Spirituality Is More Experienced Than Understood

Many people stumble when they hear Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon are spiritual programs. The word “spiritual” is misinterpreted to mean a requirement to believe in God. This misconception reduces their interest in exploring whether these programs could relieve their suffering. Before turning away from exploring a twelve-step program, consider that belief in God is only one form of spiritual experience.

Most of us reach adulthood saddled with either an unchallenged, childish image of God, or an image narrowly defined by our parents’ religious doctrine, or both. Rejection and contempt for such limited, and sometimes obviously superstitious, perspectives can last well into adulthood. But, if you have reached the point of suffering from your own or a loved one’s alcohol/drug use enough that you are contemplating going to a twelve-step meeting, you might also consider rethinking the narrow view of spirituality inherited from your past. Or, are you content practicing “contempt before investigation”?

While the word “God” does not appear until step three in the twelve steps, the invitation to consider the possibility of there being a power in this universe greater than yourself comes in the second step: “Came to believe a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity” (see AA’s Step Two: Looking Beyond Your Self for Hope).

I find it helps to whittle this step down to acknowledge that there are many forces impinging on me that I have no control over. The weather is a good example. Hot days drain my energy, balmy evening breezes soothe me, and gale-force winds rip shingles off my roof. Each of these weather conditions is a metaphor for many things. Hot, hateful moods, calm moods, and raging moods all come and go on their own, leaving me to respond to each as best I can. People around me drink or use drugs too intensely, abstain, or overdose according to their own internal forces, all out of my direct control. I can only respond to each as best I can.

There are many forces impinging on all of us. Our lives exist within a matrix of powerful forces greater than ourselves. We can hunker down to withstand the most powerful and destructive of these forces, or we can collect together with others, buffeted by the same suffering we feel.

Here is the thing. Sitting in a room with other people who feel overwhelmed by their own or someone else’s addiction is a different experience from sitting home alone with the same problems. Shared suffering creates a power greater than ourselves that restores sanity. The insane perspective is that you are alone in your suffering, that your problems are unique. In reality, you are one of very many suffering in exactly the same way. You can choose to suffer alone (which is a good way to add self-pity to your problems), or you can choose to enter a wider community of similar souls.

Once you sit in a twelve-step meeting, spirituality and connection are experienced more than understood. Experiencing the healing power of community and connection is far more important than trying to understand, analyze, dissect, categorize, rationalize, or pontificate about it. Spiritual experience is like enjoying that balmy breeze when it bathes you in the evening. You do have to walk out onto your porch and take a seat to let the air restore and revitalize you. It is much less useful to intellectualize about connecting to the breeze than just to experience it.

For many, the comfort of connecting to others in twelve-step meetings is the avenue toward recovery and sanity. I call this connection to a power greater than yourself a spiritual experience. Its essence lies in experiencing a connection to, and feeling a part of, something grander than yourself. This profound experience of expanding your sense of identity from me to we is spiritual. You can call it whatever you want because spirituality is experienced more than understood.