Spirituality and Twelve Step Programs

If you are a Catholic, you are probably familiar with the idea of fasting and doing good works one doesn't usually do in the 46 days prior to Easter. If you are a non-Catholic, you likely enjoyed watching the discomfort of your Catholic neighbors as they abstained from the steak you were enjoying. Either way, you have at least encountered someone choosing against what is more convenient, appetizing, or more desirable for some perceived greater and more distant end than a Friday night steak or not going out of one's way to do an act of mercy toward another person(s). If our behavior is to maximize our peace i.e. neuro-harmony that pervades our being, then we must submit ourselves to discipline. Our beloved saints lived by such a principle that submitting oneself to God, God increases in holiness/what they were made for/whole-ness. The way they lived informed the creation of 12-step programs.[1]

Evolutionarily speaking, we are moved to adapt to our environment.[2] We have much control over the environment in which we find ourselves (Genesis 1:28).[3] What we do instead of the addictive habits is even more significant, because our environment itself does not lead us to sin(Matthew 15:11). We must not only avoid moments of temptation but use external mechanisms/realities/persons to change these habits. The efforts contained in the whole 12-step process require conversion. We must meet ourselves precisely where we are at, not presuming ourselves better than we are(Luke 14:28-30). As we go through the process, our developing self-knowledge exposes the lies of comfort we once believed. These lies lead us to believe that sin is expedient and that there is no possibility to live without this sin/excess/clandestine indulgence. As we know ourselves, we can know our good, and thereby we can know that there is life without sin and it, in fact, is not just possible but worth it.[4]In uniting our strength to God’s, our salvation is possible (2 Corinthians 12:9, Philippians 4:11–13).[5] Our habitual behaviors are physiologically trained responses. The more intimately tied to our concepts of survival, the less we can consciously change them. We become powerless, not just because it is difficult but rather because it has power over us instead of vice versa. Actualized conversion is only possible through constant and genuine prayer because it is only through offering ourselves that we gain ourselves (Romans 12:1, 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, Ephesians 6:18).

In conclusion, the exercises of the spiritual masters employed by the 12-steps involve working without oneself to change what is in oneself, increasing self-knowledge, and using strength from a higher power. This subliminal and heroic path of acting/becoming despite one's physiological and spiritual pre-disposition is the only path to freedom from vices and toward virtue. Suddenly, those Friday night steaks can be seen in a new light, one that shows it to not necessarily be moving us toward heaven, even if not to hell per se. Our "mortifications" or deaths to our disordered passions, move us toward God. Thus, the next time you think of support groups think about heroism instead of "naval gazing", since it is a real and imperfectly analogical way each person that really intends to strive for heaven must fight to the death and find new life. There is great simplicity in this path and there indeed is life to be found there, and all the same, it is one of soldiers in conquest.

John of the Cross:

o dark of night, my guide 1

night dearer than anything all your dawns discover!

o night drawing side to side

the loved and lover she that the lover loves, lost in the lover!

Upon my flowering breast,

kept for his pleasure garden, his alone,

the lover was sunk in rest;

I cherished him-my own

there in air from plumes of the cedar blown.

In air from the castle wall

as my hand in his hair moved lovingly at play,

he let cool fingers fall

-and the fire there where they lay all senses in oblivion drift away.

I stayed, not minding me;

my forehead on the lover I reclined.

Earth ending, I went free,

left all my care behind

among the lilies falling and out of mind

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1. Anonymous, "Pass It on": The Story of Bill Wilson and How the A.A. Message Reached the World (New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, 1984), 228.
2. Nora Volkow, 'Why do our brains get addicted?' YouTube video, from TEDMED, Posted by TEDMED on 27 January 2015. at http://www.youtube.com.
3. Volkow, 'Why do our brains get addicted?', .
4. Thomas Aquinas, _Summa theologiae_, II-II, q. 25, a. 7, at New Advent, www.newadvent.org.
5. _Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd ed._ (Washington, DC: United States Catholic Conference, 2000), 1987-2016.