Spirituality; Letting Our Lives be Changed

However we might understand the specifics of spirituality, at its core is the idea we are both finite and transcendent. We each have a significant core that is connected to what is beyond us. 

For me, spirituality is my experience of connection with our Creator, specifically as I find it in the teachings and way of Jesus of Nazareth. 

Essential to healthy recovery is spirituality.

And essential to healthy spirituality is surrender.

If we think of surrender as relinquishing control, it sounds like loss. Subtraction. Our life now is less. 

But if we understand our life as belonging to One beyond us, not just ourselves, we can think of surrender as giving way to this Other. 

Healthy spirituality always gives us more than it asks of us. Surrender that is truly spiritual, that leads to our healing, is reciprocal. We give and we get. 

Spirituality, Control and Effort

Most of us struggle to some degree with control. Especially those of us who are addicts. 

The whole payoff of addiction is that we engage in something we can control and for an element of gratification—even if it is only blocking our emotions, numbing our experience. We are exercising some control when life has seemed out of our control. 

It’s a lie, actually, but it works for us. Until it doesn’t.

We have to decide to give up control of whatever is dragging us down. We surrender those behaviors.

But relinquishing control doesn’t mean giving up. Surrender doesn’t mean we quit exerting ourselves. It doesn’t mean resignation. 

We still have opportunity. We still maintain effort.

There’s an old recovery slogan, ‘let go and let God’. We can misinterpret that to mean surrendering means not only quit worrying and controlling, but quit trying. 

Better is ‘easy does it, but do it’.

Healthy surrender is not blindly accepting everything that happens. Rather we keep working at what we need to work at, and we surrender what we cannot control.

We also surrender our expectations.

We take the right steps, work a program, use spiritual tools, and surrender the expectations of what will happen as a result.

We don’t always realize it, but too often our approach to spirituality is a subtle attempt to manipulate God. It’s foolish to engage in spiritual practices to get God’s favor and blessings. Also, it’s not necessary.

We don’t engage in spirituality to affect God. We use spirituality to affect us.

We engage in our spiritual work not to get God to bless us, but to open ourselves to receive what our Loving God already wants to do for us.

Surrender is how we open ourselves to a two-way exchange. Without it, we circle a hellish cul-de-sac of our own making, going round and round and not getting anywhere.

Spiritual Engagement

Spirituality, then, is about both letting go and taking up. 

How we pursue spiritual development will be determined to some extent by what our working definition of spirituality is. 

If, like me, your spirituality is formed by believing in and following Jesus, your spiritual practices will include things like reading the Bible, focusing on the Gospels, engaging in Christian worship, reading devotional literature, sharing life with others in the same pursuit and acts of service, the practical outworking of a life of love. 

Three of the most basic practices—and absolutely essential for healthy recovery—are prayer, mindfulness and meditation.

Prayer is basically an ongoing conversation between you and your Creator about things that concern you both.

Mindfulness is becoming increasingly aware of the conversation we’re having with ourselves and how the world around us is affecting us.

Meditation is a focused use of prayer and mindfulness that enables us to understand and integrate things on a deeper level than ordinary thinking and feeling allows.

A useful resource for each of these spiritual practices can be found here in Practices 11-13 of “Fifteen Practices for Living the Life You Want”.

You weren’t meant to do this life on your own. You were wired to connect with others, to belong, to know and be known. To love and be loved.

Are you engaging your spirituality? What is the next step for you to develop your spirituality? tcr