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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
Should I Be Ashamed of Myself? Powerlessness and Unmanageability as Manipulation
Moral Inventory with Self-Love
I turn my will and my life over to the process of awakening to a self that no longer holds self-harming beliefs or engages in behaviors that lead to suffering.
In traditional 12 Step language, Step 3 is “[We] made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood God.” Now, atheists may object to the term “God,” and agnostics to the phrase “understood God,” but for me the point of Step 3 is to get beyond the defensiveness of my ego that doesn’t want to admit how badly it is screwing up in its attempts to run my life. I need to “turn my will and my life over” to something else, something that will help my ego by relaxing its grip on these old harmful beliefs and behaviors. I call this “something else” a process of awakening to a new self, one that does not cling to its beliefs and behaviors as the ego does.
It’s very important for me to remember that I am not turning my life over to a solid “self,” but to a process of awakening, of self-awareness that relaxes my defenses. My ego cannot be aware of itself because it is defensive: in its attempts to be solid, it shuts out all experiences other than the image it is trying so hard to protect and hold on to. I can have compassion on these protective attempts and approach my ego gently, because I don’t want to hurt it, either; what I want to do is release myself from the unrealistic expectations I cling to that cause me to try to justify myself.
Unrealistic expectations are a form of aggression. When I have them for myself, I also have them (consciously or unconsciously) for others. Most likely, they are unconscious because my ego is trying to maintain an image of being “completely selfless and dedicated to the well-being of others.” When I act aggressively, I cause harm to myself and engage in behaviors that lead to others’ suffering, even when I act with good intentions. When I try to get others to adopt my own value system or way of thinking for themselves—something that is very easy to do when I am writing or teaching—I am attempting to become the hero of someone else’s story. I expect applause; I want others to say that I changed their lives. This interferes with the other people’s Principal Witnesses, and quite often, they resist.
Others frequently choose to solidify their egos and become more defensive in response to my attempts to change them. While I am not responsible for these choices, I am responsible for being aware of the likelihood of defensive responses to my actions, and for choosing to act (or not act) in a manner that I have seen lead to suffering. Every experience in my life is the result of some choice that I have made. No matter how many choices of other people contributed to the situation, ultimately it came about because something I chose put me there at that place and time, behaving and responding as I did in that moment. This is not a matter of finding fault, but of realizing dharma: what did I need to learn by putting myself that situation?
It's also a matter of sangha, of refuge in community. If I will stop looking to others to reinforce my ego by telling me it is okay for me to become the hero of their stories, they can teach me how to stop being so arrogant and how to open up to experience others as they really are. Recently I was reading about how people with severe mental illnesses and death row inmates could benefit from a Buddhist perspective of seeing and accepting themselves as they really are. No matter what we think of ourselves, or what we may have done, we can approach that with gentleness—we can go on to face the next day, whether it holds life or death for us. Whichever of the two occurs, we can be patient. It is humbling for me to realize that I am not so different from a schizophrenic or bipolar person, or from a dangerous criminal: we all come to the same necessity of gentle self-awareness.
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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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