A Practical Non-Theistic Spirituality
A core definition
A practical non-theistic spirituality focuses on cultivating inner peace, ethical living, and connection to the world without relying on deities or supernatural beliefs. Grounded in secular, humanistic, or naturalistic worldviews, it uses practices such as mindfulness, service to others, nature, and self-reflection to foster meaning, resilience, and awe, thereby enhancing well-being in everyday life.
AA’s effectiveness
Of all the rehabilitation programs for alcoholism, AA ranks as one of the most effective.
“Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) is highly effective for many, with research indicating success rates for long-term abstinence comparable to or better than traditional therapy. While studies vary, significant evidence shows that regular attendance, particularly at least 27 weeks a year, can lead to 70% abstinence rates. A 2014 survey found 46% of members had been sober for over 5 years, though high drop-out rates in the first year (approx. 40%) exist.” Stamford medicine
This may appear somewhat strange to a layperson because its twelve-step recovery program suggests that recovery from alcoholism is contingent on a spiritual awakening. For many AAs, this spiritual awakening amounts to belief in, or conversion to, a God that has removed their compulsion to drink. The AA literature seems to confirm this page after page. The AA fundamentalists flatly declare that the alcoholic cannot get sober without God! How true is this? These days, more and more alcoholics who identify as atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers are staying successfully sober in AA.
In Chapter Two of the AA Big Book, Carl Jung, the world-renowned psychiatrist and psychotherapist, tells one of the early AA members and a hopeless drunk, that in his view, short of a vital spiritual experience, there was very little hope of his recovery. (BB “There is a solution” p.27)
This raises a key question: If Carl Jung was right, and a real alcoholic cannot recover without a spiritual experience, must that experience be God-centered?
Dr. Bob’s farewell Talk
Dr. Bob, the co-founder of AA, spoke for the last time three months before he died. It was at the first international AA convention in Cleveland, Ohio, on July 30th. 1950. A few short sentences he said during his talk were game-changers in my recovery as an agnostic in AA.
“Our Twelve Steps, when simmered down to the last, resolve themselves into the words’ love’ and ‘service.” We understand what love is, and we understand what service is. So, let’s bear those two things in mind.”
https://www.aa.org/dr-bobs-farewell-talk
If Dr. Bob was right and when “simmered down to the last,” the twelve steps embody the principles of “love” and “service,” I wondered if one had to believe in God to put love and service into practice? My recovery, as an agnostic, depended on the answer to that question being yes!
The next frontier: emotional sobriety
In January 1958, Bill W, the other co-founder of AA, wrote an article for the AA Grapevine magazine. It was later published in an AA conference-approved publication called “The Language of the Heart.” Although Bill mentions God and the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, this didn’t bother me at all as an agnostic for several reasons. Bill suffered from depression for many years in sobriety. I, too, suffered from debilitating depression!
Bill was also plagued by unhealthy dependencies in sobriety. In recovery, like Bill, I too fought food addiction, codependent and clingy relationships, sex addiction, work addiction, money issues, frequent escapes overseas, and a constant need for approval. How could Bill’s article not catch my attention? God or no God, any method that Bill found to overcome his problems in sobriety had to be of interest!
Finally, after many failed attempts at relationships in recovery, I had now become aware of why they kept on collapsing. It was because both of us were empty and needy. We had precious little love to offer each other, expecting the other to fill the painful void. Yet, here was Bill saying:
“I am now trying to consolidate by offering love to others regardless of the return to me. This seems to be the primary healing circuit.”
If I could learn how to love unconditionally like that, perhaps I could also heal myself of depression and all the other unhealthy dependencies that made life so unmanageable?
Excerpt from Bill’s 1958 article
Here is the relevant excerpt from Bill’s article “The next frontier: emotional sobriety.”
“Suddenly, I realized what the matter was. My basic flaw had always been dependence — almost absolute dependence – on people or circumstances to supply me with prestige, security, and the like. Failing to get these things according to my perfectionist dreams and specifications, I had fought for them. And when defeat came, so did my depression.
There wasn’t a chance of making the outgoing love of St. Francis a workable and joyous way of life until these fatal and almost absolute dependencies were cut away.
Because I had, over the years, undergone a little spiritual development, the absolute quality of these frightful dependencies had never before been so starkly revealed. Reinforced by what Grace I could secure in prayer, I found I had to exert every ounce of will and action to cut off these faulty emotional dependencies upon people, upon AA, indeed, upon any set of circumstances whatsoever.
Then only could I be free to love as Francis had. Emotional and instinctual satisfactions, I saw, were really the extra dividends of having love, offering love, and expressing a love appropriate to each relation of life.
Plainly, I could not avail myself of God’s love until I was able to offer it back to Him by loving others as He would have me. And I couldn’t possibly do that so long as I was victimized by false dependencies. 1 For my dependency meant demand — a demand for the possession and control of the people and the conditions surrounding me.
While the words “absolute demand” may look like a gimmick, they were the ones that helped to trigger my release into my present degree of stability and quietness of mind, qualities which I am now trying to consolidate by offering love to others regardless of the return to me.
This seems to be the primary healing circuit: an outgoing love of God’s creation and His people, by means of which we avail ourselves of His love for us. It is most clear that the current can’t flow until our paralyzing dependencies are broken, and broken at depth. Only then can we possibly have a glimmer of what adult love really is.”
Bill W
© Copyright, AA Grapevine, January 1958
A practical non-theistic spirituality
My sponsor was a wise old-timer. Although he was a believer, he gladly sponsored atheists and agnostics. He offered clever suggestions for guiding non-believers through the twelve steps. When I completed the first nine steps, he was eager for me to sponsor other atheists and agnostics. He assured me that, if I did so with humility and devotion, it would eventually lead to a spiritual awakening. This would happen even if I remained an agnostic.
After reading Bill’s article on emotional sobriety, I realized that whatever service I offered through sponsorship in AA, it had to be unconditional. Bill was right: this kind of sponsorship became my “primary healing circuit.” The “love and service“ Dr. Bob mentioned in his farewell talk became powers greater than me. Gradually, they taught me what “adult love really is.”
Were it not for everything I learned from my sponsor and the twelve steps, I would never have experienced the mature love I am now enjoying with my wife. I would still be bouncing in and out of codependent relationships. Finally, through the beautiful words left to us by Bill and Dr Bob, I have found a non-theistic spirituality that has kept me sane and sober for a few 24 hours!
In fellowship,
Andy F
