The Practice of Spiritual Awakening

"Be quick to see where religious people are right. Make use of what they offer."

Alcoholics Anonymous, page 87.

WARNING: This blog entry (and the attached video by Rev. Ted Nottingham) may be somewhat confusing to those readers who may not have completed the Twelve Steps, or those among us who do not seriously seek, or have let up on our efforts, to "improve our conscious contact with God." 

Please remember: "Keep an Open Mind."

"Do not conform any longer to the world," St. Paul advised, "but be transformed by the renewal of your mind." (Rom. 12:2) And what is "renewal" if it is not "recovery" - a "recovery" which is at the heart of A.A's program of action and, indeed, which is at the heart of all the world's great religious and wisdom traditions?

"Religion," notes Rev. Nottingham  (real 'inner religious' transformation, as opposed to the too-often insignificant and superficial trappings and practices of a mere 'outer religion'), "means to relink or reconnect with Spirit." In the following video, in which he introduces "a perennial teaching, timeless and universal, of spiritual transformation," Nottingham surveys a number of little known spiritual teachings and teachers - everything from Orthodox Christianity to Zen Buddhism - with an emphasis on "The Fourth Way" teachings of G.I. Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky.

These teachings may prove invaluable to those of us in recovery who are constantly trying to expand and deepen our spiritual recovery - even though, perhaps, there are few enough amongst us who wish or are willing to go to the deeper depths which may be available through outside traditions. But, "keep an open mind", as there are hidden, esoteric depths to every tradition, and with each new depth we experience, a new and further depth awaits just beyond.

As Ouspensky observed:

"The evolution of human consciousness is a question of personal efforts and is therefore a rare exception amongst human beings. . . . Most people simply do not want to awaken. To become a different being we must want it greatly, and over many years. Without the necessary efforts we will not evolve. Moreover, we must acquire qualities we may believe we already possess, but in fact do not."

"The attainment of higher levels of consciousness," says Nottingham, "is closely related to certain religious practices which we find in all cultures, such as meditation and contemplation. Yet," he notes, "(t)hese are difficult paths to tread because our attention is always being caught by the ceaseless chattering going on in our heads." Nonetheless, he points out, "(i)t is possible to become receptive to a state of pure consciousness without thought, where truth is revealed to us directly without words."




"Awakening from the sleep of a carnal life, an externally-driven life, does not happen automatically," Nottingham observes, "it requires directed attention and sincere, repeated efforts. . . . You will not (however) make the effort to awaken," he notes, "if you do not know you are asleep. We have to realize our captivity before it can occur to us to escape from it."


Further helpful videos are available on Ted Nottingham's Youtube channel, and his books (as well as those of his wife, Rebecca Nottingham, and certain of their valuable translations) are available online. Rev. Nottingham also publishes a free weekly podcast available on PodOmatic.com.

* * * * * * * * * * * * *

At the end of the above video, Rev. Nottingham recommends the following practices as tools for attaining spiritual awakening and deepening our spiritual experience:

Tools and Practices for Spiritual Development

• Recognize the sleep of unawareness. These things keep us asleep:
• Being unaware that we are asleep.
• Being unaware that we can choose to be awake.
• Not choosing it.
• Presuming that we are already fully aware.
• Believing that we are already good.
• Negative emotions and our attachment to them.
• Justifying our negative emotions.
• Automatic habits.
• Constant inner talking.
• Fear of change.
• Spiritual laziness.
• Allowing ourselves to be swept up in the current of our responses to life.
• Fearful emotions:
• insecurity,
• embarrassment,
• impatience,
• self-pity,
• dread, anxiety, worry, nervousness,
• criticizing,
• hopelessness,
• depression, despair, and jealousy.

• Discipline your mind to be aware.

• Stop and silence negative thoughts and negative emotions.

• Silence justifications. Never accept your justifications for your negative emotions.

• Don't believe fear. Fear opposes faith.

• Don't consent to anger. Angry emotions have violence in them.

• Remember why you are choosing to overcome your anger. 
• It is unhealthy physically, mentally and spiritually.
• It wastes your energy and life force.
• It never produces goodness.
• To not allow yourself to be under the dominion of changing circumstances.
• To choose to act, not just react to life.
• To become more than only the result of what has done to you.

• Practice not criticizing, not objecting, not exerting or expressing your opinions and attitudes.

• Silence negative inner talking.

• Think of scale and relativity, your universal significance and what is really important.

• For a moment, stand outside of the stream of events and your responses.
• Sense your real self above them and outside them.
• Become aware of your unique individuality and become aware of your relative insignificance.
• Become aware of your connectedness with all things.

• Quiet your mind by thinking about what is good and worthy and beautiful.

• Stop thinking about yourself and how you feel, and what you like and what you don't like, and  whether you approve or not of every person and event.

• Consciously give your attention and time to whatever good things inspire you.

• Realize and accept that you alone are responsible for all of your actions and their consequences in the world.

• Accept not being understood.

• Accept injustice, judgment, condemnation, slander, gossip, and your insufficiency . . . and return good for evil, forgiveness for offense.

• Stop complaining. It is noisy and there is no "Thy will be done" in it.

• Stop taking offense. Humility is not offendable.

• Release your requirements that other people be how you think they should be.

• Release your expectations of life and circumstances and your need to be satisfied by them.

•  Live the fruits of the spirit whether you are satisfied or not.

• Stop thinking that you deserve better. No one deserves anything.

•  Give up having to have the last word.

• Don't worry about the impression you make on others.

• Sacrifice your need to be right.

• Don't speak negatively about any other person.

• Refuse to listen to, believe, or participate in gossip.

• Give up being impatient. It is the vanity of wanting your will now over God's timing.

• Stop thinking about what other people are thinking about you.

• Refuse to accept your justifications for acting badly.

•  Practice being scrupulously honest with yourself and other people.

• Whatever you do, do it to please God. Who else do you have to impress?

• Strive for purity of heart. 
• In purity you will find peace and humility. 
• In humility you will find freedom, authenticity, and serenity.

Process for Spiritual Development

• Aim: Loving God, goodness, purity, servanthood.

• Acquire knowledge to know what you must do to live out your aim.
• Know thyself and know what to do about thyself.

• Direct your attention to  become aware of what is going on inside you, in your thoughts and emotions.

• Observe yourself with:
• scathing honesty,
• perseverance,
• integrity and patience.

• Use discernment to recognize how and when  you are outside God's will which is always good.

• Practice STOP toward your negative thoughts and feelings.
• Practice silence toward them one at a time.

• Create a separation between your authentic self and your automatic habits of thoughts, feelings, attitudes and opinions.

•  Choose what you consent to think, feel and do.

• Choose goodness before gratification -- what you know to be good rather than what feels good.

• Sacrifice, give up, your negative emotions. Don't condemn yourself for them. Change them.

• Do not allow yourself to express negative emotions out loud.

• Make yourself passive to your automatic reactions.

• Make your internal responses quiet so that you can act with intentionality.

• Release your requirements of life, people and circumstances.

• Release your desire for satisfaction.

• Willingly bear your necessary suffering, including all the efforts you must make to develop spiritual maturity and obedience.

Remember that God's nature is one thing and that is perfect Goodness.

H.O.W. It Works

"We find that no one need have difficulty with the spirituality of the program. Willingness, honesty and open-mindedness are the essentials of recovery. But these are indispensable."

Alcoholics Anonymous (4th ed.), page 568

Referencing the above passage taken from the "Spiritual Experience" appendix to the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous, the acronym "H.O.W." (as in "H.O.W. It Works") is often cited as representing the three qualities of mind that are necessary prerequisites for effectively working the AA program and, thus, attaining the spiritual awakening that allows the alcoholic addict to recover from "a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body."

Spirituality, with its ever-deepening understandings,  is by its nature a nuanced phenomenon. There are then, of necessity, both plain and more subtle aspects to all of its dimensions. There are both  conventional and extraordinary, mundane and subtle, layers to all spiritual teachings. To this end, it seems to me that there are both surface and deeper meaning to the requisite qualities of honesty, open-mindedness and willingness. And, of course, even beyond these meanings there are undoubtedly evermore deeper meanings to all three qualities, for in working the Twelve Steps, as in all spiritual practices, "more will be revealed."

“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it. But small is the gate and narrow the road that leads to life, and only a few find it."

- Matthew 7:13-14

Honesty: At the conventional level, becoming honest means that we do no further harm to others by lying, covering up, taking what does not belong to us and being untruthful etc.. Often referred to as "cash register honesty," this level of truthfulness is necessary in order that we can make an admission of powerlessness over alcohol (and/or drugs) and move forward in working the Twelve Steps. It is particularly important as we undertake our moral inventory which is both a 'fact-finding' and 'fact-facing' exercise that is wholly dependent on the alcoholic addict's being honest about the facts of his or her life.

At a deeper level, however, the requisite honesty requires our facing the illusions and delusions that are at the core of our self-centeredness, or ego-centricity. (The ego, in the sense that it is used here and throughout A.A. literature does not mean 'pride, per se, but rather the false sense of 'self'' that is a construction of our ordinary, worldly consciousness.)

Derived from the Latin honestas, which originally designated a plant with semi-transparent seed pods, honesty means to be "free of deceit and untruthfulness" - in this instance, self-deceit. At page 55 in the 'Big Book,' we are assured that "the fundamental idea of God" is deep down within everyone - man, woman and child - but that it is "obscured" by the "calamity, pomp and worship of other things" that are characteristic of most people's ordinary thoughts - i.e., the thought patterns that are characteristic of the human ego, the thought patterns Bill W. called a "painful inner dialogue.". Thus, in this instance, to be honest is to be free from the self-deceit and inherent untruthfulness of our egoic and addictive thought patterns, the fearful thoughts and emotions which block us off from our true inner nature.

In becoming honest and recognizing the "ideas, emotions and attitudes" that habitually veil the divine or spiritual nature of our being, the curtains of "calamity, pomp and worship of other things" are at least temporarily or partially lifted and we can then see and sense the truth of what and who we are. In this sense, we can then truly become "a channel of His peace."

Indeed, in describing the nature of the "spiritual awakenings" that were known to relieve alcoholic addiction, Carl Jung (at page 27 of the 'Big Book') observed that:

"Ideas, emotions and attitudes which were once the guiding forces of the lives of these men are suddenly cast to one side, and a completely new set of conceptions and motives begin to dominate them."

 In this sense, one becomes honest with one's "self."

Open-Mindedness: There are, I have come to realize, at least two facets of being truly open-minded. In the simplest terms, to be open-minded is to be free from the prejudice and contempt we may feel for spiritual and/or religious matters. Most often arising from our skepticism towards religious doctrines or the resentments we hold towards religious institutions, such prejudices (i.e., pre-judgments) must be set aside. Indeed at page 87 in the 'Big Book' we are enjoined to "(be) quick to see where religious people are right."

(In this regard, I note that the very word 'religion' comes from the Latin phrase 're ligare,' which means "to rejoin" or "reunite." In this sense a "religious experience" - as discussed in the second paragraph of the Spiritual Experience appendix - is what reunites the suffering alcoholic addict with the totality of the world and all things, that is God.)

At a deeper level, to be open-minded is to have a clear mind that is free of compulsive thinking and old ideas. In the 'How It Works' reading (from page 55 in the 'Big Book') we are told that many of the early members of A.A. had "tried to hold onto (their) old ideas," but that "the result was nil until they let go absolutely." My experience is that "old ideas" are not only those that I held for years in respect of spiritual, religious and other matters, but they also consist of new ideas that I cannot easily get rid of - thoughts about people, circumstances, ideas and institutions - that occupy my mind unduly.

Like chewing gum, it does not take long for such 'new ideas' to grow old and lose their appeal once I have chewed and ruminated on them for any length of time. Thoughts that frighten me, anger me or provoke envy in me etc., can quickly overwhelm my consciousness, bolstering my ego and separating me from everyone and everything, thereby obscuring that "Great Reality" that exists deep down within (all of) us." Indeed, it is only through the practice of meditation and prayer that we are effectively enabled to rid ourselves of such thoughts, and so improve "our conscious contact" with the God of our own understanding, however we may understand that Being.

Willingness: The conventional meaning of 'willingness,' I believe, is merely the determination to take the steps that others have taken to attain and maintain their sobriety. To this end, the 'How It Works' reading specifically notes that "(i)f you want what we have and are willing to go to any lengths to get it, then you are ready to take certain steps." That includes admitting to one's self that you are alcoholic, to believe (or, at least, be willing to believe) that there is a Power greater than one's self which can restore you to sanity, making the decision to turn one's will and one's life over to the Power of the God of your understanding, and then proceeding with the moral inventory and amends making process laid out in the Twelve Steps. Those who are unwilling, are those who do not want what we have, and thus "are not ready" to work the Twelve Steps . . . at least yet. Their sobriety, if any, is typically tenuous, precarious and desperately uncomfortable. They are in real danger.

At a more fundamental level, an act of one's will is a decision to do something, in this instance to live life one's life on a spiritual basis. (At page 83 of the 'Big Book, we read: "The spiritual life is not a theory. We have to live it." Why? Because life is inherently spiritual. It was the late great spiritual teacher, Krishnamurti, who observed: "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience, but spiritual beings having a human experience.") And living one's life on a spiritual basis requires practice - a practice that starts with Step Three.

"Practicing Step Three," we read in the Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, "is like the opening of a door which to all appearances is still locked and closed. All we need is a key, and the decision to swing the door open. There is only one key, and it is called willingness." This, as above, signifies our decision to take the Twelve Steps in order to walk through that locked door and live a spiritual life.

"Once we have come into agreement with (the steps to be taken)," we read, "it is really easy to begin the practice of Step Three. In all times of emotional disturbance or indecision," (emphasis added), "we can pause, ask for quiet, and in the stillness simply say: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. Thy will, not mine, be done."

The serenity, courage and wisdom we ask for are only truly available to us when we effect (or re-effect) a conscious contact with the God of our understanding; that is, when we are released from our ordinary ego-consciousnesss, and thus attain our higher God-consciousness. (The human ego is, by its nature, troubled, frightened and lost, the very antithesis to the serenity, courage and wisdom of higher consciousness.) Dissecting the power of this Serenity Prayer, we can observe that:

• 'Serenity' is the nature of our Being when we shed ordinary, self-consciousness/ego-consciousness and effect a conscious contact with our higher nature - i.e., with God.
• 'Courage' (from the Latin 'cour,' meaning heart) is to change the only thing we can in any instance - that is, to deepen the level of our consciousness. Symbolically it is to shift the center of our consciousness and thinking from the head/ego and its "painful inner dialogue," to the heart/soul (or deeper seat of consciousness) wherein there is a total acceptance of people, circumstances and the world exactly as they are in this instant of time.
• 'Wisdom' is to know, from experience, that there are two wholly different realities within us. One is the ego - i.e., the 'self' or 'self-consciousness - which lies at the root cause of our alcoholic addiction, the reality which we sought to escape from through the use of alcohol and/or drugs. The other is our authentic Being, wherein we are wholly at one (i.e., in communion) with God.

In his last public talk, Dr. Bob pointed to the "absolute necessity" of the teachings that he and Bill W. derived from the Beatitudes, First Corinthians 13, and the Book of James. A close reading of the latter identifies the problem of not just alcoholic addicts, but of all men and women: 

"A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." (James 1:8)

• So long as we respond to life and act on the basis of our egoic, rather than God-conscious, thinking. We are apt to think, say and do almost anything. Our old ego-centric thinking and ideas will always be prone to lead us back into active addiction. Thus, we must be willing to work the Twelve Steps in order to deflate the ego "at depth." Nothing changes - "the result is nil" - unless we let go of our old ideas and our habitual ego-consciousness.

 "Draw near to God, and God will draw near to you. Wash clean your hands ye sinners. Purify your hearts ye double-minded." (James 4:8)

• "We found that Great Reality deep down within us," we read at Page 55 of the 'Big Book.' Indeed, we are told, "(i)n the last analysis it is only there it may be found." When we shift from the self-consciousness and egoic thinking of our separated "self" to the essence of our Being, we effect a conscious contact with our Higher Power; that is, God "draws near" to us. 
• In Steps Four through Step Nine, and again in Step Ten, we face and face down our narrow "self" and, where possible, we right the wrongs which occurred (or occur) as a result of what is really a soul sickness. Figuratively, we 'wash our hands' and 'clean house.'
• Through prayer and, importantly, through meditation we "purify (our) hearts," letting go of our fear-based egoic consciousness in order to effect God-consciousness. In doing so, we increasingly live a single-minded spiritual life, rather than the unpredictable and injurious life of "the double-minded."

How does it work? It works through "ego-deflation at depth." It works by awakening to the spiritual nature of our Being and the world we live in. It works by turning our will and our lives over ot the care of God as we understand Him. It works by fearlessly facing the proposition that "God is either everything, or He is nothing." God either is, or is not,

What is our choice to be?

It works by trusting God, cleaning house, and helping others . . . . Namaste!

Tale of a "Double-Minded Man"

I've always been a reader. I got the habit hard when I was a kid, and its stayed with me. I pretty much always read for a little while, or a long while before going to sleep, even in the years I was drinking and drugging - at least on those nights when (a) I didn't pass out, or (b) I actually went to sleep that night.

I just reviewed Dr. Bob's last major talk from the pamphlet, "The Co-Founders of Alcoholics Anonymous", and was pleasantly surprised that he said he had decided to "cultivate the habit of reading", as he puts it, when he sobered up - usually for about an hour or so a day, which included what he called "the Good Book", but also "a good deal of standard literature, possibly of a scientific nature." Not that he pushed that on anyone. Quite the opposite. He said, quite specifically, "I'm not trying to sell you on the idea that you've got to read an hour a day. There are plenty of people, fine A.A.s. who don't read much." . . . I wouldn't try to sell anybody on the idea of it either, but I'll tell you - those minutes or hours are sometimes the very best part of my day, and spiritually liberating.

What I looked through the Co-Founders pamphlet for was a mention that Dr. Bob made in his last major talk about what it was like starting out, and what Bill, Bob and the other "early-timers" had read and studied in the very earliest days of the 12 Step Recovery movement, before there was the 'Big Book' of Alcoholics Anonymous - or even a written-down formulation of the 12 Steps, for that matter.

I had in my mind's eye the picture of Bill, Bob and Bob's wife, Anne (who was really probably better read, and perhaps more spiritually advanced, than either of those two newly-sober drunks), sitting at Bob and Anne's kitchen table, with only what they referred to as the "Good Book" to go on as a guide. I know I've read that description - probably in one of the two ' official' A.A. histories: "Pass It On" or "Dr. Bob and the Good Old-Timers." While the description, as I remembered it, wasn't there, the information I was looking for about the passages from the Bible that they had found "absolutely essential" was.

Speaking of the very earliest members of A.A. - Bill. Bob, Bill D. and the mere handful of (then) men who were the precursors to the millions of men and women who have been transformed by taking the 12 Steps today, Dr. Bob said:

". . . (W)e were convinced that the answer to our problems was in the Good Book. To some of us older ones, the parts that we found absolutely essential were the Sermon on the Mount, the thirteenth chapter of First Corinthians, and the Book of James." (Emphasis added.)

I had read the Book of James several times in the early years of my sobriety, before I became surrendered to life itself and not merely to 'the bottle and the bag'. And, frankly . . . it hadn't meant much to me because of my prejudice and contempt prior to investigating the spiritual basis and nature of the 12 Steps. When I picked it up again, four or so years ago, however, the following passage hit me like a ton of bricks:

"A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways." (James 1:8)

That's me! I'm that guy! If you run into me when I'm spiritually centered and fit, you will probably get the same kind of experience when dealing with me. . . .I'm pretty predictable that way. Get me on a day when all that is 'inside' of me is "right with the world" - so to speak - and I'm pretty much "happy, joyous and free", as the Big Book says.

But watch out if I'm 'off-kilter' . . . if I'm having a "spiritually-bad hair day", as one speaker so aptly put it. Then, all bets are off, folks. . . . When I've got a really bad case of the "monkey-mind" - with my thoughts just a-racing, taking me from here to there, to there, to back here again . . . and all in my mind . . . like a monkey jumping from branch to branch in a tree - with the full 'committee in the head" all present and cacaphonously accounted for - I am prone to saying or doing almost anything! That's why, I believe, the Good Book describes a man so bedevilled as "legion" (Mark 5:9).

In those moments, I - or the guy in the 'gorilla suit' who is temporarily suited up as me - am unstable - in all of my ways. I've heard my sponsor say many times, that the only difference between him and some dude doing a life sentence in Attica State Prison, is that when he was in that state of mind, he didn't have a gun. . . . Now, that I get!

There's my problem - my whole problem! On those days, there is no G_d and I'm running the whole show, trying vainly to manage life itself. I'm bombarding all my "problems" with a futile, infuriating attempt at exercising my self-will by acting out on whatever solution comes to the monkey-mind of that full committee of idiots I've got running the show at full quorum inside of me. . . . How pathetic . . . How sickening . . . and . . . Oh!, how I suffer inside when that's me in the gorilla-suit. Stay clear of me on those days folks, if you can. No wonder I'd drink, drop or drug just about anything in days past to shut down the "monkey-mind".

I've read and re-read the Book of James, many times since the full import of James 1:8 hit me. Then on one of my last go-throughs, the solution to all that double-mindedness popped out at me. Its just like reading the Big Book or listening to my sponsor. The same thing is repeated again and again, and I can't absorb the truth when I hear it because who I am is obscured by the clamour of the calamity, pomp and worship of other things that can run unchecked and roughshod through my mind - even when I'm looking for the solution. Never underestimate the power of the human Ego to blind someone like me to reality! Worse yet, as Chuck C. put it, "It's Divinely impossible to satisfy the human Ego."

In, at least to me, very Biblical language, James at Chapter 4:8 writes:

"Draw nigh to God, and God will draw nigh to you. Wash clean your hands ye sinners! Purify your hearts ye double-minded."

I am sure it was my reaction to the very Biblical sounding words and imagery in James 4:8 - "Wash clean your hands", "sinners", "purify". . . even that word, "God" - which kept me skimming right past the solution without its having a chance to register in my consciousness. To me, this brief passage sums up what the 12 Step process is all about. It is just about as beautiful and as succinct a diagnosis and prescription for what ails me as I've seen anywhere outside the "three pertinent ideas" that pertain to a wreck like me: That (A) I am alcoholic and could not (cannot, nor should presume to) manage my own life; (B) that probably no human power could (can, or will) relieve my alcoholism and restore me to sanity; but, (C) that God could (can and will) if I seek him out and try to do as he would have me do, not what I might prefer to do. (Please excuse my paraphrase of these three beautiful, pertinent ideas from page 60 of the Alcoholics Anonymous basic text.)

What James 4:8 suggests that I do, is what A.A., N.A., E.A or even ?.A. suggests I do in adopting the 12 Steps as a way of life. That is, (a) to draw near or "nigh to God" by 'uncovering, discovering and discarding' the calamitous thinking, pomp and worship of other things that obscures the "Great Reality" within my being from 'me' and 'my' consciousness - Steps 1, 2, 3; (b) to "wash clean" my hands, by getting rid of "the wreckage of my past" - Steps 4, 5, and 8 through 10; and (c) to "purify my heart" by ridding my being of the false-self's - or Ego's - petty, selfish, self-centered desires and fears by instead focusing my will on the desire to obtain that, and only that, which God would and will provide to me, particularly by his allowing me to attempt to help 'others' - Steps 6,7,11 and 12.

A modern teacher from another of the world's beautiful and ancient wisdom traditions put it this way:

". . . (I)f we want to transform our life and be free of problems we must learn to transform our mind. Sufferings, problems, worries, unhappiness, and pain all exist within our mind; they are all unpleasant feelings, which are part of the mind. Through controlling and purifying our mind we can stop them once and for all. . . . This is not easy to understand at first, but we can gain some understanding by thinking about the following. When we are awake many different things exist, but when we fall asleep they cease. This is because the mind to which they appear ceases. When we dream, the only things that appear are dream objects. Later, when we wake up, these dream objects cease. This is because the dreaming mind to which they appear ceases. If we think deeply about this we shall understand how we can cause all the unpleasant things that we dislike to cease simply by abandoning impure, deluded states of mind; and that we can cause all the pleasant things that we desire to arise simply by developing a pure mind. Purifying our mind of delusions through spiritual practice fulfils our deepest longing for true happiness."

Geshe Kelsan Gyatso,"Transform Your Life: A Blissful Journey", pp. 8-9.

Paul advises, as my greatest spiritual friend in A.A. often did: "Don't be conformed to the world; rather, be transformed by the renewal of your mind." (Romans 12:2) Interestingly, one of the definitions of "renewal" in The Shorter Oxford Dictionary is "recovery".

Enough, already . . . Time to quit writing and do a little more reading, with Dr.Bob's blessing, I assume . . . and with G_d's, I trust. . . .

God Bless . . .