Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our
lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
Koan: You are being chased by a
tiger. Coming to a cliff, you grab the
root of a wild vine and swing yourself over the edge. The tiger you were
fleeing from is sniffing at you from above; at the bottom of the cliff is
another tiger waiting to eat you. Only
the vine sustains you.
Two mice, one white and one
black, little by little start to gnaw away the vine. Nearby you see a luscious-looking
strawberry. Holding tightly to the vine
with one hand, you pluck the strawberry with your other hand and pop it in your
mouth. How sweet it tastes.
My sponsor once said to me, “I’m not in charge of what you
say; but I am in charge of what I hear.”
So went our evening on Friday with people hearing this story in
different ways. I love it how koans do
this.
Beginning with our experiences with Step One, we found
ourselves being chased by a tiger of a different form: By our disease. Our conscience. Or by something we made
up…the stories we tell ourselves, or being stalked by "a hundred kinds of" fear.
Having to make a decision has, in the past, brought on fear
in me. If I make this decision this will
happen. If I make that decision that
will happen. This is where the koan took
me, a tiger of fear of making a decision was
in the chase. With sobriety comes the
ability to make Step Three decisions more promptly – it can almost become a
default mode: grab the nearest vine and jump; grab Step Three
and jump. It’s in the jumping where
we are totally at the whim of the Universe.
“Only the vine sustains you.”
Only Step Three sustains you. It’s in Step Three where we learn to trust
our Higher Power; that when our decision is aligned with what is right living
(God’s will), we can be at ease.
And the tiger down below, “waiting to eat me?” Can we be sure about that? If the chasing tiger can take on many forms,
so can the tiger below. Maybe it’s Tony
the Tiger. We really don’t know since
that part of the story has not unfolded yet.
As another person said, the chasing tiger is our past, the tiger down
below is the future.
The two mice – black or white, good or bad, the way we
usually see things (duality)…and then, of course, carry these thoughts into the
future, usually to bad outcomes. But it
says one white mouse and one black
mouse. Either one or both could play a
part in my future; but right now, they’re just gnawing. Lots of things in our
life are being gnawed on, aren’t they?
Another person solved her anxiety of gnawing mice and decided her “vine”
was really thick and no need to be concerned right now.
Strawberry… only this is what’s noticed. No tigers, no mice, no cliff, no past, no
future…just a luscious, ruby-red strawberry…in this moment the strawberry is what the Universe has
given to us to partake in. Taking Step
Three has a way of changing our mind’s default mode for the better…no matter
what the “strawberry” in life looks like today. Actually, the whole world is
strawberry. "How sweet it tastes."
Bill K.
