We were together on an AA retreat -- an opportunity to
do an annual self-review, part of my working the 10th Step --
when I said to my sponsor: "I am in the worst spiritual state
I can remember being in for a long time. All the joy I had
in sobriety seems gone. I'm alcohol-free, but so what? I am
starting to wonder if all this effort is worth this --this
spiritual bottom. It's even worse than the "bottom" that
brought me to recovery."
We talked for a long while, he questioning and I
answering as best I could. Yes, I was going to meetings
regularly. Yes, I continued to pray ("But what use is it?" I
wailed. "I do not feel as if I'm in touch with God!"). Yes,
I talked at meetings when called upon, and sometimes
volunteered to speak. I called the people in my support
group, and continued to help the people I was sponsoring.
I still functioned as secretary of one meeting and was even
in the process of starting a new meeting. And yes, I stayed
in touch with him -- he knew that, as he responded to my
daily phone calls, often doing no more than listening as I
tried to express painful feelings which I often didn't
understand and which I sometimes couldn't even name or
describe.
"You are in a lot of pain, and need to do something
about it," he said when I was finished. "But it's emotional
pain. Your spiritual life is in good shape -- in fact, in

1.
2.

great shape!" He saw my bewilderment and laughed. "You've
confused your feelings with your spiritual state," he
continued. "When you feel good, you think that all is well
spiritually with you, and when you feel bad you think you're
spiritually low. Many people in the program seem to think so,
too. But if that's right, when you were loaded and partying
and having what you felt was a "wonderful time" for yourself,
you would then have been in spiritually great shape! But no
matter how "wonderful" you felt at that time, you were in
fact in a bad spiritual shape. That was your spiritual
bottom." We talked at length about what he said, and he
urged me to work on coming to a deeper awareness of what
constitutes spiritual growth and a healthy spiritual state.
"Begin with the BIG BOOK," he suggested, and I was not far
into it before I began to get an idea of what spiritual
growth might mean.
The first sign of "spiritual growth" was "accepting
things which seemed entirely out of reach." (p. 47) Some
pages later, in the discussion of the Tenth Step, mention is
made of a new way to deal with selfishness, dishonesty,
resentment, and fear: we ask God to remove them, discuss
them with someone, and then make immediate amends to those we
have harmed. (p. 84). A very simple formula for spiritual
maintenance is given: that we "carry the vision of God's
will into all of our activities." We can exercise our will
power along this line all we want since this is "the proper
use of the will." (p. 85).

3.

Finally, in the discussion of spiritual awakening in the
"Twelve and Twelve" Bill Wilson wrote that

When a man or woman has a spiritual awakening, the most
important meaning of it is that he has now become able to
do, feel, and believe that which he could not do before on
his unaided strength and resources alone. . . . . In a
very real sense he has been transformed, because he has
laid hold of a source of strength which, in one way or
another, he had hitherto denied himself. He finds himself
in possession of a degree of honesty, tolerance,
unselfishness, peace of mind, and love of which he had
thought himself quite incapable. (pp. 106-107)

I wondered if there was a single word that could put all
of this together, that could describe "spirituality." I
wondered if I could find a simple description for "spiritual
growth." As I reflected on all I had read and heard, and on
my experience both before and after I started my recovery,
it seemed to me that it could all be expressed in the simple
idea of "empowerment."
To be spiritual is for me to be "empowered." To be
"empowered" means to find the power to do what I could not do
before; it also means that I can do in a healthy and healing
manner what I might have done before in ways that were
unhealthy or which brought suffering to myself or others.
This is why the Eleventh Step, more than any others, opens us
to God's power and makes it possible for us to do what we
could not do before. It is the Step that leads to "sure power
and safe guidance from God" (Twelve & Twelve, p. 109).

4.

Spirituality for me is not therefore a question of
"feeling good" (though "feeling good" is a feeling I like a
whole lot!). Instead, it is a matter of finding from prayer
and meditation, from other people, from meetings -- in short,
from all the "tools of recovery" -- the power to do what is
good, what is healthy, what brings joy and healing to myself
and others. Spirituality is the power to do these things
even though I may be in emotional distress; and one way I
have of gauging my spiritual strength is seeing how
"empowered" I am to do God's will for me. "Spiritual growth"
means to increase such "empowerment"; and I lose spiritual
ground when I lose the "empowerment" I once had.
As my sponsor reminded me, I sometimes felt wonderful
when I drank. But despite this feeling, my spiritual state
was then at its lowest since I did not have the power to stop
drinking, or the power to see or stop the harm I was doing to
myself and to others. Whatever "power" alcohol gave me, it
was not the power I now have in recovery, the power to know
God's will and to carry it out.
Even when I am feeling at my lowest, the "empowerment"
that is the meaning of spirituality makes it possible for me
to work for others and to try to help them. It can give me
the courage to take good care of myself -- to go to meetings

5.

even when I feel I don't need a meeting, to speak up even
when my alcoholism wants me to keep my pain to myself, to
talk at a gut-honest level to my sponsor and to the people in
my support group about painful matters I rather keep hidden.
"Empowerment" makes it possible for me to pray and meditate
even when I don't want to do so, even when I don't "feel"
connected to my Higher Power, even when I don't feel that any
good is coming from these practices.
My spirituality is in good shape when I can do what is
healthy and healing. Spirituality is not a state of
feelings. It is a state of being, of "empowered" being.

Jamie C.