The Zen of Recovery by Mel Ash

Author:Mel Ash [Ash, Mel]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Premier Digital Publishing
Published: 2013-04-02T23:00:00+00:00

When we were active in our denial and diseases, our dreams were full of grandiosity and self-justification. “The world doesn't understand my dreams” was our sob to no one in particular. Active in our denial, we fueled our little “I” into the Great I Am, a nearly omnipotent ego that imagined it ruled the world, but which was, in fact, ruled by substances and self-destructive behaviors. The dreams we dreamed were like immense card-castles built on clouds, yet we would believe in them violently, even viciously defending them, and only creating bigger and more grandiose dreams when the winds of reality and our karma knocked them down. Then we would retreat back to the bottle for yet more dream juice, back to the drug of self-destruction, fueling still more nightmarish actions, or back to compulsive behaviors in an attempt to manipulate our denials into dreams. We lived in this dream world full of anger and resentments that the real world just didn't understand and wouldn't let our dreams come true.

In our little dreaming, we were beautiful, successful women or handsome, wealthy men or anything other than what we really were: suffering, disease-ridden people in the death-grip of fatal illusions. We used the seductive alchemy of denial to repress and transform our suffering into shimmering dreams that gained more and more substance the drunker, higher and angrier we got until finally, sometimes blessedly, we passed out. Passed out of both the dream world and the real world.

When we stopped being at risk, the most grandiose of these dreams also stopped. In time, we learned to put down the irrational and often paranoid dreams our diseased thinking had created. Soon enough, if we rigorously followed our programs, new and more attainable dreams sprang up. You often hear it said in meetings that people's wildest dreams have come true in recovery. True enough. Our diseases were the brakes on our fulfillment and the break in our wholeness.

Now, in new or mature recovery, we can start to recover yet again, by waking up to bigger realities through the essential spiritual components of the program. The Eleventh Step's insistence on meditation leaves most people scratching their heads in bewilderment. Prayer is easier to understand, so they tend to pass over meditation in favor of their childhood practice. This is understandable, since even the official Step book is rather vague on what exactly is meant by meditation, focusing instead on traditional prayer and contemplation. Contemplation, while similar to meditation, is still not the medicine required to empty us and kick-start the awakening process. Through the centuries Zen Buddhism has developed a science and art of meditative practices conducive to spiritual recovery.

As we take the path of Zen and meditation, we are once again asked to fundamentally alter our ways of thinking and reacting to both ourselves and the world. We are continually challenged to lay down old habits of thought and being. We are invited to enter a fresh new world, stripped of our ideas, our expectations and, yes, even our dreams.

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