Early in my recovery from alcoholism, I came across part of a letter from the famous Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung to Bill Wilson, cofounder of Alcoholics Anonymous. Referring to one of his former patients, Jung wrote, "His craving for alcohol was the equivalent on a low level of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: the union with God."As I read on, I realized that Jung was describing something that I know well. I have felt a nonspecific craving for most of my life. Many of us do. And I recognize it from my recovery. It is different from and more far-reaching than the physical craving for alcohol. A trip to the mall, a piece of cake, a cuddle: none of these momentary solutions quenches the deep thirst.I have talked with numerous others, both nonaddicts and recovering addicts, and they describe the same underlying longing in their lives. It is a pervasive aspect of the human experience, and it has been misread, misunderstood, and acted upon m mistaken ways, some of them deadly. The only way we successfully satisfy this elemental craving for wholeness or for God is through an ongoing relationship with a vast inner spiritual source.This book is for those who are aware of their own thirst for wholeness, struggle with it at times, and want to find ways to quench it. Much of my focus is on the problem of addiction; however, I believe that the addict's struggle is in many ways an exaggeration of a challenge we all face. The issues are similar, and so are the solutions. Whether you are a student, a parent, a professional, a person involved m active recovery from one or more addictions, or simply someone looking for a more fulfilling life, you may recognize yourself here.When I was a child, the sacred beckoned to me. I found divine glimmers in nature, in church, and during private, interior interludes. In my midtwenties, I experienced a sudden and dramatic spontaneous mystical awakening that took me light-years away from everything I had always considered to be real and acceptable -- it turned my life completely upside down. To better understand what was happening to me, I began to explore, to read, and to ask questions of people I thought might give me clues. I met a spiritual teacher from India whose teachings and practices helped to explain and support my experiences; I became his student and started meditating.A short time later, I became acquainted with the relatively new field of transpersonal psychology, a branch of the field that offers a broad understanding of the human experience. Proponents of transpersonal psychology talked about the whole person, our physical, emotional, and intellectual capacities, and included our mystical nature as an essential element in our makeup. This theory was unlike any Western approach I had known about or experienced, and as someone who had always felt drawn to spirituality, I felt significant relief just knowing that there were people -- serious people -- who thought and lived this way. A whole new world began to open to me. I increasingly sought out transpersonal thinkers, spiritual teachers, and practitioners of various psychological approaches.I listened and learned, and learned some more. I struggled with my own demanding inner process, which had turned into a true transformational crisis, or spiritual emergency, as I called it. I encountered very difficult and dramatic areas of my psyche. As I tried to comprehend and integrate what was happening to me, I felt particularly attracted to Eastern mystical traditions. And I found that transpersonal psychologists and theoreticians helped me to understand many of my insights and experiences by translating them into a language that a Westerner could comprehend. Meanwhile, I traveled and worked at a hectic pace. With my husband, Stan, I began to organize and give lectures, seminars, and workshops around the world and to coordinate international conferences on transpersonal psychology. At the same time, I continued to struggle with the challenges of my own emotional and spiritual growth, as well as with the considerable pain I still felt with the separation from my children because of an earlier divorce. Somewhere along the way, I discovered temporary relief from it all; I began to use alcohol as an exceptionally effective tranquilizer. I had never had a normal relationship to alcohol -- being a controlled person, I had always used alcohol in a controlled way. Now, I discovered that a couple, or maybe a few, drinks would take the edge off, numb the intensity of my inner world, relax me, relieve the pain, and get me offstage temporarily. I did not realize until later that alcoholism has affected a number of my family members. My biochemistry, plus many other factors, created in me fertile ground for what was to come. The disease swept through me like wildfire, and within a relatively short time, I became a very sick alcoholic.I found myself developing a deep conflict: as my alcoholism progressed, I remained involved in spiritual and transpersonal pursuits. I remember sitting at the feet of my guru and then going home to drink, feeling horrible and guilty and wretched. The misery of my drinking seemed as far from my concept of the divine as anything could be, and the alcoholic hell I was experiencing had nothing to do with the ecstatic mystical states and the expansive insights I had known.Finally, in January of 1986, I checked into a twenty-eight-day treatment program for chemical dependency, where I hit bottom on the tenth day. My bottom was very low and extremely devastating. In this process, I felt that everything I had been or had been connected to had ended, that I had died. Amazingly, waiting for me immediately on the other side of what felt like total desolation was a time of profound healing and guidance. For months, I felt connected with the world, with myself, and with a source of inner strength and inspiration that seemed boundless. I sensed that I had been given a second chance and that I was beginning to find the mystical connection I had been seeking for so long. I became aware of untapped creativity stirring within me and began to sense a renewed purpose to my existence. It was a wondrous, mystical period.Standing on the edge of a new life, I at first felt sad as I reviewed what felt like endless days and months and years of wasted time and productivity during my active drinking career. But then my focus started to shift, and I began to see that the dark years of alcoholism had actually been an important stage in my spiritual journey. I had been given lessons and opportunities and gifts that could have come to me only through that experience.Meanwhile, anywhere I went in the world, I found myself being welcomed into a global community of recovering people who offered me the love, understanding, and acceptance I had never known elsewhere. I became acquainted with the TwelveStep programs and discovered that they contained, in ordinary Western language, many of the elements that had attracted me to various spiritual systems. Recovering alcoholics and addicts who actively worked these Twelve Steps were involved in an earthbound, practical daily program that was producing miracles in their lives. And they had a different commitment to their spiritu ality than I had seen before: their spiritual practice was about life and death, and most of them had confronted each deeply. I also found myself thinking a lot about the Buddhist notion of attachment. According to Buddhist philosophy, the root of all human suffering is attachment or desire, and the way to liberation is through a daily practice that includes an element of surrender or letting go. I began to think that the terrifying inability to detach from the deadly cycle of addiction is perhaps simply an extreme and exaggerated form of the dilemma faced by every human being as we cling to the roles, relationships, activities, and material possessions in our lives. I realized that part of the effectiveness of the Twelve-Step programs is that they offer a way out of our attachments through a spiritual practice that includes, in the first three Steps, the essential experience of surrender.I was impressed and genuinely excited about everything I was learning, feeling, and seeing. I wanted to know more. I was aware that in my personal experience, there was an important connection between spirituality and addiction, and I was meeting many others for whom this was also true. I initiated and co-coordinated a month-long seminar and two professional conferences with variations on the title "Yearning for Wholeness: Addiction, Attachment, and the Spiritual Quest"in order to further explore these topics and to give others the opportunity to do the same. I kept asking myself, How is all this related, and how can I articulate it to myself and others?This book represents an attempt to do just that. It is divided into three parts: Part I defines the prevalent yearning for our own wholeness and relates it to addiction. I address such questions as, What is spirituality? What is a spiritual experience? How do we define and recognize our wholeness? What is the relationship between the individual self and a larger sacred identity? Part II discusses the human state of existential alienation from the divine source and explores the role of abuse in deepening the sense of personal isolation. I look at our mechanisms for surviving in a nonsupportive or hostile world, our need to escape life's pain, and our tendency to seek solutions through potentially addictive activities and substances in the tempting world around us. We also travel through the dark night of addiction and examine the essential issue of surrender or letting go in the addictive process and the inner journey. Finally, I address the relationship between the universal problem of attachment and the cycle of active addiction. Part III offers ways in which we can start to satisfy our inner longing. I look at the qualities of spiritual maturity and explore recovery as a path to the deeper Self. I survey some of the challenges and pitfalls of the path, as well as the complex issues of acceptance and forgiveness. The book concludes with a discussion of the rewards of the quest for wholeness and the importance of discovering the sacred dimensions in everyday life.The journey through this book is a hero's or heroine's journey through some essential elements of the human dilemma, and my deepest hope is that it will be helpful to others along the way.