And so, each of you should first examine what he considers his own family, money, or estate. And when he has reckoned what all this avails him, and understands that it avails him nothing, then only can he be my disciple. And upon hearing this a man said: `That is very well, if there be indeed a life of the spirit. But what if one abandons all, and there be no such life?´
To this Jesus said: `Not so; everyone knows the life of the spirit. You all know it; but you do not know that which you know. Not because you doubt, but because you are drawn away from the true life by false cares, and excuse yourselves from it.´
Leo Tolstoy: The Gospel In Brief, pp 115-116
We can trust the process – of life and recovery. We do not have to control, obsess, or become hypervigilant. We may not always understand where we are going, or what’s being worked out in us, but we can trust that something good is happening.
Melody Beattie
The life of the spirit. This is the theme to which the Christ returns again and again. What could possibly be meant by this? What we were taught as children in conservative Catholic Ireland was merely a strict moral code: Do this and you go to heaven; do that and you go to hell. The chips were stacked against us from the beginning and many of us really believed that, not only were we destined for hell, but that we thoroughly deserved it. That is as far as the teaching (not really teaching but indoctrination) went.
The words of Christ quoted above require examination on a much deeper level if they are to be truly grasped. Not even a Jesuit education of fourteen years’ duration could bring forth such an examination. It was left up to the circumstances of the later unfolding life as to whether the message would reach the recipient or not.
The first half of any human life is about `setting up shop´ in this material world of ours. In my case this consisted of finding and defending my place in the hierarchy of a large extended family, doing my best to `earn´ the physical and emotional attention that young children need as much as they need oxygen, in order to survive.
Then came some hefty challenges. The early death of both parents, a civil war raging in the north of our island, a sense of hopelessness as the superpowers built up arsenals of thousand of nuclear warheads, explaining that this was the only way to secure `peace´.
Personal challenges too. To adhere to the dogma which had been so well indoctrinated or to risk breaking out? Let it suffice to say that by the age of eighteen, I was the perfect storm waiting to be unleashed upon the world, fuelled by anger, grief, resentment, and a large portion of alienation.
Yet the `establishment´ of my person as a functioning member of our society still lay ahead. What to do when I grow up? Having ditched university in a condescending attitude of `knowing better´ than everybody, especially my professors, the only viable option seemed a leap of faith, in the form of emigration. My compatriots had had much practice in this over the preceding centuries; looking back it seems to have been perhaps pre-programmed in my case.
On arrival in Germany in 1980, it became obvious that there were ample opportunities for a guy like me, who – as the fifth of ten children – had developed a capacity for getting things done. In fact, this worked out so well that doors began to open and a twenty-year career in international management in the corporate world followed. That storm, the causes of which had never been adequately treated, had been internalised, in the form of alcoholic drinking and addictive weed consumption.
Thanks to – in the words of a later therapist – `the constitution of a horse´ I kept going, settling down into family life with a German wife and our two beautiful children.
False cares drew me away from what I intuitively knew yet did not know that I knew. That only the life of the spirit counts. That we are all the progeny of a Great Spirit: Humans, animals, vegetables, and minerals. That, while clothed in this body and given this name for the present incarnation, I am immortal and infinite, just as is every manifestation of creation; children of love born of the same star dust.
The false cares that occupied me were many. First and foremost, not to be exposed as the fraudster I knew myself to be; the `Jekyll and Hyde´ monster who moved mendaciously through the world. Then there was the task of making it to the cover of `Time Magazine´ as one of the first Irish CEOs of a Fortune 50 company. And, of course, keeping the lid on the volcano of my own thoughts and feelings, which threatened to blow at any moment and wreak havoc and destruction upon everything in sight, those closest to me being in the gravest danger.
That the havoc and destruction was already taking place on a more subtle level was lost on me. I had a mental checklist for alcoholics which included `drinking half a bottle of vodka before getting up in the morning´ and `sleeping under a bridge´. Since the former was never the case, and the latter a rare occurrence, there was no problem. Denial is not a river in Africa, my Irish friends now remind me.
While I did not know what I knew, it was becoming abundantly clear that the course which had been charted could not hold very much longer. And so, it transpired. The false cares took care of themselves, in that the house of cards which had been so diligently erected was demolished in one fell swoop in the summer of 2003. By the autumn there was no longer a job, a marriage, a family home, even an attempt to uphold the façade of the successful manager; there was no hope.
Upon reaching out for help, hope is the first thing which was rekindled. People who hade been at that low point (we call it `rock bottom´) related their stories of woe and recovery. They seemed healthy and content with their lot, were actively involved in their newly chosen communities and seemed to have found a deeper meaning in life, that of being useful and of service to their fellows.
My new friends said that the old life, the life of playing God and directing a symphony of false cares, had to be abandoned. It would be replaced by a life of sanity and purpose. But what if one abandons all, and there be no such life?´
That was the crux. It felt like a circus acrobat in action, being exhorted to let go of the current swing while still not being able to see where the other was to be reached, or even if it existed at all. This suspended animation was the state in which my life unfolded for many weeks and months, even years. `Trust the process, clean up the wreckage of your past, and help others´ was the mantra in those AA rooms which had, by now, become my new home.
We let go in stages, it seems. Letting go of alcohol as an alcoholic is very different to letting go of life as a human being. It can be achieved and does work, especially thanks to the encouragement and guidance of those who have been on the journey somewhat longer and have been generous with their time and energy when it comes to helping the newcomers.
But obviously we cannot transmit what we haven’t got. The key to sustained recovery is the daily cultivation of that which we did not know we knew, after having discovered it, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, always deep within oneself, in a vibrant and loving community that truly knows.
