I read an unattributed quote a while back that has stuck with me.
“The reason the past and future filled me with anxiety is that, when I go there, I go alone, without God. God only exists in the present, and that is the only place I can find true peace and serenity.”
For millennia spiritual gurus have sought to remove thoughts and clear their minds to allow for a connection with something greater than themselves. They do this to be in the moment, to quiet the mind and find peace, to simply ‘be’. These spiritual guides know that in the present, in this moment, God ‘IS’. Source, Consciousness, Higher Power, or whatever you choose to call ‘It’ exists only in the eternal present. Whatever ‘It’ is, it has no past or future, It simply is.
The past, whether an hour ago or a decade ago, no longer exists. And even what I can recall, only ever existed in my mind. Anyone else who was present at that time can only recall is from their own point of view, different from mine. And that point of view is subject to the vagaries of the mind which colour and fog the memory as time passes. Detectives tell us the most unreliable witness is the eye-witness to a crime: our recollection of the past is often faulty and incomplete. The past, often a delusion within my mind, no longer exists. God is not there.
It’s probably easier to see that the future doesn’t exist but that doesn’t stop us from living under the belief that some thing is going to happen, that people will react in a certain way, that I will or won’t be there. We make plans and contingencies. And we all know that everything can change in a moment. An accident, new information, an unexpected turn of events, may spin off all of our well laid plans into oblivion. The future doesn’t exist: God is not there either.
God is Present. God is the great ‘I am’, not the ‘I was’ or ‘I will be’. God simply ‘Is’.
In our book, Alcoholics Anonymous, one of AA’s founders Bill Wilson, writes of being ‘…rocketed into the fourth dimension.‘ What does he mean? I’ve been pondering this question for a while and here are some of my thoughts.
We live in three dimensions in life. In geometry we are taught that length, the first dimension allows movement one direction or the other. Adding width, the second dimension, gives us area and we can move in any direction but only on one, flat plane. Height, which gives volume is the third dimension gives us the ability to move anywhere, on all planes in any direction. Running through all dimension is the fourth dimension. Einstein tells us the fourth dimension is ‘time.’ And time ever marches on wherever we find ourselves, wherever we move to.
But perhaps being rocketed, blasted into the fourth dimension is really taking us out of ‘time’ and into what is infinity eternal and completely outside of time: into the present moment, pure being, and forever now. There is no ‘time’ in eternity, only this moment. Here in timelessness we exist. Here in timelessness we find God, pure present Consciousness. There is no past or future with God, only the present.
Yes, I have more pondering to do.
The beauty of it all is that I do not need to understand everything perfectly. Small insights like this help me to grow in understanding and in applying them to my life, help me to discover peace and serenity, greater happiness, joy and freedom in this life and more ‘awe’-some moments.
When I came into AA, I knew almost immediately that I had found my tribe: I belonged here.
After a month or six weeks I shyly asked a man who had a quality of sobriety that attracted me to be my sponsor. And very soon after that I was on my knees repeating, phrase by phrase, the Third Step Prayer. At the time, I really had no idea where that prayer came from nor did I really understand what it meant. But I trusted my sponsor. I at least had enough faith to know that this man knew more about this stuff than I did.
I didn’t realize then that in this prayer I was making a bargain with my Higher Power: I’ll surrender my will and my life over to Your care and share that with others and You’ll release my from the slavery of Ego and remove difficlties from my life, which will further show just how powerful You are.
On the surface it was easy enough to understand. But like many aspects of the AA program, I’ve learned that there’s a whole lot more depth to the words.
Like most newer members I spent the first few years cleaning up the wreckage of my past. Then I moved into my character defects.
I had spent very little time in Step 6 and 7 when I first went through the steps. And with six years of sobriety, with the help of my sponsor and the book Drop the Rock, I made a much deeper dive into these steps. One of the main ideas that I took away from my time spent on those two steps then was this: if I want a new Tim to arrive, I had to let go of the old Tim. Not only did I have to be willing to give up the character defects that were holding me back I had to be willing to put the ones I thought were positive aspects of my character on the table as well. Slowly, I began to let go of the old Tim, once again turning my life over to that Higher Power.
I know that it was a growth experience for me and I believe that I grew from where I was into someone different.
However, with time, it’s very easy for old character defects to return, especially if one isn’t vigilant, and I wasn’t. I see now that I was “resting on my laurels.” Looking back over my years from six to twelve I see that arrogance, perfectionism and selfishness had crept back into my life and I had a tighter grip on my will. I was able to see this because, again with a sponsor and this time armed with the Big Book, I worked through all the steps again.
This experience has taught me many things about myself, the program, my relationships with others and with my Higher Power.
It has taught me that not only do I need to let go of the old Tim, I also needed to stop putting conditions on how the new Tim would show up. If I’m really putting my will and my life into God’s care then I can’t have conditions at all. I can’t hold back what I like about myself. Nor can I tell my Higher Power how I should be in the future. It’s a full and complete surrender. Yes I thought I surrendered that first time I recited the Third Step Prayer and I did, to the best of my ability at the time.
But my abilities have changed over the years. So my understanding of what a complete surrender means has also changed.
My first uttering of the Third Step Prayer was a beginning. And like all beginnings, there’s a lot to learn as the journey progresses. Old ideas must be released and new ones embraced. I can see that I couldn’t have understood the prayer the way I do now; new understandings are built upon old ones.
I don’t know where the next stage of my journey is taking me. I don’t need to know. My Third Step decision reminds me that I only need to trust and my Higher Power will bring me where I need to go, meet the people I need to meet and learn the lessons I need to experience.
I don’t need to navigate the river…just enjoy the ride.
Many folks do very well in recovery until they come to working Step Three. Here we are asked to make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the ‘care of’ a Higher Power, as we understood him. And many balk at this step. Their past experience has not been positive when dealing with things around God and religion. I understand. The God I grew up with wasn’t easily understandable: at one moment, kind and loving and at another throwing my soul to the bowels of hell for all eternity.
As much as I tried to work within the religion I grew up with, I couldn’t. So I left it, took a fork in the road to another idea, that of spirituality. My addiction did a great deal to slow down my progress along this road but with recovery, I found myself moving forward again. I didn’t believe in some old guy with a white beard in some celestial space surrounded by throngs of angels. And while I appreciate Christianity and it was how I was raised, I no longer believed in that either. The truth is, I couldn’t have told you exactly what or how my Higher Power was, but I knew that there was something more than what my five senses could interpret from the world.
And that’s one of the miracles of this program. It doesn’t force me to believe anything. It’s a Higher Power of my understanding. I don’t expect you to understand my relationship to my that Power, and I respect your relationship to yours. As I have grown in recovery I have received greater understanding. I expect that I will continue to grow in that understanding. But what about those who are diligently working the Steps and are finding it difficult?
I’ve learned that you’re making a decision. It need not be all cut and dried and finalized. I know my understand of my H.P. certainly wasn’t then nor is it now defined. In fact, I don’t want to define that power because that will put limitations on it. I use the word ‘god’ in meetings, because it’s convenient, but it certainly isn’t ‘god’ in the traditional sense.
A regular at my home group who has been in the program for many, many years once shared with me that if a new person in the program is finding that they are living in less fear than they were before, then they have a Higher Power. If they are living a life that is more manageable, then they have a Higher Power. And if they are thinking about what they are doing before they do it rather than following their egos, then they have a Higher Power. They may not ever be able to define it, but they know that there is something that is helping them; something or someone with a greater knowledge that is nudging them along this path. If they want to call it God, or Christ or a G.roup O.f D.runks, it doesn’t matter. They’ve figured out that they’re better off with whatever Higher Power is ‘caring for’ them than when they were still out there and the person in their mirror was the one in charge of decisions!
Trust the process of the Twelve Steps: all of them. As you go along you will find that you are ‘cared for’ in so many ways. Open-mindedness and willingness go a long way in recovery to help us all to see that we are connected, which for me, is what spirituality is all about.
Recovery river 