Got It? Gonna Lose It. Don't Got It? Not Gonna Get It.

This is one of my favorite passages from the literature:  " . . . primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded (Ed. Note: Demanded, not wanted.).  Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration (Ed. Note: Continual disturbance and frustration.).  Therefore no peace was to be had unless we could find a means of reducing these demands.  The difference between a demand and a simple request is plain to anyone."

If I got it I'm afraid I'm gonna lose it and if I don't got it I'm afraid I'm not gonna get it.  Yowser!  That's a wicked knife edge of misery.  It reminds me of the end of my drinking where I needed to drink enough to get relief but then I'd always continue until I was so drunk and so high that the complications of being so out  of control became more of a problem than the temporary, vanishing release the alcohol and drugs gave me.

There's a contingent of birds that are in the garden area outside my office window that start their chatter as it begins to get light.  They repeat a sound rapidly that sounds exactly like "chirp."  I like the noise.  It's life.  They're doing the only things important to them: finding food and not getting eaten.  I like the fact that they're going to shit out some undigested seeds so a plant can take root somewhere else.  I like to toss out seeds from my fruits and vegetables - just toss them on the earth and see what happens.  I ate some small cantaloupes last year that grew out of nowhere and there are always scraggly tomato plants popping up here and there.  Nature!

Quiet Time Interruptions:

Politics, politics, and more politics.  I have a friend who's going to be on a vacation with some inlaws who are on the opposite side of the political spectrum and I think I feel worse about his prospects than the does.  He helps me remember that St. Francis asks us to "understand rather than be understood."  He's always quick to point out the kindness and generosity of people that make MY blood boil - not boil, exactly, kind of get hot - and I'm not going to be within three thousand miles of them.  This is always a great lesson for me and one I forget all the time.  Politics is confrontational and vexing and in your face.  I'm not going to read the paper today.  The state of politics in my world is demanding.

I've been listening to a genre of music called Stoner Rock or Heavy Psych Rock or something else like that because I still prefer heavy metal to anything else.  There's a song called "Innerspeaker" by the band Kosmodrom that has a riff I can't get out of my head.  Music is demanding.

I had intrusive thoughts about a show SuperK and I are watching while I was meditating.  Not bad thoughts, just intrusive thoughts.  Video is demanding. 

The feeling that I'm not doing enough.  Thinking about what I have to do today.  Wondering if I can get it all done.  Vaguely uneasy because I'm in the future and not in the present.

More Quiet Time Pop-Ins

"More than the profound concentration of many meditation practices, therapy has the quality  of investigation and discovery.  In an unfortunate way, many students of Eastern and Western spirituality have been led to believe that if they experience difficulties, it is simply because they haven't practiced long enough or somehow have not been practicing according to the teachings.   We may have been taught that experiences we have at the 'spiritual' level in meditation, as if by magic, will have power to transform all the other levels of our being.  In truth, the need to deal with our personal emotional problems is more the rule in spiritual practice than the exception.  Without dealing with these issues, we will not be able to concentrate during meditation, or we will find ourselves unable to bring what we have learned in meditation into our interaction with others."

Jack Kornfield

If you break your leg go to the hospital.  Don't pray for acceptance.

Here's Doctor Bob: "So long as I'm thinking as I'm thinking now, and so long as I'm doing the things I'm doing now, I don't believe I'll ever take another drink."  While I realize I need to keep doing today what I've been doing I have no trouble believing that I'll never have to drink again.  One day at a time, for sure, but with a long-term goal in mind.

Here's some Quiet Time pop-ins:

There's a guy at my fitness club that I really can't stand.  He's a big, loud, super-confident bald guy who shouts out his opinions - many of them fatuous - while holding court - holding people hostage is a better way to put it - often after eavesdropping on someone else's conversation.  He's such an idiot that I have trouble with the "restraint of tongue" concept.  Yesterday he informed everyone that exercise only really helps you feel good while you're exercising and won't make any difference in your health long term.  I leaned over to the guys he was haranguing and quipped: "Well, that's the best rationale for using heroin today that I've ever heard."

I stopped in to see a good friend yesterday who never really came back to meetings after the pandemic ended.  His company was starting to make me feel a little uncomfortable.  A lot of the time when someone starts slacking on their recovery I get this sense of an individual who is stuck and no longer growing, of a lack of any forward progress.  I walked into his store and he was clearly very excited to see me which actually didn't make me feel great initially.  I haven't been "seeking to comfort rather than be comforted."  I have been more concerned with my own personal comfort than the comfort of a good friend.   He just bought a vacation home in a small Mexican town and gave me the scoop about the local A.A. club in great detail.  Who knows what causes us to change direction? 

So many of us in America are uncomfotable with the direction our country is taking.  On the left, on the right, in between, in our opinions we seem lost and it came be frightening and disconcerting.

It's all going to go.  All of it.  The stuff, the people, you, it's all going to go.  So what are you hanging on to today?  Whatever it is I can guarantee you that it's temporary.

There is absolutely nothing more important than being in the moment.  I've said it many times before and I'll say it many more times because I need to keep reinforcing it in my mind.

Resentments, Et Al

Resentment:  A complex, multilayered emotion that is a mixture of disappointment, disgust, and anger, especially when you feel someone or something is being unfair.

One of the problems with lying as much as I do is that it makes it a lot harder to tell the truth and have anyone believe you but here goes anyway: one of the big advantages of staying sober for a long time and working a complex, mulitilayered spiritual program is that my resentment level is way, way down and my resentment list is much, much shorter.  So many things that used to trigger resentments I let slide today so that I almost walk on water in my complex, multilayered spiritual state.

And then . . . 

I mentioned being called on the carpet as a donut rule breaker and how this triggered a little flash of annoyance.  I pay a hefty chunk of money monthly on site rent and don't use any of the facilities in the complex which - to my thinking - entitles me to a fucking donut every couple of weeks, despite the rule - the new rule - which states that if I want a donut I have to eat the donut in the clubhouse.  The fact that it's a dumb rule isn't the point.  SuperK likes to point out the too frequent instances where I "think I'm special that the rules - if dumb - don't apply to me."  If something is dumb I don't like to do it.  I'd like to be exempt from the rule, to be an exception.

 

When I got home after the donut shaming I used my wife as a venting board to detail some possible twisted schemes and proposals.  In my defense I wasn't really mad and no real resentment developed and I never seriously considered doing any of these things but the fact they popped into my mind so quickly and effortlessly points to some still lingering character flaws, calling into question exactly how far I could walk on the hypothetical water.

My first thought was to open the clubhouse door and put one foot outside, one foot inside, and eat the donut in that position, arguing what constitutes being "in" the clubhouse legally.  I then imagined taking my donut and strolling slowly, menacingly out to the furthest reach of the clubhouse grounds - not physically in the clubhouse but pretty close to the clubhouse - and eat the donut there, strategically positioning myself where everyone could see me bending the rules to the breaking point, asking them to prove in a court of law what the "clubhouse" was, exactly.  Would I be technically following the rule or still in breach of contract? At my most sinister I could take my donut, sit down at one of the tables, in full compliance of the rules, nibble the tiniest corner off the donut, then throw the rest of it away, slowly and in full view of whoever put up that sign.

These are not the thoughts of an individual free from all resentments.

Popping Into My Mind

One of the primal lessons in/of meditation is to stay in the moment, to look at whatever pops into my mind while I'm trying to quiet my mind and my mind refuses to quiet down, to look with curiosity and openness, not trying to control the thoughts or direct them or suppress them, to just say: "Huh.  I just thought about Ohio State football recruiting" and then redirecting my attention to my breath.

So in my Quiet Time this morning I was pretty quiet but my mind did interfere from time to time, the incessant bastard.

Here's a playlist:

Yesterday I contacted a friend with whom I had spent a great deal of time when I was using.  Not an alcoholic, just a guy I partied with.  I have learned over the years that he's an old friend but not a close friend.  I don't contact him often and he never contacts me and this used to irk me.  The interaction was pleasant and funny but it played out like it always does.  I won't contact him again for a long time and I'm saying that with no ill will or resentment but with an understanding of who I am and who he is and what kind of interaction that this always, always leads to.

Being pulled by a young man back toward the boat when I was struggling in a strong current while snorkeling in the Maldives.  I wasn't in any danger of drowning but I was struggling against a current that was more powerful than I realized in a body that is weaker than it used to be.  This reminiscence produces a mild, vague unease in my mind.  It was one of those reminders that my body is slowly deteriorating and that that's okay.   Keep moving but don't decide to do some cliff diving in Baja Califoria.  It's enough with the cliff diving already.

A friend who lives in the Northeast that falls into that blessed, blessed category of dear, old friend that I don't ever see or talk to.  And then back to my buddy who taught me that a good friend doesn't have to be someone with a constant physical presence in my life.  One of those lessons that really changed how I view friendship and all of my relationships.  It helps me hold people dear to me in my heart without expectations and preconditions.   It definitely helped me process my perception of the essential shallowness of the first friend I discussed at the start of the post.

Taking a solo trip through the Northeast to see people I know who are scattered through that region.

Taking a trip back to sincity.  Who I would see and what I would do.  I think there are a lot of people who would expect to see me but wouldn't.  I think there are a lot of things I would do on my own.  I think I'd see people that I want to see for reasons unique to me and not because I would/should be expected to see them.  Incredibly freeing this thinking is!  I'm surprised at how some relationships have lapsed and some have grown.  Ten years ago I would have pondered a trip where I would have spent a lot more time doing what I thought I should do and not what I want to do.  Does this sound selfish?  Hmmmm.  Maybe it's just wise.  It takes two to maintain a healthy, strong relationship and if one person isn't putting in the effort maybe it's time to move on, or at least move forward on a different path.

How important/comforting it is to be Me.  I've written about this at length so I won't drone on and on about it today, not because I care if you're bored, dear reader, but because I'M bored with the topic.  Be you today.  Let it rip.  Be nice but be you.  I got a haircut yesterday where I cut off my pony tail and I look like a Marine now - high and tight - and if I spike up the little hair on the top  of my head I look like a huge Q-Tip.  It doesn't look particularly attractive but it's going to grow back and what the fuck do I care what you think, anyway?

SuperK and I had a talk with our health insurance broker yesterday where the topic was our health  insurance.  Get it?  We were both a little nervous because it involves money and our health - get it? - but it went fine and everything's fine and we're both content and un-anxious because we were able to click off a thing that we needed to do but that made us nervous.  Everything isn't going to be easy all the time.  Today the broker told us that she wished ALL of her clients did this on a yearly basis.

The state of our country and how this is affecting the little bit of money I have saved.  And how little control I have over any of this.  And how I'm managing to stay involved in the political/communal discourse but not buying into the fury and rage and pigheadedness of some/many of my fellow citizens.  We had the angst of the Great Depression and Gilded Age, and we worried Communists were everywhere with nuclear bombs hidden in their underwear, and then the hippies and free-love Socialists were going to ruin the moral fabric of our country and then . . . and then . . . and then . . .  So if I want to worry I'm going to worry and my worrying is going to change precisely nothing.

How much money I have and how much money I need and how much money I want and how happy does the money make me?  I have enough to eat and a warm, dry, safe place to sleep tonight and that's more than a lot of people have.

I didn't dwell on these thoughts.  They popped in my noggin, I took a look at them, and I tried to refocus on my breath, to be in the moment, to be present.  But the fact that I was able to write about them at such length and in such detail shows how important they are to me and how worthy of great attention when the time is right.

Be Afraid!

 Fear.  This short word somehow touches every aspect of our lives.  It was an evil and corroding thread.  The fabric of our existence was shot through with it.  It set in motion trains of circumstances which brought us misfortune we felt we didn’t deserve.  A soul sickness.

Can we steadfastly content ourselves with the humbler, yet sometimes more durable, satisfactions when the brighter, more glittering achievements are denied us?

There was a one hit pop-rock that went by the name Gary Glitter. That's a good name. Unfortunately, Gary is also a convicted child pornograher. So there's that. His big hit was Rock and Roll Part One. There were no lyrics. This is a glittering thing?

The spiritual life is not a theory - we have to live it.

Here's the deal as I see it: I don't know shit. I think I know a lot - I think I know everything - but I basically know fuck-all. I'm so much wiser and so much more experienced than when I got sober but I'm still an idiot about half the time. I realize today that - metaphorically speaking - I need to just stay in my own lane and drive the speed limit. If you want to go slow or speed or change lanes constantly it's really none of my business. I have a better day when I sit in the backyard and watch the monarch butterflies flit around my melon head. The monarchs have a better idea what's going on than I do. If you're confused about something you'd be better off talking to a monarch. Monarch butterflies travel from Canada to Mexico - a distance of 3,000 miles - using an internal GPS to go somewhere they've never been before. So why would you ask me something when you could tap the brain of this creature? Do what seems best for you today and God Speed, little doodle.

Painful Pain

 

His drunkenness and dissolution are not penalties inflicted by people in authority; they result from his personal disobedience to spiritual principles.

I repeat the Hot Stove Story: mom tells child not to touch hot stove; child, defiant, touches hot stove; child gets burned by hot stove; child is pissed at mom. This is my behavior pre-Alcoholics Anonymous. I blamed the universe for my problems and not my behavior. The stove isn't evil. It's a stove and it's hot. Mom isn't evil - usually, anyhow - but the inherent, immanent, indwelling properties of hot metal meeting human skin will not be denied. The result is predetermined, preordanied, so . . . maybe stop touching the hot metal.

Great suffering and great love are A.A.’s disciplinarians; we need no others.

Someone who knew what he was talking about once remarked that pain is the touchstone of all spiritual progress.

Touchstone: A stone used to identify precious metals (an assaying tool).

Touchstone: A means of assaying relative merits of a concept.

I still don't know what a touchstone is.

We had ceased fighting anything and anyone - even alcohol.

We have been talking about problems because we are problem people who have found a way up and out, and who wish to share our knowledge of that way with all who can use it.

Inventory and the Fifth Step and Instincts Gone Astray

Rampage:  Rush around in a violent and uncontrollable manner; a state of violent anger or agitation.

Balk:  Hesitate or be unwilling to accept an idea or undertaking. 

Instincts on rampage balk at investigation.

Ceaselessly: Continuously and without end.

These fears are the termites that ceaselessly devour the foundation of whatever sort of life we try to build. . . .

I had a friend in sincity who loved the use of the wood-devouring insect termite as a metaphor - or is it a simile? - for his mind. I'd catch him on the phone and inquire after his mental health. Sometimes he'd just say: "Termites" and we'd both laugh at the image of a horde of negative thoughts eating away at his serenity. Unseen, unbidden, destroying from within without leaving any visible signs of destructions.

We should be sensible, tactful, considerate, and humble without being servile or scraping.  As God’s people we stand on our feet; we don’t crawl before anyone.

We spend a great deal of time trying to reinforce the idea that we need to make amends; that we need to make amends without any qualifiers, with no "buts;" and that the reaction of the amendee is none of our business. We are sweeping our side of the street. Many if not most of the amendees have our best interests at heart and are thrilled to hear that we're trying to get some help while remaining understandably suspicious. We've said we're sorry and that we won't do it again so many times and then promptly doing it again that most other people are a tad wary of our lying bullshit. That being said the sincere apology for past behavior is the amend. We may need to apologize more than once as we practice being actually sincere and to assure the amendee that we are indeed sincere but then it's enough already. We don't beg for forgiveness. We don't apologize forever. We don't listen to an airing of the grievances over and over and over. We are no longer pieces of garbage living in the garbage dump. We're fuck-ups, sure, but we're trying to fuck up with less frequency so having another person - to whom we've apologized - rehash our behavior forever is not going to cut it. We're looking forward with optimism and confidence and listening to someone detail our mistakes repeatedly is a hindrance and not a help.