On God and stuff...

I begin by apologizing for taking last weekend off. I know a few of you really look forward to seeing what sort of drivel I'll spew each weekend - hope you found a satisfactory substitute. It was Memorial Day weekend after all, and we have been having a bit of a rocky time around the old homestead, and the Mineral Wells Trailway did beckon me and my bicycle, and...well, sometimes, we all just need to take a break from whatever habits we form, be they good or bad. Habits, I think, are by definition confining - sometimes comforting and sometimes destructive, but in any case limiting if we allow them to be. But here I am, back for another round...

So, I'm pretty sure that way back toward the beginning of this thing I probably mentioned the corollaries between AA and Buddhism. Yes? Now I always fret a bit about describing myself as a Buddhist, because I have friends who are real Buddhists - sitting zazen and reading sutras and following the Noble Eightfold Path. I'm not one of these, and may never be. And I'm sure I have alcoholic friends who will argue whether I am an alcoholic at all, given that when I finally decided to quit I quit, and that while few who knew me prior to a year ago would recognize me without a drink of some sort in hand or nearby, thankfully far fewer ever saw me totally shit-faced, which didn't happen often but was never a pretty sight. Or experience. For me or anyone near me. My alcoholic doubter friends are, as a general rule, not in the program...

The appeal to me of both AA and Buddhism, and even more so Taoism, which probably more accurately describes my spiritual path, is that they are decidedly non-hierarchical, have suggested readings and texts but nothing accepted rigidly as the infallible scripture, and have rules, if you can call them that, which are so simple and malleable they hardly count as rules as all. Nobody baptizes you into the fold, and nobody can kick you out. The whole load is on me, or you, the individual practitioner, and we own alone whatever successes or failures we achieve in either medium. Pretty empowering, huh? If we do well in these circumstances, its a major ego-boost, right?

Which is interesting, because the most crucial corollaries between recovery from addiction and The Path are a heightened sense of awareness and the absolute elimination of the ego. These are the objectives, anyway. Now some in AA might argue with me on this, and as I don't argue this could prove frustrating. Sorry...

We hear in our meeting rooms with great regularity, "Give it over to God." For those of us successfully recovering in the program but who aren't believers in a conventional God model, though, what many of us hear is, "Get out of yourself already." The God thing can be a real challenge for many, and I think that's too bad, because the point is not so much to have a powerful omnipotent vigilant being to watch over us and take up our individual burdens when the need arises, as it is to recognize and admit our insignificance and inability to, on our own, overcome the vast forces of the universe outside of our selves, or the greater challenge of the ego we confuse as our selves. So, the ego is the enemy, and full awareness is our ability to recognize the enemy when it rears its head, ignore it as the fallacy it is, and accept our connectedness with the universe in all its manifestations. I guess I've often thought of the separate stand-alone God man created in his image to be sort of a manifestation of humanity's ego, but that's probably a philosophical discussion best left for another time.

So, what's my point? Well...

As I am rapidly approaching the one year anniversary of committing to making alcohol powerless over me, and accepting myself to be powerless over alcohol without help, I continue to stumble soberly along the spiritual path, seeking a keener understanding of myself, an awareness of and growing disdain for my ego, a sense of connection with all manifestations of the universe, a desire for a simpler and saner life coupled with a grudging acceptance of the one I have. Daily I come upon answers to questions asked and unasked, but each one spawns another. It is as when we develop more powerful telescopes and microscopes and other investigative tools and techniques, and come to realize that the better we see, the more there is to see. I detect no lessening of this phenomenon in my own physical or spiritual life, nor in the endless quest for understanding that too small a contingent of mankind is engaged in. And so, recognizing the incredibly finite nature of my mortal existence, and hoping to derive as much from it and contribute as much to it as I can, I am settling comfortably onto the path which reveals itself to me each day, a path which is connected to all other paths, which connects me to all other beings, which meanders through and is dependent on the totality of the universe seen and unseen. And I am committing myself to being grateful every day for the gift of my human life, for self-awareness despite the fallacy of the self, and for a mind and spirit that allows me to put it all in a wonderful wondrous harmonious context and to marvel at its fantastic intricacies.

In closing, let me say that in sharing these meager thoughts I do not intend to belittle any reader's belief in some particular manifestation of God. I am comfortable in my own lack of understanding of the unknown and unknowable, and pray the same for all my friends. For some God is Allah, and for others the Judeo-Christian God as portrayed by Charlton Heston or James Caviezel; for some Vishnu or one of his pantheon of lesser Gods. Many consider earth to be God, or Mother Nature. My wife, who was raised Jewish, is certain that God is a Golden Retriever, and who am I to say otherwise? The point is that, for the addict or alcoholic, or really for anyone of curious mind and searching spirit, the image we conjure up to establish a relationship with our higher power is insignificant relative to our having that relationship. I love to paraphrase a quote I once read but can't now lay my hands on, attributed to Buddha, perhaps from his dialogue with Ananthapindika, in which the Buddha is reported to have said, "There is so much in life that we can know, and so much that we can never know - it is best to focus on that which we can know."

Following is a light rewrite of the traditional 12 steps that I generated in my earliest days, to help me get beyond the "God thing" which too many in need find a barrier to joining the program that has helped so many. If it helps you, feel free to adopt it as you own.

12 Steps to Sobriety for Non-Christians, Atheists and Agnostics

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to align our will and our lives with our Higher Power.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to our Higher Power, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Became entirely ready to allow total alignment with our Higher Power to eliminate all our defects of character.
7. Humbly aligned ourselves with our Higher Power to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and, when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through study and meditation to improve our alignment with our Higher Power, seeking only knowledge of our proper role in the Universe and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.