Spiritual Malady in our Threefold Illness
The definition of a Spiritual Malady is:
Malady means disconnect or separation. So therefore a spiritual malady is a separation or disconnect from spiritual things. This can mean a separation or disconnect from other human beings, spiritual principles, a spiritual higher power etc. Spiritual things are not merely religion but are defined by each individual uniquely as the guiding force in their lives-something that is greater than them or principles they live by.
The disconnect for me from God happen when I was a little girl. I wasn’t firmly grounded in the love and knowing of my Father, so it didn’t take much to separate me from that which I didn’t know. Me and little boy played “you show me yours and I show you mine”….at like age 4. The guilt of that weighed HEAVY on me from that moment on. Doesn’t seem like much, but it was enough to put me on a path of Shame, Guilt and Remorse which then resulted in being Restless, Irritable and Discontent.
If any sort of happy thought or excitement tried to enter me in childhood, it was immediately squashed by the memory of doing that. My sexuality was strong at a very young age that boys and men picked up on. It made me feel gross, nervous, and overcome with anxiety. Sex was then attached to everything from my head into my stomach. I developed an ulcer and unrelenting sadness and guilt. No room for God.
The obsession of the mind was BOYS before booze. I was reading my dairy from age 8-15 and WOW…All consumed by boys. I see that they were my Higher Power! No room for God. Then when I became sexually active it made the guilt worse. I was used by boys and used boys. I was seeking the same feeling I got from the “first kiss”, kinda like the feeling I got from my “first buzz”….Chasing a feeling I could never get back no mater how many boys or how many drinks….The obsession, guilt, shame, self loathing, fear, low self worth, humiliation, hopelessness, etc….Leaves absolutely no room for God!
to fill the void of my spiritual malady….I of course blamed God!. What I didn’t realize was that God, like any loving parent, waits patiently for me to come home to Him when I am done rebelling. At that time I would only call “home” to him when something was wrong and then would curse him if it/they failed. God can’t dwell in the darkness that I was in until I sought him. He could, would, and did once I let him in sobriety.
Using people to fill a void then using alcohol to numb the pain of what I was doing and creating. As a child, I of course had no control over what happen to me. What I do have a choice in is if I continue to prey upon others because of it. Forgiving the predators of my youth, knowing that they were preyed upon as well, and taking full accountability for the harm I caused others, stopped the cycle of predatory behavior. If I am getting fed through God then I am not draining you like a parasite that feeds off someone to feed what it’s lacking.
Even if my behavior and actions weren’t as server as those who preyed on me, I was still contributing to the pattern of using human beings to get fed. That’s what they were doing using me to get fed….It’s a terrible cycle happening in this world. Over time my soul was almost depleted by what I had done. Humans looking to be filled no matter who gets hurt.
Thankfully I found my way into AA and was given a set of spiritual tools to work with. These “tools” if given to all of us as children would save the world a lot of suffering!! These simple tools and Faith in my Father, stopped the cycle chaos and pain. It removed the guilt through the 4th step and gave me peace in the 5th Step. It showed me what defects were driving me the 6th Step. It made me accountable in the 9th Step….I was clean and ready to serve the Power that got and keeps me sober through service to Him by service to his children.
Selflessness, gratitude, love, service and compassion combats the self certeredness, self seeking, self pity, victim hood and selfishness which is at the core of my dis-ease that kept the malady going for so long. The more I fed “Self”, the worse I got. This is a Selfless program. You can’t combat Selfishness with more selfishness. This is the reason that “self help” didn’t work for me. Less self, more God. Feeding the God in me by service to His children is the only way I found to freedom from the looping of my personal hell.
Please share on your experience accepting Spiritual help or your experience with service to others and how it has transformed you.
Love, safe and protected in the Armor of God!
Hilarie 4.8.14
“There is a solution. Almost none of us liked the self-searching, the leveling of our pride, the confession of shortcomings which the process requires for its successful consummation. But we saw that it really worked in others, and we had come to believe in the hopelessness and futility of life as we had been living it. When, therefore, we were approached by those in whom the problem had been solved, there was nothing left for us but to pick up the simple kit of spiritual tools laid at our feet. We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed.
The great fact is just this, and nothing less: That we have had deep and effective spiritual experiences which have revolutionized our whole attitude toward life, toward our fellows and toward God’s universe. The central fact of our lives today is the absolute certainty that our Creator has entered into our hearts and lives in a way which is indeed miraculous. He has commenced to accomplish those things for us which we could never do by ourselves. Pg 25-Big Book