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The 12 Steps from a Buddhist Perspective
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
The Process of Awakening to a Non-Defensive Self
What do I mean when I call “taking refuge” my Higher Power? How can letting go and not clinging to my sense of powerlessness be a power greater than my self?
Self-blame and insistence on my own helplessness are manifestations of the Ego’s attempts to maintain itself at the expense of spiritual awakening, which contribute to my own and others’ suffering. The awakening of Gentle Self through the process of taking refuge is a higher power than this Ego that wants to believe its helplessness is so powerful that it can wreck my whole life and the lives of everyone around me.
Taking refuge in the buddha means that I am the final authority on my own path to recovery; I take full responsibility for my past, present, and future choices, and avoid blaming others for giving me bad advice or making me do things that didn’t work or made things worse.
Maybe I haven’t made any “bad” choices. Maybe I have chosen the partners I have chosen because they reflect my own behavior back to me, because I am trying to wake up! This is taking refuge in the dharma: learning everything I can from all of my experience, without exception.
Taking refuge in the sangha means I draw strength from my choice to keep company with those who support my recovery rather than with those who enable my addictions.
Three Questions for Contacting the Higher Power of Refuge:
Am I taking responsibility for making this choice?
Am I open to learning all I can from this experience?
Am I seeking feedback from my teachers or reinforcement from my “allies”?
Three Simple Affirmations of Refuge in Our Higher Power for Use in Meditation:
This is my choice.
This is my lesson.
These are my teachers.
Three More Affirmations of Refuge to Use in Meditation:
What is happening now is the result of some choice that I made.
I am grateful that my negative feelings about what is happening now are helping me by calling my attention to something I want to change but have ignored in the past.
I am grateful to these people for helping me by calling my attention to something I want to change but have ignored in the past.
I am not in control of what life hands me, but I am in control of what I do with it, as long as I take responsibility for making conscious choices. If I am practicing my addictions—self-harmful beliefs and behaviors that lead to suffering—I cannot be present to choose consciously. Stopping unwanted behavior is never the problem; always the choice is not to start harming self and others again. Stopping does not take as much acceptance, courage, and wisdom as not starting again. Stopping projects us into a victimized, self-dramatizing, and catastrophic future; not starting again can be done in humility and gentleness, one day at a time.
Please Read These Important Disclaimers:
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.
Further, the ads that make this a free site are not endorsed by any 12 Step program, nor by me personally. It is another 12 Step Tradition that groups be self-supporting, and not take contributions from outside sources. Therefore, visitors to this site should note that I am using this ad-supported site to air my personal opinions on the recovery process, and not those of any 12 Step program or group. Moreover, as I have no control over any of the ads that appear on this site, I state no opinion on the material that appears in any of them.
