God of Our Understanding: Jewish Spirituality and Recovery from Addiction

by Shais Taub

E.G.O., which stands for “Edging God Out.” One cannot be at once God-conscious as well as self-conscious. It’s not that the ego is inherently evil; it’s just the source of evil. The ego says, “I exist. God is bigger, stronger, and older than I am, but I also exist.” Of course, that doesn’t sound so terribly sinister, but that’s precisely what makes it such an insidious trap. God is True and Independent Existence. He is the Real Everything. Indeed, that is the very best definition for God that human words can express. Now, if God is Everything, how can there be anything else? If I have my own existence, then God is not Everything. There’s God and there’s me. Says the ego, “Oh, God is great, and I am a tiny speck. But I exist too.” In other words, God is not really Everything. But the definition of God is complete Oneness. Therefore, if He is everything but me, then He’s not really God.

We cannot be true to ourselves and we cannot be in tune with Reality if we are obsessed with an illusory image of self.

Addicts are obsessed with finding a solution, even when they don’t really understand what the problem is.

The central prayer of Judaism is the Shema. “Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God. The Lord is One.” (Deuteronomy 6:4) It doesn’t say, “The Lord is the one God.” It says, “The Lord is One”—that is, complete Unity and Oneness. Nothing exists apart from Him.

When we realize that God is truly Everything, we are released from E.G.O., and likewise, when we let go of E.G.O., we feel how God is truly Everything. Most people would call this “enlightenment” or some other fancy word.

But the program does clearly make at least one statement about the nature of God—that the One who has the power to help us recover from addiction is Everything. To quote: When we became alcoholics, crushed by a self-imposed crisis we could not postpone or evade, we had to fearlessly face the proposition that either God is everything or else He is nothing. God either is, or He isn’t. What was our choice to be? (Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 53)

As long as one clings to E.G.O.—read: the belief in oneself as a separate existence independent from God—one cannot let God be God. And if God isn’t God, then who will be? Who will take care of me? “I will,” says E.G.O., “I always take care of myself.” And that is when all hell breaks loose.

A Recovery Parable An addict is driving along all alone in his car one night on an empty highway. He is depressed beyond words, thinking how miserable he is and how he would do anything to get sober and have a normal life. Suddenly, as he’s zooming down the highway and thinking, he hears the voice of God. “I hear you’re looking for sobriety,” says God. “Yes,” he says, in awe. “Well, you’re in luck today,” says God, “Because I happen to have sobriety, and it can be yours for a reasonable price.” “How much?” “How much have you got?” “I’ve got twenty dollars in my pocket.” “You’re in luck,” says God. “The price of sobriety today happens to be exactly twenty dollars.” “But that’s everything I’ve got,” the man protests, “If I give you all of my money, how will I buy gas for the car?” “A car?” says God, “Oh, I see. The price of sobriety is twenty bucks and your car.” “But if I give you my car, how will I get to work tomorrow?” “Work?” says God, “You have a job? The price of sobriety is twenty bucks, your car, and your job.” “But if I give you my job, then I won’t get paid. I need to pay the mortgage this week.” “A mortgage? You mean you have a house? I hate to tell you this but the price of sobriety just went up. It’s twenty bucks, your car, your job, and your house.” “But where will my family live?” “Family? You’ve got a wife and kids? The price of sobriety is twenty bucks, your car, your job, your house, and your wife and kids.” At this point the man decides to shut up. “Are y...

The man nods again. “See this twenty dollars?” says God, “It’s not your twenty dollars. It’s My twenty dollars. You know that. But I want you to take it from Me, and I want you to be My emissary to spend it as I would. And you see this car? It’s not your car. It’s My car. But I want you to use it as I would. And this job, I want you to go to work and earn a paycheck. But it’s not your job. It’s My job. And I want you to behave there as I would. And this family—this wife and these kids. They’re not your family. They’re My family. But I want you to take care of them for me the way that I would. Can you do all of that?” The man nods again. “Then here it all is. And here is your sobriety.”

addict gets tired of trying to make everything work; addict gives up and lets Higher Power take over; addict experiences unusual freedom, happiness, and usefulness as long as and to the extent that addict does not renege on previous decision.

when you are full of yourself, it’s very hard to see that you are the problem.

when you need God the most, God is the last thing you want.

understand how this program works. People don’t make miracles. God does.

The addict’s role in recovery is thus really no more than to just get out of the way so that God can make recovery happen.

If that sounds like some kind of voodoo or imaginary magic bullet, just remember how much incredibly hard work it act...

y es aquí en donde los terapeutas tenemos que intervenir

To wit, a major misconception about the Twelve Steps is that they are a “self-help program.” I’ve actually heard mental health professionals, albeit not ones who specialize in addiction, refer to the Twelve Steps as such. This description is completely inaccurate. The Twelve Steps are the very opposite of self-help. Active addiction is self-help (“I take care of myself the only way I know how, because no one else can or will”). Recovery is God-help (“I can’t continue trying to do for myself what only God can really do for me”). If one is a true addict in the sense described in the preceding chapters, then one will not recover by trying to get his or her own addiction under control. By the time one is an addict, there is no human power that can make the addiction go away. Addiction must be treated by a miracle. And as we said, miracles are God’s business.

En el libro de "un curso de milagros" se trabajan temas muy parecidos.

Recovery is faith healing in the truest sense. Recovery is about opening yourself to God so that God can do whatever He needs to do with you so that you can best live your life. Nevertheless, we must be clear about one thing. The reason we can treat addiction with straight spirituality, whereas we cannot use the same treatment for, say, a broken leg, is due to the very nature of the disease in the first place. As explained in the preceding chapters, addiction itself is an essentially spiritual malady and thus treatable by the application of overtly spiritual practices.

honest, I think I have some general notion as to why they are effective. They train a person to get away from ego and become available for a conscious relationship with God, thereby alleviating the obsession with self-destruction as a means for relieving existential discomfort.

But I don’t believe that anybody really knows any of this. All we know is that those who honestly commit themselves to the program find themselves utterly changed, and that this change is far more profound than mere chemical sobriety. Indeed, as we have already explained, in order to work, it would have to be.

If we look at recovery as a set of instructions for living according to the rules of life, I think it helps us also understand the challenge facing the addict. The addict is a person in desperate need of learning how to live.

los 12 pasos son la mejor manera de enseñar al adicto cómo vivir

At any rate, addicts as a whole are not at all stupid. Yet, when it comes to living, they are inexplicably inept. There are certain life lessons that they have never grasped—the emotional equivalents of “don’t eat waffles all day unless you want to get sick.” As time goes by, rather than learning how to do what everyone else does, the addict increasingly overcompensates by developing an entire alternative set of life skills of dubious distinction such as a masterly knack for self-deception or an instinctive ability to manipulate others.

What the Twelve Steps seem to do is take grownups who are bad at life and train them to live as if they had learned the lessons we are all supposed to have learned from our early experiences.

The Midrash says, “If a person should tell you there is wisdom among the nations, believe it . . . But if he tells you there is Torah among the nations, do not believe it.” We must distinguish between wisdom and Torah. Wisdom refers to human insight while Torah is Godly revelation.

Maimonides, who said: “Accept the truth regardless of its source.”

In the early years of AA (1935–39), before the Big Book was written, the fellowship practiced a handful of simple ideas that were handed down orally from one member to another. Essentially, they learned the program from one another and guided one another in its implementation.

una de las mejores maneras pues incluye compañerismo y comunidad

The Twelve Steps Made Simple 1. There’s a power that will kill me. 2. There’s a power that wants me to live. 3. Which do I want? (If you want to die, stop here. If you want to live, go on.) 4. Using examples from your own life, understand that selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear control your actions. 5. Tell all your private, embarrassing secrets to another person.

6. Decide whether or not you want to live that way any more. 7. If you want your life to change, ask a Power greater than yourself to change it for you. (If you could have changed it yourself, you would have long ago.) 8. Figure out how to make right all the things you did wrong. 9. Fix what you can without causing more trouble in the process. 10. Understand that making mistakes is part of being human. (When you make a mistake, fix it, immediately if you can.) 11. Ask for help to treat yourself and others like you the way you want your Higher Power to treat you. 12. Don’t stop doing 1 through 11, and pass it on.

The Twelve Steps Of Insanity 1. We admitted we were powerless over nothing—that we could manage our lives perfectly and those of anyone who would let us. 2. Came to believe that there was no power greater than ourselves and the rest of the world was insane. 3. Made a decision to have our loved ones turn their wills and their lives over to our care even though they could not understand us at all. 4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of every one we knew. 5. Admitted to the world the exact nature of everyone else’s wrongs. 6. Were entirely ready to make others give us the respect we so rightfully deserved. 7. Demanded that others do our will because we were always right. 8. Made a list of all persons who had harmed us and became willing to go to any lengths to get even with them. 9. Got direct revenge on such people wherever possible except when to do so would cost us our lives or at the very least a jail sentence. 10. Continued to take inventory of others and when they were wrong, promptly and repeatedly told them about it. 11. Sought through complaining and medication to improve our relations with others, as we would not understand them at all, asking only that they do things our way. 12. Having had a complete physical, emotional, and spiritual breakdown as a result of these steps, we blamed it on others and tried to get sympathy and pity in all our affairs.

Each Step in a Word 1. Honesty 2. Hope 3. Faith

4. Courage 5. Truth 6. Willingness 7. Humility 8. Accountability 9. Justice 10. Integrity 11. God-consciousness 12. Service

Of course, if we are really looking to sum up the Steps, we shouldn’t fail to mention the “Twelve Steps in Six Words” formula that is often attributed to AA cofounder Dr. Bob Smith : Trust God. Clean House. Help Others.

The answer I usually give is not only that there is nothing in the Twelve Steps that is problematic from a Jewish perspective, but also that the Steps can actually help Jews to better understand their own God. The Steps, in their clear and simple language, marvelously communicate certain truths in which we as Jews are already enjoined to believe. Accordingly, as expressed in the title of this book, the Jew in recovery is often delighted to find that the “God of our understanding” turns out to be the very same as “the God of our father.”

At the risk of making a sweeping generalization, allow me to say that addicts are always looking for an excuse not to recover. It’s part of the disease. Every addict—irrespective of his or her drug of choice—possesses a certain nagging sense of what we call “terminal uniqueness.” Eventually, the addict will always claim, “But my case is different.” It’s not so much that addicts are too proud to buy into anything too “mainstream”—although that is certainly a factor. Rather, addicts typically feel so unusual, so special, that they have difficulty believing that anything normal, popular, or universal can be of any help to them.

la soberbia a su máximo esplendor.

God is not an idea or an abstraction. He is a force, and He is active. And this force is more powerful than we are. Further, we are told that this Power can actually do something for us—something quite big. It can “restore us to our sanity.” These are all theological statements, and these are all contained just in Step Two. In other words, right away in the Second Step, we have already been told quite a lot about God—not just that He exists, but also about how He manifests Himself in our lives. The next Step, in which we are told to turn our will and our lives to His care, tells us even more about God—He cares. That’s another distinct theological position. One can believe in God and not believe that He cares, but this Step tells us, at least implicitly, that He does indeed care. In Step Five, we are told that we can talk to Him; we can speak to Him openly and honestly about ourselves. In Steps 6 and 7, we are told that God can change us, and that we can ask Him to do so. In Step Eleven, we are told that we can consciously engage Him, and that we can ask Him for knowledge of His will, and the power to carry out this will. This, incidentally, also sets forth another very big idea—God has a will. That’s a strong theological statement. And not only does He have a will, but He has a will for us, things He specifically desires from the individual.

He is a Power; He can affect our lives; He is caring; He has a will.

[God] is the cause of all that exists . . . and there is no possibility that He does not exist, because without Him, all existence would cease. [Whereas] if we could imagine the absence of all existence other than His, the existence of God would not cease or diminish, for He is self-sufficient, and His existence requires nothing other than Himself.” In other words, although the phrase “Power greater than ourselves” may lend itself to being interpreted as any power the effects of which are unavoidable, if read in the context of the rest of the Steps, it is obvious that the “Power” mentioned in Step Two is not the sun or the ocean tides but the same God who is explicitly mentioned throughout—the God who restores sanity (Step Two), who cares for the individual (Step Three), who removes character defects (5, 6, and 7), and who lets His will be known and grants power to the individual to adhere to that will (Step Eleven).

Years later, Clancy’s sponsor stopped working the program, got drunk, and died. What was Clancy to do now, what with his “Higher Power” being dead and all? Would he lose his direction, his faith? Not at all. As Clancy explains it, by the time he lost his sponsor, Clancy already believed in God. It was his belief in his sponsor as a power greater than himself that was the necessary first move away from self-reliance. Once he was able to accept his dependence upon something outside of his own ego, he had already begun his journey toward finding God.

In other words, it is most probably safe to say that a person can get sober and work an effective Second Step just by believing in any power.

Abraham discovered belief in the One God through a process of looking further and further outside of himself until arriving at “The Causer of Causes.” When we begin to look beyond our own ego, we have already begun our journey to find God.

It might be useful to note that Chasidus teaches that the opposite of serving God is not idolatry but the service of self. At least idolaters turn to an entity outside of themselves whereas egomaniacs—and addicts, almost by definition, fit that profile—cannot peacefully defer to anyone or anything aside from their own egos. Thus, the mental shift that is most critical and urgent is that of the addict’s adherence to the simple piece of advice often heard in the rooms: “Get out of your own head.”

God will always fill whatever space we make for Him but He will not intrude where He is clearly unwelcome.

In order to experience God’s Power in Step Two, one first makes a “power vacuum” in Step One.

Para poder encontrarte con Dios primero debes de vaciarte y eso es lo que el primer paso te permite.

For many people, “God” can be a “scare word,” as in the old Jewish tale of the rabbi who tells the atheist, “My son, don’t worry. The same God that you don’t believe in, I don’t believe in either.”

There’s a saying in recovery, “Don’t tell God how big your addiction is; tell your addiction how big God is.” The disease of addiction—regardless of drug of choice—is essentially an obsession with power. The addict wants control and finds it in the altering of his or her state by indulging in the addictive behavior. Hence, in order to recover, the addict must surrender this desire for control. But surrender it to what? To God? But what is God? The likelihood that surrender will be effective as a means for treating addiction depends entirely on one’s concept of God. Simply put, the idea that God can heal the addict only seems true if the God of one’s conception is a God to whom one can worthily surrender one’s own power. God may be many things to many people, but for the recovering addict, God must before all else be Power.

Indeed, this may be the reason that the practice of religion by itself is usually inadequate in treating addiction. One can believe in God and even practice some form of devotion to Him, but if one does not come to

believe in God as Power, then there is nothing to which the addict c...

The medieval Jewish philosopher, Judah Ha-Levi, explains in The Kuzari why the first commandment of the Decalogue states, “I am the Lord your God, who took you out of Egypt.” Why did God not introduce Himself as “The Lord your God, who created the heaven and the earth”? Surely that is a far more impressive credential. Ha-Levi answers that God chose to introduce Himself in the way that would be most relevant to those whom He was addressing. The concept of creation seems too abstract, dare we say, too impersonal, to serve as a basis of a relationship. The Exodus, on the other hand, demonstrated God’s direct involvement in the affairs of man—that God did not just make the world, but that He is involved in it as well, and is all-powerful to act within it as He wishes. In other words, the Jewish relationship with God is not predicated upon God’s role as Creator but as Power.

Chasidus is replete with analogies and examples illustrating how God did not just create the world but that He continues to exert absolute control over every detail of reality. I told him about the Jewish mystical concept of “ongoing creation,” that even now, God is bringing the universe into existence out of absolute void and nothing.

there is no automatic pilot; God is always in control.

God cannot be an abstraction. We can describe Him with all the great and lofty terms we can think of, but if we cannot see Him as an active force in our lives, then we have not even begun to know what God is.