Falling Upward

Today’s post is by guest blogger Bob Sessions:

During May our church’s adult education program has focused on alcoholism and spirituality. During these past weeks I’ve been saddened by hearing first-hand the horrors of alcohol and drug abuse, but I’ve also been moved by survivors’ stories of difficulties encountered and overcome, over and over.  Their strengths, struggles, courage, and authenticity are inspiring.

Having just written a book on authenticity (Becoming Real: Authenticity in an Age of Distractions), I’m sorry that I didn’t connect the dots on recovering alcoholics and authenticity until now, for they have much to teach us about this too-rare phenomenon.  Part of my book’s thesis is that the journey to being authentic has been made exceedingly and unnecessarily difficult in modern societies because of our burgeoning array of distractions and by the lack of necessary ingredients in most people’s lives.  Authenticity is about achieving a solid identity that fits with who we are, and the road to such an identity requires strong community support, clear focus, great effort, and above all, personal honesty.

Alcoholics have few of these ingredients; recovering alcoholics have them in spades.  Several of our speakers spoke of the “miracle of recovery.”  Many alcoholics (a broad designation that includes addiction to a wide array of substances and behaviors) die and few recover.  Addiction involves a feedback mechanism deep in the so-called reptilian brain that, once activated, is nearly impossible to reverse.  You can see why it is a miracle that anyone recovers.

The 12-step program of Alcoholics Anonymous is the major source of support and strength for those who are in recovery (addicts are never cured—they must remain constantly vigilant lest they “fall” once again).  At the heart of the program is a stripping away of the ego, bringing the alcoholic to a brutally honest understanding of what they have become and an awareness of how far they have fallen.

In Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life, Richard Rohr has a wonderful phrase for this archetypical spiritual path: falling upward. He notes that every spiritual tradition recognizes that people must die to the old self in order to move to a deeper/higher spiritual life, and that the cycle of falling and being reborn can be repeated many times.  On the path toward spiritual perfection (well, at least toward growth), it seems that the last truly shall be first.  Or, as Paul says in Corinthians 2:10, “It is when I am weak that I am strong.”

The thesis that sets Rohr’s book apart from the many previous discussions of falling upward is his contention that the fall/growth distinction demarcates “a spirituality for the two halves of our lives” (the subtitle of his book).  There surely is no formula for navigating the tricky shoals of spiritual development.  Nevertheless, Rohr argues that in the first of our lives, we should work to diminish the negative effects of our ego, and in the second half, we need to build ourselves back up in new and healthier ways. The consistent poll results that tell us people over 40 are happier than those in the first half of their lives is testimony to people’s egos having “died,” at least in part, freeing them to focus on serving their communities and their own spiritual growth.

Recovering alcoholics are poster children for the difficulties of overcoming the many deceits of the ego, and they are also paradigms for the hope that lies on the other side.  The true beginning of the spiritual path is falling upward.