Nearly two decades later, I’ve learned a few things. I used to think that the treatment of trauma was something that could be done by one person. I used to think that if you provided enough nurture and attention, everything would be OK. I used to think that if I tried hard enough, a patient could survive the ravages of trauma and Complex Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (C-PTSD). I used to think that the training that I received in graduate school and at my internship would enable me to handle anything that crossed my way. I used to think that if a patient survived horrific violence, they could survive the memories of what had occurred.

I am wiser now. I know now that sometimes, no matter what I do, it might not be enough. I know now that it takes more than a graduate school education to embrace the treatment of trauma and to succeed. I know now that I am one cog in a wheel, and that without my team, my efforts would fall short. I know now that it takes a village to raise a client. It takes a village because trauma impacts every sector of a client’s being: it short-circuits their biochemistry; it distorts their cognition; it inhibits the ability to connect with others and to seek and use social support; it blocks their energetic meridians; and it confounds their connection with Spirit.

Trauma is a multifaceted demon that sucks the capacity for life from a person, one region at a time. Recovery from trauma requires a therapy protocol that attends not only to the mind, but to every piece of the fabric of who we are. Trauma recovery demands techniques that impact body, emotion, mind and spirit. And whether or not you have a specific faith, or worship at all, the treatment of trauma survivors mandates that you not only have an active connection to something that is greater than us all, but also requires that you can hold space for the client who feels abandoned by God, Source, Spirit, High Power – or whatever name you choose to use.

When the arrogance of graduate school wears off and you finally feel overwhelmed by your clinical work, you might begin to consider that multimodal toolkit. And, as you begin to treat those with mood disorders and addictions, you’ll grow closer to that village idea. When you lose your first patient to the rigors of trying to stay alive one day at a time, you’ll cross the threshold into ways of thinking you might never have considered before.

According to Sack (2012), who reports on a recent study published in Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, a history of childhood neglect or sexual, physical or emotional abuse is closely correlated with the development of anxiety, depression, addiction and suicidality.

Rates of historical physical abuse are reported to be as high as 24 percent for men suffering from alcoholism and 33 percent for female alcoholics. The rate of sexual abuse history among those with alcoholism is approximately 12 percent for men and 49 percent for women. But, most of us realize that trauma comes in many forms, not just physical, emotional or sexual abuse. The article in ACER cites a study of children who attended school near Ground Zero, suggesting that the more trauma-related factors the children experienced, the more likely they were to use drugs and alcohol. According to the study, children with three or more exposure factors were 19 times more likely to increase their use of drugs or alcohol.

Research suggests that trauma is associated with a range of unhealthy efforts to cope, not just with alcoholism and addiction. Even the Adverse Childhood Experiences study conducted with Kaiser Permanente patients indicates that those with a history of trauma also struggle with overeating, compulsive sexual behavior and other types of addictions. In their study, children with four or more adverse childhood experiences were five times more likely to develop alcoholism and 60 percent more likely to suffer from emotional and/or disordered eating. Boys who had experienced four or more of adverse experiences were discovered to be nearly 50 times more likely to become IV drug users than their peers.

When you begin to treat clients with histories of abuse or trauma, you begin to realize that you are also likely to be treating them for sexual compulsivity, gambling, eating disorders, alcoholism, drug addiction, prescription drug abuse and even Type-A workaholism. It’s at that point when you’re most likely to realize that your protocol needs to be beefed up.

Much of what I do in my practice is now standard of care: assessing for physical, biochemical and hormonal issues to address, evaluating cognitive function and distortion, analyzing the social support network, identifying resources and reviewing the psychosocial history. Common practice includes referring a trauma client to a team of healthcare providers, including a physician, acupuncturist, massage therapist and even a Reiki Master. You might even remember to ask about a client’s faith, or to recommend pastoral care, but how often do you really focus on that? If you were raised in a religion different than that of your client, do you even dare converse about their views? If you’re not religious, can you talk about God?

Over time, and through hundreds of phone calls like the one mentioned in the first lines of this article, I learned that I cannot treat a trauma survivor without being able to have those conversations. I’ve learned that despite my willingness to do so, and an unending supply of desire to facilitate the healing process of my clients, I am human. In order to uplift the human spirit, what is required is a source of energy so great that it can carry that broken, fragile core into a space where it can be restored.

As a trauma psychologist, I trained in a number of different models, one of which was Prolonged Exposure Therapy, or “Flooding.” Edna Foa (1991, 1999) originally developed this technique in the 1990s to address the symptoms of those suffering from resistant PTSD. Foa’s PET protocol incorporated three modalities. During the course of approximately 12 sessions, a clinician would provide:

• Psychoeducation about the reactions and symptoms being experienced by the trauma survivor, as well as some of the triggers for those reactions.
• Imaginal exposure that engaged the client to repeatedly recall and recount the traumatic memory, and
• In-vivo exposure that involved using reminders such as photographs or objects related to the trauma to enable the client to confront rather than to avoid the material and to learn to manage the reactions associated to the experience.

The research suggests that PET reduces the symptoms of PTSD, such as intrusive thoughts, intense emotional distress, nightmares and flashbacks, avoidance, emotional numbing and loss of interest, sleep disturbance, concentration impairment, irritability and anger, hypervigilance and excessive startle response.

However, I have come to understand that there are limits to what PET provides, especially to combat veterans. For those who cannot tolerate reliving the event, during which they feel as isolated and helpless as they were in that moment, or series of nights, days, weeks, months or even years, PET offers little assistance. Those trauma survivors do not return for further treatment, but rather self-soothe or self-medicate in ways that distract them from the revisitation of their personal apocalypses. They look for ways to deaden their memories, or at least to numb their responses to the memories they cannot seem to dislodge from their brains.

After 27 years of treating combat veterans, getting an MA and a PhD, training for five years as an Emotional Intuitive, and even after becoming an Ordained Minister, I’m not sure I know what the perfect protocol for the treatment of trauma is, but I have been able to develop strategies that work far better than those I’ve learned along the way. Perhaps, because my protocol takes into consideration all of the areas impacted by trauma, and the core issue that lays at the very foundation of traumatic experience: that of human abandonment at a time when comfort and connection is mandatory.

Modified Intuitive Prolonged Exposure Therapy (MiPET) is based on the concept that our ability to survive, and later to thrive, following mind-altering trauma, depends on our connection to something greater than ourselves. Unlike Foa’s PET, a survivor does not relive his or her trauma while a therapist listens faithfully. In the MiPET protocol, the clinician willingly and intentionally travels back in time with the client to the traumatic event, to bear witness for the atrocities committed against that person.

Not adept at time travel, you say? Didn’t take that course in graduate school? Well, whether or not you truly feel capable of energetically travelling back in time with your client, you would be surprised at how many of your trauma survivors are willing to take you back with them, if you allow it.

Using some of the same general principles proposed by Foa, a clinician need only encourage the client to breathe deeply, and to allow their minds to move back through time, alighting on the day (or year(s)) during which the trauma was experienced. But, before encouraging the client to move even a single step further, remind the client that you are just a few feet behind them, unable to change the events which are occurring, but bearing witness to what is happening. Remind the client that because you have travelled back in time without your body, no harm will come to you as you witness the events. Then, allow the client to describe the events in detail as they happen, encouraging the experience and expression of emotion that, while likely unavailable due to danger at the time, is now perfectly reasonable. When your client has been able to move through the traumatic episode, have him or her take a deep breath and travel forward through time to a seat in your office and divert their attention to your eyes. Have them breathe deeply while they ground in the current experience, and encourage them to rub their hands together or tap their feet on the ground. If they require further grounding, have them alternate from looking into your eyes and looking at a lamp or other light source. Offer water, or even food, as both further enhance emotional grounding.

This simple technique, used repeatedly, diminishes a client’s sense of being abandoned in his or her time of need. However, given that you can’t guarantee that you’ll always be available in a client’s time of need, MiPET encourages eventual transition to an even more effective witness to the trauma. As a client’s symptoms begin to diminish during repeated recollection of the trauma, you can incorporate the client’s spiritual beliefs or foundations (as long as they support the client’s recovery). As you move back in time and alight at the time of trauma, encourage the client to look behind them at rays of sunlight, or if they have a more traditional Christian belief system, at the vision of God, Jesus or Mary. For those for whom vision is not a primary sensory modality, try incorporating the sense of embrace, or of spoken words of reassurance emanating from their Higher Power. For those who continue to struggle in their relationship to Source, stick with a more pantheistic theme (e.g. incorporate the strength of Mother Earth below their feet, waiting to consume all the tragedy that they have experienced so that it can be recycled and new life can spring forth).

As symptoms resolve even further, you can prompt the client during his or her MiPET sessions to generate his or her own narrative about what supports him or her in the hour of greatest need. Have your client teach you the story that s/he has come to know as healing, regenerative and restorative. When the client is able to move back and forth through time freely, maintaining that relationship with Source, feelings of abandonment and panic will give way to resignation, understanding and eventually compassion.

And, in the end, survivors will thrive through the knowledge that although the past may have shaped them, in need no longer define them.

More sophisticated affirmations can be derived by adding meaningful words:
• “I am wonderfully rich in consciousness.”
• “I am aware of God’s divine presence with me.”
• “I am completely at peace and totally in acceptance.”
• “I am connected with the beauty of nature.”
• “I live in abundance and prosperity.”
• “My true nature is to be of love and service to my fellow man.”

Affirmations help us change our belief systems and reinvent how we live our lives daily. I adjust my daily affirmations to coincide with the area of my life I am trying to improve.
Remember: The most important conversation you will ever have will be the one you have with yourself. –Unknown Author

The gratitude visit (Seligman, Steen and Peterson, 2005) is one of the best-known and most-quoted of the positive psychology interventions. The intervention is simple: people are asked to deliver a letter of gratitude to a person who had been particularly kind to them, but whom they never properly thanked. This has had positive effects, with greater scores on happiness and lower scores on depression, for a month following the exercise. Yet I believe this is only the tip of the iceberg of what can come from a gratitude visit, particularly if it is virtual rather than in vivo. Psychodrama (Moreno & Fox, 1987; Moreno & Jennings, 1953) is an experiential form of therapy and theory originally developed by Jacob Moreno. It is a widely employed therapeutic model, which has a variety of therapeutic uses from educational role-playing through trauma work (Tomasulo, 1998). The gratitude visit lends itself to psychodrama when the person you wish to extend your gratitude to may be unavailable or deceased, and may even be used on a fictional or historical character. In fact, based on some new research in the Journal of Positive Psychology (Rosmarin, Purutinsky, Cohen, Galler, & Krumrei, 2011), it is possible the VGV may be effectively done with God. Using this technique, a person would be asked to write a letter of gratitude to someone who isn’t available for direct contact. Two chairs would be arranged, one for the writer (the protagonist) and the other, empty chair for the unavailable person (the auxiliary position). The protagonist arranges the chairs in a way that symbolically depicts the relationship: Are the chairs close? Far apart? Side by side? One behind the other? The chairs’ arrangement sets the emotional tone for the encounter.

The protagonist then sits in his or her chair and reads the letter that has been prepared for the person symbolized by the empty chair. Following the completion of the reading, the protagonist would reverse roles and become the auxiliary. By becoming the auxiliary, the person would respond as if the letter had just been read to him or her.
Following this, the auxiliary role would be relinquished, and the protagonist would return to the original chair and respond to the auxiliary’s empty chair. This ends the enactment.
If this were done in private, the protagonist would write down his or her feelings. If a coach or therapist were involved, they would debrief the protagonist. If this were done as part of a group, the group members would share with the protagonist what it was like to witness this encounter. In an experiential group setting, this would most likely lead to others doing such an enactment. Finally, the protagonist would share with the group what it felt like to engage in the process.
Using the above format, there is evidence to suggest that gratitude toward God (religious gratitude) is a powerful mediator between religious commitment and gratitude. Rosmarin et al, (2011) collaborated to apply an evidence-based approach to religious vs. non-religious gratitude. They asked whether gratitude to God is better for well-being than generalized gratitude. The study looked at the relationship between dimensions of gratitude and measures of religious commitment and mental and physical well-being. The authors, like other researchers, found that gratitude was significantly correlated with religious commitment. But these researchers also found that the relationship between these two variables was fully mediated by having gratitude directed toward God. In other words, gratitude is more potent when you have both religious commitment and your gratitude is directed specifically toward God (Tomasulo, 2011). Through an online survey, the researchers looked at 405 adults of varying religious backgrounds and used gratitude questionnaires that measured both religious and non-religious expressions of gratitude. These results were then compared to measures of religious commitment. (Religious commitment was determined by a person’s degree of belief in god, importance of religion and religious identity.) Happiness, satisfaction with life, positive and negative affect and physical and mental health were measured using well-known scales or adaptations of them. What the research found was that general gratitude was predicted for all the outcome variables. This means that gratitude in general, as other studies have shown, works very well. The degree to which a person is religiously committed was found to actually enhance gratitude’s effect. As the authors put it, “we propose that religion facilitates gratitude through a religious lens” (p. 393). In this way, a VGV with God, thanking him for his grace may be enacted psychodramatically. This would combine one of the most successful experiential techniques with perhaps the most effective form of gratefulness.
 
References

Moreno, J. L., & Fox, J. (1987). The essential moreno: Writings on psychodrama, group method, and spontaneity Springer Publishing Company.

Moreno, J. L., & Jennings, H. H. (1953). Who shall survive? Beacon House New York.

Rosmarin, D.H., Pirutinsky, S., Cohen. A.,Galler, Y., & Krumrei, E.J. (2011). Grateful to God or just plain grateful? A study of religious and non-religious gratitude. Journal of Positive Psychology, 6(5), 389-396.

Seligman, M. E. P., Steen, T. A., Park, N., & Peterson, C. (2005). Positive psychology progress: Empirical validation of interventions. American Psychologist, 60(5), 410.

Tomasulo, D. J. (1998). Action methods in group psychotherapy: Practical aspects Taylor & Francis.

Tomasulo, D. (2011). Can God and Gratitude Help Your Mental Health?. Psych Central. Retrieved on December 16, 2011, from http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/
2011/12/11/can-god-and-gratitude-help-your-mental-health/

Using my book, The Craft of Compassion (Hand to Hand Publications, 2010), as the curriculum, I had the honor to work with Brandon Beckman teaching addicts and their families at L.A. Family Housing in North Hollywood. We guided them through the exploration of self-esteem via the first step of the Craft: self-compassion. We came at it from two different angles.

First, citing John Makransky, we invoked the “benefactors.” A benefactor is a figure who lets one know he or she is beloved. The benefactor might be your mother, uncle or pet. It could be Christ, the Buddha or the Blessed Virgin Mary, or the Baal Shem Tov. I encourage addicts to see the forthcoming work through the benevolent eyes of the benefactors. Often, recovering addicts have invoked God as their benefactor.

Secondly I speak of amor fati, which is Latin for “loving ones fate.” Not what one has made of oneself, but the “cards one has been dealt.” This includes your parents – not another set – your gender, race, the hard wiring of your character. Amor fati is the substratum of self-esteem, and self-esteem is the substratum of all healthy human relationships.

The second step of the Craft is compassion for others, and it hinges on sympathetic joy – joy over another’s joy – and sympathetic sorrow – sorrow over another’s sorrow. With the community of recovering addicts, we tell the story of “the sorrow of our sorrow with which we meet another’s sorrow, and the joy of our joy with which we meet another’s joy.” Working this way, we see how compassion lifts the addict from the self-preoccupation and narcissism that distorts relationship-building with others. The stories of one life become a vehicle for connecting with others.

Step three of the Craft takes this farther: Radical Empathy. The Cherokee proverb is apt: “You cannot understand another until you have walked three moons in his moccasins.” Radical Empathy is about seeing through another’s eyes.

I have been entirely astonished at how profoundly recovering addicts have received Step three; an intimate empathy is built into true recovery. Addicts understand the travails of fellow addicts, the joy of freedom that is being clean.

We paired off and each told the story to the other of bottoming out on alcohol or drugs. Then, in the group, each told the story of the other as well as he or she could – and told

“as” the other, in his or her “voice.” The truth is that recovering addicts do this impeccably. Two women I paired off were roommates and arrived angry at each other, yet when they entered into the “game” of seeing through the others eyes, they did so perfectly.

Step four I call the mysterium: seeing through the eyes of compassion. The previous four steps have prepared the addicts for this, the shedding of layer after layer of self-involvement. All the steps involve putting the self to the side and seeing through another’s eyes, so at this step, one is well prepared to see through the eyes of compassion. These are, in fact, the eyes of the benefactor who taught us not to be so harsh on ourselves. Here we are looking out on the whole world through these eyes.

Through the eyes of compassion one is equally kind to oneself and others. “Do unto others”, yes, but also “Do unto yourself as you would have others to do unto you.” In living compassion, you bless the full gamut of human experience – the vales of disappointment as well as the joys of camaraderie.

In these four steps of the craft of compassion, we can see how the necessary life skills of self-esteem and relationship-building with others are creatively engaged and refined.

The powerful experience of quantum joy, peace and love created by entering The Zone, is the antidote to our country’s heavy and acidic conscious state. This is why our country has the highest obesity and illness rate among the modern nations. Studies show The Zone instantly transforms aging and stress hormones into anti-aging and anti-stress hormones.

Saturday Night Live recently did a skit about the fact that Olympic athletes are using heart-activating techniques, as seen when athletes do the “heart pump” and point to the heavens to get in The Zone. This is to align their heart and brain hemispheres in a synergistic way.

Modern medicine’s well-known doctors, such as Dr. Dean Ornish, agree that we can change our DNA with simple lifestyle changes. We have dozens of techniques that are free as the air we breathe to activate positive communication with our bodies’ five life-giving systems: organs, glandular, muscular, cardiac and cerebral.

We all have experienced the peak mind and body sensations of the Zone during such experiences as sports, social rapture or spontaneous healing. What many people are unaware of is that Love Mantras can also produce entrance to the Zone, and that experience can also be called Quantum Love. There is no greater power on earth than this love.

The bio-electric vibrations produced from the words love and God stimulated several saints in the East and West (such as St. Francis, St. Germain and others from the 1700s on) to physically levitate. With such divine words or mantras harmonizing both body and brain, we inspire more strength, wisdom and healing than most other words in our language system.

Quantum Love has proven to stimulate productive communication between cells within and around our body, taking us to the next level of dimensional existence. Lance Armstrong used similar techniques to win seven Tours de France and to heal his whole-body cancer, by raising his acid/alkaline threshold with Love.

Quantum Love calms our nerves, thereby energizing the body and brain as a result of released stress. As shown in my book, Tapping Universal Source, and an upcoming experiential documentary (thezonemovie.com), stress is known to cause 90 percent or more of all physical and mental ailments. The book and movie’s aim is to instruct all those interested in spontaneous healing with Divine Consciousness.

Our brain and its shell, the human body, is a storehouse of life energy. This energy is constantly employed in the cellular metabolism of oxygen, water, nutrients and rest, incorporated with the workings of the heart, lungs and nervous system. Quantum Love produces strength, wisdom and healing that can surpass one’s wildest imagination.

In order to experience the power of Quantum Love, one must first use the whole body-mind connection, as in learning to think and breathe with our entire body. Science has proven that we habitually process 10,000 thoughts per day, made up largely of memories of the past. Any less-than-loving thoughts will produce less-than-loving outcomes. For example, saying or thinking “life is hard” can produce physical or mental hardships.

When multiple-personality patients transition from one personality to another, they can commonly experience the onset and release of diseases as serious as diabetes or asthma. Each personality has its own mental imprint and bio-chemical production as a result of its habitual thoughts.

Every word or thought inspires a trillion bio-electric reactions within the whole body. The ratio of loving to less-than-loving thoughts is the critical factor to the state of good health.

Remember, love is more than a word – it is emotional energy that reflects the very force that created the universe.

Saints and mystics say our truest essence is Love. Accessing the dimensions of Love and expanding with it could be our most important job here on earth. I believe that, as the universe expands, our consciousness is equally challenged to expand. Pain and suffering can be seen as temporary challenges to help guide us back on track toward Quantum Love.

We all consist of vibrating atomic energy where electro-magnetic frequencies define our existence. We all are hard-wired to God, and optimizing God’s frequency is our objective. We can think of God as a giant magnet, and the closer we get to that magnetic source, the more powerful are the healing and euphoric vibrations to be experienced.

While “surfing the inner dimensions” of my “body-mind” on Christmas Eve several years ago, I prayed for a new Mantra to heal a serious health problem that been diagnosed “incurable” by modern medicine. Minutes later, a blue flash of light was accompanied by a Love Mantra filling my voice box and brain, as seven highly charged words entered my mind and body. Very soon after this experience of Quantum Love’s Healing Power, my disease disappeared.

Our universe is an interactive force of reality defined by loving or less-than-loving emotions and intentions. For example, the degree in which we are loving and forgiving to others corresponds to the degree in which we feel loved and are forgiven by others. Turn up your “love dial,” and the heavens will open up and rain healing, strength and wisdom into your life. All of these blessings will nurture even more Quantum Love for the benefit of everyone.

We all have angels in our lives: sometimes we see them, sometimes we don’t. Angels are spiritual beings often depicted as messengers of God. The Hebrew and Greek words originally mean messenger, either human or one that is supernatural.

Heavenly angels, often referred to as guardian angels, are mentioned numerous times in the Scriptures. Therein we learn that angels are spiritual beings created by God to serve him; and sent by God to watch over the human race; to deliver his messages; to guard and protect us from danger; and to do battle with the other spiritual beings on our behalf. Since the beginning of time, angels have delivered God’s messages to mankind. Sometimes the messages are warnings of impending danger, sometimes they are instructions as to what we are to do in a particular situation; they have been known to bring joyful announcements, and yet sometimes they are simply there as protection from enemy forces.

Why do we need angels? In truth, I do not know. God can deal with us in any way that pleases him to do so. He can speak with us directly, in a burning bush, in our dreams, visions and specifically through the Scriptures. Yet, he also employs angels. The Scripture says angels were created for his pleasure. Perhaps it is as simple as that — it pleases God to send the supernatural heavenly beings we call angels to minister to his children. Some of the roles of angels include protecting, guiding and directing human beings to carry out God’s tasks.

Angels can guide you in your life where you are stuck, leading you to discover the blocks in your life and helping you to work through them. When you are sick, feeling lonely, depressed or lacking energy and unable to motivate yourself, you may wish to ask the Angels for their healing support. Children have no trouble seeing and believing in angels, because their personalities or their egos have not fully developed. In fact children, until discouraged, will often tell you about the angels they see appearing in the form of a grandfather or grandmother they have never met. What makes us lose our spiritual intelligence and distrust that is natural to children?

Angels really want to help guide you, but most of the time we are not listening. This is when something called our EGO (Edging God Out) gets in the way and blocks our spiritual intelligence. As we get older, we develop roles to play in our lives to stay safe and loved. It is then we learn that love comes from something outside of ourselves, and that we must do something to get love. Our personalities, or our egos, become somewhat deaf, blind and forgetful to the truth of who we truly are, stopping us from seeing our true, divine selves. Thus, we have messengers in our lives, called angels to remind us.

Is it possible to have met an angel without knowing it? Angels can act as symbols to remind ourselves of our true purpose when we become distracted. Symbols have been around for ages. Plato cites Eros as a mighty demon, halfway between God and man. Eros, always present in the unconscious background of the psyche, animates the inner world and keeps the channels open between the ego and the unconscious. Our angels are catalysts we can use to get in touch with our inner genius. They act as a bridge between our rational and spiritual intelligences. In this way we are able to elevate the conscious mind beyond the boundaries of ego.

When people embark on a journey of personal growth, they hope to overcome feelings of fear, addiction, self-hatred and unworthiness. Becoming identified with mind and emotion can sabotage our relationships, preoccupy our thinking, increase our state of anxiety and unhappines and keep us out of a state of joy. As we begin to identify with our minds and emotions, we identify with ego, and any time we become identified with something, or label ourselves, we feed the ego and not the soul.

On some level, our soul always tries to express itself through unconscious means.

Our unconscious may be out of awareness, however it directly influences our behavior, finding expression through dreams, slips of the tongue, forgetting, delusions and projections. Our spiritual growth process is achieved by breaking the barriers to our repressed Higher Unconscious (i.e., fear of letting go and surrendering) and embracing it, representing an increase in the experience of higher, mystical and spiritual states of consciousness.

The trick is to become fully present to hear these messages from our divine. The ego is very busy blocking these messages through words, labels, judgments and criticisms. When we become present, either through joy or fear, our egos surrender, move out of the way and give up control. We need to move back from our rational intelligence to our spiritual intelligence that we once had as children. Sometimes we do not surrender until we are older and forgetful. Perhaps if we can get in touch with our angels, we will not have to wait that long.

To go further, there are many dimensions of reality below what we normally see and hear. We need to be open to the mystery, as well as the mystical experiences, to begin to see each happening and circumstance as a message from God. The secret of successful change is that although the change may look negative on the outside, it is creating a new space for you to grow and develop. Although soul works through individuals, its focus is on the needs of others and on service to humanity. So we will live in a wonderful state of mystery and not see it as something we need to control. Once we become open to connect with something, we open to its essence, its purpose, and meaning. When our hearts and minds are truly open, we can really hear what’s being said, or really see what’s happening in the moment. Openness demands that we be willing to move to places we’ve never been before. It asks us to continually challenge the foundations of our belief systems so we can test out new ideas. And to do that we need to accept insecurity. It means we are continually learning, unlearning and relearning.

The transition from the level of the ego to the existential requires the ego to deconstruct, let go, suspend controls with pleasure and to permit ideas and fantasies to emerge in a regressed state, thus furthering imagination, play, humor, inventiveness and creativity (Pahnke and Richards, 1972).

Identify Nine Core Characteristics of mystical experiences:

1. Unity: Internal (the usual sense of individuality falls away) or external (one’s identity merges with the sensory world in recognition of an underlying oneness).

2. Noetic quality of experience: Direct insight into the nature of being, accompanied by the certainty that such knowledge is truly real and not delusion.

3. Transcendence of space and time: The experience of time and space shifting their usual parameters.

4. Sense of sacredness: A non-rational, intuitive and quiet response to inspiring realities.

5. Deeply felt positive mood: Feelings of joy, love, blessedness, bliss and peace.

6. Paradoxicality: Experience of unity of opposites is felt to be true in spite of violating normal logical principles.

7. Ineffability: The inability to adequately express the experience in everyday language.

8. Transiency: The transient nature of the experience relative to the apparent permanence of everyday consciousness.

9. Positive change of attitude or behavior: Resulting from having had the experience.

The angels can help us to develop our spiritual intelligence, to surrender and give up control and listen to the angels and the messages they bring. When we develop our spiritual intelligence, we include values, such as courage, integrity, intuition, compassion and love, implying responsibility to one another. Developing our spiritual intelligence is critical today, so that we can have a strong enough inner world to sustain our need for belonging, self- esteem, contribution and love. Maybe we can ask the angels for help.

I have experienced many angels in my life, some I have seen and some I have felt. They come in the form of teachers, mentors, helpers, my children and my parents. These angels have guided, inspired and protected me. Sometimes an angel appears as a stranger that says hello, and we simply ignore this.

Angels can appear through our senses and intuition. When we see, hear, feel and smell them, we are fully present to their divine guidance. There are many angels, and they are not to be worshipped, but simply seen as co-creators with our divine selves. Who are the angels in your life? They are the ones who often make you see things in a different way. Perhaps we as humans are simply fallen angels.

In the mystified and trance-like state in which we lived before recovery, we could not be present in the moment, for each “now” was full of “then.” Whether we were listening, observing, talking or in any way experiencing life, we simply were not there. And so the quality of our life diminished.

I look at old photos of family outings and realize that, much of the time, I was not there. I cannot ever get these moments back. They are gone. I missed them, and I am sad and angry about that. I don’t want to miss any more of my life.
It frequently seems that our lives are made up of a series of events. Taken individually, these events appear insignificant. In the grandiosity of toxic shame, we discount and dismiss them without realizing that, no matter what success or failure occurs, these events will continue to be the core of our existence.

Gandhi said, “Almost everything we do is insignificant, but it is very important that we do it.”

To be awake and fully conscious is to recognize that everything, from washing dishes to locking up the house at night, is important and demands attention. The move from toxic shame to healthy shame enlarges our opportunities for recognizing the significance of the insignificant.

In my view, spirituality is a lifestyle rooted in moment-to-moment awareness and appreciation of all events in life; it must, of necessity, be an everyday affair.

Some of us have difficulty accepting ourselves unless we are praying or are in church. We associate spirituality only with religion and its happenings. This ideal hinders our acceptance of ourselves as spiritual, but it is only part of the problem.
Toxic shame, like a brooding omnipresence in our souls, is always there to remind us that we are unworthy, and that spirituality is a state far too lofty for us to achieve. With its customary deceit, shame urges us to deny our humanness by denying its spiritual quality. To be human is to be spiritual, and to accept this is a part of healthy shame.

We need to recognize that spirituality is not at odds with “terrible daily-ness,” and it need not be grandiose in its ceremonials. The soul benefits most when its spiritual life is performed in the context of ordinary life. It grows and blossoms in the mundane and is found and nurtured in the smallest of daily activities.

Spirituality is living each moment of life more abundantly. It is honoring our values in our simplest acts. Spirituality is being present in our feelings. It is being more conscious of our connections to others and to all things. Spirituality enables us to turn an ugly loneliness into peaceful solitude.

None of these remarks is intended to discount prayer or our relationship with our higher power as principal sources of spirituality. Turning to this higher power on a daily basis is a bottomless well of spiritual sustenance. Other techniques, such as meditation and service, deepen and enrich us by giving us a way to pass on spiritual awakening to others.
I have the image of a group of sleeping children about to embark on a holiday. One of them awakens and, with excitement and energy, rushes to the others, urging them to “wake up — it’s time to go!” All of us need to bring the light to others with the same joy and enthusiasm.

A brief word of caution: Certain qualities are antagonistic and destructive to our efforts to achieve a soulful spirituality. Rigidity, moralism and authoritarianism are some of these. They are to be avoided like the plague, for they are harsh and arrogantly insist on absolute standards and perfection. They destroy the gentleness and serenity out of which spirituality flows.

If I were to make a list of the promises of recovery, a deepening spirituality would rank high. It is the fruit of our labor. Recovery takes great courage and involves great risk if it is to be successful. To come out of hiding and embrace our shame is no easy thing to do. Those of you who went through a program know well the pain and agony of this experience. The payoff for such tremendous acts of courage should be great. I believe it is.

Reaching for the ultimate freedom from the bondage of addiction — a rigorous transition from near death to a life cultivated — keeps recovering addicts in the Steps. Becoming aware is our beginning, while the constant action of reaching keeps us in the process; meaning in recovery is limitless. Our life cycle might end but our spiritual evolution continues. We break free of devastating pain in addiction to arrive at our path. God is clever. He brings us home.

Understanding the 12 Steps is a simple necessity. Make it right with God in Steps One, Two and Three. Make it right with ourselves in Steps Four, Five and Six, and, finally, make it right with others in Steps Seven, Eight and Nine. Living compassion guarantees us freedom from a death-spin that had evolved from a biopsychosocial history of influences on what ultimately becomes our true, Genuine Self. Only God stops the “slow-motion suicide” called addiction.

When working with others, I focus on action. Even in the deepest world of despair, degradation and demoralization — so perfect for the Disease of Addiction — the light of Recovery warms us through understanding and keeps us safe through action. Our actions bring us to the source: our Higher Power, the Light. Without a transformative program of action, our spiritual journey is not possible. The simplest prayer is action. Our simple prayers connect us so that living compassion becomes our blissful state.

We value what we do and do what we value. Self-discipline is practice and training. We were experts at destroying our body, mind and emotions. What I discovered in Recovery, to my surprise, is that the spirit endures and it will never die. If only the Disease of Addiction knew this. Suffering is a spiritual torture, a tug-of-war between self-will and His will. No more rope-burns here. I finally let go. Suffering becomes merely an option to even the most resistant addict if Self Compassion is learned in the Steps. As we connect, perhaps again for some, to a God of our understanding in the Third Step, suffering begins to evaporate and gives way to an energy flow that is promised in Recovery. A restful state of mind and body develops that can only be interrupted by relapse. In this state, I practice the Self Compassion so skillfully described by Michael Ortiz Hill.

In my last book, Hug Me, My Daddy’s Not a Drug Addict, I give to others delicate, personal messages learned from my journey in Recovery and fatherhood. For our readers, I’m hopeful that we can all discover what “loving our fate” means, stay true to Self through action, teach others about being teachable and evolve through the 12 Steps of Living Compassion. Then, our spirits can wander almost like children playing, dreaming…living.

Freedom. ~By Brandon Beckman

God is Love, and whosoever abides in love abides in God and God abides in her. ~ 1 John 4:16

“Love is God, God Love”
That is all ye need to know on earth,
And all ye need to know. ~Homage to John Keats

Yet, it’s precisely within the contour of our shame that we are summoned to wholeness. “Even there, even there,” Psalm 39 tells u s— even in the darkest place we are known — yes, even there. ~Gregory Boyle

Love as much as you can from wherever you are with what you’ve got. That’s the best you can ever do. Remember it’s the process, not the content that counts. ~Zen teacher Cheri Huber

No creature ever falls short of its own completion,
Wherever it stands it never fails to cover the ground. ~Dogen Zenji, founder of the Soto school of Zen Buddhism

The Twelve Steps of Recovering the Heart

Step One
We admitted we were toxic with self-centeredness and our lives had become unmanageable.

Step Two
Came to believe that loving and being beloved could restore us to sanity.

Step Three
Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to loving and being beloved as we understand it.

Step Four
Examined fearlessly all that has stood between us and the heart of compassion.

Step Five
Admitted to Love, to ourselves and to another human being, the exact nature of our heartlessness.

Step Six
Were entirely ready to have Love remove all of our resistances to loving.

Step Seven
Humbly asked Love to remove our shortcomings.

Step Eight
Made a list of all those we had harmed by heartlessness and became willing to make amends to them all.

Step Nine
Made direct amends to such beings whenever possible.

Step Ten
Continued fearlessly to examine our moment-to-moment failures of love, and when we missed the mark promptly admitted it.

Step Eleven
Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with Love as we understand it, praying only for knowledge of Love’s will for us and the power to live it out.

Step Twelve
Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to the loveless, and to live compassion with all that we meet.

When I was teaching the Craft of Compassion to doctors and nurses, it occurred to me that that this radiant and exacting path could be translated into the Twelve Steps.

Although I bottomed out as a homeless teenager, I have spent my life learning that the process of becoming clean and sober involves giving up one addiction after another, letting go of attachment after attachment – whether it be to substance or process – and shedding layer after layer of defenses that preserve the illusion of separation from Spirit, from others, from love. Sobriety is an ever-deepening process of letting go of the old life of dissociation and disconnection, and with the help of the Twelve Steps, moving into an unfamiliar and unknown new life of association and connection. In this journey, we come to understand that the ultimate addiction is not to any given substance or process, but to separateness, to a separate “me, myself, and I,” an entity that, ultimately, does not even exist.

To settle into this new life is to rest in the heart of compassion. The Twelve Steps are a guide to yielding to the Pervasive Presence of what is.

Step One is awakening to find ourselves in the prison of self-centeredness, which some enact in addiction. Steps Eleven and Twelve are the fulfillment of being Love-centered, the way of living compassion.

Living compassion is, in fact, freedom.

The intelligence of Love flows through the Twelve Steps.

“Nothing is as soft and yielding as water. Yet for dissolving the hard and the inflexible, nothing can surpass it,” says Lao tze. Dissolving is intermittently terrifying and liberating.

The following steps proceed through bearing witness to, and seeing through, the apparitions that try to solidify a self that no longer is. In this “twelve step book of the dead,” we proceed with rigorous honesty and heart to understand, and let go of, the distortions of our commitment to “me, myself and I.”

In Steps Two through Nine, we gather seeds for the upcoming harvest. The heart softens as we learn Self-Compassion, and through Self-Compassion, compassion for others.

The Buddha defines compassion with such clarity. Compassion, he says, is sympathetic joy and sympathetic sorrow — sorrow over another’s sorrow and delight over another’s delight.

In these steps your story is no longer a prison, but the school of transition where compassion is learned for real.

Steps Nine, Ten and Eleven are about becoming, for a new life of freedom and an unimpeded compassion beckons.

In Step Nine we make amends to those whom we harmed in our previous life of selfishness.

In Step Ten we step into radical empathy – seeing through another’s eyes.

In Step Eleven we refine our moment-by-moment practice of refining our conscious contact with Love.

In Step Twelve, we step across the threshold toward living compassion – the intent of extending compassion to ourselves and all that we meet. Here we see that we are not, nor have we ever been, the Source of compassion.

Compassion is a gift, pure and simple, and these Twelve Steps have well prepared us to receive the gift and pass it on.

“Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to…practice these principles in all of our affairs,” says Step Twelve, and we live compassion for all who suffer lovelessness.

English likes to nail things down with nouns. “Awakening” and “compassion” are verbs. Neither are possessions and both are the activity of gift-giving.

This path is the moment-by-moment practice of learning what compassion is — for ourselves and the world of suffering. We will fail, and forgive our failures, but in truth, “success” and “failure” don’t describe the practice we are in.

Everything instructs the heart.
______________

A few notes on language and perspective in Recovering the Heart are in order.

I do not speak of a Higher Power, but of a Pervasive Presence — higher and lower, hither and thither and yon. Beneath every stone, in the flight of every bird, every word you read, every breath you take.

Not “Lord” — that feudal projection. And not “Father in Heaven” that makes “Him” so far away and unapproachable

The edifice of hierarchical language has bones in its basement. How many thousands of years can we presume that men are superior to women, humans to animals, God the Father altogether superior to everything? I much prefer to invoke, like the Sioux, mitakuye oyasin, “all my relations.”

Or at least bless the wild plurality of sacred ways.

Alpha and Omega yes — the snake does swallow its tale.

Right here and now is eternity.

And this nowness, this Pervasive Presence, is Love.

Love is the Pervasive Presence of the Infinite. This is not about reducing God to a Divine aspect. God is whole and intact in every gesture of love.

Throughout this book Love — italicized, capitalized — means simultaneously God.

My renditions of the Twelve Steps are about turning our wills and our lives over to Love.

The Big Book is not self-explanatory — at least that is my experience. I am college educated, but the instructions for this spiritual process eluded me — and I wasn’t conscious of my lack of a spiritual awakening, even at four years sober. I was clueless even to its necessity or its possibility.

At the general direction of my sponsor, I had worked the steps, on my own, reading the Big Book and doing the best I could, with very few specific directions. My first step was about drinking events; second and third steps — about my cradle Catholic God; fourth step — about behavior; fifth step — a script-reading and therapy-mode disclosure; sixth and seventh steps — short, but ineffective; eighth and ninth steps—about sorry!, very sorry, indeed!; tenth and eleventh steps — about prayer, which I viewed from my previous religious exposure (versus experience); twelfth step — seemed mandatory and mundane drudgery, not an honor and privilege to be of service.

In anticipation of my fifth-year milestone, I was given the inspiration (breathed into from the Spirit) to:

1. Rework the steps; and
2. Ask a man (not my sponsor, since I’d already done that in my first year) to help guide me through this step process (this second thought was even more important than the first).

I had no idea this would change my life from the inside out. It brought me into an ongoing transformation that provides the emotional stability and spiritual development I had been pursuing through religion, therapy, and a variety of self-help programs for 30 years.

This man, Jerry R., introduced me to a very structured method of approaching the Big Book based on:

• Prayer
• Reading
• Consideration/Reflection
• Writing
• Discussion

He pointed out that the Big Book:

• … is “the basic text” (B.B. page xi) telling “the story of how many thousands of men and women have recovered from alcoholism” (B.B. face page)
• … has as its main purpose “To show other alcoholics precisely how we have recovered …” (B.B. page xiii)
• … describes “… a plan of recovery …” (B.B. page xxv)
• … gets us to ask the question … “What do I have to do?”; “It is the purpose of this book to answer such questions, specifically.” (B.B. page 20).
• … gives “clear-cut directions … showing how we recovered” (B.B. page 29 referring to Chapters 5-11).

The Big Book is about answering the question “But where and how … are we to find a Power greater than ourselves?” “Its main object is to enable you to find a Power … which will solve your problem” (B.B. page 45) — that is, lack of power.

Could it be a coincidence that the architecture analogy of “building an arch through which we shall walk a free man at last” [B.B. page 75] permeates the book whose cover is blue, as in blueprint — a specific “plan of recovery” [B.B. page xxv]?

Based on my previous effort (in my first year of sobriety) of working through the Big Book’s steps on my own, with no specific guidance, it’s clear to me that the Big Book requires assistance. For me the directions in the Big Book were not self-evident. I needed a step guide —
a person who himself had been led through the step process, who could share with me his instructions and experience.

My step guide gave me homework assignments, reducing the process into manageable projects, one for each step.

He asked me to:

• Pray each time I sat down to do any of the assignments
• Read with intention, highlighting words, phrases, and sentences that spoke to me
• Review this assignment with consideration and pick out the most meaningful thoughts
• Rewrite the highlighted passages in my own words
• Call and make an appointment to get together and discuss the assignment when finished; we shared our respective observations, questions, and experiences on each Big Book page for this specific reading assignment.

This process (Steps One through Nine) took 11 months. While I had several important ah-hahs!!, the two most significant were:

1. My body chemistry is different than normal people’s. When I ingest alcohol ,I cannot predict what will happen — but I can predict that periodically I will drink more than I intended. I have what looks like an allergy, which sets up a physical craving over which I have no control. I am totally powerless once I take that first drink.
2. I have a role and responsibility for the turmoil in my life (fourth column of resentment inventory). This discovery paralleled Columbus’s observation that the world is round — my whole perspective changed. I found my troubles “… are basically of my own making” (B.B. page 62).

These results were revealed to me a couple of months after finishing my amends. I became conscious that I was no longer in conflict with my family, my work colleagues, or myself. The tension I was so used to experiencing in my everyday interactions evaporated. I began to experience a sense of peace and a demeanor of happiness. Life had become sweet. The promises I hoped would manifest in my life were now a reality.

About three years later (1991), I was moved to do the work again with a new step guide. The method and instructions were similar to what I had done in 1988, but there were important and valuable differences. I experienced new awakenings, new insight in several of the steps, especially:

Step One:    My mind is powerless to perceive the truth about alcohol — my mind is fundamentally flawed, defective. I experienced “no choice” at a previ-ously unknown core level. I had experienced that “strange mental blank spot” (B.B. page 42). I needed to fully concede to my innermost self (B.B. page 30) that I had a mental obsession over which I was powerless — even to see the truth when it is presented.

Step Four:    My troubles are of my own making arising out of a distorted sense of self-esteem (third column of resentment inventory); I lived in delusion, a lie, believing it to be the truth. I am not who I think I am.

The process this time took six months. My spiritual evolution continued; my spiritual awakening widened and deepened.

In anticipation of my tenth anniversary (1994), I was inspired to do the work again with a different step guide. Once again, the method and instructions were similar to 1988 and 1991, but not entirely the same. This time it was a very meditative process. I was instructed to approach each step from the vantage point of my experience and practice with Steps Ten and Eleven. Furthermore, I was asked to turn the statements in the Big Book into questions.

This method/process cracked open the meaning of the sentences by relating them to my personal experiences.

It took two years (there were major time lapses [balking] between columns in Step Four). Once again, I experienced new spiritual awakenings in several of the steps; the most meaningful were these:

1. A deeper insight into unmanageability as the core of the disease — the spiritual malady; my will is radically (at its root) flawed — it has a natural (innate) tendency to choose self over all else. (Is this the origin of “sin” … choosing self over God?). I am powerless to choose other than myself without outside intervention.
2. I came to understand that I had done the work previously with preformed ideas (a prejudgment) about God — bringing to the work a closed mind built around the previous “cradle Catholic God.” This prior knowledge and experience had prevented me from seeing the truth: I had a shadow corner of agnosticism (doubt), which was made clear to me when I looked at how I conducted my life (not how I thought, but how I walked — self-reliant). I was really a practical agnostic.

The questions asked in the presence of Grace and willingness have been the trip trigger to my recovery:

• “What is your relationship with alcohol?” (1984)
• “What happens when you put alcohol in your body?” (1988)
• “Have you ever decided to stop drinking and found you couldn’t (or that you changed your mind!)?” (1991)
• “What areas of your life are unmanageable? How effective has been your decision making, your use of your will power?” (1993)
• “Do you have any doubts about God?” (1993)

It has been my experience that when, in an atmosphere of prayer, a thought-provoking question is asked and a thought-filled bit of information is presented, the result is new knowledge — not just at the intellectual level, but at the intuitive level. We become just a little bit more awake, a little bit more conscious. Our perceptions are shifted; our being is changed, ever so slightly, ever so subtly.

Transformation is our life’s goal. But we cannot make it happen. We can only be open to the process, and make ourselves ready to receive this gift. We can be taken to a place of willingness (Grace), but we must be willing to be taken (our cooperation). As I said previously, for me, the Big Book is not self-explanatory. I needed a lot of help over a prolonged time to understand both the depth of my disease and my responsibilities in recovery.

As a result of my experiences, I wrote “Twelve Step Guide to Using The Alcoholics Anonymous Big Book”(2004) to lay out the aggregate of instructions I received in the hopes that it might help others to see the “… clear-cut directions … showing how we recovered” (B.B. page 29). I could not find these instructions or follow them without specific guidance from one who had preceded me on the path. Having a guide was like wearing a coal miner’s helmet with a light on it — my step guide was able to switch on the light so that when I read the Big Book I could see the instructions and when I followed them precisely, I was led to the Truth.

Many men and women have journeyed the Twelve-Step path precisely. Find one and ask for help. Does this person have what you want? By their fruits (actions, lifestyle) you will know them.

It’s a matter of your life! Death does not scare me, but the dying process from here to there does. A drinking alcoholic’s life is filled with pain; a dry alcoholic’s life is filled with insanity. But the recovery process the Big Book outlines promises a “… high road to a new freedom.” (B.B. page xxi).

We are asleep dreaming that we are awake. The application of the Twelve Steps is a process not an event. It is an “awakening”: a gradual change in the way we think, feel, and behave and it is done to us not by us. It is not self help; it is a solution for the helpless.

The Twelve Steps are the introduction to a path that leads to an effective relationship with an accessible, personal Power. The Big Book says “… we are sure that our way of living has its advantages for all” (B.B. page xiii). This means those with addictions other than alcohol and even those without addictions — “normal” people looking for an improved spiritual life — can benefit from this process.

“We shall be with you in the Fellowship of the Spirit, and you will surely meet some of us as you trudge the Road of Happy Destiny.

May God bless you and keep you –until then.” (B.B. Page 164)