Dealing With Spiritual Relapses: Overcoming the Recidivism of Our Egos

The dictionary defines recidivism as “a tendency to relapse into a previous condition or mode of behavior.” Usually this term is used in the context of government penal systems and the rate at which previously-released prisoners relapse into criminal behavior and often return to prison. Addicts use the word “relapse” to describe a return to their addictive behavior. 

When writing or speaking about this in the context of human systems and the influence systems have on our behavior, this tendency to regress is similar to elastic bands wanting to return to their relaxed position. To resist this pull-back one must develop new muscles, new tools, so that the new behavior is reinforced and the older, more familiar behavior is given little or no attention. I suppose yoga could be a similar metaphor where one’s flexibility is improved through routine stretching so the new normal range of motion is greater than the old.

In a spiritual context, recidivism can be described as reversion to egoic thinking – where one’s spiritual self, one’s Higher Power or God or whomever/whatever one holds as a power greater than themselves is subordinated to their ego-mind. One relapses in their consciousness so they think they are “in charge” and their God is there to serve their thoughts and their ideas.

A doctor friend who is a member of Alcoholic Anonymous (A.A.) shares a story of when he first joined the A.A. fellowship. After several months of fighting the simplicity of the process and constantly trying to “out think” a proven strategy to get sober, his A.A. sponsor told him he only had to get two important things at that time: “There is a God and it isn’t you.”

Our egoic minds want to think they are in charge. Once we have spiritual experiences and see the wisdom of accepting a wiser more powerful source of inspiration, and realize our minds can serve that source very effectively, the ego lies in wait for any opportunity to assert its influence to take the helm once again. This “spiritual recidivism” is a sure path back to the restrictive lives with which we are so familiar. No matter how well we decorate them, no matter how fancy the furniture or the paintings, a jail cell is still a jail cell.

Exercise those “muscles” that keep you in touch with your God, your personal Higher Power, if you want to remain a free soul, truly liberated. Establish new habits and routines, adopt or develop spiritual practices and positive attitudes that encourage you to maintain a healthier perspective on the appropriate role of your mind, not as captain of your ship but a very competent second mate.

Relapses may still occur, but they might be more temporary. Reversions may occasionally happen but they can be more easily reversed. But unlike government penal systems which can have huge consequences for backslides you can return to a liberated life by activating those same muscles or tools and begin those spiritual practices without the need to spend more time in your jail cell – regardless of how well-decorated it might be.

Comments

[Hooman]

How fitting that my first intro to your blog is this post. Thanks so much for your words. They were the perfect ones at the perfect time, a time when I'm finding myself going deep in the process of training some new muscles while re-training some more recently formed ones. Sometimes its easy to think of the ego as being fragile for not being able to hold the new states and expand as necessary, but I find it to be so perfectly powerful in creating just the right form of defense mechanism to keep us believing that the jail cell is fancy! I try to stay humble to myself for my path clearly takes its own journey, and the human journey is clearly not void of landmines. Much thanks again.