Addictions, Surrender, 12 Steps and Homa Therapy (Barry Rathner, Ph.D. Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.)

Steps 1 through 3 of the 12 steps of alcoholics anonymous can and have been summarized to state, “I Can’t, He can, Let Him.”

In other words, I cannot manage my life because of my addition to alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, food, sex, co-dependence, WHATEVER. A higher power can, however, bring me out of the insanity caused by these addictions, so I would be well advised to let my higher power do just that.

Shree Vasant said many, many years ago that in point of fact, all humans are addicts. Some may abuse recreational drugs, some may be chronic over-eaters, some may be rage-aholics. It doesn’t matter really. Anything that has the potential to:

1) Make our lives unmanageable
2) Lead us into depressive states, and
3) Take us out of a balanced state of being an instrument of the divine into something much less balanced, much less happy, much more neurotic anything that does that to us is basically an addiction.

And if one has trouble with the label of “addiction,” it may be helpful to think of it in the 12-step model of addiction being a disease, not a choice, not a lack of self-discipline, not a lapse in morals, but a disease, not unlike diabetes, e.g. one might label it “disease or condition of life.” We don’t berate a baby for being “addicted” to its mother’s breast. We slowly and inexorably wean the baby from the breast when appropriate.

Take “attachment,” e.g.; who amongst us is not attached to something or other – a person, a place, a job, a food, a movie, a concept or doctrine, a whatever. Well, I would surmise that the road from attachment to addiction is a straight line and with all of us looking for ways to alleviate the sometimes unbearable stress that punctuates our lives, the diversions and delusions and Dunkin Donuts that we often turn to for short-term stress relief put all of us at risk for truly addictive behaviors.

So it may be with any addiction as we strive to be better instruments and slowly approach the condition of “surrender.”
And we do not do this out of obligation or out of something similar to adherence to religious doctrine. We do it because:

1) Our true, ultimate happiness depends on it, and
2) It is win/win in the clearest and purest sense of the term whereby we, our loved ones and the planet as a whole become better as we individually become better.

That is the genius of the serenity prayer of 12-Steps: “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

When push comes to shove, the thing I have the potential to change the most is myself. So why not throw our energy where it does the most good?
“Simple, but not easy,” is how the big book of alcoholics anonymous describes the 12-Steps. One might use a similar description to describe Homatherapy.

It is pretty simple when you think about it. A little bit of ghee, little bit of cow dung, make sure your watch is correct, add the rice/ghee mixture, do the mantra and there you go. Sounds a bit like, “a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down,” huh?
I remember being rather stunned in 1975 when I first learned Agnihotra from Ross Ford while he coordinated an intense group Psychotherapy session in Baltimore.

“You mean to say that if I light a fire in a copper pyramid each sunrise and sunset simply using 3 specific ingredients, and saying a short mantra once, that I will feel what I felt each time I experienced Agnihotra with Ross?” I wondered.

I learned repeatedly that that was indeed the case. to this day, nearly 33 years later, I am still not only stunned by it, but so, so, grateful.

So as we trudge along approaching the second decade of this new century and find ourselves individually and globally at risk of so many negative forces it is unnecessary to list them, we have the choice to:

1) Choose to deny
2) Stick our heads in the sand, or
3) Be a part of the solution.

The first two choices are those that addicts often make before entering into recovery. Choice #3 may be the best.