Buddhism And 12 Steps: You Can't Make Me Angry (Episode 8)

Today we will look at the 12 Step perspective to building spiritual sobriety. You will want to read Dr. Paul O.'s book, You Can't Make Me Angry. Dr. O is an original co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous and was a psychotherapist. His wife Max, was a therapist and co-founded Al-Anon. You Can't Make Me Angry helps us cultivate physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual sobriety.

Transcript

Hi everyone,

Welcome to Spiritual Sobriety.

I'm your host,

Chris McDuffie.

Today we will discuss how to build spirituality while maintaining abstinence.

We have been discussing Buddha's Four Noble Truths,

Which is his introduction to teaching the end of suffering.

As a reminder,

The Buddha's Four Noble Truths are generally reported as follows.

The first Noble Truth is that the nature of our human existence is suffering,

Pain,

Anxiety,

And dissatisfaction.

The second Noble Truth explores the origin of our human suffering.

In short,

He teaches we are always trying to escape from,

Or think we can avoid,

The pain and discomfort that the anxiety and fear of dissatisfaction breeds.

In the third Noble Truth,

Buddha reports that there is a path to ending our self-generated suffering,

Which he outlines in the Fourth Noble Truth.

The Fourth Noble Truth is Buddha's presentation of the specific actions to follow,

Which will bring the cessation to our suffering.

Our discussions thus far on spiritual sobriety have explored the following.

Defining spirituality,

Defining suffering,

Identifying the causes of suffering,

How to balance our suffering with gratitude,

And the eight worldly preoccupations or the emotions that breed our suffering.

So from a Buddhist perspective,

We have been looking only at the first three of the Four Noble Truths.

From a 12-step program approach,

We have been looking chiefly at Steps 1 through 9.

Both of these powerful spiritual pathways offer suggestions and practices to identifying the causes of our suffering and how to end our suffering.

Let's keep reminding ourselves throughout each day of the definition of spirituality.

For our purposes on spiritual sobriety,

Spirituality is defined as bonding in love or simply love.

When we are suffering,

We are not loving ourselves.

We are at war with ourselves.

When we are suffering,

We turn against those who love us and want the best for us.

So how do we build spiritual sobriety so that we may love ourselves,

Especially when we are in pain and suffering?

Today we will look at the 12-step perspective to building spiritual sobriety.

You will want to read Dr.

Paul Oh's book,

You Can't Make Me Angry.

Dr.

Oh is an original co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous and was a psychotherapist.

His wife,

Max,

Was a therapist and co-founder of Al-Anon.

You Can't Make Me Angry is technically a couple's communication guide to create a spiritual union in marriage and all relationships.

In short,

The book follows the premise that no external force,

Event,

Or person makes me angry.

Rather,

It is our internal perspective and reaction to the situation that drives our feelings of mad,

Sad,

Glad,

Or happy.

Do you remember all eight of the Buddhist eight-worldly preoccupations that we discussed in an earlier podcast?

As a reminder,

They are generally referred to as happiness and suffering,

Fame and insignificance,

Praise and blame,

Gain and loss.

Buddha suggested that our anger and our suffering comes from the wanting and not wanting of these eight emotions.

Dr.

Paul and his wife's teachings in You Can't Make Me Angry identify the actions that one must take to build spiritual sobriety within oneself to begin cultivating a loving connection with others.

For our purpose,

He identifies as the stages or bases to work towards achieving spiritual sobriety.

Dr.

Oh uses a baseball diagram to illustrate his point.

To be clear,

All religious and secular spiritual pathways have the same or very similar building blocks.

You may enjoy as much as I do,

Seeing how all spiritual exercises,

Texts,

Religions and philosophies all have so much in common.

Consider drawing a baseball diagram on a piece of paper or in your spiritual sobriety notebook.

We will label first base as physical sobriety,

Second base as mental sobriety,

Third base as emotional sobriety and home base as spiritual sobriety.

My AA sponsor,

Jerry,

Likes to report,

I'm glad that the spiritual bases are numbered,

Marked and have coaches because when I try to do all this on my own,

I think I'm going to first base,

But somehow I end up in right field.

Jerry just celebrated 36 sober years of running the spiritual bases successfully,

One day at a time and with progress,

Not perfection.

Now consider who is in the opposing team trying to tag you out.

Is your bartender playing right field?

Is anger playing third baseman?

Is your ego playing the shortstop position?

I invite you to take a few minutes and consider ascribing the names and emotions to each of the opposing team and who is on your team.

Who is the opposing manager?

Is it fear?

Is it trauma?

You may wish to pause today's podcast and rejoining us in five minutes.

Okay,

Welcome back.

Remember that we began today's discussion with the premise that our emotions begin within us.

This means quite literally,

You can't make me angry.

Our suffering begins within us and Buddha and the Twelve Steps reminds us that our solution to ending our suffering also lies within us.

Let's return to our baseball diagram.

To be clear,

We are not trying to round the bases and arrive at home plate only once.

We are not trying to win this game of spiritual sobriety only one to zero.

Consider this illustration as a guide to long term sobriety.

We want to remain at bat playing the offense,

Working on the upward maturation of physical,

Mental and emotional health.

As we consistently continue to round the bases again and again.

I teach today's exercise to my AA Sponsees and clients who are new to recovery from trauma and addiction to help illustrate the concept of both one day at a time and with no final goal to attain.

Spiritual sobriety is a fluid dynamic dance and freedom from our suffering from dukkha,

From our attachments,

From grabbing and aversions helps us run the bases of spiritual sobriety more effectively,

More efficiently and with more awareness and we don't get tagged out.

Let's now explore each base a bit more.

First base,

Physical sobriety includes all of the actions of loving and healing our physical self.

Are we eating,

Sleeping,

Hydrating and exercising?

And more importantly,

Are our efforts in balance and practice with the intention of cultivating love for ourself so that a healthier self will be able to love others.

For those of you in early recovery,

Physical sobriety includes a medically supervised detox and careful monitoring of the symptoms of PAUSE,

Post-acute withdrawal symptoms,

For your first two years of recovery.

We know that on average,

Individuals suffer for 10 years in their attachments to their addictions and trauma and aversions to sobriety and mental health care.

Consider how long it must take for the body to heal itself from these devastating effects of alcohol,

Heroin,

Crystal meth,

Cocaine,

Sex addiction,

Gambling addiction,

Eating disorders,

Body dysmorphia,

Etc.

The first base is itself,

Its own journey,

Not a destination.

The second base is mental sobriety.

Here we are exploring the devastating effects of trauma and use on our thinking mind.

Remember,

We like to call addiction a thinking disease since our fear,

Our trauma and our use has negatively impacted our thinking and our clarity of thinking.

We literally thought it was a good solution to ending our suffering or avoiding our suffering by putting a needle in our arm or spending the family savings on internet addiction or sex or gambling.

We actually thought that we were not worthy of help or joy or love or we thought that we deserved the suffering.

We thought that the solution to our suffering and the causes of our suffering was outside of us.

You were making me angry.

The third base is our emotional sobriety.

Are we using our practices to be able to identify,

Feel and respond in a loving,

Kind way that honors our values?

Or are we angry too often,

Anxious too often or in a state of prolonged depression?

Steps one through nine help us identify how our suffering and our cycle of addiction created emotional imbalance and a lot of suffering.

And home base is spiritual sobriety.

Are we choosing to learn how to love ourselves again and forgiving ourselves and those who have harmed us or caused us pain?

Are we willing to restore justice to those who we have wronged?

Do we look for and choose to see the similarities,

The better,

The good in ourselves and in others?

Do we see the Buddha within or the Christ within everyone we meet,

Including ourselves?

Are we choosing to look down our path with looking only at imperfections and the imperfections of others?

Or as poet W.

H.

Auden writes in his poem,

As I Walked Out One Evening,

You Shall Love Your Crooked Neighbor With All Your Crooked Heart.

So are we daring enough to round the bases a second,

A third,

A fourth time?

Are we committed to cultivating our physical,

Mental and emotional health so to form a loving connection with ourselves and others?

This is why I argue that spiritual sobriety is essential for creating joy and happiness and relapse prevention.

I hope that you found today's podcast on spiritual sobriety empowering and supportive as you continue your sober life.

Please be sure to click and follow Spiritual Sobriety to receive our weekly discussions automatically.

Thank you and may you have a wonderful week.

Reviews

Wow, what a cool new pair of glasses you just gave me! Thank you, I'll be sure to pass them on.😎🙏🏼

Really interesting stuff here. I’m going to make sure I listen to the rest of these over the next few days. Thank you.

Love the baseball analogy. The visual enabled my process; which will facilitate retention.

Beauty! I'm a 12 stepper. 11 months. Alchoholic, Drinkin' Thinker. VERY USEFUL visualization. Thank you!
Peace, Love n Cheer!

I will return to this often. Thank you.

Thank you so much very informative and super reminders! Namaste 🙏

Wonderful for recovery and anger!!!

Listened with a notebook and pen. Lots to process here. Thanks

Thank you Chris. I have 31 years sobriety. I appreciate your perspective on sobriety.