Surrender – More Freedom Blog

The Spirit of Forgetfulness

I once had the opportunity to be Foreman for a federal court case. It was about drug creation and distribution. There were several defendants including a fairly young couple with three small children and a man who was well into his sixties. It was made abundantly clear to use by the defense that if we found these people guilty then we’d be condemning children to grow up without parents and a man to die in prison. We had to find them guilty though due to the evidence. It was horrific. What had started out as something exciting and interesting as reality television had become a tragedy.

I went home that night and as I prayed I felt inspired to pray for forgetfulness and then to be more specific and pray for the Spirit of Forgetfulness to take away the painful memoires of faces, names, and the situation. After about three days of doing this, I noticed it began to work. To this day, I can not remember the names of the people and barely remember the faces of the parents but not the children.

This leads me to suggest this is something to consider when we repent of some of the awful things we did under our addictions. The inappropriate relationships, the actions, the words we used, and so forth can bubble up in our memories at bad times. I have prayed for the Spirit of Forgetfulness and it is slowly, slowly working. I don’t remember the names of the people I should forget. Sometimes, like picking at a scab, my brain will nitpick at it until a name does pop up or a situation but then I just turn back to prayer and pray to forget.

Somethings we need to remember to keep from doing them again but I think there are many things we shouldn’t remember so we be better about surrendering those things that could trigger our addictions. Ignorance is bliss is an often used phrase but I’d change that to forgetfulness is peace in this instance. While this kind of prayer is one way to let go of something bad, we should also remember to make sure it is surrendered as well so it does not linger within us.

Looking the Other Way

Some people have asked me lately how to keep temptation away or how to change habits. In Addiction Recovery there is a lot of talk about triggers, patterns, and things of that nature. I’ve found it is better for me when I keep it simple. I look the other way. It comes in three degrees or categories: physical, mental, and spiritual.

Physically looking the other way is the easiest to start practicing but hardest to keep doing correctly. Addicts have excellent radar for seeing things that will tempt them and bring them enjoyment. We’ve been doing it for years and know when something comes up whether or not to turn our head or keep an eye out. What I propose is when that pops on your radar is you purposefully and physically turn your head the other way. It feels a little weird at first but it works. Keep doing it and slowly it becomes a habit.

Mentally is much harder because our minds can move so quickly and so covertly that it’s hard to keep a handle on them. Just like in the physical example, if you feel your mind turning to something that will trigger it or start the steps in a pattern of addiction then you force your mind to look the other way. It helps to already have something to look to like a favorite scripture or poem or song. Plan ahead with what you will turn to mentally and have it ready for when, not if, you’ll need to look the other way at it.

Spiritually is perhaps hardest of all; however, I found that if you are working hard on the first two degrees or categories then it becomes easier to spiritually turn away. It is tied in closely to the mental category. Where our minds go so do our spirits, but we need to actively want our spirits to follow. I would also equate this with a change of heart or becoming a different person. To spiritually look the other way, I need to have chosen something good or righteous to focus on in place of unrighteous thoughts. Mentally we can count prime numbers or remember quotes from Shakespeare to distract our thoughts. Spiritually we need something uplifting to the soul to move us to a better spiritual plane.

Lastly, as is always true, it is important to surrender whatever it was we were looking away from and make sure it isn’t crammed down into our self-conscious to be used later. Surrender it to God and let Him take it from you so it is gone before it can do any harm.

It takes time, practice, and patience. Like anything worthwhile, it isn’t easy and expect to make mistakes and slip up. I still sometimes don’t look the other way as much as I should, but I just recognize it and recommit to trying even harder the next time. It sounds simplistic but by simple things are great things accomplished.

The Lies That Are Hidden In My Anger and Resentment

I can’t remember where I learned this, but it’s been extremely helpful to me and others in addiction recovery. A lot of it probably came from the ideas that Joe and Charlie cover in their step 4 mp3’s (there are 7-8 mp3’s there, I linked just to the first one), which I highly recommend. They discuss resentment and how we tend to use resentment to cover our own defects by focusing on others’ defects.

Connection with a spouse

Over the years in recovery with my spouse, we have had different levels of disclosure between us based on where each of us are in recovery and what we needed at the time. Sometimes we are just going along in recovery with no particular needs other than some basic transparency. Sometimes she needs to build trust with me. Sometimes, she’s overwhelmed and needs a break. I outline each kind of disclosure we have used over the years below. In each case, we discuss as a couple what we both want and need and are in agreement on which level of disclosure we both want.

Healthy Connections

Before recovery, almost all my connections with women were lustful and dysfunctional. When I got into recovery, I started disconnecting in those lustful ways from women – largely through surrendering lust and through avoiding people and places. A few years later, I started to feel a sadness about being isolated away from half of the people around me because of my fears and triggers. A counselor I was seeing at the time suggested that I try connecting in a healthy way by saying “hi” and getting to know people just as I would a man or someone I wasn’t triggered by. It is important that I point out that I could not do this earlier in my recovery or these attempted connections would have gone back to being lust-based.

Amazingly, when I said “hi,” the lust disappeared and the anxiety left me as well. To those to whom I couldn’t say “hi” or that it wouldn’t be appropriate to say “hi”, I would think about going up to them in my mind and tell them “I just objectified you and I’m sorry for that, I hope you have a good day today” without them saying anything back (in my mind) and that helped me as well. That felt a little strange to do, but it kept me honest and helped me be aware of what I was doing.

Again, I could not do this before a few years into physical sobriety from the addiction, but now I see that through positive healthy simple connections, I can have freedom from the anxiety and temptations that up to that point I just had to wait around for and then let go of when they came along. It takes a lot of time and complete honesty. Again, this progression took years and had to be taken in the right order and at the right time, but with each step, I found more freedom and happiness. Years of addiction had really messed me up and it takes a while for God (with my help) to untangle that mess. I don’t know if I’ll ever run out of things for God to untangle, but that’s OK, because at each stage, from the first moment I stepped into a recovery group, I have had more and more freedom, hope, happiness, and motivation to keep going.

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.

Step 6

Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.

I like to think of step 6 as a way for me to gather up a bunch of my underlying addictions (character defects) and figure out what each one of them is giving me that makes me want to keep holding onto it. I can’t really become ready to have them removed if I’m holding onto them for some reason.

So, I went through my 4th step and gathered up all of my own character defects from the experiences I had documented into one big list. Impatience, anger, grumpiness, hatred, pride, denial, yelling at my kids, shame, codependency, selfishness, etc. Then I wrote next to each one what it gives me. For example, denial gives me a false sense of righteousness and safety from consequences. Yelling at my kids gives me a sense of them being obedient and me being a good parent.

It seems that a lot of these have to do with impatience. I don’t want to wait to do things the hard way, the right way, the way that actually lasts. So I go for a quick and easy way that doesn’t work in the long run.

As I inventory all of these defects and realize that they give me stuff that’s temporary and just makes things worse, in the long run, it helps me to surrender them, let them go, and become willing to have God work with me to get rid of them. A lot of that work to get rid of them happens in step 10, but I have to want to let them go before we can work on getting rid of them.

I share the list of defects and what they give me with my sponsor and let him know whether I feel like I’m ready to let them all go or if I need more surrender first. Once I surrender them, I’m ready to move to step 7.

Traveling and Unstructured Time

When my surroundings or schedules change – usually by traveling somewhere or during a holiday season or weekend – triggers get stronger. Some boundaries that are generally in place, like Internet filters or TV channel filters, may not be in place in my new surroundings. Idle time is deadly. I’ve heard people say that Christ chose His disciples when they were at work and that Satan chooses his disciples when they are idle.

Continue reading “Traveling and Unstructured Time”

The “Lust Balloon”

When I entered the program, I acted out almost daily. As I progressed, I would act out weekly, every two weeks, every month, etc. It seems to me as though I have some sort of capacity to hold lust within me – I’ll call it a lust balloon. Once I have filled this balloon with lust, I feel compelled to resort to my addiction by acting out my addictions physically.

Continue reading “The “Lust Balloon””

Surrender Before Sleep

I have learned to take a few minutes before bedtime and think back on the day to see if any triggering memories from the day pop up. I have learned that if anything pops up, I didn’t really let go of it during the day and so I have to let go of the thought or visual again and again until it stops coming back to my mind. See the Step 3 and Surrender articles for more detail around how to let things go, or surrender them.

When I do this, I have a purer sobriety and am much more lust free, and the lustful dreams don’t happen. Again, I don’t know how this works but it does. I talked to someone who was at an earlier stage of recovery who had tried this and they said that unless they were in a good place spiritually, thinking back on the day would bring up things that they were unable to let go of and it ended up making things worse. Through that experience, I have learned that I must be in a good spiritual place and must be able and willing to surrender my lust before I can use this technique successfully.