Tag: God

What Did You Learn?

Whenever I, or someone I’m talking to in recovery, goes through a rough time or acts out, I ask, “What did you learn?”

I got this idea from a near-death experience book where someone had compiled several of these stories and pulled out the commonalities. One of the things they all had in common was a point in their experience where they met someone full of love toward them, so powerful that they could feel it. That person showed them a review of their life. They paused at crucial moments in their life; the good, the bad, and the shameful. The people expected correction or condemnation for the bad parts. Instead, for every single event, the loving person asked, “What did you learn?” The people realized that each event was a carefully crafted lesson by their Creator to help them learn a lesson.

This concept blew me away and changed my perception of God. I’ve tried to do the same for myself and others. So, every time I have a hard time, or if I’m talking to others having hard times of any kind, I ask, “What did you learn?” It changes everything. Shame and self-hatred turn into curiosity and discovering ways to navigate life more effectively.

Often the learning is about how well I’m doing my dailies or how connected I am with others in significant ways. Frequently it’s about boundaries and making adjustments to them. It can also be about working the steps and getting unstuck. It lifts me back up and helps me get back on the path, but because of this new learning, it’s a better path for me or others I’m sponsoring or just others in the group or outside the group.

Do I Need God to Recover?

Now there’s a good question! In the Alcoholics Anonymous book, there are entire chapters dedicated to this question. Some will say, “you don’t need God to recover from alcohol addiction”. Others say “without a doubt, you do need God to recover”. But most say, “you don’t necessarily need ‘God’ to recover but you do need ‘a power greater than oneself’ or a ‘higher power’ in order to truly recover”.

I wholeheartedly agree that one needs a “higher power” in order to truly recover. For me this “higher power” is God. For others I know, their “higher power” is their collective 12-Step support group.

So, the main question I have for you is this: Is your current relationship with your “higher power” strong enough to help you recover from your addiction to pornography, lust, and sex?

I am a Christian, a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, to be precise. Yet even with my upbringing and belief that God is my Father and Christ is my Savior, this belief alone was not enough to “cure” me of my pornography addiction. I was a church-going, returned missionary who could not piece together 24 hours of true sobriety! Why?

Because I was not tapping into true connection with my higher power.

Two thoughts on this. First, connection with others I often find helps with my connection with my higher power. Coming out of isolation and connection with others is crucial to connecting with God.  Attending 12 Step Meetings is a great way to connect in an honest genuine way with others. Breaking out of addiction is also a course in breaking out of isolation – isolation from others and ones’ higher power.

Second, specifically relating to communication with my higher power, I used to pray selfish prayers or pitiful “help me” prayers, if I prayed at all. I sometimes felt love from God, but my relationship with Him was focused on my desires and my will. I rarely opened up in a sincere way about my feelings, emotions, problems, sorrows, and true fears. I had no concept of surrendering my will or my life over to the care of my higher power. Now in recovery, I have learned to surrender to Him. I gratefully have a two-way connection with a God who is real and who wants the best for me, and who can truly heal me. I now trust Him, and I seek His wisdom and power instead of my own. So back to the original question: do I need God to recover? Yes, I do. Do you need God to recover?  Yes, you do, but the God of your understanding will suffice. I promise if you pursue a journey into the 12 Steps for recovery from your sexual addiction that you will find a power higher and greater than yourself. Click here to find a list of 12 Step program options. Maybe I’ll see you there at one of them someday!

Step 11

Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.

Step 3 is me letting go of my own will, and step 11 is seeking God’s will.  In step 3, I stop drowning myself with my own horrible ideas to where I’m just floating there.  Step 11 gives me a positive direction from God so I can start moving in a direction that’s aligned with His amazingly frightening will.

Of course God’s will scares me to death.  How could it be any other way?  I’ve already tackled all the easy stuff that I’m not afraid of.  All that’s left is the stuff that petrifies me with fear.  I am bound by that fear, and fear is not from God.  So it’s got to go.  And the only way to get rid of fear is to face it.  When I’m working my program well, I include steps 1, 2, 3 and 11 in my morning prayer.  I will add step 12 to that too some day.  I’m slow.  So I talk to God about the things I’m powerless over, then I express my faith in His ability to help me with these things, and then I give them all to Him to figure out and only then am I ready to follow His will.  My will is usually too noisy to hear anything from God.  So the steps are in order for a purpose.  I have to let go of the wheel and let Him guide me through my day, asking for the courage, power, and clarity to align my rebellious self with His will.

He loves me and wants me to get stronger and freer.  And I’m giving Him permission to do that, so I need to stick with it when He starts me down a path toward something I fear.  It’s like I’m working out a weak muscle and God’s my spotter and I’ve agreed to be here doing this and then the pain gets to be more than what I expected.  Then instead of working through it, I’m tempted to run out of the gym to avoid the pain.  But that just puts me back where I was before.  If I can build up a little more trust in Him each day, each week, it helps me to put up with the pain and fear, knowing that it will be better afterward.  Like going to the dentist.  If I thought the dentist was my enemy, I’d run as soon as I saw the needle.

My daughter came to me with a sliver in her finger.  She trusted me enough to help her get it out.  She knew it was going to hurt worse than what she was enduring right now, but she and I have built up a trust that I love her and will do what will give her peace and happiness in the long term.  So she comes to me when she needs relief from the pain – even if it means more pain for a time.  Afterward, the pain subsides and her faith and trust in me is increased a little bit more.  So it is with me and God.  He is my father after all.

Meditation (or pondering) has also helped me seek God’s will and get rid of my own defective parts of my will.  There are a few different methods I have used.

One method is to focus on breathing and nothing else. If my mind drifts, I don’t get frustrated, I just bring it back to my breath. That method quiets my mind down and gets rid of the noise.

Another kind is observational meditation where I simply observe my mind’s activity without holding on to any particular thought. That’s a lot more difficult for me because I grab the thoughts and run with them.  This helps me become more aware of my thoughts and decreases my self-condemnation, which allows more thoughts to come to the surface.  The more awareness I have, the more freedom I get to make choices about my thoughts and feelings instead of them silently running me.

Another kind of meditation is when I visualize a flame in front of me with a huge empty space around the flame.  I focus on the flame and my breathing.  As I breathe in through my nose, I imagine the air soaking into parts of myself physically (like into pain in my back or tension in my shoulders or neck) or emotionally (into lust, anger, stress, etc.).  I hold it in for a second and then let it out through my mouth and imagine the pain, tension, lust, anger, stress, etc. going into the flame and burning up. I repeat for a few minutes. I’m visual so this one works well for me and gives my mind something to imagine while I’m doing it. And it really helps a lot.  I have no idea why it helps, but I don’t really care.  I found this technique in the Wheel of Time book series, but I believe the author Robert Jordan might have gotten it from somewhere else.  I do it as described above, which is slightly different than what is described in the book. The lust and anger and stress tend to get visualized coming from my heart or entire body depending on how intense it is. And with each breath the emotion seems to get less and less until there isn’t anything left to feed the flame. It’s strange, but it has worked really well for me. More on this here.  Sometimes I can feed images into the flame (like I do with Christ in Step 3) and those might be coming from my brain. So breathe in through the nose and visualize the breath going up into my brain and soaking up the images, then breathing out of my mouth those images from my brain into the flame. And I do this with my eyes closed. It can even be just a couple of breaths at my desk.