soul from the pit of nothingness, you have thrust all my sins behind your back! The living, the living are the ones who praise you, as I do today.”
—Isaiah 38:16–17, 19
“What we have heard and known for ourselves must not be withheld from our descendents, but be handed on by us to the next generation.”
—Psalm 78:3–4
“Simon, Simon, you must be sifted like wheat, and once you have recovered, you in your turn must strengthen your brothers.”
—Luke 22:31–32
“What was given to you freely, you must give away freely.”
—Matthew 10:8
After trying to teach the Gospel for over forty years, trying to build communities, and attempting to raise up elders and leaders, I am convinced that one of my major failures was that I did not ask more of people from the very beginning. If they did not turn outward early, they tended never to turn outward, and their dominant concern became personal self-development, spiritual consumerism, church as “more attendance” at things, or to use the common phrase used among Christians “deepening my relationship with Jesus” (most of which demands little accountability for what you say that relationship is). Bill W seemed to recognize this danger early on.
Until people’s basic egocentricity is radically exposed, revealed for what it is, and foundationally redirected, much religion becomes occupied with rearranging deck chairs on a titanic cruise ship, cruising with isolated passengers, each maintaining his or her personal program for happiness, while the whole ship is sinking. I am afraid Bill Plotkin, psychologist and agent of cultural transformation, is truthful and fair when he says that we live in a “patho adolescent” culture.1 One of the few groups that name that phenomenon unapologetically is Alcoholics Anonymous. Read, for example, page 62 of the Big Book: “So our troubles are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves; and the alcoholic is an extreme example of self-will run riot, though he or she does not think so. Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kills us!” What courage it took him to talk this way.
Why can’t we all be that honest—and therefore truly helpful? Well, Step 12 found a way to expose and transform that pathological adolescence by telling us early on that we must serve others. It is not an option, not something we might eventually be “called” to after thirty-five religious retreats and fifty years of church services; it is not something we do when we get our act together. No, we do not truly comprehend any spiritual thing until we ourselves give it away. Spiritual gifts increase only by “using” them, whereas material gifts normally decrease by usage.
It is a karmic law of in and out, and what Jesus really meant when he sent the disciples out “to cast out devils, and to cure all kinds of diseases and sickness” (Matthew 10:1) or to “Go out to the world and proclaim the Gospel to all creation” (Mark 16:16). He knew we had to hand the message over before we really understood it or could appreciate it ourselves. Over forty years as a preacher myself, I have no doubt that it has been my attempts to preach, teach, and counsel others that have re-convinced and partially converted me!
Jesus was not talking about forming a new in-group, but transmitting a message that actually made a difference for people and for human society. As Tradition Eleven of A.A. will say, “Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion.” If it really heals, they will come, A.A. believes; whereas much of organized religion says in effect, “Come join our group, and maybe we will get to some actual healing some day.” Francis McNutt, trained in the Dominican “Order of Preachers,” calls it “the nearly perfect crime”: Although Jesus spent all of his ministry moving between preaching and healing, with the healing validating the preaching, most of church history has done loads of preaching and very little healing.2 Seminaries are set up to train teachers and preachers, not healers.
We would have done well to take seriously that most neglected Letter of James, which Luther called “the epistle of straw.” I personally believe that James, perhaps written by a brother of Jesus, or at least a head of the Jerusalem church, represents the more primitive message. At that point in our history, we have more lifestyle Christianity than doctrinal theories. James always insists on orthopraxy instead of mere verbal orthodoxy: “To listen to the word and not obey it is like looking at your own features in a mirror, and then, after a quick look, going off and immediately forgetting what you look like” (1:23–24). For James, to “actively put it into practice is to be happy in all that one does” (1:25), and, “If good works do not accompany faith, it is quite dead” (2:14). James is a unique apostle of the Twelve Step behavioral approach.
What makes me or anybody think that we really believe in Jesus, much less follow him, unless we somehow pass it on “to the least of the brothers and sisters” (Matthew 25:40) as he commanded? It is the spiritual equivalent of the First Law of Thermodynamics: Energy cannot really be created or destroyed, it is merely converted to different uses. What comes around must go around, or it does not come around again.
Inhalation and Exhalation
A person will suffocate if she just keeps breathing in, which might be exactly what has happened. The Jewish name for the Holy One, literally unspeakable, is “Yahweh,” which we now believe was an imitation of the sound of breathing in and breathing out.3 It could not be uttered but only breathed. The sacred name of God (Exodus 3:14) is already revealing the deepest pattern of all reality, which is the cycle of taking in and giving back out. It is the shape of all creation, which Christians called a Trinitarian circle of indwelling and outpouring, and was the very shape of God and of all reality formed in God’s image.4 It is all there, like a cosmic hidden code, at the very beginning and foundation of our Traditions.
I know of a fine priest who established a most amazing and effective parish in New York State. He told me that when new members would come to join, he would at the very first meeting say, “And for what service group can I sign you up?” It was an absolute condition of membership. No passive attendance was allowed there, and he would not accept any excuses either. I think of most Catholic parishes, where there are a group of stalwarts who come to Mass every day, hear a daily sermon, and for whom we turn on the lights and heat up the church. A recent study said that these are not the same people who do most of the ministry or volunteer work in those same churches. They just “attend” their daily spiritual event. Without realizing it, we are training them in taking and training them in not giving. No wonder we largely descended into mere civil religion and cultural Catholicism, with so many passive members.
A.A. would call this enabling unhealthy codependency, and there are special meetings just for such a sickness—for those who foster it, allow it, and profit from it. It is called Al–Anon. We must learn to distinguish between what looks like loving and what is actually loving for such codependent members of our churches. A.A. recognized that most people need tough love or they do not grow beyond their inherent selfishness. Passive membership creates not just passive dependency but also far too often passive-aggressive behavior—when such stalwart members do not get what they have become accustomed to. Every pastor knows what I am talking about. Many archconservative Catholics are great lovers of the papacy, until the pope talks about the evils of war, capitalism, capital punishment, or the rights of labor unions (In fact, they often refuse to admit that he even said such things!). That is the predictable passive-aggressive behavior you can expect when there has been no actual spiritual awakening.
“Having Had a Spiritual Awakening”
We now return to where it should all start—the necessity of “a vital spiritual experience,” or what Step 12 calls a spiritual awakening. It is the grand plan and program for human deliverance. Yes, God could have created us already awakened, but then we would have been mere robots or clones. If God has revealed anything about who God is, then it is enormously clear that God loves and respects freedom—to the final and full and riskiest degree. God lets evil take its course, and does not even stop Hitler or people who torture children. We will look at this more in the final chapter.
A good spirituality achieves two huge things simultaneously: It keeps God absolutely free, and not bound by any of our formulas, and it keeps us utterly free ourselves and not forced or constrained by any circumstances whatsoever, even human laws, sin, limitations, failure, or tragedy. “It was for freedom that Christ has set us free!” as Paul says (Galatians 5:1). Good religion keeps God free for people and keeps people free for God. You cannot improve on that.
Believe me, it is a full-time job. Jesus spent much of his time defending his healing ministry from observant religious authorities, and reminded them that “the Sabbath was made for humanity, not humanity for the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27). We all seem to bind up both God and one another inside of our explanations, our preferences, and even our theologies. The patterns never seem to change.When these two great freedoms meet, we have a spiritual awakening! And the world opens up beneath our feet and above our heads. We are in a differently shaped universe. It is not that God chooses some people to have a spiritual awakening, and others not. Awakening just happens, as certain as the dawn, when the two great freedoms meet. But keeping God free (from bad teaching, fear, and doubt) and getting you free (from selfishness, victimhood, and childhood wounds) is the big rub and the lifelong task. Like two super magnets, when the two freedoms are achieved simultaneously—even for a millisecond—they grab onto one another—and, as in nuclear fusion, an explosion always results. It is without doubt the change that changes everything. It is both divine lovemaking and human ecstasy.
For Bill Wilson, there is no real or long-lasting recovery, no real sobriety, much less “emotional sobriety,” without what he calls a “vital spiritual experience.” In the second appendix to the Big Book, he distinguishes between his own frequent use of the terms “spiritual awakening” and “vital spiritual experience.” He rightly clarifies that most awakenings are not “in the nature of a sudden and spectacular upheaval,” although even that is not infrequent. But usually, they are of the “educational variety because they develop slowly over a period of time.” One gradually “realizes that he [sic] has undergone a profound alteration in his reaction to life, and that such a change could hardly have been brought about by himself alone.” Nor could it “have been accomplished by years of self-discipline.” As usual, he is both helpful and brilliant here.
I was counseling a young married man recently, and he was very discouraged with himself. No matter what, he could not stop being irritated at others, biting off people’s heads, resenting every little thing. He said in desperation and anguish, “How can I change this? I don’t know how to be different!” He sounded like Paul: “What a wretched man I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24). Then I asked him if he was that way with his two little children, and without any hesitation he said, “No, not at all, hardly ever.”
You see the point, I am sure. The only way to be delivered from our “body of death” is a love that is greater, a deeper connection that absorbs all the negativity and irritation with life and with ourselves. Until we have found our own ground and connection to the Whole, we are all unsettled and grouchy. That man’s children do that for him, as children often do for men, and that is what a vital spiritual experience does for you too. Afterward, you know you belong, you are being held by some Larger Force, and for some illogical reason life feels OK and even good and right. You are glad to be aboard the ship called Life—every day and all the time.
Do you know why most of us are called to marriage, and even “saved” by marriage and children, even marriages that do not last forever? Marriage and parenting is made to order to steal you from your selfishness. It first of all reveals your selfishness to you (The first seven years after the honeymoon, I am told, are not easy.), and then if you stay in there, and fall into a love that is greater, it is usually much easier from there. Not without work, however, because the ego and the shadow do not “go gentle into that good night,” as Dylan Thomas would say.
Again and again, you must choose to fall into a love that is greater with both friends and children. It is all training for the falling into The Love that is the Greatest. All loves are a school of love, and their own kind of vital spiritual experience—until a lasting Relationship with the Real finally takes over. You learn how to “fall in love” by falling many times, and you learn from many fallings how also to recover from the falling. How else would you? But best of all, you only know what love is by falling into it, almost against your will, because it is too scary and too big to be searched out, manufactured, or even imagined ahead of time. Love, like God, “is a harsh and dreadful thing,” according to Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky. I wonder if that is why we both want but also avoid a vital spiritual experience?
Step 12 is saying something very risky, but very true, when it says that we will have this spiritual awakening “as the result of these steps.” Bill W knows well that we cannot program grace and mercy, so why does he put it this way? It is not that we create or earn the spiritual awakening by our inner work; and yet without the work of falling and letting go, it does not seem to happen. The two freedoms do not meet one another. I suspect Bill W knew that we were “Yankee-can-do” Americans, and we needed a program to get us going. He also knew we would know only afterward that it was all grace anyway.
A Spiritual Disease
Let me end by pointing out that addiction has been described as a moral weakness, as a simple lack of willpower, a cowardly inability to face life, and also a spiritual illness or disease. I, of course, strongly believe that it is the latter. Addiction is a spiritual disease, a disease of the soul, an illness resulting from longing, frustrated desire, and deep dissatisfaction—which is ironically the necessary beginning of any spiritual path.
The reason that A.A. has been more successful than most churches in actually changing people and helping people is that it treats addiction both spiritually and as an illness, rather than as a moral failure or an issue of mere willpower. We in the churches tend to treat everything in terms of personal culpability, which only elicits immense push-back and the passive-aggressive response that I mentioned earlier. A.A. says, in its own inspired way, that addicts are souls searching for love in all the wrong places, but still searching for love. Alcoholism is deeply frustrated desire, as are all addictions. The Twelve Step Program has learned over time that addiction emerges out of a lack of inner experience of intimacy with oneself, with God, with life, and with the moment. I would drink myself to oblivion too, or look for some way to connect with solid reality, if I felt that bereft of love, esteem, joy, or communion.
One helpful clarification is that many addicts tend to confuse intensity with intimacy, just as most young people do with noise, artificial highs, and overstimulation of any sort. Manufactured intensity and true intimacy are complete
opposites. In the search for intimacy, the addict takes a false turn, hopefully a detour, and relates to an object, a substance, an event, or a repetitive anything (shopping, thinking, blaming, abusing, eating) in a way that will not and cannot work for them. Over time, the addict is forced to “up the ante” when the fix does not work. You need more and more of anything that does not work. If something is really working for you, then less and less will satisfy you. On my good days, a grasshopper can convert me.
Good and nutritious food needs no fancy sauces, pretentious art gives way to the simple lines and textures of nature, quiet music satisfies deeply, a loving touch on the arm is better than a false orgasm, and after fasting, just a little bit of food gives one a jolt, a new sensation, and a sense that “it never tasted so good before!” When I return from my lenten hermitage of under-stimulation, it takes very little to totally delight me. It seems like everything has been painted with rich and fresh colors. The addict has actually denied himself this joy, a happiness that is everywhere and always, a simple feeling of being and being alive, when our very feet connect lovingly with the ground beneath us, and our head and hair with the undeserved air.
Addicts develop a love and trust relationship with a substance or compulsion of some kind, which becomes their primary emotional relationship with life itself. This is a god who cannot save. It is momentary intensity passing for the intimacy they really want, and it is always quickly over.
I am told that in the Hebrew Bible there is really only one sin, and the one and only sin is idolatry: making something a god that is not God. As the psalmist cleverly puts it, these idols “have mouths but speak not, eyes but see not, ears that hear not, noses that smell not, hands that do not touch, feet that will not walk. And their makers end up like them, and everyone who relies on them” (Psalm 115:5–8). There it is, with the same kind of blatant honesty that characterizes the Twelve Step Program. So, all of us, consumers, compulsives, and unconscious alike, don’t waste any more time or worship on gods that cannot save us. We were made to breathe the Air that always surrounds us, feeds us, and fills us. Some call it God.
With these twelve important breathing lessons, you now know for yourself that you can breathe, and even breathe under water. Because the breath of God is everywhere.