Spirituality - A Recovering Addict's Perspective

Can you picture it? You're on vacation in Fiji with the one you love, there's a beautiful sunset, you're on the beach, there's a sailboat lazily coasting by in the distance, the seagulls are singing their moonlight song, and you suddenly realize that you have arrived. It's the perfect moment. Not a care in the world. Total serenity. Sound spiritual? Is spirituality the absence of worry or stress? To some degree I think spirituality does conjure up these sorts of images but spirituality exists within real life and not mere fantasy.

In a perfect world we'd all go about our business never upsetting anybody, never hurting anybody or getting hurt and having all our needs met. But would we learn anything? Would we be any closer to the meaning of life? And what about religion and God? Do these often biased concepts play a part in spirituality. Let's take a look and see.

For about half of my life I've been running away from emotional pain, avoiding responsibility, afraid of myself and others, and on a path of self destruction all by the hands of the evil crack pipe. I rested in the illusion that life was unfair, people didn't care about me and that I had no purpose in life, and that I deserved to feel the dopamine rush through my brain and experience ecstasy once in a while. It almost killed me. It hurt the ones I loved. It created loss, heartache and masked the pain temporarily inevitably causing warehouses full of more pain to deal with later. But I will say it was not all for naught. It brought me to twelve step programs which taught me a new way to live. They taught me to look at myself and my flaws, to make restitution for the harm I caused, and to find a higher power who would always be with me and never let me down no matter what. I learned faith, I learned gratitude, I learned to have hope, and experience freedom and I have felt joy. These sort of concepts ring more true to me when I think about the meaning of spirituality.

I have two enemies in life. Self pity and resentment. To me when I am stuck in either of those places I am self centered to the core and as far away from God and spirituality as I could possibly be. So when I take a wrong turn and end up there I have to pick up my kit of spiritual tools and do some work in order to get centered with the God of my understanding.

For example, I might make a gratitude list. I have worked with individuals with varying disabilities such as mental retardation, paraplegics, learning and behavior disorders, spina bifida, cerebral palsy, the deaf, the blind, to name a few. First and foremost I live in a healthy body and just that simple often taken for granted fact is a miracle of huge proportions which often in and of itself turns me from fear to faith. It reminds me of the gifts of life I am able to sense, experience, and appreciate each day. Gratitude and faith, I believe are the heart of spirituality because they allow us to feel the reality of our pain and at the same time be at relative peace with the universe. To look into the eyes of the woman I love and to see such beauty, to have seen my daughter be born, to know deep down that I have been cared for and protected all my life and that I will certainly look forward to joy and happiness in my future, these are the gifts and promises that spirituality offers me today.

Yesterday is gone, and tomorrow is not here yet. All we have is the present moment and when we can take that moment and recognize it as precious, timely, and perfect then we have arrived at the doorstep of spirituality.