Information about "The NA Way" and Authors Release Form

From the editor

Through prayer and meditation

Recovery without God

Terima kasih banyak banyak Bahasa Melayu for “Thank you very, very much”

Am I a human being having a spiritual experience or a 
spiritual being having a 
human experience?

Seeking understanding

Finding the spirit in spirituality

Creative action

A brief history of
“God” in Narcotics Anonymous

Toward a more spiritual service

Editorial reply
It’s a matter of life and death Serious about service

Our readers write

I have found myself talking about this concept a couple of times recently.  While this appears to be a common topic and I have heard many people talk about it in one way or another, I have yet to hear anyone talk about the essence of this concept and what it means for us individually.

I believe that it all comes down to a foundational or fundamental system of beliefs.  For example, if I believe that I am a human being having a spiritual experience, then what that means, to me at least, is that I believe my personality, my mind, my thoughts are primary and that being spiritual becomes a goal toward which I strive on a daily basis.  I will expand upon this a bit later on.

On the other hand, if I believe that I am a spiritual being having a human experience, then for me it means that, first and foremost, I am far more than the cells of my body, the thoughts I have, the experiences I’ve had, the emotions I experience, etc.  I am a part of All That Is, however that may be defined.  The life of the person I am today is but the current expression of what I am.

As a human being, I have two overriding psychological needs: to be secure and to be significant.  In my life I have gone to some extremes to try to fulfill these needs.  At times, I have put others’ opinions about me so far above my own that I became a human chameleon just to fit in and be accepted in my environment, thus filling these needs.

Or so I thought. Deep down I knew that such was not the case, as I continued to believe that I was living a lie and that truly I was not good enough—for myself or anyone around me.

Through this I learned to judge myself harshly—quite mercilessly, in fact—and arrived at the point where I lived my life based on fear: fear of everything, from fear of how you would perceive me to fear of not ever being good enough.  Living this way required that I manifest my life accordingly, constantly providing myself with more people, places, and things to fear, whether secretly or overtly.

You see, on the surface, I rarely if ever appeared afraid.  After all, I was a Vietnam veteran and I had seen, felt, and done things that had removed normal fear from my range of emotions.  Yeah, right.

I have been on a spiritual quest for many, many years.  It began as a journey of discovery about various religions, and ended up being something far more significant: to find answers to those age-old questions “What are we really here for?”  “Who and what are we?”  “Is there a God?”  “In what manner and form?”  It has only been in the last few years that I have come to realize that I had been going about things backward, that truly I am a spiritual being having a human experience.

What this means for me today is that my “failings” are impermanent, a part of this existence, and that they truly are a part of a lesson.  Lessons are for me to learn from, not to beat myself up about mercilessly.  While it is true that as long as I am here in this form I am subject to being fear-based, I have come to know that I truly have a choice and have become love-based far more of the time.

This means that I have been able to soothe those two age-old needs of security and significance.  You see, if I am love-based and truly believe that I am a part of All That Is, then I am immensely and totally secure and significant as long as I can remember that.  I can learn about higher emotions such as unconditional love and compassion because I no longer have to think about how anything and everything is going to impact me and my life.  It is amazing how truly self-centered and self-obsessed so much of my life has been.

I can see myself and come to accept myself without harshly judging that self. It was that harsh self-judgment, after all, that enabled me to continue to mess up, to be a disappointment to myself and everyone else, to do the things for which I could judge myself, and on and on in a vicious, vicious cycle.

Today I can accept that I make mistakes, and lots of them—but that is all they are, mistakes, not symptoms of a deeply diseased, insufficient, incomplete human being.  I can learn from my mistakes, exercise compassion toward myself, and continue along my path of discovery toward the ultimate joining with the God of my more and more limited understanding.

My spirituality allows me to refrain from judging others.  In fact, I am released from the judiciary altogether, although the only one who ever appointed or elected me to be that judge was me (and always in absentia).  Instead of judging, I can love.  Instead of trying to find out how you measure up against me (you always measured up way ahead), I can love and accept you for the incredibly beautiful being you are, a part of all that I am.

Today I choose to be a spiritual being having a human experience and all that entails. Which are you?