Taking Refuge, Part II: Resting in Our True Nature, Touching the Great Reality Within

“We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood (God.)” – Step 3 of Alcoholics Anonymous

The path back to sanity begins with recognizing our inner essence, one that we share with all beings and all of life. In Buddhism, this inner essence is called our “true face,” or “original nature,” the buddha within. This is the same mind we share with beings of old, people who were just like you and me before they awakened. In Step Three, we rely on the truth that we, too, can realize our true mind.

In the throes of addiction or raving codependency, we surely lose contact with our true nature. For many years, I believed that, really, I was defective; walked around with a feeling of shame in my bones. I came from a “bad” family. My father was often publicly drunk. Everyone in the neighborhood, in Saint Richard’s parish, and at the American Legion where he drank knew I was “Joe’s daughter.” I made it worse by using drugs and driving my own health into the ground, a wreck by the age of 22, afraid of being found out.

These were the kinds of ideas I had about who I really was.

Taking refuge in awakening suggests that many of the self-critical or self-important beliefs we hold are simply overlays, clouding and distorting our conscious contact with the “mind in its fullness … obscuring the brilliant qualities of Buddha nature, or natural mind.” I think of a carnival fun house, filled with trick mirrors: First, you’re fat. Then, you’re thin. Then, you’re tall. Then, you’re short. In the fun house, we know it’s a hoax. When it’s our own inner voice saying, I’m obscenely fat, I’m grotesquely skinny, or I’m a neurotic loser, we believe it’s the truth.

Tenshin-roshi Reb Anderson says that “what you think you are is not all of what you are … What you are is already attained, always, every moment.” For me, that represented a wild change in outlook. I wondered, What would that be like, to live as if I actually believed I had an essential self that is fundamentally beautiful and true, already attained?

Taking refuge in our true nature doesn’t mean we magically turn into a new, holy person. Rather, the process is one of recognizing our original face. Wake up to what’s been true all along. We are not giving ourselves to a power “out there,” separate from ourselves. In a radical turnabout from our addictions, we decide to trust that our deep inner nature is beautiful and true.

Chinese and Vietnamese practitioners use the phrase, “I go back and rely on the buddha in myself.” We touch the Great Reality Within. In Step Three of Alcoholics Anonymous, we commit to awaken our true self, opening to the light and beauty in us and the world.

Thérèse Jacobs Stewart, M.A., L.P., has been a practicing psychotherapist, meditation teacher, and international consultant for more than 28 years. She is the founder of St. Paul’s Mind Roads Meditation Center, which integrates contemplative practices from both east and west and serves as home of the St. Paul chapter of the Twelve Steps and Mindfulness meetings. For more information about her center and teaching schedule, click on www.mindroads.com.