By DAVID DUPONT
BG Independent News
When Pete DeWood got sober 14 years ago this June, he still needed help.
He found that “it was a really difficult thing to find people to connect with in recovery and sobriety in Northwest Ohio. I was always just a little bit different. … There was always a lot of dogmatic things brought in from Midwestern AA.”
A year into sobriety, he started meditating, beginning a path of serious spiritual practice. As he developed this dimension of his life, he and a friend decided to bring recovery and meditation together. They modeled their meetings after 12-step programs. Since they emphasized the 11th step, it is a 11 step program. As expressed by Alcoholics Anonymous that step is: “Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.”
DeWood said as someone who is “staunchly agnostic” the references to the deity didn’t sit well with him, but he clung to the mention of meditation.
The meditation recovery sessions started in Toledo, but when he moved to Bowling Green, where he is practitioner with Empty Cloud Zen, he established them here, first at the Common Good.
Now the sessions are held Sunday at 7 p.m. in the basement of the First Presbyterian Church on Church Street. The meditation recovery sessions last an hour. They begin with five minutes of introduction and restatement of their intention, then followed by 25 minutes of meditation.
DeWood practices Zazen, or seated meditation, but the sessions are open to all forms of meditation, or just silence. The session concludes with 35 minutes of discussion and talk.
The sessions are open to people recovering from all addictions or seeking support for friends or family who are addicted.
He had come to Buddhism through a spiritual search prompted by sobriety. “I was doing deep personal work in recovery. All these things, these mysteries, I was interested in and drawn to my entire life started to make sense to me,” he said.
He did his homework and dipped his toes in various traditions. “I settled with Zen Buddhism because it was really focused on direct experience, not a lot of intellectual, reading.” While there is that element, it is “focused on direct experience, and meditation is our true teacher, our only true teacher.”
His recovery and his spiritual practice are his “true path.”
“Wanting be able to present the spirit of recovery in terms of a very practical direct spiritual practice is something became very important to me,” DeWood said.
The in-person sessions were derailed during the height of the pandemic. They persisted on Zoom, but that became more and more tiresome.
Now there’s new energy as people are back to attending in person. The participation is slowly growing, DeWood said. He has arranged to have the space for a Thursday meeting, but those have yet to start. DeWood hopes that will occur sometime in spring.
He appreciates the church’s openness to hosting the sessions. “The church absolutely fits our needs.”
Participants take part in other area sessions. But given spirituality is such a central tenet “a specific meeting for meditation that is loosely guided is something that really appeals to people from recovery who are drawn to that aspect of the program.”
Those interested in the sessions can contact DeWood by email at: pmdewood@gmail.com
