Progressive Psychic Change

Experience, Strength and Hope

Carl Jung, the renowned Swiss psychiatrist who had a direct effect on the creation of the Twelve Steps of recovery, believed that psychic change is an essential part of recovery from addiction and other psychological struggles. He maintained that the psyche's conscious and unconscious parts can be integrated to create a new perspective, which is a key element of personal growth and development.  

“The restoration of sanity that is central to the Twelve Steps is progressive.”

~ Al C. 

**********

Through decades of deepening spiritual recovery, there is one overwhelming truth: there will always be more revelation, more information and more awareness to propel us to a next level of the restoration to sanity. As we often hear in the rooms of recovery, it’s a journey because the destination is always much more than we previously imagined. It is potentially much more than simply not drinking or drugging.

Earlier in recovery, many of us are frustrated by this reality. We kept hoping we would arrive at a place when we could finally stop the effort. Yet the reality of life on life’s terms always arises sooner or later to push us along still further. If we are fortunate, we will realize this is in fact the greatest gift. Stagnation is contrary to life and living. For the alcoholic or addict, and perhaps for all humans, the absence of growth is the beginning of a withering away. There is a wonderful psychological analogy for this:

New information, new experiences and new relationships energize the human being in the same way sunlight fuels plants. Without these, life force begins to fade. We are creatures designed by life itself to continue to progress. 

No wonder progressive psychic change is essential. We never stop needing upgrade after upgrade after upgrade to our psycho-spiritual selves.

“The secret formula is to continue to grow along spiritual lines.”

~ Betsy C. 

So how might we go about this continuing growth and development, this progressive psychic change?

We can certainly wait for life to compel us, usually through challenges that can lead to breakdowns of all kinds in our lives. Some of us seem to need pain and suffering to urge us forward. On the other hand, we can embrace the inevitable.

“Lean into the sharp points and fully experience them.

The essence of bravery is being without self-deception.”

~ Pema Chodron

The literature of recovery provides many means to take ourselves further and further into progressive understanding and approaches. Beyond the realm of recovery, there is an immense world of growth and development knowledge. My friend, Betsy C., who is quoted earlier, suggested that all we need is a spirit of willingness to try new things. Many spiritual teachers further suggest that we cultivate curiosity.

Of course, the great challenge for all of us is complacency. When our lives are comfortable, it’s always harder to push ourselves further. Ironically, recovery increases our well-being and the comfort of our lives, which then makes it more likely we will stop being willing and curious. So there is an inherent tension each of us will always encounter.

To clarify, none of us consciously chooses to rest on our laurels. It just sneaks in against our knowledge.

Perhaps the greatest motivator is coming to understand that when we stop progressing, the disease of addiction begins to catch up with us. A better motivator may be in realizing that the promises of recovery are also progressive. As one wise woman in long-term recovery observed from her own experience, “First the bad gets good. Then the good gets better. Then our lives in recovery become better and better. It never ends if we keep recovering more and more deeply.”

If you’d like a more practical approach to new material, this Progressive Recovery site is filled with a wide range of information, knowledge and experience that can stretch us. Perhaps the essential thing is to commit oneself to getting started. There is no way of telling what may come to pass.

Conscious Contact

Connection and Connectedness

“Sought through prayer and mediation to improve our conscious contact with Higher Power as we understood It, praying only for knowledge of Higher Power’s will for us and the power to carry that out.”

~11th Step, Adapted

“If lack of power is our problem, then Conscious Contact has to be the solution. The Twelve Steps clear the channel, and Step 11 builds a bridge. It’s the one step you can do out of order.”

~Patrick K.

“Whatever tools help you practice Step 11, they are the right tools. Just use them. Higher Power doesn’t care how it works, only that it does work.”

~Sam D.

*********

When many of us arrive in the rooms of recovery, we are overwhelmed by the difficulties that have arisen in our lives. Admittedly, some of the challenges we face are very complicated. So it is that our initial connection is often likely to be with the people in the rooms. We are welcomed generously, and slowly we begin to trust other recovering people, and through them we begin to trust the process of recovery. 

At this point, some of us may conclude that the rooms and the people are the “program of recovery,” or we may get very established into a social life with those in the rooms. To be clear, this initial connectedness is a powerful thing, and can usher us into a deeper and progressive recovery. However there is a risk that we become stalled or stuck at that level. Hopefully, some of our wise elders will remind us that the suggested “program of recovery” is the Twelve Steps.

In recent years, research and learning in the recovery field has yielded an idea that the “cure for addiction is connection.” There is truth in this reflection, and yet connection and connectedness need to be progressive in nature. If merely having companions in recovery were sufficient, all we would need is sober friends. Clearly, the evidence does not support this. We need to go further.

If we practice the Twelves Steps, and if we avail ourselves of those who have applied them deeply and over time, we will move beyond companionship into what Bill W called the “fellowship of the heart.” This is a much deeper level of connectedness. We move beyond superficial connections, though they may be very useful and fulfilling, and begin to become more vulnerable, which supports greater “understanding and effectiveness,” as the 10th Step proposes as our purpose. We get realer, others get realer, and it gets realer. 

This deepening fellowship is often where we hear people describe their connection as “God with skin,” i.e. we experience Conscious Contact as a part of our increasingly engaging relationships. Once again, we need to remember that more will be revealed. Always more will be revealed if we continue to progress in our recovery practices. 

At some point, we will become aware that Conscious Contact is being revealed either through the deepening relationships, or the beneficial effects of the 11th Step and prayer and meditation, or both. If we continue with ongoing personal inventory, it will become clearer and clearer that power which we may not understand is flowing in our lives. The Promises will show more and more fruitfully. 

This deepening connection, connectedness and Conscious Contact can continue to progress. There seems to be no limit to just how far our access to power can advance, and likewise no limit to the degree of restoration we can experience. It is all predicated on our willingness and ability to continue to delve more deeply into recovery.

**********

A Deeper Reflection:

Perhaps the conversation in recovery is the tool that leads to our experience of community. Then as we progress, community leads increasingly into connectedness. Slowly over time that connection brings us into Conscious Contact, which in turn facilitates increasing degrees of communion with others. 

A Possible Path of Progress:

Beyond the rooms of recovery there is so much knowledge of prayer and meditation. So too with Conscious Contact. It covers the entire landscape of spirituality and human development. Somewhere amid that realm are tools and approaches that will fit each of our needs in unique and wonderful ways. Our task is to keep seeking, and to keep learning. 

**********

Ron's Real World Experience

Just a few years ago, I was telling my story at a Progressive Recovery retreat. During the question and answer period that followed, a woman who was deeply challenged by the idea of God and Conscious Contact asked me what I experienced with what I had called a Higher Higher Power. I started by explaining that at every point in recovery, my conception of a Progressive Power continued to expand, hence the ways I had referred to it. And that since I did not understand it, whatever it was, I also like to call it “A Power Greater than Myself.” 

She prodded me further. “That’s what you think about Higher Power, but what do you experience?”

The next thing I knew tears welled up in my eyes. Powerful feelings were surging through me. I had to breathe deeply for a few moment to find my bearings. Then words fell out of my mouth. 

“All I really ever wanted was to know I was okay, and it was okay. I was so afraid there was something profoundly wrong with me.”

I had to stop to breathe again as emotions powered through me.

“I just realized that I have a deep well of connection that I never had before. Somehow I know that I am connected in remarkable ways. The reason I just began to cry is because I am so unbelievably and impossibly okay now. Even though I still do not understand Higher Power.”

I watched myself as I nodded in affirmation. “Who knew Conscious Contact was what I needed?" 

Emotional Sobriety

Imagining Freedom

“Thank you that my happiness, contentment and well-being is not dependent on anyone or anything.”

~Ronald Chapman, An Affirmative Prayer to a Power Greater Than Our Selves

*****

One of the most awe-inspiring gifts of a long-term and progressive recovery is what Bill W called “emotional sobriety,” which he characterized in a 1957 article for the Grapevine entitled The Next Frontier. However, the idea is often misunderstood as some kind of management of our emotions, which is really not possible. Instead, Bill proposes that when we are no longer dependent on people or circumstances to make us feel secure, valued or validated, then we find ourselves experiencing remarkable stability. Bill went very far indeed in describing what would be needed:

"Reinforced by what Grace I could secure in prayer, I found I had to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA, indeed, upon any set of circumstances whatsoever … Then only could I be free to love as St. Francis had been. Thus I think it can work out with emotional sobriety. If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root of it some unhealthy dependency and its consequent unhealthy demand."

We realize this seems impossibly idealistic, and yet, it is the experience, strength and hope some of us carry as one of the greatest gifts of our recovery! It was this profound reality that caused my long-time sponsor, affectionately known as Master Samwise, to pronounce, “Damn! If the problem of dependency is one-hundred percent within us, then the solution is one-hundred percent within us.” Just imagine the freedom that comes with no longer being dependent on anyone or anything outside ourselves!

Judy Borich, a New Mexico based spiritual teacher, called this “equipoise,” and described it as the state when we are neither drawn nor repelled by something. Buddhists speak of “equanimity,” which is defined as "mental calmness, composure, and evenness of temper, especially in a difficult situation.” Interestingly enough, one synonym is “serenity,” which now takes us into the Big Book Promises described after completing the first nine steps: “We will comprehend the word serenity” and “We will know peace."

There is much to be learned and even more to be gained by exploring emotional sobriety further. Here’s a link to the virtual workshops recorded a few years ago for Pavillon Recovery Center and a link to “Ron’s Stories,” where you’ll find two conference workshops in 2024 and 2020 that focused on emotional sobriety.

For many of us who arrived at the rooms of recovery deeply disturbed in any number of ways, the idea of simply being okay is a very powerful one. As always, the proposal of Progressive Recovery is that our experiences of these benefits can continue to deepen and advance as we practice the principles of recovery more and more deeply over time. Bill pointed us toward this idea, and it is our growth and development in recovery that brings it to fruition.

Back to the Basics

A Fellowship of Survivors

Much of Season 6 has leaned into heady content - and for good reason. Many of us in recovery need ideas that ignite our imagination, challenge us to reach for greater possibilities, or take us to places we never thought possible, even in our grandest moments. Yet, as we are called upward and outward, we must not forget the foundation: staying sober one day at a time. Without that, all the expansive growth is meaningless. Recovery requires us to hold both mindsets - the soaring vision and the daily practice - firmly together.

“We have come to believe Higher Power would like us to keep our heads in the clouds … but that our feet ought to be firmly planted on earth.”

~ Alcoholics Anonymous, Page 130

What follows are some deeply grounding reflections from one of the Progressive Recovery community’s most skilled practitioners in this balanced, heady-yet-centered way of living and thinking. In Jeff W.’s words - originally shared with a new friend marking thirty days in recovery - you’ll encounter both the deeply practical side of our program and the uplift of his expansive perspective. Ultimately, he brings us back to earth with a simple reminder: “Today has to be worth it. It’s all we have to work with.”

Thoughts from Jeff W. to a friend celebrating 30 days in sobriety:

Note that the Big Book of AA and the steps were written by enthusiastic visionaries early in sobriety who had stumbled onto a formula that appeared to be working, so they shared it as “good news.”  The good news consisted of the awful conclusion that real alcoholism doesn’t go away, even while not drinking. In fact, their observation was that it gets worse and the only solution they had to offer in regard to imbibing was abstinence, but which they conclude is best handled one day at a time.    

So today is still the day. This is the time I got sober. Nothing else about the disease of alcoholism has changed. I may believe that I have a unique orientation to it, because I’ve only seen it through my eyes. But to anyone else’s eyes it is a form of insanity (lack of sanity) which is a significant threat because I can’t perceive it when I believe I am using intoxicants “successfully.”

This message is strong in a few places in the Big Book. Elsewhere it is forgotten. There’s nothing wrong with the other stuff, except to the degree that it might cloud the “revelation” that alcoholism is a condition of insanity that is activated by the first consumption of alcohol. It was there right from the start and it’s always right below the surface in an alcoholic’s sober perception of reality. Staying sober is therefore a much bigger deal to each individual alcoholic than it appears to outsiders. Which explains why AA is a fellowship of survivors. It’s a big deal and it’s also nothing.

Many alcoholics forget this idea because it seems too simple and obvious. There must be more to it! I’m a complicated soul! My life is mine to live as I see fit! Alcohol is an inert substance—how can it have power over me? The desire to “control and enjoy” intoxication can no more be eradicated than any other fleeting thought. Emphasis on “belief” as a defense is a borrowed idea in the context of alcoholism, perhaps also too much rooted in rationalism (as if it were a physical cause-and-effect premise.). “Controlled thinking” is not the whole story of how human brains work 

Discussions of Higher Powers are interesting but arguments that it is an essential part of a “conversion” to recovery from alcoholism are also tricky. Must one “keep a faith” to avoid relapse and the consequences of alcoholic insanity that rapidly follow? Those questions may only be distractions from the reasonable allowance that AA offers more than one path to follow to sobriety and they’re not necessarily exclusive unless one insists on imposing a rational discipline on an irrational problem.   

If alcohol is a “subtle foe—cunning, baffling, powerful” why wouldn’t we set up defenses on the WHOLE perimeter? Atheists can certainly pray. Religious people can meditate on the absurdity of existence.  Anyone can listen to the sound of one hand clapping in meetings over and over, arriving nowhere, but sharing some sober moments together.

Sobriety is an entire alternate universe for the alcoholic, worthy of exploration like a fresh continent. There is only one rule if we want to stay, and no one keeps us here against our will. We don’t have to like it here, but it helps to accept that we burned the ships on the beach for our own good.

Back in an active alcoholic reality we are virtually slaves who can’t escape because we’ll be fooled into thinking it’s our choice, trading in a useful pair of eyeglasses for another broken pair, the ones that insist we are not insane as the first premise of the insane condition.

Today has to be worth it. It’s all we have to work with. Glad you are in it, here, sober too.