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An integrated spiritual life involves both intellect and emotions, the mind and the heart. The intersection of the two is the “wise mind,” as it is called in dialectical behavioral therapy. An integrated spiritual journey involves joining the rational powers of the mind with the intuitive awareness of the heart, and finding God present in both. Anything less is incomplete.
The Carmelite spiritual tradition sheds important light on the spiritual aspects of recovery from Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD), and it is helpful in spiritual direction. When Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross wrote about the soul, they were not referring to something a person has, but to who a person most deeply is—their essential nature as an embodied spirit. For John and Teresa, the soul is not a separate aspect of the person, but rather what we see when we look at someone through spiritual eyes.i Union with God is not something that is achieved, but rather something that is realized. It is already there. It is important for the spiritual director to see the client in that light.
It is also important to acknowledge the very human tendency to seek sources of satisfaction. Our deepest longing is for God, but we do not always realize what that longing really is. We tend to reach for things that we can see, feel, and grasp in order to fill what feels like a void inside us. Gerald May, a psychiatrist writing in the Carmelite tradition, calls these things that we grasp “attachments.” They can become compulsions, and compulsions rob a person of their freedom.ii
A person can reach a point where God darkens their awareness, an experience that John of the Cross calls the “dark night.” In that darkness, God takes them where they would not choose to go alone, to fill them with that deeper love for which they long. A person dealing with alcohol addiction can experience this darkness as “hitting bottom.” They realize that they cannot let go of attachments by themselves. Spiritually, this point is not an invitation to recede into passivity, but an invitation to a very intentional surrender.
We will never really turn to God in loving openness as long as we are handling things well enough by ourselves. And it is precisely our most powerful addictions that cause us to defeat ourselves, that bring us to the rock bottom realization that we cannot finally master everything. Thus, although in one sense addiction is the enemy of grace, it can also be a powerful channel for the flow of grace. Addiction can be, and often is, the thing that brings us to our knees.iii
While the experience of “hitting bottom” has this important spiritual component, it is not an invitation to spiritualize. Cooperating with God requires humility, honesty, a willingness to accept help in whatever form it is needed, and to find God’s grace in that help. Step 3 of Alcoholics Anonymous removes the stigma of surrendering control over one’s life. Instead, a person invites a higher power to guide them to a healthier place, with the help of people who support them along the way.
Arriving at this inflection point is a spiritual journey, as well as a psychological and emotional one. Secrecy, isolation, and denial are ways of coping that become familiar for the addicted person, but they are obstacles to reaching the point of surrender. Their prayer life tends to be compartmentalized, if they pray at all. They may be unaccustomed to bringing difficulties, including their difficulties with alcohol, to prayer. This is an attempt to hide from God and others and only increases isolation and loneliness.
A person struggling with AUD is likely to be dealing with guilt and shame, another roadblock in their spiritual life. A spiritual director can remind them that the reality of our humanity is that we are fallen and incomplete. That incompleteness is “the empty side of our longing for God and for love. It is what draws us toward God and one another.”iv
Characterizing an addictive substance as an “attachment” does not imply that the addiction is somehow the addict’s fault, and it is certainly not intended to add to guilt and shame. Rather, a spiritual director can reinforce the idea that all of us are weak, and any of us can seek satisfaction in ways that are ultimately unsatisfying.
No one can achieve any sort of spiritual perfection alone. God calls us into the future, but we cannot get there on our own. We need God’s help and attempts to hide from God will only get in the way. A spiritual director can invite the client, gently and gradually, to lower these defenses, to be honest with God and others about their struggles, and to listen carefully, in prayer and in the voices of those who support them, for the voice of the Holy Spirit.
iGerald G. May, M.D., The Dark Night of the Soul (Harper Collins, 2005), p. 42. iiGerald May, M.D., p. 50. iiiGerald G. May, Addiction and Grace (Harper Collins, 2007) p. 24 ivMay, Addiction and Grace, p. 34.
Dr. Kathleen Hope Brown is the coordinator of spiritual formation at Saint Luke Institute.
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