Is spirituality necessary for recovery?

If spiritual means otherworldly the answer is a resounding, “Yes.”

However, if spirituality means religious then the lean is toward, “No.”

We weave religion and spirituality as if they were synonymous. Are they the same? The non-religious would strongly disagree. Regardless of our religious affiliation (if we have one), it is prudent to see the possibility of living a spiritual life. Key for those new to recovery is opening up to the possibility of a spirit-filled life. What is a spirit-filled life? Seeing the world from a genuinely loving perspective. This means learning to love what is happening around, within, and through self.

For addicts, a life free from alcohol and drugs means we move forward with different thinking. Our success comes, solely, as the result of shifted thinking. This new mindset is not of this world—truly. This shift from old to new is a spirit-filled transformation. It is all the unseen stuff that actually transforms us from the inside out. How else could it be possible for a chemically dependent person to go from a life of daily (in some cases hourly) abuse to non-addiction and a reasonable state of mind?

The solution is our mind communicating with spirit. Physics shows us this is already happening. The trouble is we don’t see it happening, so we think it’s not. We are seeing a world that deceives us because we have a livelihood invested in this belief. We don’t know how to hold it differently, except a little at a time. The lifetime investment in self is what we are going for. Not just 30 or 90 days, everyday our communication matters.

The essence of recovery is in seeking to develop a depth to our person that had previously not been apparent (or even sought for that matter). It is new, just not in a brand-new sense. It is the type of new like America was to the first European settlers.

Was America new? No, only undiscovered.

The discovery gave the appearance of new. The same is living within each unrecovered addict; something new to be identified, something otherworldly. It is in the discovery of this land (our mind) that our spirituality is awakened. We don’t get recovered and then become spiritual. We shift our perception of the world, in doing so we see that we are spiritual. We are innately spiritual, inasmuch as America is innately part of Earth. They cannot be separated. The same is true for us. Despite that our sense of spirituality has remained dormant by no means is it nonexistent. We cannot separate from what is built into our being. It is not possible.

When we can start to equate spiritual with otherworldly we resist change less. As addicts, we stake our life (or someone else’s) on our ability to change. If we can’t see that the world we see with our eyes isn’t the real world we are missing an amazing component in our recovery (aka our life)!

For today I hope you aren’t missing out today on the “otherworldly” inside you.

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