Practical Spirituality: A Journey

Every meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, and Gamblers Anonymous begins with the Serenity Prayer, for those who care to follow: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

For recovering addicts, this said prayer offers a rock to hold on to in the long, arduous process of healing.

For the rest of us, it is a simple prayer that “contains the sum total of what spiritual life is: a series of lessons about when to accept life as it is, and when to make changes for the better,” according to author Mary Hayes-Grieco in her book, The Kitchen Mystic: Spiritual Lessons Hidden in Everyday Life.

It’s a good entryway to a life of spirituality; it acknowledges that we are not the center of the universe, and that a higher power (of our understanding) is there to guide and to help.

What Everyone Really Believes

There are many religions in the world — Catholicism, Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, and so on. Despite a history of jurisdictional war, misunderstanding, and each religion’s own public relations crisis, 90% of the world’s population practices some type of spirituality — simply because it helps them. Harold Koenig, MD, a psychiatrist whose expertise is in the relationship of mental health and spirituality, notes that “central to [religion’s] definition is that [it] is rooted in an established tradition that arises out of agroup of people with common beliefs and practices concerning the sacred.”

Spirituality, meanwhile, poses a vaguer, more general description. “It is a more popular expression today than religion, as many view the latter as divisive and associated with war, conflict, and fanaticism. Spirituality is considered more personal, something people define for themselves that is largely free of the rules, regulations, and responsibilities associated with religion. In fact, there is a growing group of people categorized as spiritual-but-not-religious, who deny any connection at all with religion and understand spirituality entirely in individualistic, secular terms.”

Healing and the Higher Power

In a study by Dr Koenig, he found that patients with depression reported a 50% higher remission if they had religious practices. In another study in 2013, people who had some source of spirituality reported a higher response to treatment for anxiety and depression.

The same is true for recovering addicts. The incorporation of a Higher Power is essential in the twelve-step program, with the U.S. Surgeon General’s report on Substance Use in 2016 that nearly two thirds of all recovering addicts and alcoholics consider their recovery of having a spiritual dimension.

“Spirituality made all the difference for me in my recovery,” notes C.T., a recovering drug addict and ADHD patient. “In my active addiction, that’s one thing I didn’t have. I felt like I was exisiting, I was functioning but I felt like a zombie. When spirituality came in, I felt like a human being.”

Dr Deepak Chopra notes: “As a physician, I’ve seen all sorts of unusual things. I have seen spontaneous remissions, or so-called miracle cures. I have seen two people get exactly the same treatment for the same disease, one recovers, one doesn’t. And I have become convinced over the years that healing is a spiritual experience. In fact, if you look at the word “healing” it comes from the word “holy.” And healing is more than just a physical phenomenon.

The Darker Side

For a while, I got turned off by Catholicism, the religion in which I was raised.

Everything seemed to be a sin: holding hands with a boy. Thinking lustful thoughts. Thinking angry thoughts. Gossiping. Parents divorcing? They’re sinning and going straight to hell. If you don’t confess, you’re going to hell.

My teachers were wonderful and well-meaning; but to a highly impressionable, highly sensitive and emotional teenager whose parents were at a tumultuous point in their marriage, the threat of a God that shuns you and your family was perhaps too much.

In a 2015 article on Livescience, psychology professor and religion and health expert Kenneth Pargament notes: “If people have a loving, kind perception of God, and feel God is supportive, they seem to experience benefits…[but] we know that there’s a darker side to spirituality…If you tend to see God as punitive, threatening or unreliable, then that’s not very helpful to your health.”

On a practical level, we wouldn’t hang out with someone who was mean and judged us all the time. And we constantly would want to be around someone who was supportive and kind.

So for a while, I did shun spirituality. Sure, I believed in God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, the blessed Mother and all the saints, I stopped speaking to them in prayer. My 20s and early 30s were spent mostly pursuing the bacchanalian pleasures of alcohol, drug experimentation and sex. I chased the next big thing: the next hot guy; the better paying job; the coolest clothes; the cutest shoes. And truthfully, I felt lost.

That is, until my world came crashing down; and my experience is not uncommon. Kathleen Brehony, a psychologist and life coach, notes in her book After the Darkest Hour: How Suffering Begins the Journey to Wisdom: “Illness, loss of loved ones, disappointment, decline, death, limitations and imperfections startle and shake us. But they awaken us to find meaning, dignity and significance in our lives…it is through suffering and pain that we break down our habitual barriers between ourselves and others and allow for the entrance of a transpersonal, transcendent perspective: a full appreciation of our intimate and profound spiritual connections.”

It is when we are lost that we try to find our people, our rock; and religion and spirituality, when taking on a kinder, loving and welcoming persona, becomes a guiding force.

Today, I am not a perfect Catholic — but like many of my peers, I have found a closer, more personal relationship with God. My practice is much better than before; moreover, it works for ME. I’ve incorporated the traditions I’ve grown up with, and I’ve introduced some of my own–including a prayer journal, where I keep track of the things I’m grateful for; the things I’ve asked for, and the prayers that have been answered.

HOW DO YOU MAKE IT WORK FOR YOU?

Here are some practical ways to incorporate spirituality in your daily life:

Define your own understanding of a Higher Power and keep an open mind.

Religions and traditions vary; who is the God you choose to speak to? Is He the God you grew up with? Is He or She the God/Goddess/ Universe you came to know through life experiences?

Do remember that your peers may not have the same beliefs as you do. Listen and be understanding, and know that everyone is one a different journey as you are.

Embrace your own practices

Some of us repeat the Serenity Prayer until we take its meaning to heart. Some of us recite prayers memorized from childhood. Some of us keep a prayer journal, to list down and take to heart what we’re thankful for, what we’ve asked for, and what was answered. Some of us choose to forego prayer, opting instead of meditation. The key, as with anything, is to keep the right balance.

The best advice about prayer I’ve received was this: “When prayer becomes an internal conversation with God, rather than an external obligation from your elders or from others, the whole dynamic changes. It’s something you WANT to do, versus something you’re FORCED to do.”

Practice kindness and sincerity

For all their differences, the religions of the world teach a common rule: to love one’s neighbor as one loves themselves. As the Eastern philosopher Lao Tzu writes:

“Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.”

This story originally came out in Ideiya.