In my Y12SR group, we have decided to go through the Steps, one a month, and explore how the steps of AA complement a yoga practice. Full disclosure: I know next to nothing about the yoga tradition itself. I found my way to Y12SR because I was seeking something different from a traditional AA meeting, and I knew at some level that to really thrive on a path to recovery, I would need to engage the mind and the body.
January we reflected on Step One. It's the foundational step of a 12-step program, the gatekeeper. It also kept me from AA for years, the admitting that I was powerless over alcohol and that my life had become unmanageable. Yes, the evidence of unmanageability was all around me for years, and as could be expected, it grew progressively worse. Initially, it would look like broken promises, lost things, missed appointments; eventually it would include ended relationships, DUIs, going through a court program. And more. I didn't necessarily have an issue with the "unmanageability" part of that statement.
But powerless? I felt such a strong resistance to that word. And that matters. It's a loaded term. For me, in part, I think some of the resistance is based in my "Addiction Story," as Tommy Rosen refers to it. I took those first sips of alcohol precisely because I felt so powerless in my own life: powerless to access the life that I wanted to live, to live up to this picture of success I was building in my mind, so insecure and lonely. Alcohol immediately became a way of connecting to people and that felt like a semblance of control.
But also because other parts of my life just did not align with that concept of powerlessness and alcohol owning my life-- I have accomplished pretty good things, things I am proud of, in spite of repeatedly and problematically over-indulging in alcohol. So to admit to powerlessness felt like I was betraying that part of myself and my story.
Where does one go with that?
So in class a few Saturdays ago, our teacher offered us this: what if we step back, and don't jump to the end of the sentence in Step One where we get stuck on "powerlessness." Let's start where the sentence starts: "we admitted." Admittance, acknowledgment, or in the yoga tradition: non-lying, the practice of truth-telling. May this be a softer place to start? Less loaded, less judgmental? Elsewhere in the AA program, it asks us to engage in "rigorous honesty"-- this too seems harsh, seems punitive almost. It sounds a lot like "self bashing." Even just typing these words, I can hear the negative self-talk queuing, beginning its soft, insistent chatter of all the things I did wrong and how I am a bad person because of it: "here's the honest truth, I am a piece of shit because I did XYZ as a result of drinking." So. Much. Judgement.
And thus, because I could never get totally behind Step One of the AA 12 Step Program in particular, I spent many years floundering because I knew of no other way to approach sobriety beyond AA.
So here I am, reflecting on the beginning. And I have to be here again, I realize, because to (continue to) move forward, I do need to come to a reckoning, or more accurately, finish going through that admittance. I am creating my process, my program of recovery, as I go along, and yes, even borrowing from 12 Steps where they serve me.
This includes a Step Zero, if you will: start with admitting, the truth-telling. Start with the acknowledgement that something is happening, has happened. Something that I am no longer with comfortable with, something that is problematic and has brought negative consequences in my life. That something is an attachment to alcohol. And just as I can attach to things-- and this is just part of the human condition, the "ego"--then I can un-attach. As Richard Rohr writes in his book on the 12 Steps, Breathing Underwater, "No one likes to die to who they think they are.... Letting go is not in anybody's program for happiness, and yet all mature spirituality is about letting go and unlearning." And there is so much to unlearn. Part of my process of un-attaching, or letting go, is to practice non-lying, based on objective fact, where fact is truth without judgement. This practice of truth-telling inherently involves humility--not being too big or too small, but knowing both my strengths and my weaknesses and owning them.
I admit to and own all parts of my experience, of my story, not just the regrettable ones.
