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The 12 Steps from a Buddhist Perspective
Taking Refuge as a Higher Power
Admitting When We Are Wrong While Refraining from Blaming Others
Replacing Shoulds with Healthier Self-Talk
Handling Others' Projections of Character Defects We Actually Have
The Unbearable Cuteness of Consumer Addiction
Being the Best versus Doing my Best
Moral Inventory with Self-Love
The Process of Awakening to a Non-Defensive Self
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me; I once was lost, but now I’m found, was blind, but now I see. What a hook. Every time I hear these lines, they invite me to wallow in public shame so pungent it becomes sensuous. Through many dangers, toils, and snares, I have already come; ‘twas grace that brought me safe thus far, and grace shall lead me home. This is the kind of bragging or one-upmanship that recovery groups tempt me to engage in: “Look at all the stuff I’ve come through! Look at how well I’m doing now! Don’t you want to be like me?”
Poor me—my Higher Power must be better than anybody else’s if it can help a wretch as powerless as me. My life obviously requires more management than I am capable of—and I am going to make God and everyone else so sorry for me that they will want to do it for me. Watch me surrender—I am so good at this!
What’s wrong with this picture? It is not only by “being the best” that I call attention away from others toward myself, but also by being the “most improved.” What’s worse, by surrendering to forces greater than my own will, I can stick someone or something else with the responsibility for my decision to stay powerless by pleading insanity—and look good doing it! Making a conscious choice would mean that I am responsible for whatever I choose. If I can just throw it up to my Higher Power, I no longer have to worry about the consequences of this choice. After all, my Higher Power would never steer me wrong.
But is an illusion to think that I need to “worry” about the consequences of any of my choices. “Worrying” comes from thinking that there is one right way to act to force things to turn out the way I want—attaching to an outcome. The only power I have over myself is the power to say yes and accept the reality of whatever happens as a result of my actions. I cannot say yes unless I am fully present, and I cannot be fully present unless I am fully conscious. To be fully conscious, I cannot be engaging in any of my addictive behaviors. I must be able to make the distinction between what it would take courage to change and what I cannot change with any amount of courage, instead of making easy changes to my consciousness with a substance or activity in order to avoid the question of what I really want.
Recovery from codependency starts with the recognition that I am powerless over others, and owning that I do have some power over myself in the form of responsibility for myself. It is through asserting the unmanageability of my own emotions that I attempt to exert power over others. “Take care of me, don’t hurt me, because you never know what I might do to myself if you push me too far.” I used to use shame as a most potent weapon to hold myself hostage until others would do what I wanted. Now that I own my power over myself, I see that I do not have to do anything to myself, nor do others have to ransom my self-hostage from me by responding to me in any particular manner.
Therefore, I need to make an important distinction here—between taking responsibility for myself and trying to control an outcome, between refraining from my self-observed cravings and trying to “manage” my life by playing a victim role with those around me. No, I’m not any more unmanageable than they are, but management is not the point. I don’t need to be trying to manage anything, I need to be observing and learning from everything. When I take refuge in my own accountability, learning process, and seeing others as teachers, a Higher Power greater than me is nonetheless within me. If that Higher Power were outside of me, I would be in trouble. As a codependent, one of my greatest challenges is not making something or someone else—that I am admittedly powerless over—responsible for my feelings and actions. How tempting it is to loudly confess my own powerlessness to try to show others it is all their fault that my life is unmanageable! How easy it would be to blame others for provoking all the wrongs in my moral inventory as I move to Step Four! I am a victim of the disease of codependency, and they have taken advantage of my vulnerability!
A lack of self-examination has never been my problem. However, playing “Now I see what my disease drives me to do to you because I am powerless over it” is not letting go of my impulse to control others. Only taking refuge in the power of saying yes can do that—yes to the reality of the consequences of my actions and to my responsibility for the choices that led to those actions.
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It is a 12 Step Tradition not to have any opinion on "outside issues" such as religion or spirituality. Therefore, I wish to emphasize that all the writings on this site are my own personal experiences in recovery, and do not reflect the views of any 12 Step program or group.
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