Using the 3 A's of Al-Anon in Soul Recovery: Awareness, Acceptance and Action

Inspired by the 3 A's in Al-Anon: Awareness, Acceptance and Action, I am sharing these empowering tools through the lens of Soul Recovery.  Bridging the realms of spiritual wisdom and real-world challenges, this conversation serves as a comforting embrace for those wrestling with codependency, shadows of addiction, or anyone seeking a guiding light toward wholeness. Explore the profound synergy between transformative tools and Buddhist teachings, discovering their remarkable power to lead us to peace and fulfillment. Lean into the art of mindfulness, courage in acceptance, and the wisdom of the seven factors of awakening, drawing inspiration from my personal life. This episode is your call to action, inviting you to awaken through awareness, bravely face reality, and embark on a transformative journey of Soul Recovery.

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This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not allied or representative of any organizations or religions, but is based on the opinions and experience of Rev. Rachel Harrison. The host claims no responsibility to any person or entity for any liability, loss, or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly as a result of the use, application, or interpretation of the information presented herein. Take what you need and leave the rest.

Transcript

Rev Rachel Harrison: 0:47

Today's episode is around the three as awareness, acceptance, action. These are empowering tools and in a previous episode we talked about the three C's. We didn't cause it, we can't control it, we can't cure it. That's about letting go. And here we are now in our sole recovery journey, learning how we personally can show up. What is the work that we need to do within ourselves to have a happy, healthy life following a spiritual path, and these three tools are profound ways to move through anything. Enjoy the episode.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 1:23

Welcome to the Recover your Soul podcast a spiritual path to a happy and healthy life. My name is Reverend Rachel Harrison. I started Recover your Soul after having profound changes in my life from my recovery of alcoholism, codependency and control addiction. I was guided to share the tools and principles of spirituality and soul recovery to help others transform their lives, as mine was transformed. For us to overcome external circumstances, we need to turn the attention to ourselves, focusing on our interchange and healing. Positive results in our lives will follow. Welcome to the Recover your Soul podcast. I'm Rev Rachel and if you're here for the first time, or maybe you've just heard a couple episodes and you're trying to see if this podcast, this community, fits with you welcome. I hope it does. I hope that my stories resonate with you and inspire you of your life. Maybe there's some things that are in common that's what I hear and through that we're learning how to use soul recovery. We're learning to turn the attention to ourselves and to find inner peace and happiness, regardless of what's happening around us and our lives. So many people walk through the door to this podcast through codependence or addiction or alinone, but my hope is that once you've walked through the door, what you really find is that you're walking into a door to yourself, to finding yourself, remembering your wholeness, remembering who you are and how you can use these spiritual tools and concepts to reground and to be okay, even when the people and the world around you doesn't feel okay. And if you're coming back on a regular basis to listen to the teachings and these episodes, I am so grateful to have you in this community. I take it so just with such honor that you are choosing to spend your time with me. So thank you. Thank you for being here. I appreciate each and every one of you For this episode.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 3:30

I'm inspired by the three as and this came because in an earlier episode I did the three C's of alinone, which is I didn't cause it, I can't control it and I can't cure it, and that's one of the most popular episodes of any of the episodes I've done, along with detachment, and somebody had said have you ever thought about doing the three as Well? The three as isn't actually alinone. It's only listed one time in Hope for Today, on page 97, as just a quick mention, and then it's been grabbed because it's such a fabulous tool to use and it's a model that's been used in coaching, in mindset, in psychology the AAM model Awareness, acceptance, action Model, also known as Universal Growth Principle. And so I wanted to talk about this from the Soul Recovery perspective because, as I've looked more into it, it really is kind of the description of Soul Recovery in general, that we're learning to have awareness around it, we're learning to accept it, and then what are we going to do about it? Now, the other thing that happened in terms of looking at these principles and my spiritual practices is I saw that they aligned with some Buddhist principles, so I thought that'd be interesting to draw in as well. Now let's just go into awareness from the Soul Recovery perspective.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 4:57

When we're in the middle of it, when you are tolling the thick of it and sometimes I've described it as the being in a sandstorm, right that you can't see anything around you. You are just swirling and you can barely see right in front of you. You have no idea what is just right outside and all we can do and feel is what is in our body and in our teeny, tiny perception and perspective right at that moment. And what we often are dealing with is old patterns, old ways of being that is surrounded by our pain, our way of dealing with things, from our woundedness or from our defensive posturing. We're in it and so we don't have awareness. We're in the midst of the storm and the first step in growth and spirituality and getting out of anything is to be aware of it.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 6:00

In Buddhist practice it's called mindfulness, and I heard a lecture around the concept of mindfulness in the context. That it's interesting because it can be elusive to what that means, because in Buddhism what we're learning is we're learning to not be attached. And I'm not teaching Buddhism, I'm reflecting from Buddhism as a one of many spiritual tools that is important to me in my life. But when we look at the suffering that we feel when we are attached, when we're grasping to things being a certain way or being fixed or rigid. This concept of mindfulness is not about having any attachment, it's just seeing it. This is the same as awareness, which is to work on this place where we're letting go of judgment. We're not trying to say this is good, this is bad, this is right, this is wrong. We're just saying can I actually see it for what it is? Can I have awareness of the truth of what it is, in perspective that is not clouded by all of my ways of feeling or being upset about or having expectations? Can I just see it for what it is? Can I have awareness around it? And the first step in this is also around letting go of denial, because when we're in denial, that's a cover for our pain and we're denying that something actually exists. Oh, they're not that bad. It's not that bad. This situation isn't that bad. I know that he yells at me and says these kinds of things to me, but it's not that bad.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 7:47

When we step into mindfulness and awareness, what we're starting to say is can you see it? Can you recognize not only how people are treating you and what the outside world actually is, but can you see yourself, your peace in it? Can you begin to have awareness of how you're showing up? What is your part? Are there places of yourself that you don't want to look at, that you don't want to admit to that, you don't want to see that, you don't want to be willing to recognize that's awareness. So, again, we're not judging, you're just saying okay, I can actually see that the way that I show up in this situation isn't beneficial to anyone. It isn't helpful to anyone.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 8:37

I know in my life you know my story if you've been listening to this podcast is that I couldn't really see that my bossiness or my know-it-allness or the fact that I always had to have an opinion that that was hurting the people around me, that it wasn't benefiting the situations around me, and so the first step I had to have was to be aware those existed, to be aware that my behaviors were actually part of the dysfunction I spent so much of all those years where I was so dissatisfied and unhappy, pointing the finger outward and saying you are the problem, you do this. I don't like this about you. I don't like this about this situation. I want this to be different. Well, the awareness that came to it was I am part of that. I'm participating in this cycle to really be aware that some of the behaviors that I saw Rich having around his upset with Alex, I was doing the exact same behavior in my upset with Rich literally the exact same behavior, and until I could see it I couldn't do anything about it. You need to see it first, you need to be aware of it, and the mindfulness in Buddhism is just being present with what is in this moment and not getting too caught outside too far. Can you just be right here? Can you have the awareness of this moment without a whole bunch of past and future attached to it?

Rev Rachel Harrison: 10:22

If you're ready for soul recovery, as a spiritual coach I can support your healing to help make real changes that will bring you a life of peace, happiness, connection and abundance. You can also work in smaller groups by taking a deep dive in a Zoom workshop or with me in person at a retreat or an event. Join others on the Soul Recovery Path, once a month for the free Zoom support group or daily on the private Facebook page. Visit the website RecoveryyourSoulnet to book coaching sessions with me or find all the information you need about soul recovery dates that are coming up and how to register for those groups and workshops. To support the podcast and the community, check the links in the show notes to make a small monthly donation or a one-time donation of your choice. That will make a huge impact to support this community and the Soul Recovery mission. Together we can do the work that will recover your soul.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 11:20

The next is acceptance, and acceptance, again I've talked about so many times in soul recovery is a part where you don't have to like it, but you see it and it's interesting. When I was doing this research on this podcast, it came into the seven factors of awakening from Buddhism and I am always so interested. I'm like, oh, what are the seven factors? Because I didn't know what they were before. I went and looked at them and their mindfulness, investigation, energy, joy, relaxation or tranquility, concentration and equanimity. The first three of these mindfulness, investigation and energy are awareness, acceptance and action. They actually are the same three. So it's fascinating that awareness is mindfulness and then acceptance is investigation. So in acceptance, what we're doing is we're being willing to see it, to see what the nature of the reality is. I love this concept of using investigation around it, because investigation means that you have curiosity, it means that you wonder what is happening here, not processing from. I need to know why or how this happened so that I can make something change. But if we can see it, then we can start to have curiosity around it and this investigation allows us to accept it for whatever it is.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 12:59

When I needed to accept the fact that I was part of the problem in terms of our dysfunctional family, because I was headstrong, nitpicky, self-righteous and thought that I knew better in a lot of ways and that I was always meddling, I was always meddling into every single thing that was happening. What was the conversation that you had with the kids? What are you guys going to do today? Did you bring all these things? Why are you talking like that? Why are you two fighting? I just was involved in every single aspect of what was going on. Now, to accept it means to see that that's what I was doing, to not pretend like that was something different, but to actually accept that that was not healthy for me or for them.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 13:52

When you're looking at somebody else and we're having this acceptance, sometimes we're having to accept their behaviors for exactly what they are and not wanting to do anything about it, just to see it, just to recognize that it's true. But in this situation we're talking about awareness, acceptance and action for ourselves. So once I could accept that I was actually a major part of the triangle that continued to keep us unhealthy and I was open and ready to do something about it. That's where the action is. We need to be able to move forward and to come out of the place where we're whipping the story that says here's what the problem is, here's what the problem is, here's what the problem is, here's what the problem is, and move into. If I can't be part of the solution, there is no problem. I have to be part of the solution, and what I love about what it says in the Seven Factors of Awakening is energy. Energy is determination and effort, and that's what action is that. You have to put energy into it. You have to be willing to do the work.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 15:05

Now, in Soul Recovery, what we're learning is that we were putting a whole bunch of energy into fixing and doing for somebody else. That the energy, the action, was man. If you could get better, if Rich could get better, if the kids could get better, if somebody could do something different, then this would all be better. So the action was around making somebody else have the action. Well, here we are and we are turning the attention to ourself, and the concept of awakening in the spiritual world is that you're not awakening somebody else, you're awakening yourself. This is your soul's journey, this is your path to your fullness, expanding your consciousness. And so the determination and the effort isn't around somebody else, it's coming back to yourself and being willing to take action and to do the work in your own life for your benefit.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 16:06

So the action that I took in this example was to start to look more honestly at every interaction that I was having and to accept and be honest about what those interactions were and where they were healthy and not healthy. And then I started to actually do this soul recovery journey. The steps I worked the steps of AA 12 step, al-anon 12 step and then I began to create and apply those steps in addition to everything that I was learning, all the places that I was gathering, all the spiritual information and move them into the nine steps of soul recovery. And working those steps. That's action To not just have it be in your head and to know the principles, but to live and to really embody the work, because once we embody it and we have this action, then we start moving into the next levels of the seven factors of awakening. The next ones are joy.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 17:13

So when you do the work, when you start to take these actions, these steps to healing yourself, bettering yourself, letting go of the past, moving through our woundedness and standing in our hero self, changing how we see it, we start to experience lightness. Joy sometimes in spirituality is called bliss this concept that our hearts are lightened and then from that moves into relaxation and tranquility, that our body, our mind, our soul feel a softness, a lightness that is calm, that's at ease, that's contented. And then the next one is concentration, having a calm, one-pointed state of mind, and that point is on wholeness and love and healing and light, moving in the direction of love instead of moving in the direction of fear. And we're concentrating on what brings us to our best self, only what brings us to our best self, leaving behind the suffering, leaving behind the grievance, leaving behind guilt, leaving behind this part that says you're to blame or has judgment. We're moving into a place where we're seeing exclusively, as much as we can, light and love. And then the last one is equanimity, which is accepting reality as it is, without any charge or aversion to it. I feel like the more than I do the deep work, the meditation, the journaling, the really connecting on this soul level with these teachings, the more that I feel that I can accept reality for what it is.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 19:11

And I have a friend who recently went on a trip with her mom and she said she's a minister as well. And she said that the person who was pushing her mother's wheelchair they were just chatting it up and having a conversation and the guy said you know what do you do? And she said I'm a spiritual teacher and a minister, and she's a minister in the same school that I went to. And so he started asking her questions about why is there evil? Why do people do evil things? If there's God, then why do bad things happen?

Rev Rachel Harrison: 19:46

These are big questions and these big questions come around because we wish that it wasn't so difficult. We wish that it wasn't so hard. Why do children have to get sick? Why is there war? Why is there cancer? Why do people harm each other? These are real questions. Why does somebody have an addiction? Why can't they get well? Why can't I let go of the pain that I feel, and what I loved is that she was able to answer him in a way that I would have answered as well. And again, I just want to say, in terms of spirituality, I want you to take what works for you and leave the rest.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 20:28

But for me, my belief system is that we were given free will and that these choices that we make to struggle with, to truly struggle with the humanness, with our ego part that has this level of attachment to wanting to know and understand and have certainty, and the part of us that wants control and wants power, that is the harm, that is the pain, that is the evil. And I don't know why children get sick, because our bodies aren't always well, and I don't know why people get cancer when it seems like maybe they would have done all the right things. But when we're constantly asking for some answer, we're letting go of the awareness and the acceptance and the action. We're trying to push past those. Instead of saying I have awareness of this situation, I truly am looking at it and having right view. This is another concept actually in Buddhism.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 21:39

Right view that says if you first just choose to see it for what it is and to know that there is old age, sickness and suffering and death, that these are qualities of being a human being and that then you accept that and you see it. You don't have to like it, you don't have to think that this is wonderful, but you stop trying to pretend like it's something else. Then you can move into the action steps of using your spiritual program, using the tools of awareness and connection with higher power and prayer and meditation to be in whatever that situation is from your truest, highest self, that that action isn't about changing them. It's about connecting more deeply with you, to be present with whatever it is from that higher place. So now, instead of thinking that it's my job to go into my family and fix and change and do and nitpick and all the things that I used to do, now, if I see that there's a problem in my opinion, if whatever problem is, something's up, I just look at it, I'm just aware of it, I accept it for whatever it is.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 23:02

And then the action step is what is mine to do? What is mine to do here? And sometimes it's just to be present with my own feelings of discomfort. Sometimes it is to actually step in with a kind or important observation, without attachment. We have so many less of them nowadays that it's almost hard sometimes to even pull some examples up. But I'm showing up in my family in a profoundly different way and my family is profoundly changed. I'm not trying to change them anymore. I want to be at peace, I want to feel good about myself. I wanna be able to use these tools so that I can handle and be in whatever's happening in my life and be okay with it, even if it's hard.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 23:59

Some of you know my dad just went through cancer. He still has cancer, it's just less, and he is gonna age and do whatever it is that he does and it doesn't look like what I probably would have liked for it to look like or for him to do. But I'm gonna have these tools to be aware of what's happening, to accept what's happening and then to have the action steps that will benefit me and through that will be the most benefit to him and everything that you look around. You can just see these three steps and say how can I participate in my life in a way that is kind, that is courageous, that is real, that benefits my mental, spiritual, emotional health, that I wanna be the most sane, healthy, happy person and I wanna be connected to my higher power and I don't need to fix or change or do for anyone else. The action steps are not to fix them. It is to accept and to be aware of and to take the action in our own lives. For us, just a reminder that I'm here as your spiritual coach to work through any situations that might be happening in your life or to guide you through the nine steps when you're ready.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 25:24

Until next time, namaste, thank you for listening to the Recovery Soul podcast and if you loved what you heard here, every Friday we have a bonus episode and you can access this by becoming a subscriber through Apple Podcasts for only $3.99 a month, or become a Patreon member and on this platform you can choose $5, $15 or $25 a month to show what you want to support the show with. On both of these subscriber platforms is an entire catalog of back episodes intended to inspire and support you on your soul recovery journey. I really want to invite everybody to attend the free once a month, every first Monday of the month support group. This is on Zoom. Everyone is welcome to attend and by giving a like or a review and sharing this with your friends and family really helps us to share the soul recovery message with even more people.

Rev Rachel Harrison: 26:22

We are on social media. We are on all the platforms. I am on TikTok. You can listen to guided meditations by Rev Rachel Harrison on Insight Timer. Thank you for supporting the show. Thank you for being part of the community. To find out more about soul recovery and everything that's being offered, visit the website wwwrecoveryoursoulnet. Together, we can do the work that will recover your soul.