Step Five: Part Three
Step Five: Part Three
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs
This week our time with Step Five comes to a close, at least for now. (I anticipate revisiting these first efforts to articulate my understanding of the Twelve Steps from a Buddhist perspective in the future.) It’s a challenging thing to write out on paper—or type into a digital document—what feels clear and organized in your head. Yet it’s made easier by remembering that the only requirement is sharing in an authentic, genuine way. That is something I had to learn how to do in recovery—and I’m still learning to do it. My default was performing for (or: hiding from) an audience. Showing up as myself and offering my experience and strength in a humble way was frightening. And it still is sometimes.
One reason concerns what I feel it necessary to share. Sometimes they’re called “character defects” or “shortcomings.” Other times, both inside and outside of the rooms, I hear them called “failures,” “mistakes,” and many other names. Step Five calls them “wrongs.” Specifically, Step Five reads:
Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
The exact nature of our wrongs. Or, since I’m writing about me and my experience in recovery: my wrongs. Well … yuck. I notice an immediate kick of resistance to sharing any of that. Why? It has not so much to do with how others might (or: are likely to, will) see me. There is some of that though, and there always is. It has more to do with how I might (or: am likely to, will) see myself. I’m my own “best and worst critic”—I know exactly where to point the sharp stick and won’t stop poking away, even when there has been serious damage.
From what I hear in recovery meetings, this disposition or tendency towards unskillful self-judgment is common. Sometimes it seems to be a requirement for attendance! And from what I observe outside of recovery meetings, among so-called “normies,” it’s out there too. I’m reminded of a particular (possibly apocryphal) story about the Dalai Lama. At the end of his first visit to the United States, the Dalai Lama was asked what stood out to him about America and Americans. He replied, “There is a lot of self-hatred here.”
What does this phrase mean, “the exact nature of our wrongs”? How does it fit into the admittedly still-fragmentary image of Step Five forming from my previous two reflections?
I’ll start with the reminder that, from my perspective, the admission central to Step Five is not made “from a feeling of guilt or shame, or some sense that we failed to meet an unrealistic standard and must rouse self-hatred so that we’ll do better.” At times, therefore, I wonder whether the word “admitted” (with which the step opens) expresses well the Step’s spirit. As I offered in Step Five: Part One, the word “recommitment” feels more appropriate. Writing about Ryaku Fusatsu (Full Moon Ceremony), I said that along with a “full and open acknowledgement” of our karma is a recommitment to the Buddhist precepts. “[This] recommitment is gentle—we remember our basic goodness and encourage ourselves to remain in touch with our humanity.” I might, then, suggest rewriting Step Five as:
Recommitted before the Three Treasures, ourselves, and another human being to our basic goodness and shared humanity.
I might. It’s an interesting idea—rewriting the Steps themselves to reflect your understanding, instead of leaving them as is and expressing your understanding elsewhere.
Chapter Five of the Big Book, titled “How It Works,” opens with the following sentence:
Rarely have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.
I heard in a meeting some time ago that this is not what Bill W. originally wrote, nor is it the opening sentence that he wanted for the chapter. Apparently, Bill W. originally wrote and wanted this sentence:
Never have we seen a person fail who has thoroughly followed our path.
Never. Well, isn’t that a straightforward expression of deep trust in the program and those who would put it into action in the pursuit of sobriety?
This story, whether accurate or not, has stayed with me. It remains because it casts helpful doubt on the possibility of making mistakes in recovery or failing to “get it right.” The offering is: nothing done in the pursuit of sobriety, and emotional and spiritual well-being is a mistake; you cannot fail in the process of manifesting a better way of living within and moving through the world. Such an offering doesn’t deny that we often feel that we make mistakes or create setbacks through our actions, the means by which we see our inclinations to greed, anger, and ignorance. The “inner critic” is there—and you don’t need me to tell you that. Yet we’re afforded an opportunity to relate in a different way to the critic’s activity, perhaps even playfully.
Can you dance with those on-going judgmental narratives about yourself? I can sometimes, and occasionally there’s a smile too.
In the weeks following that particular meeting, I started looking at the Twelve Steps differently. I saw them less as individual steps; more as an interconnected whole with different states in which we can find ourselves, where no one of them is any more important than any other.
For example, the process of “cleaning house,” by way of a searching and fearless moral inventory (Steps Four and Five)—a pair that can be worked over months, if not a year or longer—appears again in Step Ten, the use of which varies from person to person and circumstance to circumstance. The implication is that we don’t take stock and share just once. The activity occurs again and again throughout our life, anchored in an increasing awareness of how, when, and where we tend to “get stuck.” Or as I often put it, “get in our own way.”
When that happens, part of working with that stickiness is becoming willing to let whatever is in the way go—an attachment to pleasurable sensations or my preferences, seeing myself in a certain light and desiring that others do too—and then humbly seeking the assistance of others to support that process. This series of actions is Steps Six and Seven. I’ll begin writing about them in a few week’s time.
Yet I cannot engage in the process of a daily or as-necessary check-in with myself unless I also acknowledge the possibility of there being something to check-in about. Is there a desire for praise creeping in? Am I still clinging to the way in which I was blamed by someone else, or I rebuked myself for some action? Nor can I continually seek refuge in the Three Treasures without an understanding that investigations of self-centered fear and pride are never finished in this life. It’s in part for this reason that we often use in Zen the word “practice” and, occasionally, “art.” We’re always practicing; we’re always exercising the art of meeting what arises directly, unfiltered. Dogen Zenji in the fascicle on an Old Mirror describes this direct meeting as not-knowing, writing
Not-knowing is a straightforward bare heart. It is bright and clear not-seeing.
What I want to close with, then, is a question. If I cannot fail in my efforts to thoroughly follow the path, if I cannot work the whole of a program without acting in ways born of greed, anger, and ignorance, if I cannot go for refuge without sometimes feeling the Eight Worldly Winds at my back, if all of this and more is necessary for continual practice, constant exercising of the art of not-knowing … then what are these wrongs to which I am admitting, and what, if anything, is their exact nature?
The quotation of Dogen Zenji’s “Old Mirror” is taken from “The Treasury of the True Dharma Eye,” edited by Kazuaki Tanahashi.