8 Balls & 8 Reelers #5: The Rational Miracle
8 Balls & 8 Reelers #5: The Rational Miracle
Failing Upwards With Spirituality and Connection
I rejected my religious upbringing fairly quick once I moved out of my household, drifting my way to college. There was and still is nothing wrong with the church I went to with my mom and brother. Everyone was pleasant, the sermons endearing and even funny, and there was a progressive, welcoming aura ringing atop the steeple. And Jesus sounds like a pretty cool guy.
My primary conflict was with God.
God and I don’t exactly see eye to eye, you see. In my advanced adolescence I came to believe that what can be conceived as “god” either actively tortured the human race with drought, war, ignorance, oppression, *yadda yadda*, or simply doesn’t care. Who wouldn’t be angry? Thus began a rather cringe phase of my private militant atheism.
To an extent, I am still atheist, in that I do not consider myself a religious fellow, but through my path of recovery I have found something just as great as any interpretation of God.
It makes sense that most recovery programs scare off a lot of people, especially younger people like myself, due to the connotations of the word. We attached the spiritual and very real religious sayings in halls and smoke-fogged parking lots to our own upbringings; ones of fear and eternal punishment. I was the same way, and manipulated that mindset to ward myself away from sobriety, rejecting the wholesale product of anything spiritual.
Several months and a few relapses later, I met a fellow who’s share I deeply connected with, having similar past and miserable experiences. Come to my surprise, the gentleman was not only a staunch atheist, but had also been sober for over a decade. I was shocked, as he was also deeply involved in the 12 Steps. I asked him how he did it, and his answer stays with me every morning.
“Anything you can center around that isn’t yourself is a belief in a higher power.”
For my fellow agnostics and atheists struggling with spirituality, let me give you a rational example, as we all tend to favor some version of logic, be it skewed or perfect.
The human genome is a wonder of scientific and mathematical ingenuity. The fact that we have been able to actually map it is a testament itself. But if we read between the lines, something far more grand is at play. The number of possible combinations and patterns in the genome is, while definitively finite, nearly impossible to conceive in scale.
What does this mean? Through out all of human history, from prehistoric times to the present, the amount of different patterns of each individual makes up the equivalent of a single grain of sand on a single beach on the Earth that makes up the possibilities of genome patterns.
You are unique. You are a miracle.
Even the very formation of life and consciousness is a miraculous feat, given the random chaos of the expanding universe. Your higher power can be anything. Hell, I know someone who’s higher power is “The Force” from that movie with a tin foil pal and a trash bin made of Lego.
I think our instincts to ward off external connection, particularly those spiritual in nature, is our concentration of ourselves. We, as humans do, have the intense craving to seek pleasure. We drink, drug, shop, eat. Every time I go outside, all I see is the endless scrolling of Instagram feeds and playlists. People aren’t there.
Seeking a higher power is the first step to honesty, and therefore connection and meaning. Meaning is found outside: outside the workplace, responsibilities, and duties. It is found in the smoke breaks, book clubs, those awkward chats on the commenter. Find it in what you engage with and fight for.
Enjoy those times in between. Take yourself out of yourself. Don’t die before your physical death.
Things I Did
I achieved my biggest personal accomplishment in quite some time: I finished a draft of a screenplay. I put off writing for several years during my active addiction, and over the course of my pathway, I had a love/hate situationship with the process. It took half a year, I had constant writer’s block, it is terrible, but I am very proud of it. I plan on going back through to flesh out some of the notes I left behind before letting it rest so I can see how it ages and if I still have passion for it further down the road. Now to continue the other 3 projects I am co-currently working on because I’m manic.
I cannot put the Red Rising trilogy down. I am on the third and final installment Morning Star. I am shaking and crying. The science fiction epic is only growing in scale and stakes, both heartwrenching and triumphant. I might take a break and explore other things on my reading list before moving on to the sequel trilogy (mainly because I am waiting for payday to afford the next 4 books fml).
Waking up earlier has been the change I’ve been searching for most of my life. I am one to constantly complain about the lack of time in a given day: too much time and energy wasted on work, can’t catch up on the movies I want to watch, no time to pursue hobbies, etc. I set my alarm only an hour back, and have opened the gates to more room to breath. I’ve been able to add going to the gym and practicing morning meditation to my routine, and have felt my physical and mental health improve dramatically as a result. You adjust rather quickly, so don’t let that fear of needing to hawk down a few redbulls deter you.