The Threshold of an AA Awakening
Christ is in our midst! He is and ever shall be!
“Enter by the narrow gate; for wide is the gate and broad is the way that leads to destruction, and there are many who go in by it. Because narrow is the gate and difficult is the way which leads to life, and there are few who find it” (Matthew 7:13-14).
My flight out of New York after my break-up was one of the most turbulent rides I’ve had the opportunity to sit through, it was out of Chicago after a layover, and I practiced a sort of heart opening meditation the entire way from O’Hare to Hartsfield.
Breathing in warm, loving, and Divine energy to exhale it through my body, eventually exhaling it through the cabin over all of my fellow passengers, the meditation is akin to the Episcopal “soaking prayer.” It was my introduction to the idea of praying for others and by that, I mean it was my introduction to a type of prayer that went beyond my eye-rolling attitude toward people “sending thoughts and prayers” over the internet, which I still feel is an incorrect form of the very real phenomenon of prayer.
A year and half a later I find myself in a similar situation, flying out of another localized memory of past lives, deplorable, self-destructive cycles, and a reflection in the mirror that hates looking at me. The flight out of the jewel of the South was somehow more turbulent than the one leaving my life in New York.
I seriously thought that we hit something at some point. Turbulence feels like a lot more than it is, right? It feels like the bottom has dropped out while the plane, realistically, is only falling a couple feet.
A year and a half after learning to pray in (what felt like) a desperate situation high above land I began doing the same:
Inhale, Lord, Jesus Christ; exhale, have mercy on us.
Three-and-a-half-hour flight, reflecting on something I read about monastics entering community life after being tonsured and declaring vows where they are left in solitude to prayer for the world, nonstop, for three days. Three hours seems like a drop in the ocean comparatively, but even a small drop in the ocean makes up a part of the whole body—injecting even a small amount of peace into the whirling vortex of the world is still injecting peace.
Tradition calls this prayer the prayer of the heart, Καρδιακή Προσευχή, because the goal is to move this prayer from a repetitive practice of concentrated self-effort to an effortless, self-perpetuating prayer that emanates our whole being. The prayer is referred to as a Noetic prayer, because practice is meant to sustain the person on their journey toward God, to move the person, in their heart and mind, to union with Him. St. Paul calls us to a life of prayer in his letter to the Thessalonians, “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17), and the prayer of the heart is how we might begin our journey of living a prayerful life.
The life of prayer is much more than spending our time sending out “good vibes” to the world in the spirit of “thoughts and prayer,” “light and love.” These are just words and do not begin to describe the power of real, noetic prayer; nor do they point to the purpose of a life of prayer.
Κάθαρσις, or katharis, which means purification is the first step toward θέωσις (Theosis), the preeminent goal of a person’s life.
Θέωσις is a transformative process wherein one becomes more and more like God culminating in union with Him, and while there is change throughout, we cannot begin to open ourselves to a cooperative relationship with God without first opening our hearts to Him and His energies. The first step of the Twelve Step program is a gateway to change, it’s opening the door and peaking inside to a transformative process that opens wider by taking the next step to understanding that true change is not accomplished by self-will, alone, but by a Power greater than ourselves that can restore us to sanity.
The sanity of a Twelve Step program overlaps the Orthodox view of growing in virtue, because insanity is living committed to perpetuate the same addictive behaviors and attitudes as the day before, living with our self-aggrandizing thought patterns and self-destructive faculties, it is—in contrast to the monks—injecting more chaos into the vortex. A Power greater than ourselves is, essentially, different than us. It is different than us because it must be for us to acknowledge ourselves in an objective sense. God is in our lives, in our midst, and, as Fr. Josiah Trenham states, Christ our God “depends on no one rather He is Whom all creation depends and the One Whom all creation needs. As existence itself, He calls all into existence from nothing.”
We do not call ourselves into existence from nothing, we depend on God, because we are not a Power greater than ourselves. If we believed that we would not be taking the steps toward overcoming our addictive behaviors, because a fundamental belief to the addict is that they are that Power.
Side note: The Fall of Man is a story about Adam choosing to live a life without God by assuming he could become like God without Him. This is known as apotheosis and there are a lot of spiritual traditions that adhere to its tenants, but not so with Christianity or the Twelve Steps.
Anyway, it does not matter if one is an atheist, a fundamentalist, or even a Southerner; the addict has a need to control which is a will to power, voluntary or involuntary. We cannot take steps toward the transformative experience of θέωσις or utilize the transcendent purpose of the prayer of the heart without turning our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understand Him.
The One Who depends on no one. And because I have chosen to surrender to a Power greater than ourselves from an Orthodox perspective this is the One, Triune God. The Holy Trinity is a God that has an ineffable depth that, to try to find the bottom, one can never do and to know God fully is life eternal. Man is made in the Image of God, therefore we, too, have an ineffable depth that to be fully known is an eternal vocation.
Θέωσις is, in a sense, the same as recovery, because it is a lifetime of work. In fact, they both complement one another so well that to separate them would be a categorical misapprehension of both. Union with God necessitates that “that you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts” (Ephesians 4:22), breaking out of our cycles of addiction to booze, sex, or a martyr complex means recognizing our “being alienated from the life of God, because of the ignorance that is in [us], because of the blindness of [our] heart; who, being past feeling, have given [ourselves] over unto lewdness, to work all uncleanness with greediness” (Ephesians 4:18-19).
The recognition of our inclinations and habitual patterns is stepping into a sober lens, not only a perspective free of vodka tonics, but a spiritual sobriety in the Orthodox tradition called νῆψις (nepsis), which means watchfulness. This type of sobriety can only be entered into upon surrendering to God, as we understand Him, because it is only through humility that we are able to see clearly our harmful and controlling behavior. The purification of the soul, κάθαρσις, cleansing the νοῦς and stepping into right relation with God is difficult because it is death to the self, as we know it.
The Twelve Step program may, justifiably, not be advertised as a mortuary, but even alcoholics know that is exactly what it is, exemplified in the bittersweet ribbing of our friends who find sobriety, gone before us, calling them walking toe-tags. This is, in hindsight, a really good example of peer pressure and codependency literally referring to others who are trying to better themselves as dead to us, “Whosever hates his brother is a murderer” (1 John 3:15). This is regretful, but it is also true in a lot of ways, because they are dead to us, “But God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world” (Galatians 6:14). We are afraid of being alone and it is easy to point the mirror back at others who seem to be leaving us behind, but really we are engineering our own loneliness.
On the other hand, it feels lonely to recover, too, because in place of our friends at the bar lamenting our absence from getting absolutely soused with them we face a different type of grief, and that is grieving our lives. This mourning process is a necessary step to purify our souls and mind, taking the steps toward νῆψις wherein we can better cooperate with God and know ourselves. I don’t imagine I am alone in thinking this, but objectively seeing the self is a really difficult task.
When there’s no one left to point the mirror at we have two choices: either really see who is looking back in our reflection or deny there’s anything to see at all. Denial is actively lying, but its comforting after a life revolving around poor decisions compounded with worse ones. If I did not want to look at myself so much that I routinely gorged myself on this, that, or the other to distract from even a glimpse than why would I want to see myself without the beer goggles?
The first three steps are necessary to start unpacking all this heavy luggage we’ve been dragging around from this part of the world to the other; in order to find truth we have to parse through the lies. The need to believe and surrender to a Power greater than is so that we can begin polishing the mirror and see ourselves, objectively identifying where we are out of alignment with Him, as we understand Him, without falling into despair, unraveling and rippling out into the void.
When we gauge our misalignment with the One Who is good, then the real work begins—in sterquiliniis invenitur—because it is in this place that we come into right relation by demolishing the walls that we have set up between us and God, and by extension others.
If we resisted turning our will and our lives over to the care of a Power greater than ourselves than we’re going to love taking the next step… which I realize is what νῆψις is all about… Funny, it seems once we’re willing to actually turn over our will to God, as we understand Him, the momentum calls us to a deepen this trust and by sacrificing our lives up to God we genuinely take steps toward wholeness which begins by climbing the cross and letting our illusions die, trampling down death by death.
A physical sobriety is working along the horizontal, abstaining from what gave us some much “control” before we surrendered to a Power greater than ourselves. Spiritual sobriety puts us on the vertical, under the guidance and protection of a loving God we are strengthened in our eternal journey to take the next step by making a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
He Who is the True Light said, “If you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed. And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:31-32).
I pray we all find a way to abide in His word, to become worthy of His discipleship, and that—no matter what—we know Truth, lest we be a slave to the world and our passions, forever. Choosing to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood Him is choosing to turn our lives into a living prayer: an unceasing, sober, and salvific Way of being that leads to life.
A year and half after learning the value of prayer in the horizontal and almost three years of clean living, I realize that unless I am willing to take the next step I will be forever trapped on the horizontal where I am “safe” and unable to access the present moment, like being on a turbulent flight heading to a door I can’t open.
My physical keys might be out of reach, but the way to God lies within, beginning with a prayer to take the next step toward the kingdom:
“God, I offer myself to Thee —
to build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt.
Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will.
Take away my difficulties,
that victory over them may bear
witness to those I would help of
Thy Power, Thy Love,
and Thy Way of Life.
May I do Thy will always!
Amen” (The Third Step Prayer).
Si comprehendis, non est Deus
Witness, NM 