This week I’ve been reading ‘This Naked Mind’ by Annie Grace. It’s always intriguing how one thing leads to another. Her book is about alcohol, it’s toxic nature and the relationship both we and our culture have to this accepted addiction. I’m reading about alcohol, yet repeatedly I hear the spiritual undertones in her message. She teaches that our attraction to something like alcohol, but it could be other substances or lifestyle choices, comes from our unconscious beliefs and views. Our relationship with an addictive behaviour doesn’t change through our conscious effort such as abstinence but through a fundamental change in our unconscious guiding beliefs. Slowly, page by page, story by story, research fact by research fact she builds her case and seeks to alter our unconscious stance towards alcohol. It has been an engaging read.
But most curious for me is the way it relates to my spiritual life. She describes her father as experiencing ‘spontaneous sobriety’. Well, me too! She takes me back fifty plus years to the time when my relationship to drugs, alcohol and nicotine got fundamentally changed. I had a using relationship with all three, and experienced three separate times of knowing they weren’t part of my life anymore, and they weren’t. There was, no vow of abstinence, no withdrawal only a deep clarity that they weren’t getting me to the life I wanted, and they were gone. No more. No pain, no suffering. I had no interest in them. Twenty years ago, I had the same experience with meat. I lost the taste for it. Now I’m clear I don’t want to harm another being to nourish my body, but in the beginning, it was simply that I lost my physical taste for it. No vow, no abstinence, simply meat was part of my life any longer.
As Grace describes the work of our unconscious, I understand more deeply the work of the Spirit within us human beings. When Spirit works, she touches a very deep part of me, that part that is often hidden, but so strong. When I experienced the ‘spontaneous sobriety’ fifty years ago, it was the Spirit working in my unconscious soul home and changing how I saw myself and the world around me. As I lived into my new life without these addictive substances and with a growing realization of Spirit’s Presence all around me, I hit a lot of bumps and judgements from my friends and family. The Different Anne wasn’t comfortable to them. They said I was judgemental. I didn’t know that I was, but I both knew what I knew, knew what I liked in this new life ….. and immediately accepted their perspective that I was judgmental. Now, so many years later I wonder if just maybe I was bumping into their discomfort. Maybe they knew in their deep core the same truth I was discovering, and they weren’t interested in listening, about addictions or about Spirit. With a deep breath I say, ‘That’s okay, for we all have our own path to walk’. But, and this is a BIG BUT, let me walk my own path. I will, to the best of my ability let you walk yours but let me walk mine. I know how I want to live. I need help to live it humbly and truly. Please help me. I will do my best to help you be you.
May we all grow in living wisely, humbly and gently from our deepest truth. Here’s a link to her site if you’re interested in more. www.thisnakedmind.com
Love and prayers for the journey
Anne
Mystic in Motion
Companion on the Way with Contemplative Fire
Companion on the Rivendell Way
Society Member of Shalem Institute for Contemplative Living