Episode 11: Seeking Spirituality
Robbie Shaw:
This is Champagne Problems where we come together to explore the gray areas of drinking. This is a judgment-free zone where we can all take a look at how we make decisions about our relationship with alcohol.
Welcome back everybody. We are in the studio today to discuss spirituality. We're going to do it a little differently today. I got Patrick here with me and that is it. No guests, no other co-hosts, just me and Patrick. There's a lot of different components to this thing. We have ways we've been influenced by it. We see it and have studied it in different ways. And I think our listeners are going to get a little bit of an education. We'll start at a higher level and do more defining and exploring what it is, how it came about and the human experience, and then we'll dive a little more into personal practices and how we utilize it.
The definition is essentially surrounding an individual experience. So anytime we talk about it or share about it, it's going to come from a subjective place. So everybody keep that in mind. I was thinking about something this morning. I was having a conversation with somebody, it could have been 10 years ago. But they were asking how I was doing, and I said, "I'm just trying to get a sound body, mind, and spirit." And the guy looks at me and goes, "What the fuck does that mean?" And right then and there, I was like, not everybody is on that path. A lot of people go through the motions of life and are perfectly fine with that. A lot of people are entrenched in organized religion. They don't need to seek, they get it. They've got their faith. They are grounded in that and their specific area and that works for them. So welcome, Patrick.
Patrick Balsley:
Hi.
Robbie Shaw:
Hi. Did you pray this morning?
Patrick Balsley:
Yes.
Robbie Shaw:
Did you meditate?
Patrick Balsley:
Yes.
Robbie Shaw:
Good, good. I can tell.
Patrick Balsley:
It depends on what you consider both of those to be.
Robbie Shaw:
I can tell you have a radiance. All right, so let's just do it, man. Let's start at a high level. I'm thinking, what in the hell is spirituality?
Patrick Balsley:
I think if you try to define it, you're taking the subjective element from it. I think that you can't box it in.
It's not something that is definable. And I think that's probably one of the biggest mistakes that I ever made when I was younger or when I first started to explore my own belief systems.
And to me that was a big barrier to my capability to think outside of the box or really get critical about what my real feelings were around spirituality, religion, whatever you want to call it. You'll hear people put those things in two different categories. And I don't really know if that's the right way to separate them. Spirituality and religion can be talked about together in a lot of ways.
Robbie Shaw:
Even if you were to do some research on spirituality, it is known that it is hard to define because it is a personal experience. It's an exploration. It means to you what it means to you. I'm going to actually read a definition that I found, and it's, “spirituality involves the recognition of a feeling or sense or belief that there is something greater than myself, something more to being human than the sensory experience, and that greater whole of which we are part is cosmic or divine in nature.”
So, I just want to help the listeners grasp, for people who aren't digging into spirituality and a spiritual existence, what does that even mean? And I think that that definition does help in that it's about something greater than ourselves. Right?
Patrick Balsley:
In the beginning of my journey I would read something or I would hear something I would attach to these definitions or these phrases around what I thought spirituality meant. And when we throw around the term, like power greater than yourself, I feel like sometimes we do that a disservice by just making that something that we say, and we don't really look into that too much. It's like, okay, well, I believe in a power greater than myself, but what does that look like? And sometimes if you dive down that rabbit hole, it can get a little dicey. That's where I think this conversation really has a lot of value, and I was thinking about this last night, about how quick we are to say that we believe in something when we don't really know what it is that we believe in.
Robbie Shaw:
Sure, sure. And I think there's a process and that's part of it where the whole phrase, a power greater than us, isn't necessarily about finding what that power is. It's just the philosophy of something bigger than my little brain. I use the example of backing out of my driveway in the morning and somebody honking at me because I didn't see them coming and I'm yelling out of the window and then I'm fucked for the next four hours. And it's like, really? That one little thing is going to throw my whole day off? Well, if you're able to take your blinders off and see and feel open to much more than that one little stupid, frivolous experience, then your life can feel and be different.
Patrick Balsley:
Yeah. I mean, and I think we have moments like that all day long.
All the time. And this is where it's important for me to find my own kind of spiritual practice, a way that works for me that can enable me to be less reactive in situations like that. So, when I am backing out of the driveway and somebody honks at me and I freak out, instead of it lasting for four hours of my day, it lasts for four minutes or four seconds.
We make poor decisions when we're upset. And when we get stuck in a feeling like that, the ripple effect of that state is going to have a negative impact on everybody that we come into contact with, every decision that we make.
Robbie Shaw:
Right. It's like, we talk about spreading love. Well, you can spread anger and shit just as easily, if not easier.
Spirituality as part of your wellness journey
Patrick Balsley:
I really had to understand that living a spiritual life wasn't just doing it for the sake of doing it, there needed to be more of a concrete motive for me in order to engage in some of the stuff that I dove into when I first started my own spiritual journey. And obviously in the beginning it took some type of leap of faith. It was created out of my addiction. It was like, I just want to not feel like shit anymore, and I'm tired of being in pain. So that's kind of what leaped me into trying to find a solution to my problems.
It's hard for people that don't have that kind of push to really want to dive into this stuff. And that's really unfortunate because, for me, the whole idea of spirituality is to live a life that is less entrenched with unnecessary suffering.
Robbie Shaw:
The reason spirituality is undefinable is that it is a personal experience. It is a feeling or set of feelings or an experience or an understanding that is almost impossible to put into words. Therefore, it falls under the category of faith, similar to there not being a tangible thing to point at as a higher power. So it is a leap of faith. Now you do get rewards and you start to feel things and there are benefits of your practices, but it's similar to religion in a way that you don't know what the hell you're doing.
Patrick Balsley:
This is where humility comes in for me. I need to continuously be honest with myself that I have no idea what's going on. I needed to come to realize and be honest with myself that I didn't know shit. I had a group of folks that I did a lot of spiritual stuff with in the beginning of my recovery that believed that addiction was actually a divinely inspired state of being that accelerated spiritual evolution.
Robbie Shaw:
When you think about it, and you did touch on addiction being a part of this process, at least historically, often people are not going to make that leap or that jump unless there's some sort of intervention. So with addiction, it's often called the rock bottom. And that will get someone to take a hard look and make some major, major changes. And we sit in our careers and our world trying to figure out how to get someone to make those changes without hitting that level, with having an intervention, not in a traditional sense, but intervene on a behavior prior to it becoming something that is so sufferable. So in a spirituality sense, how do we get people to look into this?
Patrick Balsley:
To me, this comes down to one thing and that's accepting personal responsibility.
If I believe that the way I feel and the way that my life is the effect of what other people are doing, essentially that I I'm a victim of circumstance, there will be no reason for me to ever change my perspective and look inward and attempt to change anything in my life because all of my attention will be on my external experience and how everything around me needs to be changed in order for me to be at peace.
And that's where the struggle lies for a lot of people. And what I think is the biggest reason that people don't embark on this path is because we're too busy pointing fingers. That's a framework of belief. And you have to get out of that and take personal responsibility for your own reality in your own situation, in order to have something like spiritual practices even seem like they have any value. That seems to be the line for me, that needs to be crossed in order for any type of seeking to take place.
Robbie Shaw:
I mean, that is it right there. It's coming to a place where you realize that you're the only one in control of your destiny.
Patrick Balsley:
But the cool thing about that is that we don't realize when we feel good, we do good stuff. And living by spiritual principles and living a spiritually disciplined life has positive consequences. And after you do it for a while, you start to realize that this is the best way to make a good life for yourself. If you live this healthy, spiritual life, you're going to eat better, you're going to sleep better, you're going to exercise more, you're going to be more kind to your friends, your family, your kids, you're going to be more compassionate. You're going to be all those things. They don't come from a quick decision. That stuff comes through spiritual practice, spiritual discipline, learning more about why you do what you do, why you react the way that you react. And then you do something about it.
And if we look at spirituality as the most functional way to develop a good life, for not only ourselves, our families, ultimately our communities and society as a whole, if more people saw spirituality in that light, I think people would be more prone to start taking responsibility for their own practices. You know what I'm saying?
Robbie Shaw:
I do know what you're saying. I'm trying to relate it to wellness. There's going to be people who will say, who have studied exercise and how the chemicals create certain things in your brain, and that would open the door to spirituality. So there's somebody that would put that as the overarching theme.
Or nutrition, and you're putting key things in your body that create your brain and that would open spirituality. And so there are different ways of thinking about it for different people.
Patrick Balsley:
I think this goes back to your original point and your original definition of spirituality and it being experiential. And exercise and all that stuff and nutrition, all that is a part of your experience and will enhance your wellbeing.
My door opened through my own addiction. So I feel like there can be a way, and I think it's there and I think it's in a lot of literature, it's just about finding the right story that makes it click for you.
Exploring the benefits of spirituality
Robbie Shaw:
So Patrick, let's talk about why this episode is important and our intentionality behind the topic of spirituality as it relates to this podcast.
Patrick Balsley:
Well, I think to me, it comes down to self-awareness, which I think is one of the main components of what we would consider spirituality. If we want to take a look at why we drink, this is one of the perfect lenses to do that from.
It's like, why do we feel the way that we feel? Why do we think that way that we think? What are our motivations? Why do we need to put this substance in our body to make us relax? And we've touched on this a lot around self-medicating. And when I say self-medicating, that includes the I'm tired, beat, had a long day, I just want something to take the edge off so I'm going to drink a beer. That is self-medicating to an extent.
Robbie Shaw:
Yeah. Not necessarily problematically.
Patrick Balsley:
Spirituality is relief that could potentially replace our alcohol use that is obviously a higher risk of potential misuse or negative consequences or side effects that some of these spiritual practices and disciplines may not have.
Robbie Shaw:
Well, it's interesting because you often hear that when problematic drinking progresses to a place where it is considered a disorder or abuse or addiction that often people say it's a spiritual problem. It's saying exactly what you're saying, that we're looking for the things that we would get out of spiritual practices in alcohol.
Patrick Balsley:
And that's where I think that this can be a preventative measure.
Robbie Shaw:
So how did spirituality help you early on in your recovery process? A way to help that relate to our listeners is that it doesn't have to be recovery. It relates to any change that we make.
Patrick Balsley:
Well, it comes back to my wellbeing. It was like, if I didn't feel better or if I didn't have the coping skills to get through hard times, I was going to go back to using.
Because using worked. It numbed the pain. It helped me to avoid responsibility, or I thought it did. And if I couldn't develop a way to cope or a way to feel better, I was going to go back. So it gave me what I needed desperately and it gave me what I thought drugs and alcohol were giving me until the consequences outweigh the rewards. I think that that's something really interesting for our listeners to become aware of is in your own life, you may not believe that the consequences of your drinking have reached the point where they outweigh the rewards, but have you explored how spirituality could have a positive impact on your life? I don't think we know how good we could be. I mean, aside from drinking.
How to start your spiritual journey
Robbie Shaw:
So let's do this, let's give our listeners some advice or some guidance on how to dip their toe into this world. There's this other thing I want to do real quick for our listeners, because I was doing this recently where it's a visualization thing that helped me as I would pray. I don't know, seven or eight years ago, I was trying to dive into this and I was trying to figure out how to pray. What the hell am I praying to? It was all like fake it till you make it, just do it and eventually it'll start to take shape. But what I would do is I would close my eyes and I would imagine Google Earth.
And I would start in Charlotte, and I would back up from Charlotte. And then I could see North Carolina. Then I could see the United States. Then I could see Earth. Then I could see our solar system. Then I could see our galaxy. Then I could see more and more. And it was almost like something I saw out of Star Wars where everything's kind of flying by you. It was flying away from me as I was backing up, looking at where I was coming from at the speed of light going backwards. And then all of a sudden I would slow down and I would bump into something. I would turn around and there would be this big glass encasing of some sort of light. And that's what I would pray to. That was how I visualized some sort of higher being or power.
Patrick Balsley:
That's the beginning of this. There's so much cool stuff to explore. And you'll know if you don't vibe with something. Dive in, listen to some podcasts, read some books. There's so many good teachers out there, spiritual teachers that have done all the studying for you, and synthesized the information to where you can get it in a nice little nugget. And if you practice a specific religion and it's not working, and when I say it's not working, that means that your life is in shambles and you're suffering somehow. Or you're pointing the finger everywhere, go look in another direction, start exploring some different stuff.
Robbie Shaw:
Well, it's like you said in episode seven with Kim, the first step is trying to understand it a little bit and then being open to exploration or practices.
Patrick Balsley:
And having that open heart. This is something, if taken seriously, can be totally transformative and life changing. And like I said, I know for a fact that I can be a way, way better man than I already am. And the only thing that's stopping me from becoming that man is my inability or lack of courage to push forward and really take a look at the things that I'm doing or the ways that I'm being that are stopping me from being the man that I have the potential of being. By not doing that, I'm doing not only myself a disservice, my family, my community, but really it gives me a lot of hope that all this untapped potential is out there for us to explore.
And I love having conversations like this because this inspires me and makes me realize that I've been stuck in my box and I've been grinding and not paying as much attention to this stuff as I should. I know we live in a fast paced world, with a lot of information. So maybe it's time to stop and smell the roses.
Robbie Shaw:
So let's give our listeners bullet points, three practices to start getting into spirituality. Number one.
Patrick Balsley:
I would start with a mindfulness book. Jon Kabat-Zinn's great. Pema Chödrön's great. There's a really, really neat book called Waking Up by a guy named Sam Harris that's really good that dives into mindfulness and consciousness. It's not too hard of a read if you want a very practical, pragmatic way of understanding how your mind works. That's a good start.
Robbie Shaw:
And Dan Harris, 10% Happier. I've dug into that a few times and it's a little more guided, a little more for the layman.
Patrick Balsley:
Just go on Netflix. There's the Headspace documentary.
Robbie Shaw:
So number two. So number one is research a little bit. Number two, start mindfulness practices. Start to try to get in touch with that.
Patrick Balsley:
Yeah. Well, here's the thing with meditation. There's like, oh, meditate, meditate, meditate. And people are like, oh, I can't meditate. I can't. My thoughts won't stop it. That's not the purpose. The purpose is to realize that you're not your thoughts to where you get to a point where what's going on in your head and the way that you're feeling doesn't have control over your decision-making process anymore. You are your awareness. You are your consciousness. You are your power.
Robbie Shaw:
Let's speak to that real quick because often, and it's the same with me, it's the same with any of us when, oh, I can't meditate because I just can't stop my thoughts.
Patrick Balsley:
Yeah, not supposed to. It's about separating yourself from them. That's your awareness. And that's the whole purpose of silent meditation, or not the whole purpose, but one of the benefits is being able to separate yourself from that. Because when we're having a panic attack or anxiety attack, we are our thoughts. We become that panic attack. There's no separation between our awareness and what we're experiencing. We're like so in it, and that's why it's so scary. But if you can come to a solid understanding that you're not your thoughts or feelings, and you can experience that awareness through a meditation practice, if you can do it, if you can actually do it long enough to where you can sit there and you can be like, oh, holy crap, like, I'm crazy. That's a lot of thoughts.
Robbie Shaw:
So number one, research, number two, begin some mindfulness and meditation practice.
Patrick Balsley:
And number three is stick with it. Stay open. If you find something that works, utilize it, but also keep it up for sale. Because there may be something that you weren't aware of or you weren't ready for that could be a total game changer. You got to be open. And that takes a lot of courage.
Robbie Shaw:
Yeah. So research, practice, and consistency. So what would be some positive outcomes of these practices?
Patrick Balsley:
Peace. And when we're operating from that state, everything around us is going to become better.
If you're operating out of peace, compassion, understanding, empathy, you're not going to do anything that's going to cause anybody else any type of pain. You're going to be one of the things that helps transform that pain or comfort it.
Robbie Shaw:
That was awesome. Thanks for educating us.
The information and opinions shared on this podcast are solely those of the hosts and guests and are not a substitute for medical advice. If you feel like you may need professional help, here are some resources. For the substance abuse and mental health services administration hotline call 1-800-662-4357 or visit smsa.gov. For listeners in the Charlotte, North Carolina community, visit dilworthcenter.org or call 704-372-6969, or visit theblanchardinstitute.com or call 704-288-1097.