There's a new article by me on the safe-for-work Suicide Girls blog. Go here to read it. Yay!
A couple of days ago I attended my first ever Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. No. I'm not an alcoholic, nor am I particularly anonymous. But I was staying with a friend in Virginia and he was going, so he invited me along. Seeing as how I'm from Akron, Ohio, where Doctor Bob started AA, I felt it was my duty to go.
It was quite interesting and I'm still processing what I felt and learned from attending. There's a lot to be said for fellowship and social support when you're trying to do something difficult. Kicking addictions is not easy. The only physical addiction I ever had to kick was to caffeine. And that was really hard because I was so addicted to the stuff. I had a headache and nausea for a month and I knew all I needed to do to cure it was go out to the vending machine on the corner and buy some Boss iced coffee for 110 yen.
That's just because I'm not much for getting addicted to substances. My addictions are much deeper and harder to kick.
The false sense of self is very much like an addiction. And one way to make it easier to beat such an addiction is through fellowship with other people who have realized they're addicted to it and want to kick the habit. A Zen monastery is a lot like an AA meeting but more intense since the addiction everyone is trying to root out is much deeper and more pernicious.
The basic ideas behind AA and Zen have a lot in common. Part of the methodology is based on shared faith and belief. Both AA and Zen also have the idea that you don't really have to believe exactly the same thing as the rest of the members of the group. It's enough to sort of pretend you do.
In AA one must acknowledge a "higher power" in one's life. It doesn't matter how that higher power is defined. And, at some level, it doesn't even matter if you really even believe in your higher power deep down. You just have to say that you do and play along with the game.
I think that's a tremendously brilliant strategy. It brings something more basic than the thinking mind into play. Going through the motions even if you don't believe in them does have a real effect. I tend to believe that the really harmful parts of religion start with the thinking mind's involvement in things. And the thinking mind doesn't really need to get involved.
Anyway, that's my little rant about AA. Thank you very much.
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