Bottoming Out

How hard it can be to turn our attention within! How easily we allow our old habits and set patterns to dominate us! Even though they bring us suffering, we accept them with almost fatalistic resignation, for we are so used to giving in to them. We may idealize freedom, but when it comes to our habits, we are completely enslaved.
    Still, reflection can slowly bring us wisdom. We may, of course, fall back into fixed repetitive patterns again and again, but slowly we can emerge from them and change.

Glimpse After Glimpse
Sogyal Rinpoche

۞

Old tapes, old patterns and addictions are often how I define myself and there does seem to be no escape from my hardest dependencies. Having the desire to break free of them is fine, but it takes more effort than I can muster on my own to do so. Just as it was with alcohol and drugs, there is a bottom I must hit in order to move on from their grip. It seems to be the case that I will be unable to find the resolution to do so without an extra push from bottoming out. Hitting bottom doesn’t require that I lose everything and end up on the streets. Hitting bottom is simply where I throw all my excuses away and surrender, everything, even my will-power, in all humility; to the mystery we call God in Western culture. In Eastern traditions, however, it could be just as well called the all encompassing transcendent Self.

     Essentially, we surrender everything to this higher Power no matter what tag we put on it. In this sense, even the Zen Buddhists aren’t atheists as we think of atheism on this side of the Pacific (even though there is no belief in a supreme being in that particular practice). If I don’t surrender my will I am doing nothing more than adopting a set of rules, a morality or a religion that will succeed at doing little more than burdening me with guilt and shame. Guilt and shame helped to take me to the bottom but guilt and shame can’t be my primary directive if I am to find the freedom from the stifling bondage to self.
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