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    The Spiritual Self: Reflections on Recovery and God
    The Spiritual Self: Reflections on Recovery and God
    The Spiritual Self: Reflections on Recovery and God
    Ebook167 pages2 hours

    The Spiritual Self: Reflections on Recovery and God

    By Abraham J Twerski

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    About this ebook

    To the thicket of questions surrounding spirituality, this book brings a clear vision and a thoughtful approach that will help us find our way to the very heart of it.

    Much is made of spirituality these days-in recovery and in the culture at large-but what, exactly, does spirituality mean? Is it something different to different people? How is it discovered, nurtured, expressed? And, perhaps most important, why does it matter? To the thicket of questions surrounding the subject, this book brings a clear vision and a thoughtful approach that will help us find our way to the very heart of spirituality. Writing simply and directly, Abraham Twerski shows how spirituality-independent of religion-is central to emotional and mental health, and is a key to being truly and profoundly human. Founder and medical director of the Gateway Rehabilitation Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Abraham J. Twerski is a rabbi, psychiatrist, chemical dependency counselor, and the author of many books, including Addictive Thinking: Understanding Self-Deception.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHazelden Publishing
    Release dateJun 15, 2011
    ISBN9781616491246
    The Spiritual Self: Reflections on Recovery and God

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      Book preview

      The Spiritual Self - Abraham J Twerski

      CHAPTER 1

      Are Humans Homo Sapiens?

      The noted historian Barbara Tuchman wrote in the Saturday Review in December 1966, "Let us beware of the plight of our colleagues, the behavioral scientists, who by use of a proliferating jargon have painted themselves into a corner—or isolation—of unintelligibility. They know what they mean, but no one else does. Psychologists and sociologists are farthest gone in the disease and probably incurable. Their condition might be pitied if one did not suspect it was deliberate. Their retreat into the arcane is meant to set them apart from the great unlearned, to mark their possession of some unshared, unsharable expertise."

      Discussions of things such as spirituality often feature long words and difficult-to-grasp arguments. In contrast to those behavioral scientists described by Ms. Tuchman, I do not possess any unshared or unsharable expertise, and I hope to avoid the pitfall of unintelligibility. I have been impressed by the effectiveness of the AA teaching to keep it simple, and in compliance with this principle, I wish to make a simple assertion: Humans are different than animals.

      This hardly seems a shocking revelation, even after we eliminate the obvious difference that humans are biped with an upright posture. Yet a bit of reflection shows us that the true distinctions between humans and animals are not universally acknowledged. For example, biologists have classified humans as being Homo sapiens, homo referring to the general group of hominoids, which includes monkeys, apes, orangutans, and chimpanzees, and sapiens (intellect) being the distinctive feature that separates humans from other animals.

      Perhaps it is my ego at work that makes me reject this classification, according to which I am an intellectual gorilla. Indeed, I believe that other forms of life also have intellect but are not as wise as humans. Hence, the biologic appellation distinguishes humans from animals only quantitatively; that is, we have more intellect than animals; but it does not provide a qualitative distinction.

      I believe that there is more than just a greater degree of intelligence that distinguishes humans from animals and that if we analyze humankind and understand all that we can about our species—thoughts, emotions, behavior—we will find additional features that are uniquely human. On this basis, I would like to coin a definition. All the unique features of a human being in their totality is what constitutes the spirit of a person. When an individual exercises these unique features, he or she is being spiritual. Thus, spirituality is simply the implementation of those distinctive features that separate humans from animals.

      I realize that I am treading on thin ice, because I may be challenged to prove that all these features are indeed unique to the human race. You might say, "How do you know that animals do not have the equivalent of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony or Shakespeare’s Hamlet? Just as animals may well be unaware that these exist among humans, humans may be ignorant of what exists among animals."

      Absolutely correct. Yet no one has really taken issue with the designation of humans as Homo sapiens, and no one argues that animals may indeed be far more intelligent than we assume and that we are merely ignorant of the great intellectual achievements of animals. Someone might argue that bees are extraordinary mathematicians and engineers who have not only calculated the configuration of a hexagon to an unbelievable degree of precision but have also cleverly devised a structural technique that they have communicated to their brethren all over the world. While this might conceivably be true, we generally do not assume this to be so. Rather, we attribute the geometrically precise honeycomb to an inborn instinct rather than to bees’ mathematical genius.

      I believe we are justified in extending this way of thinking to other properties that we consider lacking in animals. We generally assume that animals do not create poetry or produce artistic masterpieces and that animals have not transmitted the history of ancient events to their offspring over many generations. While this is indeed only an assumption, it is a reasonable one and one that the overwhelming number of people hold to be valid. I will, therefore, proceed on the basis of this assumption that, given our observation of animals, human beings display sensitivities and attributes of a unique nature. It is in the quality of these unique attributes that our spirituality lies.

      CHAPTER 2

      Spirituality and Free Choice

      One of the ways in which humans are distinct from animals is that we are free, whereas animals are not.

      Human beings and animals both have biologic drives: hunger, thirst, sex, desire for comfort, avoidance of pain, and so on. However, animals are at the mercy of their biologic drives and cannot resist them. An animal that is hungry is driven to look for food, one that is thirsty must look for water, and one that is in heat must look for a mate. Given our right to reach certain conclusions as was discussed in the previous chapter, we may assume that no animal has ever made a conscious decision, for example, I will suffer the pangs of hunger and thirst, but I will not eat or drink today, because I have decided to fast. Nor has it ever happened that an animal in heat has suppressed its sexual urge and made a conscious choice of celibacy. Animals do not have the capacity to choose in this sense. They are totally dominated by their internal impulses and lack of freedom of choice.

      True, under certain circumstances an animal may avoid gratifying a biologic drive. For example, a hungry jackal looking for food may come across a delectable carcass, but if this happens to be in the possession of a ferocious tiger, it will not approach the carcass. However, this is not because the jackal consciously suppresses its appetite, but because the fear of being killed by the tiger overrides the hunger. This is not at all an instance of free choice, but merely a greater biologic drive, that of survival, overcoming a lesser drive, that of hunger.

      Some psychologists would have us believe that human behavior is on the same plane and that our freedom of will is but an illusion. They argue that human beings have a number of drives, some of which are in conflict with others, and that human behavior is merely the result of the struggle among various drives for dominance. They claim that our consciousness of what we are doing causes us to think that we are choosing but that this is nothing more than an illusion. Our choices are being made for us by our internal drives.

      These psychologists may be in concert with those biologists who consider humans to be merely another variety of animal, and according to this concept, it is virtually meaningless to speak of spirituality. It is quite evident, however, that in practice we do not subscribe to this theory. Our entire concept of human responsibility, with our elaborate system of positive and negative sanctions, is based on the assumption that humans are not at the mercy of impulses and that we indeed have the freedom to choose and determine much of our behavior.

      Freedom is one of humanity’s preeminent values. Patrick Henry spoke for all humanity when he said, Give me liberty or give me death, as did the founding fathers when they asserted that man has an inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Tyranny is intolerable and is just as despicable when it is promoted by internal drives as when it is espoused by a ruthless despot. Slavery is abhorrent, not only because it is often cruel, but more so because it is dehumanizing. Human beings are free creatures, and to take away our freedom is to rob us of our humanity.

      Humans are free when we have the capacity to make a free choice. In contrast to animals, we need not be dominated by our biologic drives. However, if a person avoids gratifying a given biologic drive only out of fear of consequences, this person is still not behaving on a true human level because, as we have seen, animals are also deterred by fear of punishment. Whether the punishment is death or corporal pain or imprisonment or social condemnation is immaterial. The person who avoids stealing because of the fear of being apprehended and punished or who avoids an illicit sexual relation because of the fear of contracting disease or being condemned by society or family is really no different than the hungry jackal who avoids the carcass that is in the possession of a

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