Outpatient Week 2: Viewing Addiction Through the Spiritual Lens

Conscious Recovery-Handout 1

WEEK 2: VIEWING ADDICTION THROUGH THE SPIRITUAL LENS

Wholeness and Perfection
The Four Rooms of Existence Viewing Addiction Through the Spiritual Lens Holistic and Integrated Recovery

READING FROM CONSCIOUS RECOVERY

“Everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time, but unless we go into every room, every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.” In the physical room is your relationship with your body and its interaction with the physical world. The mental room houses your thoughts and ideas, the assumptions and expectations that shape your perspective of the world. The emotional room is the seat of feelings, and for some, it can be a place to avoid, or run from. The spiritual room is where you connect with your innermost self, and with Source that lies within all reality. Part of your healing journey is coming to recognize the importance of all four rooms, and spending time in each of them to strengthen your whole being.

Questions for journaling and further reflection:

1. In what ways do you experience emptiness in your life?
2. In what ways do you feel broken?
3. In what ways are you uncomfortable with some of your “darker” feelings?
4. How has your addiction led to further disconnection and isolation?
5. In what ways have you sought relief outside of yourself?
6. Has it worked? If so, for how long?
7. What are you avoiding in your life?
8. What are you clinging to?
9. What would it take to shift your awareness inward?
10. What are some tools you can begin to access to look inward?

Outpatient: Week Two
Viewing Addiction Through the Spiritual Lens

(Preface and Introduction from Conscious Recovery)

Summary: The purpose of this week’s group is to introduce the concept of the four rooms (physical, mental, emotional and spiritual), and to explore what it means to view addiction through the spiritual lens.

Materials needed: Handouts, quotes, tape

Key teaching points:

1. Wholeness and Perfection – We come into this world as beings who know and live in acceptance, openness, connection, presence. We are those joyful little children who know in their hearts that they are whole and perfect and that life is wonder-full and wonder-filled. But life has a way of teaching us the opposite; traumatic experiences teach us that we are broken, and this pushes us further from our oneness with Source. Think about what little children are taught about the world, especially children who experience cruelty or who live in a threatening environment. They are taught to be mistrustful, to devalue themselves.

2. The Four Rooms of Existence – Everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time, but unless we go into every room, every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.

3. Viewing Addiction Through the Spiritual Lens – Often neglected in recovery work is the spiritual room, from which we can consider the spiritual questions involved in recovery: What is the root cause of addiction? What is the underlying condition of fragmentation and disconnection that leads people to addiction and addictive behaviors? How can sitting in the room of Spirit bring us to a place of deeper healing and peace? Addiction stems from fragmentation; it is a strategy for dealing with the pain of disconnection from our essential self.

When we reframe our approach to addiction in this way, we can see that the underlying problem is not the addiction. The problem beneath the symptoms of addiction is spiritual and psychic disconnection, the fragmentation of self. Recognizing this allows us to start to identify and let go of old core beliefs, to let go of those solutions that are no longer working, and to move toward a place of wholeness and perfection.

4. Holistic and Integrated Recovery – A holistic and integrative recovery acknowledges and utilizes the power that resides in all four rooms of the human experience: the physical, the mental, the emotional, and the spiritual. The physical room gives us the insight that addiction is a disease, and working from that insight has offered us many powerful tools and approaches. The mental room gives us the insight that our thoughts and ideas, our assumptions and our worldview, have an enormous role in both addiction and recovery. And the room of the emotions shows us that how we respond to our feelings—whether we are overcome by them, disengage from them, or somewhere in between—is a factor in our addiction. Coming from a spiritual perspective will enable us to take the insights of the physical, the mental, and the emotional rooms to a new place, a place of integration and wholeness.

Outpatient: Week 2 Group Outline Viewing Addiction Through the Spiritual Lens

(Preface and Introduction from Conscious Recovery) (10 Minutes) Opening Meditation

(10 Minutes) Check-In:

Everyone states their name and says something about the spirituality as it relates to addiction.

Review Shared Agreements

• One Person Speaks at a Time
• Confidentiality
• Share the Air
• No “Fixing”
• “I” Statements
• Feedback Upon Request(15 Minutes) Small Group or Dyad Process: Handout 1

• Reading from Conscious Recovery (Out loud)
• Small Group or Dyad Discussion of Reading(10 Minutes) Large Group Discussion:What stood out that wants to be shared with the whole group?

(5 Minutes) Group Process 1 – Four Corners:

Tape the four different quotes (on the following pages) from Conscious Recovery on the wall in different parts of the room. Have everyone walk around and read them. Then ask them to stand by the one that resonates with them or that they most identify with. Once everyone has chosen their quote, they sit in small groups (based on the one they selected).

(15 Minutes) Group Process 2:

Each group spends time discussing why they choose that particular quote. (Each group chooses one person to summarize the small group discussions.)

(10 Minutes) Group Process 3:

One person from each group stands up in front of the room and “reports” the highlights from their small group discussion.

(5 Minutes) Group Discussion:

Anything left to share/discuss?

(10 Minutes) Closing Process

We use all kinds of ways to escape – all addictions stem from this

moment when we meet our edge and we just can’t stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad

it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.

― Pema Chödrön

The key problem I encounter

working with wounded,

depressed, and unhappy

people is a lack of

connection…starting from a

disconnection from

themselves and then with

others.

― David W. Earle

I’ve found that every spiritual advance I’ve made was preceded by some sort of fall—in fact, it’s almost a universal law that a fall of some kind precedes a major

shift.
Dr. Wayne Dyer

Every addiction arises from

an unconscious refusal to face

and move through your own

pain.

―Eckhart Tolle