Daily Reprieve

It was a really good speaker meeting tonight.  All I can say is wow, and will I ever have something as potent to share.  I don’t know. 

I had a migraine headache this morning, so I called into work and stayed home.  But I was so hungry, and knew that it would be a mistake to take ibuprofen on an empty stomach.  The pain was making me feel somewhat nauseous.  Everyone was asleep, so I decided to make a run to waffle house and get some breakfast.  I ate and came out to the truck, realized I had locked myself out.  The back window that I had popped a few years ago when I had done this, was now miraculously healed and worked perfectly to keep me out.  I decided that maybe I should do a walk about and wait for a more reasonable time to call my father to come rescue me.  I spent a painful and difficult few hours letting my inner child talk with Jon, the Higher Power that has been so good to me, was there at the hospital during my last (and hopefully final) relapse. 

I actually got a lot of guidance, a move for simplification and shedding of some old ways.  I know, really general terms, but the gory details would probably only serve to make my words more confusing. 

Speaking of clarity and exactness in communication, I should probably come up with some other term besides “religious addiction.”  The addiction is my response to ANY system of behavioral domination and manipulative control.  This addiction satisfies me with a pathological relationship with a role, an icon of what a system needs.  When I am in this role, I lose touch with myself.  Then I am unable to connect with others, or my Higher Power.  If I step out of this role, I feel that I will be punished, and that others will be disappointed to know the real me.  When I am in the role, I receive recognition and attention.  I become hooked to the performance and to the need to appease.  I did this in my family of origin, my religious involvement, my marriage, and my service in the military.

In sobriety, this kind of disconnectedness will kill me.  My role will stay sober, but I will secretly die.  I have to find ways to stay genuine, to remain real and truthful with who I am.

My religious addiction is really kicking up.  It is helpful that I can look back over these symptoms and know that.  I need to find a way to work through this.  I am waking up inside.  Parts of my personality more vulnerable to this addiction are beginning to feel again.  In a very major way.  I know I am sitting on a time bomb here.  I am going to see if I can find someone in my group who might also be suffering from this.

I am personally being affected by religious addiction because of the interference it has with my ability to trust and take full advantage of this program of recovery.  My devotion to the Big Book is beginning to feel like the iconic worship of the scriptures.  Many of the characteristics of the program have a none too subtle religious undercurrents that arouse my defenses.   Sponsorship is so much like discipleship.

Yet I gain from this program.  There is a power here.  I just don’t want to invest life energy, and find that I have been tricked once again.

These are the symptoms that I would say indicate religious addiction:

1.  Fatal judgment against self and others.

2.  Fear in making decisions, continuously second guessing.  Rituals surround the process.

3.  Need to blend with the group. 

4.  Emotions harder to control are labeled negative.  Such as anger, which is usually seen as nonspiritual.

5.  Freedom muscles have atrophied from lack of use, and thus it is difficult to define freedom.

6.  Progressive need to appease God and the group.  This leads to purging, mortification, and self-flagellation.

7.  Chronic sense of impending doom or judgment.

8.  Uncomfortable and resistant to intuitive guidance.  Makes an icon out of source documents.

9.  Always knows the “right” thing to say, and has difficulty in staying in touch with genuine expression.

The following, although spoken as a statement, merely represent my speculations on religious addiction:

Centralized religion has been used over the centuries to control social behavior.  It is easier to control individuals who are beaten down by guilt and shame, and who are indoctrinated to fear inescapable retribution.  How the game is played has changed, but the goal has not, which is social control at the expense of individual fulfillment. 

The human wreckage has been horrific over the ages.  Organized faith established only two doors for all of humanity to pass through.  One required religious enslavement, and the other surrendered to reactionary evil. 

As a religious addict, I want another path.  The heretic has faith, but does not recognize the appropriate set of rules and traditions necessary to qualify.  I am most comfortable being a heretic.

I have added a new page, “Proposed 12 Steps for Heretics Anonymous.”  I am not really sure where to go from here.  The only religious addiction 12 step groups I see out there in cyberspace are controlled by pastors, and doctors, complete with donate buttons.  Red flags for me. 

Is there anyone out there in the same place I am?

To the pale moon’s pain

To the bright sun’s fame

I will leave

I will turn my back from your glory

I’ve pulled myself out of this deliverance

I’ve gotten past your good sense

Now that I’ve found it

Now that my heart has already split

To night’s ceaseless cry

To day’s caring reply

I will take another path

This was always your story to tell

So tell it good man

And let love befall you again

Let pain forget you

For that is my place

To harness the dark thoughts that you have abandoned

To live in the shadows that you have fled

Your life will be a legend

My life will be a shadow

But never forget

I have decided

And you have not

A poem by Elizabeth Morgan

“I will take another path…” That is really resounding within.

What does the empowerment of this program look like? I finally made it back to a meeting tonight, and I heard this one individual proclaim the positive aspects of the empowerment of this program. The evidence that he offered from his own life was the ability to return to college and get several degrees, to get the accountant’s degree, and to graduate in the top 5% of his law class. He now heads off to take the bar exam.

I guess he is saying that empowerment for him is being all he can be, without dependence on chemical crutches.

Is it possible for pride to cause me to miss the message of the spiritual paradox of powerlessness. Or maybe it is just some need in me to argue.

Has my Higher Power enabled me to drink or use without any serious consequences, to use it for the same reasons normal drinkers do? The Big Book doesn’t appear to say that.  I have heard this individual criticize others in the meetings for using the concept of powerlessness as a misguided attempt to abdicate responsibility for living.  Yet I do agree that folks seem motivated by a religious undercurrent that seems to cause them to claim they cannot do anything positive and that they remain a broken vessel miraculously used of their Higher Power. To me, this appears to be a desperate attempt to bring glory to the Higher Power.

So again, what sort of empowerment are we expecting from this program. I would expect that first of all it is sobriety.  But there is also an ability to intuitively hear your Higher Power according to page 87.  The authors claimed to rely on this for clarity and guidance.  We are supposed to be changed from creatures that live in a three dimensional universe to those who have gone through a vital spiritual experience producing a complete psychic change, that rockets us into the 4th dimension of existence. I understand the three dimensions to be length, width, and depth. What then is number four. This transformation can be an invigorating lightning bolt of divine ecstasy or an oozing molasses of educational awareness.  We will enjoy a supernatural fellowship with others we would normally not associate with.  We will have naturally developed an altruistic lifestyle.

When someone boldly touts the empowerment of this program, I am looking to see a demonstration of cohesion within the group, compassion for others, spiritual fortitude, and tales of intuitive adventures with their Higher Power.  And somebody please tell me what that fourth dimension is supposed to be!

For me, I have not experienced this level of empowerment. But I have gained the freedom of a spiritual seeker, and I jealously guard against secret religious agendas or attempts at behavioral control.  I am tired and must go to bed.  Debate club closed for the evening.

Acceptance is the answer, or so they say. It really seemed to help today. I asked my Higher Power for some sort of emotional triage this morning. I was hostile to the whole idea of going into work today. Full of piss and vinegar, I sent out a silent scream for help.

Then something happened. The spiritual medic dug around in my gut, and found the following – I have not heard anything from the congressional I submitted, I have heard nothing from the employment availability for the state job, my competitive spirit mixed with a desire for post-divorce vindication caused me to get overly frustrated by my son’s miss on the driving test, the apparent struggles that continue to plague my sponsees, again challenging the universal web’s vindication of this new life. But the strangest piece of shrapnel lodged within was the fear that the web was going to continue a weird duplication, a repugnant destiny that parallels my life and the life of my primary slave’s father. He also is named Rick, and shares the same birthday with me. He was in the military, got out and went to work for Walmart. This is currently my fate. It is like the time when Luke Skywalker discovered Darth Vador to be his father. It feels like a cruelty the universe is playing out in my life. I have tried to say that I am a rewrite in the history of my slave’s life, from abusive father to loving Master. But I felt the sting of cruelties such as these before.

The Medic gave me a dose of serenity-producing acceptance that would allow me to wait on the timing of my Higher Power in reference to the job and the congressional.

He then turned to my issues with my son’s driving test and my sponsees’ struggles and gave me the ability to relax and recognize that which has been accomplished. My son has applied for jobs in two places, has gotten notification for interview, and has had his cherry busted on the road test. I have no doubt that he is ready to pass it. And the universe may yet honor me with the privilege of being the catalyst for that victory. I have planted seeds in the life of both of my sponsees that can be used by their Higher Power, if they allow it. Nothing more than that can be expected.

Finally, acceptance with a redirection of my competitive spirit is given as the way to approach this Vador phenomenon. Compete against myself, not my former wife. Improve and advance wherever I end up in the universe. Do not cringe in fear at some imagined fate. Display courage even in the face of what appears to be divine criticism.

I am stumbling around looking for some safe place, some anodyne location in my brain.  Missed meetings again.  Trepidation about an amends I need to make.  The congressional looming in the shadows of my daily activity.  My time has been held hostage by school or work most of my life.  I come to life only during off times and transitional Sabbaths of social exclusion.  How can I practice an “honest” program when so much of my life is what others need it to be?  Who the hell am I?  Do I take the blue pill or the red one?  I laid down for a nap, and had some nightmares of going to a hospital and being admitted, seeing the dead ones, and children afraid as a parade of spectres ran over their huddled bodies and into some portal of oblivion.  Another chaos storm passing through.  I guess I should go attempt getting some more sleep.

Must double dip, even though I should probably just keep my mouth shut.  I am so impatient with life, I am furious.  I am livid.  Aaah!  I don’t have anything uplifting or pithy to say.  I feel phony.  My words are so mephitic.  yuk.  Anoint me in the energy of thanatos.  Save me from this pink skirt life seems determined to bury me in.  Aaah!

Aaaaahhh!  I wish I had made a meeting tonight.  Unable to accomplish things.  Up too late.  Blah.