Although not a member, I spent nearly five decades attempting to follow the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous® after learning about its offered path. Following the Twelve Steps provided me with precisely the kind of life support I needed. However, doing so required that I face a rather insurmountable obstacle.
The Twelve Step process required me to seek conscious contact with God as I understood Him. Try as I might, such a spiritual connection never emerged during my first fifteen years working the Program. Regardless of the route taken to secure a higher power, not once did God reveal Him/Herself to me.
By the time I turned fifty, my search for a deity’s presence had reached a dead end. I remained committed to recovery, but a belief in God never moved beyond faith. I then chose a new course, one divorced from any notion of divinity. By conscientiously following a more accessible road over the next two decades, I finally achieved spiritual deliverance.
What led me to write about my newfound sense of Grace was reading an autobiographical account by my close friend, John. A Harvard graduate, John became a Writer’s Guild award-winning educational filmmaker. I was particularly captivated by the insights he’d gained while taking a class from Dr. Erik Erikson, one of America’s leading psychologists of the mid-Twentieth Century. He coined the term identity crisis to explain his theory of the human predicament.
In his best-known book, Childhood and Society, Dr. Erickson divided the human life cycle into eight stages. At some point during each stage, a person faces a crisis that he or she brings to either a healthy or unhealthy conclusion. I was especially drawn to Erikson’s description of the Eighth Stage of Life when people sixty-five and older face the crisis of integrity versus despair. John explained that this final stage is about distinguishing between a life well-lived versus feeling short-changed or a failure. I could not stop thinking about this dilemma in terms of my own recent journey.
In late 2009, my father discovered his body was wracked with advanced Stage 4 cancer. During one of my frequent visits to Phoenix where he lay dying, the airport taxi accelerated through a red light, slamming into another car at speed. The resulting accident left me not only permanently disabled but suffering from chronic PTSD, a malady with which I continue to struggle.
That freefall was accelerated in 2011 when my wife of twenty-two years asked for a divorce. My descent then warped to lightspeed in 2012 when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer so severe that the doctors would not know until surgery whether it had progressed to adjoining organs.
Meanwhile, my relationship difficulties at the family business I had been devoted to for twenty-five years had reached a breaking point. By the end of 2013, I suffered a mental/emotional meltdown requiring my commitment to a treatment facility. A year later, I’d reached the end of my tether, deciding to sell my home. A local real estate broker advised against it. Apparently, the resort area I lived in was just hitting bottom. Short of taking a serious bath, I was stuck.
Whether due to financial restrictions, the state of my most crucial personal relationships, or the condition of my health, it would be logical to conclude my life’s road was coming to an end in abject failure. But upon reviewing my life’s cycle through the lens of Erikson’s Eighth Stage, I realized my time on earth was not one of despair at all.
Thanks to following Grace’s new path, the threads of my human experience had been woven into a rope of incredible resilience and integrity. In fact, the tensile strength of Grace’s weave kept me grounded. Rather than feeling lost I realized I’d been found, achieving conscious contact with a higher power I could faithfully rely on.
A cultural imperative is that without God, we are lost. Based on my experience, that is not true. Not once during any of those precipitous falls did I turn in God’s direction. Moreover, regardless of the challenge confronting me, I experienced spiritual empowerment rather than despair. With each successive gauntlet I faced, an internal voice kept reframing it as an opportunity to find spiritual emancipation. Today, I exist in a realm of peace and joy, just without God attached. With Grace as my guide, I am free.
Ironically, at no time during my previous sixty-two years did I feel as intact, whole, and free as was the case on the morning after learning my home was worth far less than my investment in it. In fact, I remember saying aloud to myself, “The struggle is over.”
Since then, I’ve discovered a muscular love for the person I am, my sense of self-worth at its zenith. Each day now I feel immeasurable value in precisely who I am despite the crooked road it took to get here. I do not feel a speck of lingering despair thanks to my life achieving joy.
In keeping with Erikson's concept of integrity and inspired by John’s autobiographical thoughts, I decided to connect the dots of Grace’s journey through written excavation in 2015. Once pen was in hand, I aspired to define the nature of my new spiritual path.
Through successive manuscript drafts, I gained an increasing comprehension of Grace’s spiritual landscape. I also knew by describing the truths I had found that I would be required to live by them. By the middle of 2021, Grace’s written understanding was finally mine to share.
When I started writing seriously about Grace a decade ago, I imagined the result as a book, my spiritual memoir. This old Baby Boomer eventually opened his eyes to the many online avenues now available to engage an audience. If I believe in the value of Grace’s message, a digital approach to publication would allow me to say so out loud.
That’s why I reframed Finding Grace Without God’s core content as a teaching curriculum, titled A Spiritual Road Less Traveled. The series invites fellow seekers into an online forum called the Eskimo Village. In that conversational space, participants can share their interpretations of Grace’s pursuit while learning more about the Eskimo way of life from others. I’m convinced true human enlightenment occurs during these kinds of discussions.
Based on my experience, Grace cannot be acquired in chronological order. Rather, I have acquired its qualities sequentially. One door must be opened before reaching the next. My acquisition of Grace required three progressive stages of effort:
- Seeking Grace demands more than my desire to attain Grace. I must act on the idea. My early steps included a demolition stage. Before I can progress from where I am now to the next level of finding Grace, I must dispose of my old ideas as well obliterate the command center from which they originated.
- Finding Grace requires me to replace previous ego-driven decision-making with a foundation of conscientious thought. I must fully embrace the truth before I can bear witness to it. Making my way through this intermediate phase of the process was both time-consuming as well as frustrating. By remaining committed to seeing Grace’s truth with precision, I’d been prepared for the process’s final step.
- Sharing Grace is how I ensure each newly acquired attribute becomes my own. By mirroring that quality, my reflection of Grace defines who I am. Failure to act upon Grace once found is like borrowing a library book but never reading it. Worse, that book may be easily misplaced or forgotten. By sharing Grace as I find it, my spiritual identity gains clarity. I better feel my spirit’s presence.
As far as I know, Grace’s road has only one prerequisite: the possession of a conscience along with the willingness to follow it. The rest of the journey reflects Grace’s continual process of finding and sharing. Based on my observations, beyond securing food and shelter, mankind has two elevated needs: to find our way and belong. That was the objective as my pursuit of Grace began. Today, I know both who I am and where I am going. Thanks to the guidance of Grace’s roadmap, I have recovered my most precious asset: the real me.
Sharing what I’ve discovered in weekly online installments honors the Twelve Step tradition of reaching out to those who still suffer. It turned out my search for Grace was the perfect detour around the God roadblock. Because I am intimately familiar with the loneliness of my own higher power vacuum, I offer what I’ve learned from filling my spiritual hole with Grace.
A Spiritual Road Less Traveled details this survivor’s story about how I negotiated my way out of life’s chaos. I now declare with confidence what I know as true. Anyone can navigate his or her way to the same graceful space I describe here without ever calling upon God. My goal is to demonstrate through personal storytelling what Grace’s search has revealed: a spiritual connection that generously accommodates my non-belief. Thanks to the radiant presence of Grace in my life, I have against all odds, found heaven on earth.
SPECIAL NOTE: The podcast version of this Series Preview includes bonus content:
Artificial Intelligence Examines…
A Spiritual Road Less Traveled’s Lesson 1
