Step Two: Part One

Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity

Last week I shared my personal perspective on Step One. You can read that post here. You can also listen to this Dharma talk that I offered over a year ago, where I share a longer version of my recovery story’s early days.

If you found last week’s Buddhism and Recovery post a tough read, the talk is a similarly tough listen. A lot of Step One shares are that way, I find, in part because they involve a recognition and admission that one’s former way of living was unsustainable. Sometimes becoming aware of this is called “hitting bottom.” And another reason Step Ones are tough to read or hear is that there is no one way to hit bottom. (There is also no one bottom to hit, for that matter.) It is different for each person, and therefore deeply personal. Sharing any part of one’s story requires risking vulnerability, something that causes fear even in the most-seasoned storyteller.

All of my reflections on the Steps will be personal, as opposed to abstract, theoretical, or philosophical—the latter used here in a pejorative way. For they will incorporate my lived experience, my wrestling with words, phrases, and concepts or ideas in an attempt to determine just what any Step (and all of them together) means for me. And that is something not stressed enough and not understood well, in my experience, both by those in recovery and by those on the outside. The Steps offer a framework or an outline. You need to fill in the details.

With that said, today I want to begin a series of reflections on Step Two. Step Two reads:

Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Came to believe. Sometimes I say in meetings that Step Two is my favorite step because of these three words. What does it mean to say that you “came to believe” in something? How can you tell when this happens?

The Soto school of Zen Buddhism is sometimes called the path of “gradual awakening.” The description is intended to frame Soto Zen as the opposite of Rinzai Zen, sometimes called the path of “sudden awakening.” Both descriptions are overly reductive; that is all right in this context. The latter description invites images of sky-shattering breakthrough experiences born from, say, a single leaf landing gracefully on a monastic’s shaved head. Sometimes “coming to believe” happens that way. I have heard others share stories where the skies opening or lightening striking would mark a turning-point quite well.

The former description, by contrast, is comparable to walking in a fine mist. If you walk in a fine mist for a little while, you may notice some wet spots begin to form on your cheeks, shirt, or shoes. Walk a little longer and your clothes begin to feel damp, perhaps even a little heavy. And if you walk long enough, at some point your clothes and you will be completely soaked. When precisely does that happen? It is difficult to say! You can walk for a while before noticing such changes.

My first Substack post focused on a limitless, ceaseless trust that is essential for Zen practice, or so says Kobun Chino Roshi. You can read that post here and listen to its accompanying talk here. I wrote in that post that I frequently doubted whether I had such trust in myself; I could not feel it for some time. Yet my actions clearly displayed that that trust in myself was alive and well, and from the very beginning.

It may have been six months ago that I felt the need to revisit my “bottom.” Not literally, mind you, but to recreate that experience as accurately as possible from what memories remain of those few weeks. I felt that need because of a question. I had been faced with a choice then. I could continue drinking my life away. And why not? After all, it felt as though everything had fallen apart and nothing was left. Or I could get help, reorient my life, and start moving in a different direction. I chose the latter. But why? That was the question.

One response—not answer, mind you, for only tests have answers—begins with a pair of phone calls. First, I called my father. For several months he had been encouraging me to seek outside help. Predictably, I resisted. I was too proud and too afraid, until I was not. Second, I called a local treatment center and was admitted later that week. These simple actions show that I already believed that a better life was possible for me. Once again, my actions revealed what I could not yet feel or otherwise grasp by way of the thinking mind.

It says on the back of the rakusu I sewed for Shukke Tokudo

The hut now burned down,
     Look! Beyond Mt. Sumeru
Can you see the moon?

Perhaps the belief that life could be different was always there—not unlike the moon—alongside that limitless, ceaseless trust in myself. But I could not see or feel them. There was too much in the way, and not just bottles of whiskey. Once things fell apart—the hut burned down—then there was space, room, a field in which a life-changing conviction and confidence could support a nascent willingness to be honest, open-minded, and to just keep going. And with time, I would be able to see all this too. I would be able to feel the transformation that took place on that cold February evening. The experience can be rightly described as both sudden and gradual; because of it, I genuinely believed that I could set self-destruction aside. Life really could be better.