The Missing Peace Podcast

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Episode 5: Recovery and 12 steps

So it's some point we're going to talk about recovery and we're going to talk about recovery in a great amount of detail because the reason that we exist here at the realization of stainless Souls is to promote and teach and bring about recovery in the minds and souls and hearts and bodies of our members it's a somewhat unfortunate reality that the word recovery automatically is associated with addiction or codependency or a 12-step program and as soon as individuals here at their turned off by anyting associated with the word recovery and I want to help alleviate any concerns with the word recovery in any of our members Minds with this message today if you have surgery you go to recovery after surgery when you are ill you recover from that illness obviously if you're addicted or codependent you need to recover from those afflictions but it's also true if you are depressed hopeless helpless suicidal if you have trauma PTSD as well as addiction and codependents that the path to restoring an ordinary life for recovering an ordinary life is called recovery and it is a universal word that we can use in order to get everybody on the same page when we talk about what we're doing here at stainless Souls so all of us addicted codependent suicidal traumatized and homeless are suffering from afflictions pinned down by hopelessness and helplessness that require recovery and over the course of the next few days we will introduce a 90-day program a recovery for those who are suffering with any of those 5 afflictions but of course the program can be used for anyone anyone who is going through a. Of difficulty in their life would benefit from a program of recovery it's a recovery of what you may consider a normal or ordinary life from something that might be considered extraordinary or abnormal over the course of our development here at stainless Souls we will offer at least for 90-day programs to our members the first one is recovery from the Insidious afflictions of addiction co-dependency PTSD suicidal ideation and homelessness following that 90-day program graduates will be invited to another 90 day program which will be restoration where that 90 days will focus on restoring all of the things lost during the. Of affliction and then the third 90 days we will call realization and in that 90-day program we will help members realize with much more and understanding exactly who and what they are and who and what their place is in the universe alongside of God and then the fourth program the force 90 day program will be actualization where we take a person who was broken broken down and out through a 90-day recovery program then a 90-day restoration program then a 90-day realization program and then finally a 90-day actualization program where they learn how to live up to the full potential of their being in this incarnation in this lifetime second of outlines the the purpose for our existence here at stainless Souls as a church in a Ministry we start by Saving Lives and over the course of a year we move to take that saved life and really helped make it meaningful as meaningful as it would have been or should have been had they not become afflicted but we like to think that even beyond that because what we teach is going to help people really excel in life so now to the idea of recovery it's a universal word all of us who suffer in any way really but in particular Faraz seduction codependency PTSD suicidal ideation and homelessness we can easily model the 12-step programs of a island on n a as a basic recipe or prescription for recovery from anything the principles in the Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous are Universal we can all benefit from what is written and taught and experienced in AA I was sitting in a meeting one time some of you might find this funny and I said out loud I wish I regret it now but I said out loud dumb you know the world would be a better place if everybody did the 12 steps and one of the older gentleman at that meeting looked at me and said we think the world would be a better place if you did those 12 steps was was funny at the time but if you think about the outline of the 12 steps which I'm going to do here in a moment you can see why they work for alcoholism and addiction and codependency but hopefully you'll see also why they work with grief Despair and suicidal ideation why they would work with anxiety and fear and anger and resentment of PTSD and why they might work with helplessness and hopelessness associated with all these afflictions but most especially those who are homeless so the the program of recovery outlined in the big book starts really with surrender and it's just a surrendering that I have this Affliction I've tried for a very long time to take care of it myself and I've not been able to I don't know what else to do so I Surrender and you can see how that would work with trauma survivors suicidal ideation people homeless people they've work as hard as they can potentially at resolving their difficulty but despite everything that they've done they have not been able to resolve it and at some point the reasonable rational thing to do is to surrender and say I can't do it and once you make that step if you do it authentically you have an opportunity to be exposed to all sorts of new ideas around how to resolve the issue because you're essentially giving responsibility for fixing it away because you can't do it I Surrender I can't do it that doesn't mean that I give up it just means I can't do it either by myself or with help from another person I still can't do it I need something potentially extraordinary to intervene on my behalf and the thing about a sick or troubled mind or a secret troubled heart or a secret troubled soul however you want to consider a mental or emotional affliction the troubled mind cannot untroubled itself it's troubled the suffering mind cannot unsuffer itself what has to happen if something higher then the troubled mind has to step in or be invoked in order to resolve the difficulty and that's where the idea of a higher power comes in now the higher power ultimately you'll find I think is the absolute power but in the beginning of recovery you don't have to make leaps towards some higher power that is absolute the initiator of the Big Bang or the father of the man who hangs on a cross or the advisor of Argentina in the middle of a battlefield between the material world in the spiritual world or burning bush you just have to come to believe once you surrender that you need a higher power a power higher than yourself to help resolve your difficulty then once you go there the next step is pretty simple you simply ask that higher power to remove your difficulty you don't need a graduate degree in theology to understand this higher power you certainly don't need to name this higher power or try to describe this higher power or make amends with this higher power for all the things that you've done against his or her rules or make amends because of all the things that he or she has done that has ruined your life or others lives you simply have to come to a point where I Surrender I can't do it myself I need a higher power higher than me and then ask that higher power whatever it is as long as it's higher to resolve your difficulty that's it and then the wheels are in motion both within you and within the universe that you have finally admitted you can't do it yourself there has to be something higher and you've humbled yourself if you will to ask that higher power for help the wheels are in motion in the universe that the wheels are in motion within your own mind so then why we're waiting for the universe and you to catch up with each other in the Eternal now there's a few things you can do to start fixing the mess you've probably made of your life and the mess is probably mostly within yourself you've completely lost track of who and what you are who and what you stand for you may be disgusted discouraged Sick by what you are or what you've become or you may not realize what you are or what you have become for me with PTSD and I don't know if I ever really realized what it was that was my problem I mean I thought I was normal even though my behavior was totally abnormal so there are some things that you know we should always do if we do something wrong two other people we should admit it at least to ourselves so after we surrender acknowledge that we need a higher power ask that higher power for help we start taking a moral inventory of ourselves and that moral inventory is just a list essentially of all the things that we may have done or not done when we were supposed to that bother us or bother other people and generally that list comes down to fear anger and resentment and all of the battles that you're fighting inside of yourself are usually a result of the regrets you have about your behavior and the results of those specific behaviors so you just simply make an inventory of all the things that really bug you about yourself that you've done both to yourself and done outside of yourself to the rest of the world and over the course of a couple days or a week however long you want to invest in this you start to summarize that list down to know what's really the one two three or four things that really bother me about me and my behavior in the past and then hopefully you can find someone that you trust mother father brother sister husband wife preacher priest counselor sponsor anyone will do I'm not so sure that your pet will do but the idea here is you have to drain all of this dirty murky water from your body from your mind from your heart from your soul and the mind is a Curious Thing if you just kind of talk to yourself through all these things and and pretend that you're talking to another person it knows and it doesn't give you any credit for having confessed the things that bother you most so for your own benefit the fifth thing that we do is talk to another person about the things that bother us the most and what you'll find is that that person feels the same way about themselves maybe not to the same degree that you do maybe not to the same intensity that you feel about yourself but you'll find in most cases human beings share similar self-analysis and the things that bother you about yourself to some degree or another bother others about themselves and at the end of that conversation when you get a hug from this person and they assure you that told them may be embarrassing and humiliating for you they still love you anyway in fact they may embrace you more than they did prior to this because now your Shield that has been protecting you the real you all these years through this relationship and many others has been taken down has been put away and the real you is now shining through then the next thing to do is pretty simple it's you step outside of this meeting and you think of all the things that you just admitted to another person anger fear resentment and you go back to that same higher power who you might know a little better by now and you just believe that that higher power could take away these difficulties the shortcomings in your personality or in your character and then almost immediately you asked that higher power to take their shortcomings away again the higher Powers just a little bit higher than your conscious mind you don't have to know it him her it you just have to believe that there is some power in this universe higher than you and then you offer these shortcomings up and ask them to be removed almost instantly most people feel immediate relief and then from here there's only really two simple steps 1 is make a list of everybody that you may have heard or harmed or that you think that you may have hurt or harmed including yourself and I want you to make that list make a commitment to yourself that you're going to make amends or make it up to all of those people and this stuff isn't really for them some of them might try to take a little meat off the bone it's for you cuz you're walking around with guilt you're walking around with feelings of not good enough you walk around with feelings of regret and these aren't simple little child play feelings that you have these are feelings that are taking you to the brink of life which is right across the threshold from death these are the feelings that have made you drink or be addicted made you think you could control the entire universe and all the people in it made you consider ending your life made you hopeless and helpless over the course of a long. Of time it's like a rose in it just wears you down so you make the list and then over the course of the rest of your life when you meet the people on it you make a man to make it up to whatever you did beginning with yourself make amends with yourself first that's really the hard part of the whole recovery program in in a 12-step system those first nine steps once done once you surrendered you come to believe that there is a higher power than you I said higher power to take away your difficulty completed your moral inventory discuss your moral inventory with another human being come to believe that the same higher power could remove the shortcomings from that inventory humbly asked that higher power to remove your shortcomings made a list of people he might have harmed and then gone off and made amends with them over the course of the rest of your life the next step is just on a daily basis repeat everything you just completed if you make a mistake promptly admit it don't get yourself into a situation where regrets linger where disappointments linger where they build up over time to the point where you're drunk again or high again or have the gun in your mouth again we're out on the street again if you daily take an inventory I make amends for whatever mistakes you think you might have made during the day then every single day you're clean the 11th step is pray and meditate and we'll come back to that one and another broadcast but prayer and meditation help you connect with that higher power that you brought into your life in the 2nd 3rd 6th and 7th steps in this 11th step year sitting with that higher power that you still may not know who are water where it is and you're praying making intercessions perhaps and you are sitting quietly receiving guidance from that higher power not in words but you are receiving it and then finally it's be a service to others in fact help people who are as helpless as you were when you started this whole thing so again if you have where are suffering from addiction co-dependency PTSD suicidal ideation and the helpless and hopelessness of homelessness recovery is the same for all of us and I can say that because I have personally suffered with all five of these afflictions to some degree or another and the recipe for recovery is always relatively the same I can't do it by myself I need help from a higher power I need to take a look at myself the things that I like and dislike I need to talk about it with another person again I need to ask for help and getting rid of the shortcomings of my character and I need to go make amends with people who I've upset again for my benefit because I feel guilty not for theirs take a look at ourselves daily makeup for our mistakes pray and meditate and be of a service to other people the simple prescription and it works for any affliction oh I'm not about to say that people with PTSD and no addiction or no to codependency should go to a 12-step meeting that's not what this podcast is about but what I am saying is you don't have to look too far or too hard for how to feel better about yourself about your life about this universe and your place in it because there are Miracles happening every single day and you can be the next one but you got to admit that you want to be the next one and then you got to be willing to do whatever it takes to become that next one that's kind of an outline of recovery at a very high level and it will be followed up like I said a 90-day program of recovery will be followed up with a 90-day program of restoration and I need a program of realization and a 90-day program of actualization and believe me the 90-day program of recovery is not going to be even 10% except for those addicted at work codependent even 10% focused on 12 steps but I wanted to get this out the 12 Steps work for everything because the 12 steps are based and promoting a spiritual experience in those who undertake those 12 steps and that spiritual experience brings into your life into your Consciousness into your mind body heart and soul a power higher than yourself and you coupled with that power are capable of absolutely anything and everything you may not believe me now but you will in a year I hope that this make sense to you if you have any questions comments complaints please enter those in an email email address is Hope at stainless Souls. Com there's probably a place under this podcast where you can enter comments and again if you found this helpful please share it with anyone who you think May benefit from it always remember no matter what you've done no matter where you've been no matter how you feel how about yourself right now there is a part of you that is incorruptible invulnerable immortal and stainless stainless soles each and every one of us God bless you