{"id":18473,"date":"2019-12-18T09:32:54","date_gmt":"2019-12-18T14:32:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18473"},"modified":"2019-12-18T09:32:54","modified_gmt":"2019-12-18T14:32:54","slug":"expressions-of-devine-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18473","title":{"rendered":"Expressions of Devine Love"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Twelve-Step Spirituality: Part Two<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cac.org\/expressions-of-divine-love-2019-12-18\/\"><strong>Expressions of Divine Love<\/strong><\/a><br>\n<strong>Wednesday, December 18, 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/MgkNB4939YM\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>Step Eleven: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God\u2019s will for us and the power to carry that out.<\/em>&nbsp;[1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In his book&nbsp;<em>Addiction and Grace,&nbsp;<\/em>psychiatrist Gerald May (1940\u20132005)\u2014who was a personal friend of mine and a true holy man\u2014pointed out how addictive behavior&nbsp;<em>uses up good desire<\/em>&nbsp;and drains away spiritual desire. May was convinced, and I am too after my years as jail chaplain, that many addicts in their younger years were people with spiritual insight and desire. In spiritual direction, addicts will often admit to early youthful moments of \u201cunitive consciousness.\u201d These were moments when it all made sense and we knew we were good, God was good, it was all good. We were in touch with our true source of power, our spiritual desire, the indwelling Holy Spirit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When this incipient spiritual yearning was frustrated; when we no longer experienced communion, connection, and compassion; when we were instead met with religions\u2019 legalism, exclusivity, and ritualism\u2014there was a great disappointment. Some then try to maintain an experience of communion through substance abuse or a process addiction (for example, shopping or gambling). Timothy McMahan King writes: \u201cAddictions represent finite answers to infinite longings. But adding up the finite over and over will never equal the infinite.\u201d [2] We want to attach to something that will never let us down, something all-powerful, all-nurturing, truly liberating. But of course, with any addiction we need more and more of it because each time we experience the emptiness afterward. It\u2019s never enough to fill the God-sized hole inside of us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Prayer and meditation allow us to reconnect with our true source of power. Alcoholics Anonymous, the first Twelve-Step program, was developed before Thomas Merton reintroduced contemplation to the modern Western world. Although the \u201cprayer and meditation\u201d described by Bill Wilson and his friends was not exactly the type of contemplative prayer we teach today, it was indeed focused on surrendering to God, seeking God\u2019s will, and relying on God\u2019s power. It was amazing that Wilson used the uncommon word \u201cmeditation\u201d in the 1930s, a time when most Western Christians would have thought that was a practice from \u201cEastern religions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Contemplative practice, done over time, actually rewires our brains so that we can detach from our addictive patterns of thinking and feeling and our unworkable programs for happiness. Now many neuroscientists affirm such very real change and call it neuroplasticity: chosen neural pathways gradually grow stronger; unused pathways die away. King again: \u201cGrace points to the possibility of a redemption that is not just recovery but the opportunity to grow deeper and become stronger than we were before.\u201d [3] May described the outcome of contemplative practice: \u201cAs attachment ceases to be your motivation, your actions become expressions of divine love.\u201d [4]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Twelve-Step Spirituality: Part Two Expressions of Divine Love Wednesday, December 18, 2019 Step Eleven: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood God, praying only for knowledge of God\u2019s will for us and the power to carry that out.&nbsp;[1] In his book&nbsp;Addiction and Grace,&nbsp;psychiatrist Gerald May (1940\u20132005)\u2014who was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18473"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18473"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18473\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18474,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18473\/revisions\/18474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}