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Articles
Advanced Recovery: The Next Step
By Rusty Stewart, Ph.D.
What is advanced recovery you ask? Well, it's getting to the core issues or moving beyond the behavior. Regardless of what we were attached to, love, alcohol, food, negativity, rage, sex, etc., the unhealthy behavior was just a way to numb ourselves from pain. This pain is sometimes unconscious, but real never the less, and constantly reinforced by the ego. In regression therapy many times this pain unmasks itself as fear, guilt, shame, and loneliness. These underlying emotions are unhealthy and need to be released from our history and childhood experiences. Frequently, anger, and eventually sadness, will surface as we re-experience our childhood wounds. The anger and sadness are a natural part of the grieving process that many of us did not properly or fully experience while growing up. When we grieve and let go, our unhealthy beliefs about ourselves will start to diminish too, especially if we replace the old unhealthy beliefs with new positive healthy beliefs about ourselves.
The purpose of advanced recovery is to re-discover our holism. We do this by reclaiming our emotional, spiritual, and sexual wholeness. This is what is truly meant by integrating mind, body, and spirit. With advanced recovery we do not need to label ourselves with any one-behavior recovery group because the fear underneath that fuels the obsessive-compulsive behavior is similar with all of us.
Advanced recovery is being in recovery from fear, guilt, shame, and loneliness. These are the things I am in recovery from, not my attachments and behaviors. Now, this does not mean that we don't need to concentrate on our behaviors first, we do. This is why support groups are so important, 12 step groups, or 16 step empowerment and discovery groups to name a few. Our behaviors can keep us from ever getting to advanced recovery, even to the point of rationalizing and keeping us in denial of our harmful attachments and behaviors. However, there comes a point when we are not our behaviors or attachments anymore. We are more, much more!
Freedom and unlimited possibility comes through forgiveness and the realization that we are all one, sinless, and perfect just the way we are. I am not a body I am free for I am still as God created me. This quote from A Course in Miracles for me is the experience of letting go. Advanced recovery is moving away from our human illusion transcending the ego and remembering our oneness in spirit with all our brother and sisters. As we transcend the ego our attachments lessen and our peacefulness increases. This is experienced as a process, for many of us lifetimes of processes and lessons. Lest I get too metaphysical, we still need to bridge the gap between our human fears and pure innocence and love.
I draw upon A Course in Miracles, Taoism, The Journey Toward Complete Recovery by Michael Picucci, Beyond the Twelve Steps by Lynn Grabhorn, Many Roads, One Journey by Charlotte Davis Kasl, and my experiences with Breathwork. I have found that integration is the key to complete recovery. We all have different experiences as to what works for us. Much of the stuff out there is the same underneath, just packaged or languaged differently. Who cares? If it works, work it. Whatever doesn't work, leave the rest behind. We all have to find our path, and all paths lead to the same place. Some just get you there quicker than others. Advanced recovery is just another place on the path. See if it works for you. If not you can always leave it behind. Advanced recovery for you might mean something completely different. Who am I to say what works for you? I'm still working on transcending the ego just like everyone else. And you know what, we might as well have fun while we're doing it!
Namaste
The Starting Point News, Winter 2002/2003
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