Welcome home! Please contact lincoln@icrontic.com if you have any difficulty logging in or using the site. New registrations must be manually approved which may take several days. Can't log in? Try clearing your browser's cookies.
Non-religous AA group
Jeffrey
Veteran
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/02/24/alcoholics-anonymous-now-available-without-god/
This was interesting for me. Basically one of the steps of the AA is to be honest. Yet how can you proceed if you honestly don't believe in a higher power? Sure you can say the dharmakaya is your power, but at the same time dharmakaya is the real you. So how is it in any way a higher power? In buddhism we have to do the work. A deity or dharmakaya does not do the work. We can rely on dharmakaya as an 'other' but then 'poof'... your dharmakaya is gone. There is no ground underneath you. The dharmakaya surely does radiate. But it is not a big babysitter.
I wonder what @Tosh thinks of this article?? I know it has been awesome in his and others. I am happy there is AA non-denominational to help a wider body of people.
This was interesting for me. Basically one of the steps of the AA is to be honest. Yet how can you proceed if you honestly don't believe in a higher power? Sure you can say the dharmakaya is your power, but at the same time dharmakaya is the real you. So how is it in any way a higher power? In buddhism we have to do the work. A deity or dharmakaya does not do the work. We can rely on dharmakaya as an 'other' but then 'poof'... your dharmakaya is gone. There is no ground underneath you. The dharmakaya surely does radiate. But it is not a big babysitter.
I wonder what @Tosh thinks of this article?? I know it has been awesome in his and others. I am happy there is AA non-denominational to help a wider body of people.
0
Comments
I actually went to over eaters anonymous once.. they claimed that anyone could join but then they all hold hands and pray, didn't quite work out lol.
Who is actually praying anyways?
If it moves one beyond the myopic view of self to something more inclusive and less limiting, if it sidesteps sufferings role in making one feel alone in the universe, then I'd say go for it if it fits the bill for a higher power..
It could be true. What is the meaning of nobody praying to nobody?
Nobody praying to nobody sounds like a meditation practices.
Yoga itself is considered a prayer. Could not the meaning of prayer be the same as a full bow?
Mother Teresa said that when she prays to God she listens. Someone asked 'what does God say'? She replied "he listens too".
However I don't think Christianity views prayer in this way. So if your AA meeting is 90% Christians it becomes a problem to define prayer as nobody praying to nobody. It seems dishonest to me to conveniently change the definition to something that none of the Christians recognize. In other words it is sophistry to redefine the word 'prayer' so to not make waves in the AA sangha.
The expression of "nobody praying to nobody" was your invention.
I was saying that paying homage to selflessness is a recognition of and an invite to accept selflessness as something worthy of aspiring to.
Something that I thought would make sense to your practice and would also allow for a higher power to simply be the Dharma..
Remember the 12 Steps is a program of ACTION, not beliefs. A.A. doesn't care what we believe; if we had an A.A. dictionary, it would be left blank under the word 'God'; it's for us to fill that bit in. A very famous A.A. Speaker (Chuck Chamberlain and author of A New Pair of Glasses") used other people as God. He said God is people and people is God. Another speaker I know says that the Universe and God, both added up does not make two.
I could really bore on, but I've sat in meetings which I know have contained a Muslim, two Sikhs, at least one Buddhist, Christians, Agnostics and Atheists and we've all got on together swimmingly. A.A.'s 12 Steps is called a 'broad highway', not some tight dogmatic spiritual path; it's wide 'n' roomy.
And many come to A.A. and don't do the 12 Steps, which is fine. The only requirement to be a member of A.A. is to have a desire to stop drinking; which means you don't even have to be sober. Conformity is not a requirement; A.A. works on the basis that if we don't live according to some spiritual principles, we'll drink and to drink means to die. Hence we have no rules and there are no 'musts' in A.A. (thought that's caveated with there are plenty of 'we ought to-s'.
Here's an A.A. share by a guy I like listening to ('cos he's entertaining):
It may give a flavour of what A.A. is about.
However, drinking really isn't the problem. Seriously; I did not have a drinking problem; I could comfortably drink two 1 litre bottles of whisky and some cans a day; no problems at all. So what I really did have was a sobriety problem and I used drinking as a solution to it.
Once I dealt with my sobriety problem, the compulsion to drink just left me; no will power required.
On my Buddhist foundation course I was taught that feelings create intentions, and not only do they create intentions they condition them also. That fits perfectly with how my alcoholism progressed and what happened when I did A.A.'s program of action. Once I'd found a measure of inner peace, no longer did I have that engine of negative feelings forcing me to drink. It was just gone.
These steps mean taking a look at ourselves - a hard look - speaking about what we find with another human being (being totally honest; again, not an easy thing to do. Just recently a sponsee told me that although he hadn't bummed any kids, he was approaching this point; grooming them over the internet). Then we make amends to those we've harmed (we're trying to put right, as best we can, our often horrendously messy pasts). And the remaining three steps could be easily translated into a Buddhist practise.
What we're doing when we 'turn our will and our lives over', is saying, "Yeh, okay, my way gets me suicidal, I'll try a new way!"
Even Christians will say that God doesn't want our will or our lives; they'll say "God gave us freewill, he doesn't want it back!"
The 12 Steps are a tough spiritual practise; particularly the 'dealing with our past' elements. Being ruthlessly honest at Step 5, or making an amend to a man we've once hated aren't easy things to do.
It's not a religious service though, far from it.
Our Higher Powers are our own personal thing. Other people seem to be mine. If I've got to do something that only benefits myself, I don't tend to be bothered to do it. But if by doing something, it benefits others, I'm more motivated to do it. For example if there's an A.A. meeting I really should go to, but can't be bothered, I'll probably not go. But if there's a new guy who (I think) needs to go to a meeting; I'm there.
There seems to be real power in being motivated by compassion.
Our Primary Purpose is to 'stay sober and help the still suffering alcoholic'; and I can use that intention for anything; even going to the pictures (I need to relax at times if I'm to be fit for purpose).
Is this a kind of Boddhichitta thing?
But what's the score with you, Jeffrey? Are you thinking about joining A.A.? Don't let the God thing or prayer put you off; there's shed fulls of agnostics and atheists in A.A..
My A.A. hero was known as the Militant Agnostic;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Burwell
He helped a lot of people recover from their alcoholism.
Which is how that comment ended up in the wrong one.
Will edit another time to correct error.
Sorry......
1. Go to A.A..
2. Find an A.A. sponsor (a mentor)
3. Go through the steps; paying particular attention to the tough bits.
It's a great Higher Power is Mr Pain and Suffering.
I was a binge drinker of like over 10 beers on my party days, but I would do that not every day of course. Then I used some techniques of my Lama and Gangaji to help with quitting. I switched to no binging and drinking 6 a night rather than binging (10+) 2-3 times a week. That was a lot easier on my emotions.
I knew from Buddhism that my vision of clarity was impermanent so I didn't get discouraged if I couldn't do it. And I just kept at it and tried again and again.
Then I switched to NA beer, tea, decaf and V8 as liquids to satisfy the oral craving.
I quit for 2 years entirely. Literally no lapses. Then I started drinking again 2012 around Christmas.
I think it's because I am on high doses of 3 anti-psychotics and a mood stabilizer, but alcohol doesn't really affect me anymore. I don't get uninhibted, care free, or heedless. I only drink 1 to 3 drinks on a night where I am drinking. I don't have that fever to have 'just one more'.
Frankly, AA in practice, varies greatly from area to area. The area I am in now, and have been for three years, is very rural and very Christian. After attending four meetings a week for three years in this area – or just over 600 meetings, I can say without hesitation that I've not been to one in those 600 in which the Bible wasn't quoted or read out of. That is not common, but there are pockets of AA in which it is practiced like so.
I recently attended a meeting in which a member was asked to close the meeting. This is almost always done by standing in some dysfunctional attempt at a circle and holding hands. That member, who I think was reeling from all the biblical references and the announcement that the Bible study/twelve step meeting would be on Thursday, began, “In the name of Allah, the merciful, the compassionate,...” All hands were dropped and the outcry was sufficient to drown out whether or not he said anything else.
Personally, I am stymied. As an 'oldtimer', I feel a duty to protect the newcomer from the idea that AA is Christian or religious in any form. Had I walked into such a meeting back in 1978, I would have left and no doubt died without finding help. On the other hand, as a Buddhist, I have no desire to get into a confrontation. In a 1961 Grapevine article (AA's meeting in print) Bill W., the co-founder of AA, said in part,
“Though three hundred thousand did recover in the last twenty-five years, maybe half a million more have walked into our midst, and then out again. No doubt some were too sick to make even a start. Others couldn't or wouldn't admit their alcoholism. Still others couldn't face up to their underlying personality defects. Numbers departed for still other reasons.
Yet we can't well content ourselves with the view that all these recovery failures were entirely the fault of the newcomers themselves. Perhaps a great many didn't receive the kind and amount of sponsorship they so sorely needed. We didn't communicate when we might have done so. So we AA's failed them. Perhaps more often than we think, we still make no contact at depth with those suffering the dilemma of no faith.
Certainly none are more sensitive to spiritual cocksureness, pride and aggression than they are. I'm sure this is something we too often forget. In AA's first years I all but ruined the whole undertaking with this sort of unconscious arrogance. God as I understood Him had to be for everybody. Sometimes my aggression was subtle and sometimes it was crude. But either way it was damaging - perhaps fatally so - to numbers of non-believers. Of course this sort of thing isn't confined to Twelfth Step work. It is very apt to leak out into our relationships with everybody. Even now, I catch myself chanting that same old barrier-building refrain, "Do as I do, believe as I do - or else!"
The emboldened part is Bill's emphasis; the italicized portions are mine. Alternatives in this area are non-existent and at present, my attempts to make those of no faith, or even different faiths welcome, has been drowned out by the masses.
Anyway, nice to have you here!
In fellowship,
Tosh
With the kind help and advice from the likes of Tosh and others on this forum I'm at the beginning of my journey into sobriety, its encouraging to read your words, thank you.
We in NA followed the same steps/program as our brothers and sisters in AA. Get a good sponsor (mine passed on a few years ago - still miss him greatly), go to meetings and work the steps. Everything else will work itself out.
This is year #40 for me being clean.
I hope to learn from your example and don't try experimenting myself!
How wonderful for all of you who are making changes, no matter what they are! Congratulations to you all and best wishes on your journeys.
So hopefully @karasti I am going to be the exception to the rule? (as regards starting right where i left off)
So many things I just sit with discomfort from not having it. Food in general, sweets, gluten, smoking, drinking I just live with, as my baseline feeling, some level of craving that goes unfulfilled.
@Tosh et al: I ended my first period of sobriety after seven years when I returned home from the military. In my opinion, there are things that the human psyche is not prepared to accept, and I ran into them. I picked up not thinking I was 'cured' but willing to die to not feel. It was a very dark period.
Interestingly, it was meditation that saved me. I suffered horrendous PTSD and was able to revisit those experiences and re-experience them in a safe environment, from my cushion, and download them to the left brain where memories are properly stored instead of the right brain where traumatic memories go to be relived over and over.
He tells me there's something called 'Memory Deletion', the new in-thing for PTSD. It's a bit of a misnomer because memories aren't deleted. It works like this:
The PTSD sufferer takes beta blockers which numb down the emotions and then they relive the trauma, and doing this while feeling less stress about it 're-saves' the memory in a less troublesome format. They think the thing that changes is the emotional content we attach to the memory of the traumatic incident and not the memory itself. It sounds like you did something similar from the safety of your meditation mat. Maybe?
I think our 12 Step amends process can be a bit like that too. I know I no longer hate my ex wife after I attempted my formal amend to her. She's the same, but the emotional memory I attach to her is different.
When I hear people say that we can't change our past, I disagree with them; we can change the emotions we attach to the past; taking the power out of harmful memories.