Spiritual Awakenings

Sitting on the incarcerated side of the jail visiting window, phone to my ear, my boyfriend at the time on the other side said, “Do you know when I got my settlement we spent two thousand dollars on dope the first two days?”

The first thought in my head was also my first astonished response, “I never got loaded!” Immediately following my indignant claim, I clearly heard a thought voice that said, “A thousand is never enough, Tina.” I had a sudden moment of clarity: a thousand a day, a thousand right here and right, a thousand day after day was never enough. All this time, when I heard people in NA say, “One is too many and a thousand is never enough,” I thought it meant if I got high one time, I was going to have to do it again and again, day after day. I never realized that a thousand right here, right now was not enough—was never enough—it didn’t give me the escape, the peace, the euphoria, the oblivion I was seeking. The experience I had been fighting to recreate ever since those first early years of using my drug of choice 20 years ago.

Returning to my cell, a letter from my 15-year-old daughter awaited me. In it, my daughter said, “This time of year is hard for me because it is this time of year two years ago that you left me.” Feeling the pain of genuine remorse, I looked at the little hand drawn calendar we had, and it struck me that it was the exact date that my family had an intervention two years before, and she was taken to live with my mother until I got clean. I failed at achieving that one condition until my arrest on a no bail warrant. The Basic Text says that our ability to love is sharply affected by our use of drugs. In that moment, even though clean by no choice of my own, clean nonetheless, I could feel my love for my daughter and her love for me.

Back-to-back, these two moments of clarity were a light of truth that dissolved the darkness of my obsession, and it was lifted. Of course there were other pieces of the perfectly orchestrated miracle. But the simple, profound clarity was the impetus for that moment of clarity that sparked a spiritual awakening.

I experienced that spiritual awakening as a profound state of gratitude and complete surrender to a Higher Power that I hadn’t fully defined, but knew only as loving, caring Power much greater than myself and—even more importantly—much greater than my addiction. During the early years of my recovery, I was strengthened by the light of that gratitude, grace, and surrender inspired by those moments of clarity.

While she was in treatment my sponsor had a similar moment of clarity with “one is too many,” words she’d heard many times without such clarity. Her moment of clarity with the meaning of those words lifted her obsession, which in and of itself she considers a spiritual awakening.

It’s certain that there are many different causes, meanings, and levels of spiritual awakenings. In my experience, they all hold this in common: they are ignited by some spark or insight, some awareness, or some truth that creates a moment of clarity whose light inspires amazing transformation.