Nine Principles of Spiritual Recovery: Reauthorization
Welcome back, everyone, and
thank you for taking some time to read this entry in the Nine Principles of Spiritual Recovery
blog series. As Winter slowly gives
way to Spring, now may be a great time to consider the principle of Reauthorization.
Over the past two years, I’ve
had the privilege of working with a set of ideas called the Nine Principles
of Spiritual Recovery. These
ideas came to me through an inspired communication one Sunday, two years ago
this week. Since then, I have slowly –
ah, let’s say “methodically” …that
sounds better, doesn’t it? – been working to expand on the information I
received in order to offer a practical set of suggestions for how people who find
themselves facing a spiritual crisis can begin to work their way back to their
highest and best selves. Essentially,
I’ve been doing this same thing – working my way back – for nearly ten years
now, since a time in my life when I was at my spiritual low. In addiction counseling, which is what I do
for a living, we might call that “hitting bottom.” As part of my spiritual recovery process, I
developed a personal spiritual mission
statement that includes learning and teaching practical spirituality – ideas
for change that can help people improve the quality of their lives using
spiritual principles that can work for them.
To that end, I continue to develop the Nine Principles of Spiritual Recovery.
Anyone
who has read my earlier entries on the Nine Principles of Spiritual Recovery may remember that “spiritual recovery”
is simply about finding the Spirit within ourselves and using It to help us
change, grow, and improve the quality of our life experiences so we can become
our “highest and best” selves. The first
principle is Reconnection,
and it is the idea that we are all connected to everything and
everyone in Creation and that we have to
mentally-emotionally-physically “reconnect” to the All of Creation in order to begin
to regain our optimum spiritual health.
The second principle is Reformation, and that refers to improving
or changing to a better state of being through the process of making changes in how
one thinks and acts in relation to one’s self, to others, and the whole world, once the “reconnection”
to the All has been made.
The third principle is the one I want to expand on
in this entry, and that is Reauthorization, or the idea of reclaiming
one’s power over one’s life and being responsible for how one lives and for
one’s choices.
According to the Nine Principles of Spiritual Recovery, Reauthorization
is defined by the statement: I AM responsible and accountable for my feelings, thoughts, beliefs, and actions, and
their effects on myself and others and means to again be given the
power over a situation (to be answerable and accountable for one’s words and
deeds). The combination of responsibility and accountability
comprises what we refer to as “ownership” of our feelings, thoughts,
beliefs, words, values, and deeds.
In order to understand the
principle of Reauthorization
better, we can look closer at what the word and its related ideas might mean,
and how that meaning translates into a practical approach to recovering one’s
highest expression of spirituality.
“Authority” is the power
to
influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior, or a freedom or right. To “author”
something means to originate or create that thing, as in to bring an idea into
being. “Authorization” follows as
essentially the establishment of a thing through the power given to one to create
that thing. Reauthorization
then, would simply mean to be given the power to create a thing
again.
Why is Reauthorization important to a
person’s spiritual recovery? I believe
that in order to reach one’s full potential as a spiritual human being, a
person has to be the creator of her or his own life plan. Even though Spirit is here within each of us
as a guiding energy, the motivation, intention, and effort to be everything we
can be lie within each of us as individual beings.
I believe that Spirit, as
Infinite Intelligence and Creator of All that Is, put Energy in motion in the
Primary Creative Principle, and that we as spiritual human beings have the
power, the freedom, and the right, to reorganize aspects of that Energy to
create a secondary individual life experience that allows each of us to realize
our full potentiality.
Reauthorization is about coming to the realization that each of us
has the right and responsibility to reclaim our personal power in order
to put ourselves on the path to what psychologist Abraham Maslow called “self-actualization,” or becoming what
we truly are, and for me that is the
highest and purest expression of Spirit within the human form. Spirituality
is about connection – connection to one’s self and sense of purpose, to
one’s family, to the human community, and to the All of Creation. Human beings who have experienced spiritual
challenges can feel disconnected from all of those things. To recover that sense of connection – one’s
spirituality – it becomes essential that a person recover that sense of personal
power that may have been lost or taken away, or more likely, given away
or purposely forgotten.
Power is a sometimes-difficult concept to understand, and
its meaning is often contextual. The
meaning of “power” in a political sense is different from its meaning in a
physical force or mechanical sense. “Power”
is sometimes associated with, or confused with force, or control. For our purposes, we will associate “power”
with the
ability to move oneself in a positive and healthy life direction when one’s
preference is to remain right where one is – even if that is an
unhealthy place. The instinct for human
beings is homeostasis, or remaining in the physical-mental-emotional
state one is currently in. Happy and
healthy people want to remain happy and healthy. Conversely, and maybe unbelievably, unhappy
and unhealthy people often want to remain unhappy and unhealthy. Sometimes, misery and stagnation are right
where a person wants to be – or
believes s/he has to be, or deserves
to be, or even needs to be. The unhealthy, unclear, and illogical
thinking that comes from this condition can become addictive, and the
unhealthiness, misery, and stagnation become self-perpetuating. Any possible change disrupts what the person
knows and is comfortable with for a life experience, even though s/he may be
suffering terribly in that life experience.
Change – or even the perception of impending change – produces stress,
negative emotional states such as depression, anxiety, and anger, fear of
failure, and a reluctance to change.
This stress and negativity produces
disempowerment,
a process that leads to a condition in which a person believes s/he has no power to change her/his unhealthy
state to a healthy one. In order for a
person who is struggling spiritually – who feels disconnected – to welcome and embrace change, s/he has to recognize
the problems s/he faces can be resolved, see the need for change, and to then feel
empowered
to make that change. As we said before about
“authority,” a person has to believe s/he has the power
to
influence or command thought, opinion, or behavior or a freedom or right to
create or originate her/his own plan for a healthy life experience – empowered.
In my work as a substance
abuse counselor I have heard many reasons for why people stay addicted to
chemical substances, even when those addictions continually produce serious and
significant negative consequences such as personal loss, physical pain and
suffering, family dysfunction and disintegration, destruction of relationships,
legal problems that often result in the loss of personal freedom, financial
problems, and severe mental and emotional health problems. Nearly every addicted person I have worked
with has described her/himself as suffering a spiritual crisis – a
nearly complete disconnection from everyone and everything and a nearly total
isolation as a being. This is what I
often perceive as a person’s “hitting bottom.”
The path to recovery begins with a spiritual awakening, the development
of the awareness that recovery is possible, and that with what the Buddhists
call “right effort” recovery is, in fact, probable.
Far too often, however, I
hear an addicted person talk only about the impossibility of recovery based on
obstacles and impediments. Rather than
looking for reasons to change, addicted persons often look for excuses for not
changing. Too often, I see addicted
persons disempower themselves rather than empower themselves. Sometimes, the fear of failure and the
avoidance of personal responsibility are so strong, people express the
attitudes evident in “learned helplessness” – a concept
developed by psychologist Martin Seligman that describes how a person has
learned, through experience, to behave helplessly, even when s/he has the
opportunity to help her/himself, and that this “learned helplessness” may
result from a perceived absence of power over the outcome of situations.
For me, “learned helplessness” is a value
– a deeply-held belief one has about life and living – that results from a person having
negatively-perceived life experiences and persistently-held unhealthy thought
patterns that lead that person to believe s/he can do nothing to change her/his
life or resolve the life problems s/he faces.
“Learned helplessness” can contribute to the development of addictions
and substance dependence conditions, and can be a significant
contributor to mental health disorders that limit a person’s ability to
recover her/his spirituality. It is the
basis for disempowerment.
“Self-confidence” is a contrasting value that results from a
person having positively-perceived life experiences and persistently-held
healthy thought patterns that lead to that person having belief in their power to change or solve life
problems. S/he sees her/himself as
having what psychologist Albert Bandura called “self-efficacy” – the ability to accomplish and achieve goals,
or more simply, to do whatever s/he sets her/his mind to doing.
“Self-confidence” is
different from “hope” in that “hope” is essentially wishing for something good
to happen, or for a situation to turn out as one wants it to, even if one feels
no control or power over
influencing the outcome.
“Self-confidence” comes from creating opportunities to achieve some
measure of success and then building on repeated successes to develop larger
goals. It also involves having faith in oneself, and is the basis
for empowerment.
Finally, Reauthorization is about ownership of one’s life choices, and
the consequences – both positive and negative – of those choices. “Ownership” consists of responsibility
and accountability,
two closely-related concepts that are often used interchangeably. For our purposes here, we will describe responsibility
as having
a duty or obligation to act in a way that responds to a demand or need
of some sort, whether one’s own needs or the demands of others or of a
situation. Accountability is being
answerable to oneself and to others for the consequences of one’s actions. In terms of the principle of Reauthorization,
“ownership”
has to do with
being answerable and accountable for one’s
words and deeds and for any harm that might come to another
person because of those words or deeds, and it lays some of the groundwork for
others of the Nine
Principles of Spiritual Recovery, namely Reconciliation and Redemption.
Reauthorization
is an important practice in spiritual
recovery. By empowering
oneself, and taking ownership of one’s words and deeds, one can find the way toward
realizing the highest and best expression of the Spirit within.
