Learning to take inventory
THE year 2000 was a turning point for me. It was the year of my first AA meeting and first Buddhist retreat. I was lucky. I never experienced Buddhism as an atheist’s path. It just gave me rituals and ceremonies to my prayers to my ancestors, teachers, the power of nature, and the Universe itself. When I read in the Big Book about the “…Great Reality…” (BB p.55) and a “…Spirit of the Universe.” (BB p.75) underlying everything, I felt that Bill W and I believed in the same Higher Power. When the Big Book promised a spiritual experience that would change my whole outlook and attitude to life, I was all in. I wanted this. When I went paddling in the Ganges (upstream to avoid pollution!) with the sole purpose of saying my deepest prayer, that prayer was for a spiritual awakening. I did not fully concede to my innermost self that I was an alcoholic till 2011, but then, Steps Two and Three were immediate.
I was taken through the Steps with a sponsor in 2013 and did the writing exactly as described in the Big Book. Just the act of writing it all down and having a sponsor willing to hear the whole thing changed my attitude to my fears and resentments. Instead of being rocks I had to carry around, I began to see them as golden nuggets of experience. I am very blessed that I’ve been able to share my entire story with my sponsor and she has given me kindness, understanding and peace.
However, for a long time I felt that I wasn’t getting the same benefits from inventory that I heard other people getting. I suspected that this was because the language of defects of character and “…the Seven Deadly Sins…” (12&12 p.48) comes from another faith. Pride, envy, avarice and the other sins are just not the particular words that are used in the Buddhist tradition. Probably many alcoholics can successfully relate words like ‘defects of character’ to whatever faith they practise without any effort. But because I have struggled with this and then had some success, I wanted to share my experience here just in case it benefits someone else.
Recently, while talking about a massive resentment with my sponsor, I realised that the other person’s behaviour threatened my self-esteem, ambitions and material security. Then I realised that it was my attachment to my self-esteem, ambitions and material security that was really victimising me, not the other person. They were irrelevant. I was being persecuted by my own attachment to self. I saw that my attachment to my self-esteem, ambitions, personal relations, sex relations, social standing, and material security caused my suffering. I saw that inventory was just a way of seeing how Buddhist teachings about the origin of suffering, and the solution to suffering, applied to the detail of my life. Suddenly I saw that Bill W and the teachings of my faith were saying the same thing. At least, that is how it appears to me.
I want to conclude by thanking those who have recently written the Plain Language Big Book. I personally have found this hugely helpful. I am grateful to every alcoholic who has put our Programme of recovery into their own words to try to bring our wonderful way of life to the still suffering alcoholic, both inside and outside the Rooms.
HELEN