Episode 203 -- March 24, 2022

Some of us in early recovery may have a challenging time with the spiritual part of it all. As human beings, we often want answers to all of our questions. We may not feel safe with uncertainty and cling to any belief to eliminate that fear. We may demand answers about our addiction, life, and the universe that we may never receive. But with patience and practice, we will come to understand things more than we ever did before—especially when it comes to finding and trusting a higher power.

In her book Waiting: A Nonbeliever's Higher Power, Marya Hornbacher shares her own journey and offers a fresh approach to cultivating a spiritual life in recovery. Anyone who may feel disconnected from traditional ideas of a higher power can use this book to explore the concept of faith.

In this excerpt, Hornbacher writes about humility as an essential element of true spirituality. Awareness of our limitations can ground us in the present moment and bring us back to ourselves. Accepting that we do not know everything—and never will—can bring us peace of mind to freely grow in our spiritual journey.

This excerpt has been edited for brevity.

Humility is an essential component of a spiritual life. The word humility is too often seen as a negative, when in fact a lack of humility—arrogance, grandiosity, judgment, superiority, all of the unpleasant things we're prone to anyway—burdens us with the need to feel that we are masters of our lives and all that they contain. This is in fact an impossible burden; the need to be right, to feel we're in control, is a state of anxiety that cannot be eased, because we cannot ever fully and finally be right about or in control of all things at all times.

Realizing at last that we can relax and be wrong is an enormous relief. Not only can we be wrong; we can rest in the certainty that we will be. We don't have to know everything, and we don't have to try to manage everyone in our lives so they behave to our liking, and we don't have to stand behind the planet and push it to make sure it turns as we think it should turn. It won't. They won't. We can trust that we will mess up, that we will misbehave, and that the planet will continue to spin quite independently of our wills.

Humility is a means of bringing ourselves back to reality. And it is a means of finding a great deal of the peace that has eluded us for so long. We are egged on constantly to want and pursue at all costs, more, and more, and more. More money, more success, more approval, more security, more proof of love. But part of a spiritual life is learning to look beyond the superficial, to reach deeper in ourselves for the wisdom we do contain. And that wisdom, when we're listening, tells us that we are more than grasping, demanding, will-driven creatures who want.

Humility is also a means of bringing ourselves back to ourselves. It grounds us in the bodies we have, in the place where we are at this moment, to work with the mixture of gifts and flaws we possess at this time. We are capable of evolution and transformation, when we are aware of these gifts and flaws; we can become more whole, and more spiritual, and more capable of living in peace. But when we begin to believe we are in control, we stop evolving, and we get stuck.

Stuck in the belief that the course and outcome of our lives are things we can foresee and know, we shut our eyes to the lives we are actually leading, moment by moment, close off our hearts from necessary seasons of joy and pain, and close our minds to the possibility that there is more to learn, more to the world and its workings, than we can ever understand. That fact should, by all reason, cause us wonder; instead it scares us. That we are small in the face of things that are vast, that we are powerless in the face of things we cannot control, that there are seasons of joy and pain that will come and go without our permission, that life is as it is—this sends us running for certainty and security and the solitary comfort of the closed-off self. We hide in the fantasy that our will is enough to run our lives and that our lives are even in our hands.

Or it sends us running for a drink. Name your poison. Any illusion will do.

When we're shut down in this way—by addiction, by fighting, by attempts to control, by what the Big Book aptly calls "self-will run riot"—we have no space in ourselves for spiritual growth or awareness. And we need that space. Without it, our spirits wither, and we become people who cannot give, who cannot receive, who cannot see themselves or others clearly. Our hearts become rigid and cannot love. We have no ability to really experience the life we are living. And we have no ability to accept.

Humility makes room in us for acceptance, and without that acceptance, we will never know peace. But it's true that what we have to accept is no small thing: we have to accept that we are limited beings with limited power and very limited knowledge. And accepting this is true surrender. It is letting go.

We need to let go of so many things, and each of us has our own unique things to which we cling, that there's no way to make a list of what must be let go. It would be awfully handy if there were such a list; it would give us a sense of a task we could undertake, complete, and be done. But that's the antithesis of the process of letting go, which is ongoing, and the practice of letting go, which we undertake again each day. That's the nature of a spiritual practice: it never ends, and that is its beauty, because as we continue to practice, we continue to grow.

But one of the things I have had to let go is the need to know the nature of origins and ends. I remember lying awake as a teenager, staring at the ceiling and wondering, Where did this all come from? Who or what set it in motion? What is its purpose? Where does it go? What is my purpose, and how do I know?

Part of my process of spiritual growth involves letting go of the need for absolute answers as to the origins of the universe, which I'm unlikely to solve; and as to the purpose of life, which is too broad a question for my particular mind; and as to what's at the end of the road we're all on, which even the broadest minds cannot begin to guess. It isn't that these things don't have meaning; it isn't even that I can't let them tumble over each other in my head when they wander in. It's just that I cannot demand—of whom would I demand them?—absolute answers. I have to accept that I will find no certainty here. Much as I like, and too often crave, certainty and reassurance, I have to accept that sometimes there is none to be found—and that, too, allows me spiritual growth. Living with my own uncertainty, like living with my own pain or gladness or frustration or any other thing that comes my way, is a practice of accepting the spiritual state of being alive.

The desire for absolute answers to these very human questions is reflective of the idea that we can know. We may want to know. I would like very much to know where the universe came from, what I'm supposed to do with my life, and where I'm headed when I die. But I accept that I don't know, and won't, and so I have no choice but to live now, unknowing, and with as much wonder as I can remember to have in my heart.

About the Author:
Marya Hornbacher is an award-winning journalist and the Pulitzer Prize¿ nominated author of four books. Her best-selling memoirs Madness: A Bipolar Life and Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia have become classics in their fields, her recovery handbook Sane: Mental Illness, Addiction, and the 12 Steps is an honest and enlightening look at the Twelve Steps for people who have co-occurring addiction and mental health disorders, and her critically acclaimed novel The Center of Winter is taught in universities all over the world. Hornbacher's work has been published in sixteen languages. She lectures regularly on writing, addiction, recovery, and mental health.

© 2011 by Marya Hornbacher
All rights reserved