Killing the Buddha

If any teacher, therapist, sponsor, belief system, philosophy or program tells you they are the sole possessor of truth, run like hell! We surrendered our potentials once before our diseases. Don’t surrender your hard-won recovery so easily to the opinions and expectations of others, including your own doubt. Do surrender to your Higher Power, the truth of which no one but yourself is qualified to judge. So be sure. Your road to recovery is your own. Don’t stop at second-rate motels claiming to be the last one for miles. Trust your own interior map and you’ll arrive safe and sound where you’ve always been: free. Free of dogma, free of anxiety and even free of teachers. Including me.

The Zen of Recovery

Mel Ash

There have been times I have sat in meetings with my hands pinned down to the seat by my ass when I heard grown men say things along these lines: “My thinking got me here so I do what I am told by my sponsor.” While it is true that alcohol and drugs warped and distorted my thinking it is also true that God gave me brains to use. So much of what I learned in the rooms of AA came to me via a mysterious but ultimately wise intuition that was not dictated to me by a sponsor. In fact, I’ve seen sponsors advise, manipulate and undermine the recovery of those they sponsor by becoming surrogate parents, healers, therapists or un-degreed doctors.

      When I first got sober I operated on the level of all kinds of misconceptions and delusion. But amazingly, within the first few weeks of sobriety, I heard others share their experience. I heard my group share their experiences and I perked up and listened. I needed no one to order me around. In fact, in my first three months I had no sponsor. I watched and listened because I knew to do otherwise would have disastrous consequences. When I found someone to lead me through the Steps I found a true friend. His judgments are as fallible as my own. I don’t go to him for advice as much as I do for another point of view. One of the promises so often quoted in the Big Book is that we will intuitively know what used to baffle us.

      Alcoholics Anonymous is a spiritual program and not a cult of strict obedience to a doctrine or spiritual guru. We face everyday problems individually, and in the group, with meditation and prayer. On page 87 of the B.B. it says, “It is not probable that we are going to be inspired at all times. We pay for this presumption with all sorts of absurd actions and ideas. Nevertheless, we find that our thinking will, as time passes, be more and more on the plane of inspiration. We come to rely on it.” To me this means that I come to rely on my own connection with God instead of any other human being. This is an individual adventure that we take together.

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