Tuesday

Heart of Recovery at the Montreal Shambhala Center

By Laurence Corman

When I attended my first AA meeting, I was left a little bewildered when I was told that I did not have an alcohol problem because, despite my daily drinking, I was not experiencing blackouts and was able to enjoy healthy family relationships and have a successful career.

I wasn’t convinced…

Knowing that AA has helped millions of addicts’ cope, I still longed for a different approach that would resonate with my ongoing personal experience while integrating my meditation practice and dharma studies.

A meditator for over 15 years, I had come to understand that my addiction issues are rooted in the exact same place as my crippling anxiety: my mind. And I had also come to understand that on some level, we are all addicts – addicted to our thoughts. I really wanted to be able to find a way to discuss addiction openly, without labels, in all its forms, with an inviting, curious approach.

So, when CJ reached out to ask our centre if we hosted Shambhala’s HEART OF RECOVERY (HOR) program, I jumped at the opportunity to establish bilingual sessions for our Montreal sangha (the first internationally to be offered in French) and asked for his help.

CJ was also searching for a recovery program that would be a better fit than the 12-Step group for sex addiction he had joined a year prior. Describing himself as a “recovering Catholic,” he had benefited greatly from his current program but still didn’t feel comfortable with its concept of a Higher Power rooted in Judeo-Christian thought. Hungry for something else, he had chanced upon Kevin Griffin’s One Breath at a Time: Buddhism and the Twelve Steps and felt it resonate with his budding meditation practice and dharma reading.

CJ and I enlisted the help of John Rancor, who runs the HOR program in Boston, and quickly started translating the relevant texts in preparation for our first session in January 2023. We also prepared and translated quotes from several books we were going to use for our sessions – including Griffin’s One Breath at a Time, the Sakyong’s Turning the Mind into an Ally, Gabor Maté’s In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, and Eric Rainbeau’s Basic Sobriety.

Held every Thursday evening, we welcome people from all faith traditions and recovery programs, as well as first-time meditators through experienced dharma practitioners. Over the last few months, we’ve gathered a solid base of participants. Along with deepening our meditation practice together, we have created a safe, confidential, open environment for exchanging our personal experiences with addiction.

With great focus on active listening and holding space for our fellows without interference, our sessions have come to resemble social meditation sessions. Together, we experience our individual and collective goodness and create a culture of authenticity and now-ness by bringing our meditative awareness into listening and speaking from our present-moment experience.

When shared in the cradle of loving-kindness, the addictive, dualistic impulses arising from our minds dissolve into the wholeness of our basic goodness, fueling our courage and strength to continue to explore what it means to be human.

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To learn more about the in-person, bilingual Heart of Recovery Group at the Montreal Shambhala Centre please click here.

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