The Present Moment

Looking back we can create guilt where none should ever exist.  No doubt, everyone has thing sthey  wish they had not done - but in most cases, we did what we could at the moment.  Chances are that if we are spending time in regret, we are not giving ourselves to what we are supposed to be doing at the present time.  We are usually doing the best we can with the tools we have at any current moment.  It may not be the thing we should have done and it may not be what we would do today  but it was the best we could do at the time, and that's not only OK but that's to be expected in our deeply incomplete, often flawed existences.

Bloooowwwwnnnn Away

Every time I find myself in the minority I do well to consider why this is . . . only to find out that why this is shows me that the majority does not consider my idea to be the best idea.  Still floors me.  Flummoxed.  Blindsided.  Blown away blowwwwwwnnnnn away . . .  I hold the minority position which means - by definition - that more people disagree with me than agree with me.  More people think that some other idea is the best idea so my idea - by default - is a somewhat worse idea.

This is no longer humiliating but it can sure by humbling.

Recently I've heard these tired and well-worn reasons given as to why meeting attendance and diligent cultivation of a spiritual life has ebbed somewhat: new jobs; new jobs for spouses; and travel for work.  One new woman introduced herself to a favorite musician at a record store and immediately swooned into a fantasy where she was dumping her boyfriend and becoming a trophy girlfriend.  I let no man or beast stand in the way of my drinking or drugging when I was in the mood so tossing out an easily circumvented excuse as to why I'm slacking on my Program is bullshit.

Look at Me! Look at Me! Why Aren't You Still Looking at Me?

Twelfth Tradition again: "If even one member got drunk or was lured into using A.A.'s name for his own purposes, the damage might be irreparable.  Moved by the spirit of anonymity, we try to give up our natural desires for personal distinction as A.A. members both among fellow alcoholics and before the general public.  We are sure that humility, expressed by anonymity, is the greatest safeguard that Alcoholics Anonymous can ever have."

I am blown away every time I consider this idea that anonymity is an expression of spirituality and the greatest safeguard we have for the continued existence of this spiritual movement.  And I'm not altogether sure why this surprises me so much.  The thought of doing some good, extending some kindness, without the need for recognition or repayment in the future makes perfect sense for the growth of my personal self-esteem and sense of self-worth.  Otherwise, my life is transactional.  Doing a nice thing for the acclaim or in anticipation of payment of some kind - cash, time, effort - is not really spirituality at all.  It's a fungible entity.  I've mentioned before the time that I anonymously bought a subscription to The Grapevine - our meeting in print or electronica - and was dismayed to hear this dude give the credit to someone else.  I was out $12 and didn't even get an atta boy.  It was a great lesson in ego deflation for me, and one that really kick-started my deeper dive into spirituality.

My Waaaaayyyy . . . .

 More stuff from the Twelfth Tradition .  .  . 

I find it intriguing that there are a couple of different takes on anonymity.  The first sentence in this Tradition characterizes the spiritual substance of anonymity as sacrifice.  We're reminded that we need to shitcan our personal desires and instead concentrate on the common good.  Then, a bit later, in a discussion about personal anonymity and how protective we are of each member's right to keep their membership in Alcoholic Anonymous confidential, we're told that this is our first lesson in the practical application of anonymity.  After all, some of us work at jobs where the mention of addiction and alcoholism might be harmful: medical people, law enforcement, the legal profession, your bus driver or airplane pilot.  No one wants to hear his brain surgeon say right before the anaesthesia takes effect: "Hey, guess what?  I got sober yesterday!"

Conscience:  An inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one's behavior.

Here's a reminder of the democracy that is Alcoholics Anonymous from Tradition Two: "For our group purpose there is but none ultimate authority - a loving God as He may express in our group conscience."  Whenever I find myself on the losing end of any kind of vote or decision and whenever I find myself on the minority side I need to remember that sometimes my ideas, my vision, isn't held by most people and when I'm in the majority I would do well to treat those who are not going to get their way with kindness and humility.  I mention often my appalling record in the group conscience procedure.  I have voted for the losing side almost exclusively and I have done this many, many times over the course of many, many years, yet Alcoholics Anonymous continues to exist and has as good a track record in saving people from destruction as any method yet tried.  And they didn't do it my way!  

Incredible.

Pride, Good and Bad

"If we ignore the beautiful and look on down the road for some future time of happiness, chances are it won't be any different.  Perfect times are brief intervals between the ordinary.  They create an illusion that life should be lived on some mountain top ecstasy.  But we are not made to be out of this world.  Our minds and bodies couldn't take it.  The high and the low are connected.  Most of the time we live in between - but that middle ground can be as rewarding as the highest plain."  

More wisdom from the Cherokees.  More emphasis on balance and perspective.  Once I started looking for this mindset I began to see it everywhere, especially in spiritual thought.  Not too high and not too low.  It's not going to be as bad as you imagine it's going to be and it won't be as great, either.

Pride:  A feeling of deep pleasure or satisfaction drives from one's own achievements, the achievements of those with whom one is closely associated, or from qualities or possessions that are widely admired.

In psychology pride is often divided into two categories: Authentic Pride which is characterized by words such as accomplished or confident, and Hubristic Pride, characterized by words such as arrogant and conceited.   One is associated with self-esteem; the other with narcissism.  The Bible calls pride extreme love of oneself and warns that pride goes before a fall.  I can use pride to push myself to achieve things that I find valuable and that impress others in society which increases my prestige in a social hierarchy.  We are, after all, very social creatures, we humans.  And I can use pride to dominate and intimidate those around me, to gain power and prestige.  Often there's a little bit of both in play.  If I want to run a marathon but I'm smoking a pack and a half of cigarettes a day then I can imagine the pride I would feel if I quit smoking and start to run, to train, and then to feel a tremendous sense of self-worth once I've completed the marathon.  Without pride in myself I wouldn't put in the effort.  Then I have to be careful not to talk about my accomplishments incessantly or to belittle someone who runs a half-marathon.  It's okay to be proud of myself but it's unseemly to be too proud of myself.

See?  The concept of right-in-the-middle again.

ALL Our Traditions

Our Twelfth Tradition states: "Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities."

Principle:  A fundamental truth that serves as the foundation for a system of belief or behavior or for a chain of reasoning.

I've looked up anonymity enough times to know that it comes from the Greek root meaning "without a name."  No name known or given.  Something without distinguishing characteristics.  If you think you have a hold on this concept try giving a gift or money to someone without taking credit for it.  Yeah, it's not that easy.

Here's something from the text of Ten: "The spiritual substance of anonymity is sacrifice.  Because A.A.'s Twelve Traditions repeatedly ask us to give up personal desires for the common good, we realize that the sacrificial spirit - well symbolized by anonymity - is the foundation of them all."

Let me repeat: the characteristic of anonymity, expressed is selfless service to others, is the foundation of ALL of our Traditions.  That's a pretty big concept.

So is the precept that it's usually for the best when we give up our fascination with our own personal needs and wants and instead concentrate on what's best for the common good.  We could use some of that in our modern society.  Individualism is all well and good until it becomes nothing more than pure selfishness.

And here's a suggestion for most of us jumpy people - no social media for a half hour after you get up and no social media the half hour before you jump into bed.  Trust me - there's nothing going on that can't wait that half hour and it just might calm your brain down a tad.

The Middle Way

Buddhism talks of the concept of the Middle Way, a way not based on an aversion to the world, nor on attachment, but a way based on inclusion and compassion.  Alcoholics Anonymous talks of this same concept but promotes the idea of balance, of getting in the middle instead of living on the ragged edge of All or Nothing, full acceleration or useless idling.  I need to quit thinking about good or bad.  I need to slow down when it's time to idle and speed up when it's time to get somewhere.  I don't think most humans are geared this way and I'm sure as shit not made to sit in the middle.

Buddhism also suggests that each of us find a type of spiritual practice we find helpful and then to stick with it.  I'm not geared this way, either, preferring to jump from this to that or go from here to there.  Fast, really fast!  I find myself pondering what needs to be done or how anything that's already done can be improved.  I get a lot done but I don't enjoy my accomplishments as much as I should because I'm always looking further down the road.  There isn't shit down there, anyhow.  It's all right here.

I am still chuckling at my current experiment where I break my day down into hour long segments or - better yet - half hour increments and then briefly jot down what I did during that segment.  I cannot believe how jumpy I am.  I'm here and there, I'm all over the place,  and I can't sit down for fifteen minutes without changing my mind and bouncing from task to task, doing a lot of things but none of them very well.  I'm also surprised at how resistant I am to enjoying what it is I'm - you know - actually doing because I'm thinking of all the stuff - stuff that doesn't amount to a hill of beans in the long run - that I think I need to get done.  I feel incomplete if I don't finish something that isn't very important.  I am trying to concentrate on that Cherokee saying that suggests that soon we will sit in the sun all day and be happy that we can sit in the sun all day and be happy.  What a beautiful sentiment!  And so appropriate during the middling days of Autumn when we get to enjoy sunny but not hot days and cool but not freeze-your-ass-off-cold nights and the sun!  The angle of its rays dropping down to the Southern horizon instead of parking itself right straight above.

68

I'm looking down the barrel at 68.  That's not nothing, I'll tell you that.  And I'm laughing all the time at the conflict between my mind - which hints I'm like 40 - and my body - which hints that I'm looking down the barrel at 68.  My favorite concept in the world - Balance! - reminds me that both ends of a dichotomy can exhibit some truth.  I try to live my life like a 40 year old while treating my body - at times, anyway - like it's 68 years old.  Today a good workout is getting into and out of my  low-slung sports car without groaning so loud nearby windows shake.  Part of the mindset is to deny the inevitable facts of aging the self-indulgent pleasures of woe and complaining; instead, let's get out there and keep moving.  Gotta keep moving . . .  I ask people why my hour long walks now take an hour and fifteen minutes?  When did a mile stretch out into two?  Who the hell keeps tilting the hills around here up another few degrees?  When did my knees start informing me that they'd rather I go uphill than down?  When did that become a thing?

I remember when I was so healthy I never went to the doctor or the dentist and suffered few repurcussions.  And when I began getting regular check-ups those people rarely found anything wrong.  Now I'm happy when they only find a couple of things wrong.  That's a win.  That and not finding anything awful wrong, nothing fatal.  I think I'm still trying to cheat death . . . 

In my meeting there are plenty of people my age and a handful more who are older yet.  Some of them are healthy and some of them are balky and some of them suffer all kinds of painful and debilitating ailments, and I get to watch as this decline happens.  As we get older we injure more easily, too - that spill I took on a concrete walkway a few months ago took a while to shake off.  The skin doctor I saw a couple of weeks ago prescribed a chemo ointment to apply to a possibly pre-cancerous sore on my lower lip.  As the treatment has progressed the outcome has been the bloody death of a lot of cells on my lower lip.  I look like I got decked by a Boston brawler when I get up in the morning: bloody spots and crusty scabs.  Very elegant.  Very attractive.  Very comely.

What inspires me is the quiet dignity that these folks -  and me, too! - exhibit during this slow decline.  We talk about our aches and pains but not all the time and with humor and perspective.  There's a difference between sharing our little woes and whining, complaining, bitching.  No one likes an older person providing a great deal of detail re: oozing sores and bloody scabs, etc. etc. etc.  I just simply do not hear much complaining and I do not hear people going over their aches and pains at length.  Mostly, we fucking joke about it.  As in: "It makes my day watching you contort your body getting out of that car"  which prompts the reply: "Hey, this counts as my workout today.'

Pain V Pleasure

"According to Buddhist scriptures, compassion is the 'quivering of the pure heart' when we have allowed ourselves to be touched by the pain of life.  Then, we can sustain a presence in the midst of life's suffering, in the midst of life's fleeting impermanence.  We can open to the world - its ten thousand joys and ten thousand sorrows.  We begin to recognize that just as there is pain in our own lives, so there is pain in everyone else's life.  This is the birth of wise understanding.  Wise understanding sees that suffering is inevitable, that all things that are born . .  . and die.  This is the purpose of a spiritual discipline and of choosing a path with heart - to discover peace and connectedness in ourselves and to stop the war in us and around us."

In jarring juxtaposition this old axiom popped into my head right after I read the above: "Don't piss off an old person - the older we get the less 'Life in prison' is a deterrant."  Not sure what the connection is to the Buddhist text.

I worry sometimes about the fact I confuse happiness with joy.  I think happiness, deep down, is overrated because it means that I'm pleased when shit goes my way and pissed when it doesn't.  I think I can be joyful just being alive, good or bad, pleasant or painful.

Here's another one I like: "Live your life as if this day is your last but plan as if you're going to live forever."

The Plagues Again

Jack Kornfield speaketh: "When we step out of the battle, we see how each of us creates conflict.  We see our constant likes and dislikes, the fight to resist all that frightens us.  We see our own prejudice, greed, and territoriality.  All this is hard for us to look at, but it is really there.  Then underneath these ongoing battles, we see pervasive feelings of incompleteness and fear.  When we let go of our battles and open our heart to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment.  This is the beginning and the end of spiritual practice.  To come into the present is to stop the war.  To come into the present means to experience whatever is here and now.  Most of us have spent our lives caught up in plans, expectations, ambitions for the future, in regret, guilt, or shame about  the past.  When we come into the  present, we begin to feel the life around us again, but we also encounter whatever we have been avoiding."

Whenver I start to perceive a creeping, oozing sense of smugness and pride about my own wisdom and experience and intellect I invariably run into some dude who can cut through the crap and make cogent observations like this above.

I repeated this phrase to a fellow A.A. this morning: "The good news about sobriety is that we get to feel everything again but the bad news about sobriety is that we get to feel everything again," then I ducked a right cross and this was from a woman I consider a dear friend.  Seriously, it's not easy, ever, to sit with pain and fear but it's downright miserable when we're at all new.  And the idea that we chase pleasure and flee from pain can be found in literally every spiritual movement ever created.

I must repeat once again one of my most beloved passages from the 12 & 12: "Until now our lives have largely been devoted to running from pain and problems.  We fled from them as from a plague.  We never wanted to deal with the fact of suffering."  I like that the phenomenon of suffering is labeled a "fact."  As in, we all have to/get to suffer at times.  

A Basic Primer on Touching Hot Metal Surfaces

Tradition Ten states that " . . . A.A. ought never be organized . . .  " and the 12 & 12 has a number of - in retrospect - pretty hilarious anecdotes about the shit that self-righteous but well-meaning alcoholics tried to pull early on in our history.  We often mean well or at least we try to hide self-serving motives under a patina of well-meaning motives.

There's a lot of text that sounds contradictory.  We are quick to point out that most A.A.s, once established, are willing to take advice, while emphasizing that those stubborn individuals who aren't quite as willing to take advice from self-righteous long-timers have every right to ignore advice but  still sit in a meeting.  And have you ever written or called our Central Office in New York?  Invariably there counsel is along the lines of " . . . the majority experience is this or that, but you, of course, are free to do whatever you want as long as A.A. as a whole isn't adversely affected . . . "

One of the recovery precepts that has really stuck with me is the idea that if an alcoholic doesn't follow our spiritual principles then any set-backs that may occur is because of this unwillingness to follow our Program as it's outlined in the Big Book and not a punishment meted out by A.A. itself.  The 12 & 12 says it better than I can: "His drunkenness and dissolution are not penalities inflicted by people in authority; they result from his personal disobedience to spiritual principles."  If someone tells you that a plate is hot and you touch it anyway and get burned don't get mad at the person who told you the plate was hot.  And don't get mad at the plate, either.  Sure as shit don't get mad at me for telling this long and barely interesting story.  If you need to get mad get mad at the laws of thermodynamics.  I'm not intimately familiar with them but one of them explains that hot shit burns skin, something like that. 

More from the Step: "So we of A.A. do obey spiritual principles, first because we must, and ultimately because we love the kind of life such obedience brings.  Great love and great suffering are A.A.'s disciplinarians; we need no others."

Pain and Suffering

"The unawakened mind tends to make war against the way things are.  Without understanding, we can easily become frightened by life's fleeting changes, the inevitable losses, disappointments, the insecurity of our aging and death.  Misunderstanding leads us to fight against life, running from pain or grasping at security and pleasures that by their nature can never be truly satisfying.  We expend enormous energy denying our insecurity, fighting pain, death, and loss, and hiding from the basic truths of the natural world and of our own nature."  Jack Kornfeld in a chapter entitled "Stopping the War."

"Until now, our lives had been largely devoted from pain and problems.  We fled from them as from a plague.  We never wanted to deal with the fact of suffering.  Escape via the bottle was always our solution.  Character-building via suffering might be all right for saints, but it certainly didn't appeal to us."  Step 7 in a chapter entitled "Step 7."

I really like the use of the word "appeal."  I really like the word "plague."  I'm not crazy about the word "suffer" because there's too much slop in it that gives the whining alcoholic room to roam; otherwise why would we suffer so much over things that other people seem to handle in a mature and more normal fashion?  I do love the word "pain."  It's a good word.  Pain is inevitable.  Sorry, but pain is here to stay and whether the pain causes you to suffer is, to a large degree, up to you.

Here you go . . . 

Appeal:      To arouse a sympathetic response; the power to attract, interest, amuse or stimulate the mind or emotions.

Plague:       A contagious disease that spreads rapidly and kills many people; an unusually large number of insects or animals infesting a place and causing damage; a disastrous evil or affliction.

Pain:         A signal to your nervous system that something may be wrong, such as a prick, sting, burn, tingle or ache.

Suffer:       To submit to or be forced to endure which implies conscious endurance of pain or distress.

You can see how pain is inevitable but much suffering is optional, or at least to be expected as a normal part of life.   Quit yelling: "Why me?  Why me?" so much.  It's you because it's everyone.  You're not getting picked on

Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

This is a new day where I can strive to renew.  This isn't yesterday and this isn't tomorrow.  One of those days is gone forever and one of those days may very well never arrive.  I have a purpose or I wouldn't be here.  Part of my mission today is to make every minute count.  If I'm just killing time, wasting time, then I'm only hurting myself, wasting something very precious.

As my life goes barrelling along at increasingly high velocity I can forget to be glad for all of the things that go right, for all my blessings, for the serendipity that is my life.  Good things are whizzing by but let one thing go sideways and then the counting starts.  Before my day is over I've got an exact count of all the times I've been put upon.  Anything out of order or not to my liking gets my attention while I blithely ignore all that goes well.  I find myself asking . . . what next?  How am I going to get screwed next?  And Jumpin' Jack Flash I'm running that ancient program that only responds to negative input.  My day goes better when I decide early on that if anything can go right, then it will.  This keeps me looking for order rather than disorder and I pay attention to whatever my mind's eye is focused on.  I can choose to see the good or I can choose to see the bad.  

Just Passing Through

"Letting go is a central theme of spiritual practice.  Sooner or later we have to learn to let go and allow the changing mystery of life to move through us without fearing it, without holding and grasping.  Spiritual joy and wisdom do not come through possession but rather through our capacity to open, to love more fully, and to move and be free in life."  Jack Kornfeld

Here's a story about a spiritual seeker who traveled from California to London to meet a great rabbi.  He arrives at the address, a huge mansion in a fancy part of town, but when he's shown in to the master's study he's surprised to find a small room in the attic, the only furnishings a single bed, a desk, and lots of books.  "Where are all of your things, rabbi?" he asks.  "Well, where are all of your things?" he replies.  "But I'm only passing through," the seeker protests. "Well, so am I," says the master.

Most of us aren't going to commit to such an aesthetic lifestyle but the point is obvious: attachment to stuff isn't going to help much at some point.  Dead in the ground is dead in the ground.  I believe I'm a much loved person but in ten years very few people are going to be able to hork up my memory and after twenty-five years the list will have dwindled to almost nothing and in fifty years?  You think someone is going to be talking about me in twenty-five years?  Fuggetaboutit.

There's another story about a wealthy man who was diagnosed with an aggressive form of brain cancer.  He was told that he would die within six weeks unless he chose to undergo brain surgery, but the location of the tumor meant that he might lose all ability to speak, write, read, or understand language.  As you can imagine this was quite the decision to have to make.  

What would you do?  What would I do?  Could I contemplate a life where a passive appreciation of the natural world would be all that was left to me?  Sitting quietly and being?  Whew.  Would this be enough?  Whew.

Personal and Universal

I try to emphasize my own personal journey because the greatest lesson I've learned is that the universal must be wedded to the personal for me to be fulfilled in my spiritual life.  In this way, any awakening is a very personal matter that also affects all other creatures on earth.  Since I've been sober for so long I have a tendency to slip into Teacher mode or - better yet - Pedantic mode where I speak more from my head and less from my heart.  I think some of this makes sense because I don't have the relatable chaos going on in my life on a regular basis,  but when I can relate a personal experience where I show how the spiritual principles correctly applied have saved me much grief and or how a burst of self-will run riot runs riot can cause me much grief, then it's a story that is more likely to resonate.

No one is so destined to lose that he cannot turn the tide . . . if he wants to change.  Overcoming requires us to put our shoulder to the wheel in ways we could not have considered in our earlier times.  We're greatly influenced by our beliefs about ourselves and whether we are supposed to win or lose.  It's our indecisiveness that keeps wavering.  I've always liked to concept of "wanting to want to get sober."  Many are there who like the benefits of a sober life but don't want to do the work to accumulate those benefits.

"There is a certain amount of sameness in all our lives - a sameness that says no matter how different we are we can still identify with each other's daily problems and hopes and aspirations."  The Cherokees

The Ongoing Spiritual Quest

"I used spiritual practice to strive for states of clarity and light, for understanding and vision, and I initially taught this way.  Gradually, though, it became clear that for most of us this very striving itself increased our problems.  Where we tended to be judgemental, we became more judgemental of ourselves in our spiritual practice."  Jack Kornfield

I've been meditating for thirty years, more or less.  I've been talking about meditating for a hundred and thirty years, give or take.  Interestingly enough, I still don't really know what I'm doing.  I'm making an effort and that's the main thing.  Sometimes I feel like I'm getting somewhere but most of the time I'm just faking it.  When SuperK and I moved to Southern CA we got much easier access to the Buddhist countries of Southeast Asia and the Indian Subcontinent.  In our travels there the structure and practices of Buddhism and Buddhist meditation were on full display.  It was really transformative for me.

I've always battled the urge - the elemental need - to be accomplishing something productive, and I don't really know what that means any more.  It's clear when you're working and you have tasks that you're required to complete and it's clear with some general things like exercising and cooking and gardening, tasks that are definitive.  If your daily routine is to run two miles then you run two miles and that's some excellent production.  But when the stuff I'm doing is only by choice then what's the measuring stick?  It can be frustrating for Strivers.  For instance, I'm reading the first section of Dante's Divine Comedy.  I think that's pretty impressive, to brag about myself a little, and it has been a lot more interesting than I would have guessed, but the problem for me is that if my routine life obligations get in the way or if something unexpected pops up during the course of my day and I miss a chapter I inevitably find myself finding fault with myself for not having "completed" this task.

This is where my meditation practice has been most beneficial - moderating my need to achieve with a realization that life can be - should be - simpler and more serendipitous.  I miss nice things by concentrating too much on tasks but if I don't apply the force of my mind on tasks then I don't accomplish those things that give me pleasure.  Have you ever painted a wall that needs painting?  I don't enjoy the painting part of the painting the wall but there is a satisfying sense of achievement looking at the nicely painted wall.  But to get this sense of well-being I have to motivate myself to do something that I find unsatisfying.

 I've shared the story of visiting a monastery when I was in Japan with SuperK and we had an interaction with a monk who was sitting behind a table of literature.  He had a huge smile on his face and was very complimentary about our visit, so naturally - a paranoid, suspicious big-city Westerner - I assumed he had a motive.  He did!  His motive was to be kind to two strangers!  THAT was his fucking motive!  He wasn't being productive - he was in the moment expressing kindness.  

See?  That can be hard for me.  I wanted to brush by the dude to continue on whatever I had on my productive agenda for the day.

Greasy Vans and the Patience of Job

I wrote not long ago about a meeting I attended where a few new people shared stories about how irritated and frustrated they were at the minor irritations and frustrations encountered in day to day living that - if they keep slogging away and trudging onward in their spiritual  growth - they won't find nearly as irritating and frustrating in the future.  My inclination is to point out how much time they're wasting, how much emotional energy they're expending, on matters that won't mean anything in short order.  You know: spouses trying our patience or car troubles or unpleasant customers, that sort of thing. but even then I try to be as kind as possible, realizing that alcoholics are experts at blowing mouse-sized problems into elephant-sized problems, and when you're new this is a lot easier to do.  Instead, I try to find an experience in my experiential repertoire that shows how lovely this peaceful progression is.  Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly, sometimes real fucking slowly.

I was waiting at a crosswalk preparing to cross a busy street a few days ago.  If you've never been to Southern California you may not be familiar with our busy streets here.  Apparently no road has ever been built that has fewer than ninety lanes.  It's not unusual for an intersection to have three left turn lanes - three! - and for the walk signs to allow you thirty seconds to cross the street - thirty! - while you experience a mild sense of panic watching the counter approach zero while you're still crossing the street, the brisk pace you think you're maintaining apparently not as brisk as you think.  In other words you don't not cross a street against the light, even if there are no cars approaching.  They can materialize out of nowhere.  

Anyway, An old, beater van pulls up next to me in the right lane - one of those lanes that permit you to continue forward or to turn right so unless the car is using a turn signal you are sort of in the dark.  There's a lot of shit piled up on the dashboard and I can see through the greasy windowshield that the driver is texting, so when the light changes and the little strolling man glyph pops up on the crosswalk sign across the street, I don't budge an inch, trying to peer through the murk to catch the driver's eye.  My sole aim is to not get run over.  This was SoCal pedestrian survival mode and not any kind of testosterone-fueled challenge to the driver.  Apperently the ne'er-do-well driving interpreted this as aggressive judgment on my part so he rolled down his window and shouted something at me along the lines of "slow" or "stupid" or some other "S" word.  Frankly, it takes about an hour to get across one of these super-roads so I had no interest in stopping mid-walk to argue with him or explain myself.  Even more frankly, it bothered me not a bit.  In fact, I recall giggling a little.  It is now in my DNA to slough off the impatience that once impelled me into an argument or an obscene gesture.  I was in no way, shape, or form bothered by this grease-ball and I'm just joking when I use that word: who knows what kind of tough life this man is enduring?  Pretty tough from the shape of his vehicle.

This is how I absorbed the message of Right Living when I was getting sober.  Show me what you did and not what I should do.

Reasons. Not Excuses.

We seldom do anything with great joy.  Most of us are animated only when it serves a purpose and not because of a genuine enthusiasm.  We're too full  of ifs and oughts to find reasons to rejoice.  Sometimes a change can jar us into an awareness of life, and that life is intended to be much simpler than what we make it out to be.  If only we can move out of fear and be able to enjoy life minute by minute.

I have no friends from college or any places of employment pre-recovery.  That's a solid twelve years.  That's a long period of time to develop some relationships and it's an amazing fact that I was not able to develop any at all.  I was busy for much of this time but not that busy.  I'm out of the Excuses business and into the Reasons business and the reason is this: I was drinking and using.  By myself much of the time and when I was with people I was still by myself, more or less, the goal always being to get away from these people so I could drink and use.  While I admit to being a liar and an embellisher and exaggerator I am not making this up.

Flight S.O.B.'s Unite!

Cherokee wisdom for today: "Lovely or unlovely, nothing stays the same.  It cannot.  It grows into something newer and better, or it gives why where it is.  Life is a living, moving force at every moment.  We would not have that change - but to live happily we must change.  We cannot allow ourselves to crystallize until we are inflexible.  There is too much to shatter us if we cannot bend.  To enjoy the present moment is to have the innate knowledge that the next one and the next can be even better."

The only constant in life is change.  I gotta adapt or it'll kill me.

I maintain - again - that One Day At A Time is a good basis for living well.  Right here - Right now.  If I had to base my existence on one concept it would be the imperative to be present.  Not in the future where terrible things are happening to me or in the past reliving the terrible things I did.

I am still obsessed with the workings of the human mind.  Maybe this is a type of control obsession.  Maybe this is because the human mind is such a weird-ass, unpredictable beast, making choices for reasons that of which we are blissfully unaware and running the show more than we'd like to admit.  If you think I'm making this up I suggest meditation.  THEN you'll see who's running the show.  Spoiler: it's not the You that you think you are.  It's this force that is darting and veering and screaming into the night.

I listened to a podcast that explored time and time management.  One of the central premises is that the people who struggle the most in this arena are those with too little time to get everything accomplished and - oddly enough - people with too much time on their hands.  The psychologist involved suggested keeping a journal where one logs personal activity separated into half hour increments.  I thought: "Why not?"  I'm one of those people with a lot of free time and I'm often surprised at the end of the day how much I accomplish and - more irritating - how much I don't get done.  It seems to me there's usually enough time to do all of my stuff even accounting for time-consuming chores - like grocery shopping and car repairs and house cleaning - as well as serendipitous interruptions - like a neighbor stopping by to chat or a phone call from an irritating member of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Here's my take after a week or two of doing this: I am a fidgety, fidgety son of a bitch.  I have trouble staying on task for a half hour at a time with the result that it's not unusual to look at a segment, see a thing listed that should take fifteen minutes, and realize I don't know what I did the rest of the time.  Can you see why sitting still on a twelve hour flight is roughly equivalent to a root canal with no anesthesia?  Part of this, I think, is due to the fact that I have an overactive imagination and my mind is always flitting here and there, and part of it is because I'm unfocused.

Go Home and Come Back

"Jealousy is never hidden. It is totally ignorant of the fact that we have to go within ourselves for things that lift or lower us.  What belongs to each of us has nothing to do with anyone else.  To be jealous is to be miserable.  If we can't hold our own we can go home and get ready and come back.  But to have animosity toward everyone who threatens cannot cultivate good in anything."

My Buddy Chivas

Life gets lifey sometimes.

If you keep doing what you've been doing you'll keep getting what you've been getting.

Tolerant:  Showing willingness to allow the existence of opinions or behavior that one does not necessarily agree with; a willingness to accept the belief, habits, feelings, or behaviors of another group, culture, etc. as legitimate even if they differ from one's own.  (Ed. Note: Funny how the word 'willingness' keeps popping up . . .  )

From the text of Tradition Three: "Our Foundation office asked each group to send in its list of 'protective' regulations.  The total list was a mile long.  If all those rules had been in effect everywhere, nobody could have possibly joined A.A. . . "

Here are a few phrases that pop up after that surprising and hilarious sentence: "pretty intolerant;" "After all, isn't fear the true basis of intolerance?"  "Could we then foresee that troublesome people were to become our principal teachers of patience and tolerance?"

When I ask people who have gone out why they picked up a drink again, what their mind set was, what happened, the reasons are mundane, insignificant, and boring.  Lazy and self-serving reasons.  The reasons are so shitty that they're actually excuses and not reasons.  No one - I repeat: no one - has ever told me that a relative just died in a car accident or that they recently learned they were diagnosed with some horrible, fatal disease.  They just drink.  They want to drink, they're not spiritually fit, they're not plugged in, and they just drink.  One young guy who had accumulated about ninety days was at a gathering, saw a bottle of Chivas Regal, and poured himself a drink.  "Seemed like a good idea," he told me.

That's his new nickname.  Chivas.  "Good morning, Chivas, good to see you!"  I can be such an asshole.

I told a Chicago guy once that I liked to party.  He said that I was drinking, not partying.  I mentioned to another Chicago guy that I didn't know why I kept relapsing.  He said that I wasn't relapsing, I was continuing to drink, that you had to actually quit drinking in the first place to relapse.

Irritating, these Chicago guys.

But a lot of irritating guys listened patiently when I talked - if by "talking" you mean "spewing nonsense" - and planted good ideas in my head, ideas that I took and used to build a good life.  They never told me what I had to do - they told me what they did and how it worked out for them, the implication being that I could try it out or not or I could try something totally different, that the idea was to try things different than the ones I was currently using which clearly weren't working out very well.

The Anvils of Experience

"There is no organization which more jealously guards the individual's right to think, talk, and act as he wishes.  No A.A. can compel another to do anything.  Nobody can be punished or expelled.  The A.A. member has to conform to the principles of recovery.  His life actually depends upon obedience to spiritual principles.  He learns that the clamor of desires and ambitions within him must be silenced whenever these could damage the group.  It becomes plain that the  group must survive or the individual will not."  They add the phrase "anvils of experience."  Isn't that a great phrase?  

The anvils of experience.  Bill came up with some great phrases.

Hope and Love

You can be loving all the time.  This is your choice.  You may not have a reason to love, but you can love because to love makes you so happy.  Love in action only produces happiness.  Love will give you inner peace.  It will change your perception of everything.  Suffering?  It makes you feel safe because you know it so well.  But there is really no reason to suffer.  The only reason you suffer is because you choose to suffer.  If you look at your life you will find many excuses to suffer, but a good reason to suffer you will not find."  Toltecs, baby, Toltecs.  These guys had some serious shit going  on.

My little walk through the Toltec book is coming to an end.  The author is concluding with a couple of prayers and this is his intro to the prayer itself: "Please take a moment to close your eyes, open your heart, and feel all the  love that comes from your heart.  I want you to join me in your mind and in your heart, to feel a very strong connection of love."

Our neighbor has a rescue dog that was plucked from the mean streets of Mexico.  This dog is the happiest dog in the history of the universe.  The name she was given in the rescue kennel was Hope and a more appropriate name I cannot imagine.  Her tail is in constant motion and she is overjoyed - thrilled! - to see anyone and everyone.  It looks like she is meeting everyone for the first time or that the person approaching is her best friend in the world, someone she hasn't seen in forever.

I fancy myself a dog person.  I usually lower myself to the dog's level - often plopping my ass right down on the pavement - and I whisper sweet nothings into their ears.  Dogs know love and they really respond to this.  I'm acquainted with a number of these animals who react enthusiastically as soon as they pick up my scent.  But Hope?  This dog thinks I'm god.  I also give her a mini carrot which she receives as if it were choice filet mignon so this might have something to do with her affection but - seriously - she loses her shit when she sees me.  It's one of the highlights of my day to see this dog.  It's a perfect manifestation of love in my eyes.

The World Doesn't Want to Wait

 "Each effort makes the next time a little easier until there is maximum strength or full growth.  Some things challenge our very existence.  It is the nature of things.  But every effort we make weakens the challenge.  If we will not give up, but move and rest, move and rest, the breakthrough comes."

It is the nature of things.  Damn, I love that concept.  There are so many variations.  It is what it is.  There is no explanation that is going to satisfy the human inclination to be frustrated at misery and pain and death.  The good news is that we get to feel everything and the bad news is that we get to feel everything.

It reminds me of the young woman who found herself in a work situation - still bartending, can't imagine how miserable it would be to have to go to an establishment that sells alcohol while you're trying to tame the almost uncontrollable urge to drink alcohol - where she had to deal with a belligerant and drunken patron.  She was clearly upset the following day, recounting for the meeting how the incident ignited a strong urge to drink which, thankfully, she fought through.  I spoke with her briefly after the meeting and passed along the bromide that because she successfully overrode the urge to drink she is much stronger and the next time she'll be able to override the urge to drink more easily.  I don't know her life circumstances well enough to suggest she find another job.  Her family may really need the money and she may have to put up with a job that involves drinking for a while.

"The world doesn't want to wait.  The fast dollar, the quick thrill, the big wind.  It all falls down.  The best idea of all is when we want to do something and do it well we shouldn't let the world know.  We should keep our heads down, our mouths shut, and everything else in high gear."

Peace V Stress

Stress:  The body's reaction to a perceived threat or challenge, and this can be described as a mental tension or worry.  (Ed. Note: I like the inclusion of the qualifier perceived in the definition.  I must also add that stress can be a very important reaction to something that does indeed need to be avoided or addressed.  Stress impels us to action and sometimes action is what is needed.  My problem is that I tend to manufacture stress, to see a threat or challenge where none exists.)

Peace:  Freedom from disturbance; tranquility.  (Ed. Note:  Normally I look at several sources to aggregate my definitions but this one nailed it on the first try.)

Peace like a river.  Think it, feel it, see it flow in smooth currents that will not toss the smallest boat.  Stress can raise the blood pressure.  It can make our ears roar and our hearts race with panic.  Stop, and say: "Peace.  Be still."  This has always worked to calm the storms.  Some people need stress to feel they are competing successfully.  Instead of quietly doing good work, the need to wrestle with imaginary competitors or hidden foes.  Stress is holding rigid opinions, but peace is a river with the power to make energy enough to heal a body.

Heaven or Hell? Your Choice

"The dream you are living is your creation.  It is your perception of reality that you can change at any time.  You have the power to create hell, and you have the power to create heaven.  Why not dream a different dream?  Why not use your mind, your imagination, and your emotions to dream heaven?

Imagine living your life without the fear of being judged by others.  You no longer rule your behavior according to what others may think about you.  You are no longer responsible for anyone's opinion.  You have no need to control anyone, and no one controls you, either.  Imagine living without the fear of loving and not being loved.  Imagine living your life without being afraid to take a risk and to explore life.  Imagine that you live yourself just the way you are."

You Have Defects. Deal With It.

"We cannot whip what we cannot recognize.  Symptoms are not the problem.  They are only evidence of it.  The roots go deeper than surface remedies."  In Toltec Speak.

". . . our decision could have little permanent effect unless at once followed by a strenuous effort to face, and to be rid of, the things in ourselves that had been blocking us.  Our liquor was but a symptom.  So we had to get down to causes and conditions."   In A.A. Speak

It's unpleasant looking at my defects.  I'd rather deny them or avoid them, bury them deep down inside me where they can eat my guts in clever silence, or - better yet - pretend my defects are really assets, than to look at them.  Profoundly uncomfortable.

Profoundly Happy

Profound:  Felt or experienced very strongly or in an extreme way; very great or intense 

"But today, in well-matured A.A.’s, these distorted drives have been restored to something like their true purpose and direction. We no longer strive to dominate or rule those about us in order to gain self-importance. We no longer seek fame and honor in order to be praised. When by devoted service to family, friends, business, or community we attract widespread affection and are sometimes singled out for posts of greater responsibility and trust, we try to be humbly grateful and exert ourselves the more in a spirit of love and service. True leadership, we find, depends upon able example and not upon vain displays of power or glory. 

Still more wonderful is the feeling that we do not have to be specially distinguished among our fellows in order to be useful and profoundly happy. Not many of us can be leaders of prominence, nor do we wish to be. Service, gladly rendered, obligations squarely met, troubles well accepted or solved with God’s help, the knowledge that at home or in the world outside we are partners in a common effort, the well-understood fact that in God’s sight all human beings are important, the proof that love freely given surely brings a full return, the certainty that we are no longer isolated and alone in self-constructed prisons, the surety that we need no longer be square pegs in round holes but can fit and belong in God’s scheme of things—these are the permanent and legitimate satisfactions of right living for which no amount of pomp and circumstance, no heap of material possessions, could possibly be substitutes. True ambition is not what we thought it was. True ambition is the deep desire to live usefully and walk humbly under the grace of God."  Step 12, P. 124, The 12 & 12 

Sometimes the elegance and beauty and profound insight of our literature overwhelms me.  So, in these cases, I can't just change a few words here and there and pretend that the thoughts are mine. I just have to cut and paste.  What an ending to this book!  Reminding me again that there are many, many Promises in our literature, and this is doozy of a collection.

Freedom From Fear

"When our circumstances happened to be good, we no longer dreaded a change for the worse, for we had learned that these troubles could be turned into great values.  It did not matter too much what our material condition was, but it did matter what our spiritual condition was.  We found that freedom from fear was more important than freedom from want."  Step 12

Toltec wisdom . . . 

"The Angel of Death can teach us to live every day as if it is the  last day  of our  lives, as if there may be no tomorrow.  That is the way I see life, that is what the Angel of Death taught me - to be completely open, to know that there is nothing to be afraid of.  This is what, in the Toltec way, the Angel of Death teaches us.  The Angel of Death comes to us and says,'You see everything that exists here is mine; it is not yours.  Your house, your spouse, your children, your car, your career, your money - everything is mine and I can take it away when I want to, but for now you can use it.' "

When someone I know in recovery is wrapped around the axle about a financial situation I usually say - after gauging the situation carefully, because this comment can be misconstrued as piling on if I'm not delicate  - something along the lines of "Well, it's all God's money.  If he wants some of it he's going to take some of it.  If he wants you to have more he'll give you the opportunity to have more."  I need to hear myself say this, for me, as a reminder that it's all going to go at some point, all of it, everything I have on this Vale of Tears is going to go, so I do my best to appreciate and enjoy all of the blessings I have.

I'm reminded of the thoughts of an emergency worker who spent several hours recovering the bodies of small children who were killed in a bomb explosion after their parents had dropped them off a day care.  He wondered how he left his house that morning.  Were the last words he spoke to his kids kind and loving, or was he annoyed at something insignificant?  I hope that when my time on this Vale of Tears comes to an end that everyone has a smile on their face, courtesy of some loving thing I shared with them.

"Of course I treat the people I love with love because this may be the last day that I can tell you how much I love you.  I don't know if I am going to see you again.  The love that makes me happy is the love that I can share with you.  Why do I need to deny that I love you?  It is not important if you love me back.  I may die tomorrow or you may die tomorrow.  What makes me happy now is to let you know how much I love you."

Reminded also of this ancient Persian Proverb: "We come into the world crying while everyone around us is smiling - may be exit this world smiling while everyone around us is crying."

Restraint

"It is the emotions that control the behavior of the human, not the human who controls the emotions.  When we lose control we say things that we don't want to say, and do things that we don't want to do.  To refrain is to hold the emotions and to express them in the right moment, not before, not later."

Feel like some Step work?  "Nothing pays off like restraint of tongue and pen."    "The way this restraint paid off was startling."   "For we can neither think nor act to good purpose until the habit of self-restraint has become automatic."   "Our first objective will be the development of self-restraint."

First objective!  Nothing pays off like restraint!

It's Not Them - It's You

Forgiveness is the intentional and voluntary process by which one who may have felt initially wronged, victimized, harmed or hurt goes through a process in changing feelings and attitude regarding a given offender for his/her actions, and overcomes the impact of the offense, flaw or mistake including negative emotions such as resentment or a desire for vengeance.  Theorists differ in the extent to which they believe forgiveness also implies replacing the negative emotions with positive attitudes (i.e. an increased ability to tolerate the offender), or requires reconciliation with the offender.

Man, ouch, and this one sticks in my craw sometimes because there are a lot of irritating people out there who behave in ways that really stick in my craw.

BTW, a craw is an area in a bird's throat that can harbor food so it can be digested more efficiently.  It was also, apparently, a post-industrial metal band from Cleveland active in the late '90s.

It is contrary to my view of life that I should tolerate intolerable actions directed to me or at me, either directly or obliquely.  My human response is to seek revenge of some kind.  It is not to overlook the slight and let it go, forever, and quickly at that.

Here are the Toltecs again: "We must forgive those we feel have wronged us, not because they deserve to be forgiven, but because we love ourselves so much we don't want to keep paying for the injustice.  Forgiveness is the only way to heal.  That's the beginning of the free human.  Forgiveness is the key."

Step Five: "Often it was while working on this Step . . . that we first felt truly able to forgive others no matter how deeply we felt they had wronged us.

St. Francis: "He thought it better . . . to be forgiven than to forgive."

Step Eleven: "It is by forgiving that one is forgiven."

It's not them - it's you.

New Guy Blues

We went around the room today.  As luck would have it there were a coven of new guys immediately to the right of the leader so we got some new guy talk.  Side Note: We have five new guys named Brian attending our meeting right now and I am not making that up.  All under three months.  They've started identifying themselves as Brian #1 or Bryan #5 and the like.  The first Brian today drank briefly recently, starting with some nips from a bottle of Chivas Regal and - just like that! - a nickname is born.  He is a busy young attorney with two small children at home so he's got a lot on his plate.  Yesterday he found himself in line at Starbucks behind one of the ubiquitous Slow Order People - you know the type: they act as if they've never been to a Starbucks before.  It's Starbucks!  Order your goddamn coffee!  Late to the office he was then stuck in a malfunctioning elevator for an hour.  Sitting there, fuming, as the fire department tried to unstuck him.

Pray for patience and God puts you in long lines.

The next guy was a postal worker who got his second DUI six months ago and he lost his license.  The good news is that the post office didn't fire his ass immediately - the bad news is since he doesn't have a license he can't drive a mail truck so he's been shifted to walking routes exclusively.  He's losing some weight, I'll tell you that.

Pray that you don't go to jail when you get your second DUI and your ass is gonna be doin' some walkin'.

The next guy was recently in a car accident which wasn't his fault but this hasn't stopped the other driver from suing him while also claiming he was injured as a result of the accident.  He wants to . . . you know . . . actually injure the other guy now.

Pray for tolerance and God puts you around intolerable people.

The next guy had to accompany his wife to a wedding where there was a lot of drinking.  He didn't drink but he was mad at the world for putting him in a situation where he had to tolerate a lot of drinking while not drinking himself.

Pray for a release from the obsession to drink and God puts you around people who show you what you were like when you were drinking yourself and you see that you weren't nearly as much fun as you thought you were.  In fact, you were a pain in the ass.

The queue got to me with time for a short share left.  I indicated that I wanted to cede my time to a new woman who had her hand up despite the fact that she definitely didn't have her hand up.  She shared about taking a trip to Japan where not drinking is sort of weird - this is a culture where social drinking is part of social life - and she had to sort of grit her teeth and get through it . . . which she did.

Pray to be left alone so you can just listen in a meeting and God puts you in a meeting with me, the Eternal Tormenter of New People.  What could I have said that would have topped that share?

Sometimes we speak from experience; sometimes we talk to get something painful or frustrating off of our chests; and sometimes we just need to allow other people to get to know us a little bit.  I mean do you seriously think that when I talk at a meeting I have anything worthwhile to say and do you think this stops me from talking?

The key is finding out what the lesson is.  There's a lesson there.

Master Manipulator

I have a friend in my morning meeting who was quite dismissive of anything that she didn't agree with . . . which was everything I said, more or less.  I learned quickly not to suggest that she do anything that she didn't want to do . . .  which was everything, once again.  When I did the pushback was immediate.  My response to this was that I could barely keep a straight face listening to her justifications.  One time she said: "Nah, that wouldn't work for me" when I wasn't even giving any  advice - all I did was share what I did in a similar situation.  I didn't even say that it would work for her although I probably implied that it would.  I'm sneaky that way.  I'm a Master Manipulator like most recovering alcoholics.  How do I get you to do what I want you to do while making you think it's what you wanted to do, anyway, and the idea was yours to begin with?

Here's another example of our Founders repeating themselves because they know we're not really paying attention - this is from two contiguous pages in Step Twelve: ". . . still more spiritual development."  ". . . as we grow spiritually . . . "  ". . . when we are willing to place spiritual growth first . . . "  ". . . if we go on growing . . . "  "As we made spiritual progress . . . "

Here's another interesting fact: Step Twelve has three parts - Carrying the message, experiencing a spiritual awakening, and practicing these spiritual principles in our daily lives.  This, our longest chapter in the 12 & 12, runs twenty pages.  Care to guess how many pages are devoted to each part?  Two on carrying the message; three on the spiritual awakening (which, in fairness, has been flogged half to death in most of the preceding Steps); and fifteen on practicing these principles in our daily life.  Fifteen!  Three times as many pages as the first two combined!

John Ramey, Esq. RIP

"But when our self-will had driven everyone away, and our isolation had become complete, it caused us to play the big-shot in cheap barrooms, and then fare forth alone on the street to depend on the charity of passersby."  Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous

When I was trying to pull myself together after getting booted from Optometry College I lived for a year in a house with a couple of guys who were attending college if what you could call what they were doing "attending college."  One of them had quite a nice illegal pot hothouse in his walk-in closet and didn't ever seem to go to classes or do any other college stuff.  The other guy - John Ramey - was the poster child for alcoholic destruction.  He was not the smartest man I've ever met and he was morbidly obese, due in part to his short stature but mostly, I surmise, because he drank huge quantities of beer and never moved out of his chair.  I hung around with these men but particularly John.  I cannot imagine what we could have talked about.  He liked my style of hard rock and matched me beer for beer and bong hit for bong hit, but what else could we have discussed?  Picasso's Blue Period?  The threat of barbarian invasions taking place at the same time the structure of the new religion - Christianity - was destabilizing the Roman Empire?  Quinoa versus brown rice?  Quantum physics or organic chemistry?

The above quote from The Big Book has always stuck with me.  At the end, before I began discarding all human activity, meaningful to trivial, in favor of drinking alone, all by myself, I had reached the stage where the only requirement for companionship  I had was that you drank and used like I did.  All relationships were predicated on this fact.  And I'm taking great pains not to judge myself too important or smart or talented to spend time with any "lesser" human beings; only that all I wanted was to have the occasional person to drink heavily with.

The Nosy Neighbor

You may remember the very nice man who so bored the shit out of me that rather than continuing to allow him to join me - over and over and over - on my beach walk and bore the shit out of me I began driving several miles out of my way to walk - alone, all by myself, no one else around - and save myself the irritation of his self-contained droning on and on and on?

Well, he moved and doesn't come to the meeting very much anymore, except on Monday when he's the meeting secretary.  He'll take his dog for a walk afterwards where I'll often run into him.  Today, while I was petting his dog - who I honestly find a lot more entertaining than him - he told me a long tale of a nosy neighbor that lives next door to him at his new place and the great lengths he's going to avoid this guy  .  .  .

I'm never sure who's learning the lesson in these interactions except to say that it's always me.  Do you know how badly I wanted to interrupt this guy and point out the blazing hypocrisy of his screed.  He wasn't really upset about it, reacting in a good-natured way, but he clearly didn't want to . . .  you know . . . have to talk with him or listen to him or walk with him on the beach.  I'm struck by how righteous my evasive behavior is with Boring Beach Guy and how righteous I feel when I notice the exact same behavior in someone else.  The lessons I learn and how The Teacher imparts this wisdom to me!  I think: "Wow, it must be this obvious to someone else when I blather on about behavior in someone else that annoys me when I'm displaying the exact same behavior."

On Outrage!!

 Outrage is a funny emotion.  On the surface, it seems like a negative, unpleasant emotion.  After all, its root is the basic emotion of anger.  However, humans are a complicated ape.  Our emotion systems evolved largely to help us obtain and maintain strong social standing within small-scale communities, as doing so was evolutionarily adaptive for our ancestors.  Expressing outrage about the behavior of others, often in the form of virtue signaling, seems to partly function to elevate the status of the person expressing the outrage.  And to the extent that this strategy may be effective, we can understand why it is often the case that expressing outrage often makes people feel good rather than bad.

Understanding the evolutionary roots of outrage may well prove moral outrage often is less about outing someone else for problematic behavior than it is about inflating one's own sense of self by buffering threats to one's own moral identity.  Virtue-signaling-based outrage seems to be much more about sending out signals about oneself.  It is essentially putting others down in an (often unconscious) effort to raise oneself up.

Screaming is not only a perfectly valid form of release, but a healthy one, too.  Screaming creates a chemical reaction that is similar to the one you get when you exercise - you get a dopamine hit and some endorphins flowing.

Jughead Jones Reads The Four Agreements

I've been talking to this new guy who's been attending our meeting.  First of all, I'm damn glad I'm no longer a new guy.  Secondly, you can say just about  anything you want to a new guy because he doesn't have the confidence or experience to counter what you're saying.  Finally, I'm trying to make a point of some kind here . . .

He's also reading the book "The Four Agreements."  First of all, I don't know why his sponsor has given him this difficult book to read in his first six months.  Give the second grader "Archie and Jughead Go to Band Camp," not "War and Peace."  Secondly, it's none of my business what his sponsor is asking him to read.  I'm not keeping anyone sober.  Finally, it's a pretty damn good book.

On a side note I bet you didn't know that the full name is Jughead Jones and it isn't really specified anywhere that Jughead is a pejorative name.  It sure sounds like a less than complimentary name to for a guy wearing sort of spiked-out half-crown half-porkpie hat.  He comes across as pretty cool and laid-back but unlucky with the ladies . . . if you know what I mean.  Now that I think about it Jughead Jones sounds like a Yale linebacker from  1943.

He's reading the book in chunks, big chunks; my A.A. friend, not Jughead.  I have to shake my head knowingly when I see someone attack recovery in this fashion.  It's not a sprint, it's a slog.  This graduate level spirituality text doesn't lend itself to quick reading and it's not going anywhere, anyhow.  I do empathize with the desire to go fast, go faster, go damn fast and get it finished.  If I passed anything along at all it's the hint that he should take a big, deep breath and try to absorb what he's reading.  I usually add that when I write down what I'm thinking about something it serves the double purpose of cementing those thoughts in my consciousness and uncovering the absurdity of some of the things that make sense when they're alone, in my own head.

If you insist on driving ninety you'll get there sooner but miss all the great scenery along the way plus you might run over a rabbit.  

Thwack!

"Awareness is always the first step because if you are not aware, there is nothing you can change  If you are not aware that your mind is full of wounds and emotional poison, you cannot begin to clean and heal the wounds and you will continue to suffer."

A friend of mine with a solid twenty-five years of sobriety asked me recently about my daily or Tenth Step inventory (ies).  She has been struggling a little bit in her recovery program as in: "I'm sick of going to A.A. meetings."  I can not be more sympathetic.  I figure I've been to seven or eight thousand meetings in my thirty-eight years which probably means - given my proclivity to lie - that I've been to five or six thousand.  In any case, a lot of meetings.  Getting sick of meetings is part and parcel of long-term sobriety.  I called her the next day to follow up on her request.  She answered the phone and said she was meeting with her sponsor.  I said I didn't give a shit and she should ditch her sponsor and talk to me instead.  She was laughing as she hung the phone up in my ear.  This is as it should have been and - not only was I not surprised, given the tone and timbre of our relationship - I laughed for a bit myself.  That's the last I heard of it although she has been back attending regularly and with a much more relaxed attitude.

Does anyone else miss that satisfying Thwack! that used to accompany the slamming down of the phone in someone else's ear?  All cell phone hang-ups sound the same . . . 

My daily inventory is not the slog that it used to be and this is because my behavior is generally  pretty decent and I am not making this up.  I don't have a lot of bad behavior to clean-up anymore.  If I don't behave well I try to correct things immediately.  I don't lie in bed reviewing my behavior before drifting off to sleep and often think: "Wow, I need to clean that mess up."  Fewer messes = Fewer clean-ups on Aisle 3 and Quicker Clean-Ups = Fewer Foetid, Rotting Messes to clean-up the next day.

I'm seeing how this works more and more clearly  . . . 

The Frog Blog

Some dude shared the frog story at a meeting this week.  You know the one - if you slowly turn up the heat on a frog sitting in a pan of water it will just sit there until it gets boiled to death.

Is this story an allegory?  Or a parable?  Or a fable?  Or total bullshit?  Answer at the end of the blog.

I understand the point the dude was trying to make with the boiling frog story: that the damage alcohol does to the alcoholic is slow and cumulative so we often don't try to get the train stopped until it's awfully, awfully late.

Allegory:  A story, poem, or picture that can be interpreted to reveal a hidden one, typically a moral or political one.

Parable:  A short, simple story that teaches or explains an idea, especially a moral or religious one.

Analogy:  A comparison between two things, typically for the purpose of explanation or clarification.

Total: Complete; absolute.

Bullshit:  Nonsense, lies, or exaggeration; foolish, insincere, exaggerated, or boastful talk.

So here's the deal.  Frogs have been around for at least 200 million years.  Some experts believe that they have been walking the earth for 250 million years.  Humans have been around for maybe 300 thousand years so I'm putting my money on the frogs.  Yeah, like you get to hang in there for 200 million years by allowing yourself to slowly boil to death.  I don't think so.  Humans are more likely to get boiled to death.  I see no evidence that we're smart enough to last another million years.

Genus Frogs!

From the Toltec Today Gazette:  "The freedom we are looking for is the freedom to be ourselves, to express ourselves.  But  if we look at our lives we will see that most of the time we do things just to please others, just to be accepted by others, rather than living our lives to please ourselves."

I initially thought this sounded a little selfish but I believe the point is that trying to live in a way that others want you to live isn't going to be very satisfying in the long run.

YOU, Dude

I'm reading Step Eleven in the 12 & 12, amused at the different colors of ink and highlighters I've used over the years, when I notice that on a couple of pages devoted to the prayer part of prayer, meditation, and self-examination, that these have caught my attention over many readings.  See if you can pick up on a thread:

"We ask for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out."

"Even so, when making specific requests, it will be well to add this qualification . . .  'if it be Thy will.' "

"They will, not mine, be done."   

". . . permit us to return to the surest help of all -  our search for God's will, not our own, in the moment of stress."

Sort of the summing up of this idea that my will is just fine until it gets in the way of God's will is the reminder that we're prone to a "self-serving demand of God for replies."

I'm getting a thread here, a theme, aren't you?    

Last couple of pages in Step Eleven: "In A.A. we have found that the actual good results of prayer are beyond question.  They are matters of knowledge and experience.  All those who have persisted have found strength not ordinarily their own.  They have wisdom beyond their usual capability.  We discover that we received guidance for our lives to just about the extent that we stop making demands upon God to give to to us on order and on our terms.  We will also report that out of every season of grief or suffering, when the hand of God seemed heavy or even unjust, new lessons for living were learned, new resources of courage were uncovered."

This is one of the messages I have finally internalized and am eager to spread: painful things are going to happen to YOU.  YOU, dude.  You are going to suffer physically, mentally, and emotionally and certainly spiritually.  The first trick is recognizing that fact but the really huge trick is understanding that everything is a lesson.  If I don't learn from my pain I'm destined to suffer pain over and over again.

Often in meetings we read a section of the Big Book called The Promises without remembering that "promises" are found all through the literature.   And here's a whopper from Step Eleven: "Perhaps one of the greatest rewards of meditation and prayer is the sense of belonging that comes to us.  We no longer live in a completely hostile world.  We are no longer lost and frightened and purposeless.  (This happens) the moment we catch even a glimpse of God's will . . . "

Do I Have a Stupid Face?

My town has a fair number of homeless people wandering around.  Some of them appear to be ne'er-do-wells but my experience is that a lot are suffering from a variety of mental illnesses and conditions to go along with all of the alcoholism and substance abuse that obviously exists.  I'm not an unsympathetic guy so it makes me pause when I'm asked for money.  I used to either give a buck or two or walk by, with a fixed thousand yard stare.  I didn't feel all that great about either option -  one makes me seem uncaring while the other may simply be channeling money into the local liquor store cash register or local drug dealer pocket.  I am not one of those people overly worried about some scam artist screwing me out of a buck.  I think the truly needy to just lazy quotient is about ten to one so I don't want to deprive someone who's hungry a meal to ensure some joker works me for some of my precious cash.

My technique has evolved so that now I simply ask: "What do you want it for?"  The most common reply is "to get something to eat."  Bus fare is another favorite but food is the big number one.  My response is to offer to buy them something to eat, pointing out a convenience store or nearby coffee shop.  A few people have taken me up on it.  Most haven't.  One woman trolling a Wal-Mart parking lot refused my offer of some bananas: "I don't like bananas."  Yeah, well, I'm not a buffet line.  It's bananas.  I have some bananas.  That's your choice.  Another woman (a belligerent woman) refused my offer to buy her some oatmeal at the Starbucks across the street: "Starbucks don't have no oatmeal."  Starbucks do have some oatmeal but I'm not going to argue with someone who doesn't want no oatmeal.  I'm not crazy about oatmeal, either, but then I have the cash to buy something else.  I think she must have thought I was a waiter taking orders: "Hi, Ma'am, I'm Seaweed and I'll be taking care of you today.  May I recommend the oatmeal? . . . "

Today was my favorite.  A long-haired kid on a stingray bike asked me for a couple of dollars.  "What do you want it for?" I said, right on cue, per usual.  "Get something to eat, maybe a Jack-in-the-Box."  I said: "OK, c'mon inside and I'll buy you something to eat."  He mumbled about a low sodium diet.  I'm no nutritionist but I'm guessing Jack isn't too worried about how much sodium he's packing into each burger.  I kind of shrugged so he mumbled something about a bag of chips - specifying Lay's chips, for fuck's sake.  I must have the kind of stupid face that attracts this style of picky, demanding panhandler.  I went inside and got my Coke and grabbed a bag of chips for this kid.  I did not pay particular attention to the brand of snack and didn't look closely at what kind of salty snack I picked up and I paid absolutely no attention to whether or not I was even buying a chip, figuring that any kind of nutritionally void, high sodium snack would suffice.  I don't work for Door Dash.  I'm not filling orders.  I'll buy anything you want but I'm not picking it out for you.  I exited the store and handed him his snack.  "Thanks" was followed by a quiet "oh."  I turned around, somewhat wearily: "Is there a problem?"  Lays chips.  He wanted Lay's, he asked for Lay's, I disappointed him with some other chip.  Maybe the salt content upset him.  I sighed and looked at him.  "They're okay, they're okay," he said quickly.

I'm being a little snarky here because I'm finding it amusing today.  I've bought a fair number of food items and coffees for people.  I'm not only empathetic I'm sympathetic as well.  People have it hard, they can have it hard.  I talk to these folks and most of them have some bubbles in the think tank.  They're not going to walk into Chase Bank and get hired as a teller.   Dude standing near my car today said: "First off I'm a musician.  Second off I'm an artist.  Third off I'm an electrician" before telling me a convoluted story about seeing a man on an off-ramp with a sign that said "Will Work For Beer" and then throwing a twenty and a pack of cigarettes at him before driving off. 

Toltecs

"The habitual comfort of a familiar place keeps us where we are - even when we are not happy there.  The hurt of leaving something we have grown accustomed to makes it more difficult.  Until we lose the world we once knew, we cannot fully adjust to a new one.  It is a slow, strange unraveling of old ways of thinking and doing."

In A.A. speak: "I'd rather sit in my own shit than get up and move."

"As the Toltecs teach us, the reward is to transcend the human experience of suffering, to become the embodiment of God.  That is the reward."

I ask my Higher Power each morning to help me channel the peace and love that is my experience with spirituality and ooze it out into the carnal world each day.

From time to time a couple of friends travel from one of the outlying villages into my neck of the woods to attend Keep It Complicated.  They're about my age with about the same amount of sobriety.  They get it.  They have it.  It isn't hard to pick out the people that have internalized the spiritual path to recovery that we try to embrace in Alcoholics Anonymous.  They have that sense of ease and comfort and relaxation that most human beings search for.  It's just in their pores at this point.  I can't rattle them with my wry (read: sarcastic) sense of humor.  You can't rattle me anymore.  I don't have anything to do with what you think of me or say to me.  I listen because there is a message in your words and actions that I need to pay heed to from time to time, but mostly it's just your view of my place in the world, which is none of my business.

They remind me of the men and women - but especially men - that were around when I was getting sober.  The men I knew before my A.A. life were in my family and in my church and school.  My dad was distant and when he delivered messages to me it was often with an angry tone, both implied and explicit.  And when teachers and church folk delivered messages to me I was often being pushed to go further or criticized and warned about my behavior, in a manner that was both implied and explicit.  Often the messages were delivered kindly and with my best interests at heart - I'm not blaming the messangers here - but for a kid who was fearful and incredibly hard on himself my reaction was usually: "I'm a failure.  I'm a fuck up.  I'm not worth anything."  This was depressing and caused me to pull further and further into my own mind.  But the men in A.A. told me what they did and how that worked personally and urged me to find my own path forward.  They assured me they didn't know what my path was.  I learned quickly that they weren't going to tell me what to do, going so far as to say they had no idea what I should do and often encouraged me to listen to may different voices in recovery besides theirs because surely I'd find a message that would resonate with me.

Usually I'd argue with them for a bit which never seemed to rattle anyone and then I'd go off by myself and think about what I'd heard.  Those guys always seemed to make pretty good sense after the fact.  "Here's what I did.  This may or may not work for you.  I have no idea what you should do.  Talk to a lot of other people and go to different meetings so you can hear different opinions.  Then find your own path.  Good luck.  We're here to help in any way we can."

They were so fucking infuriating!

Mistakes!

 Mistakes

Three Categories:

Catastrophic - when an outcome can clearly be linked to a decision.  I.E., driving with your eyes closed and having an accident.

Complex - when an outcome is the result of a combination of factors that on their own wouldn’t usually cause a problem.  I.E., having an accident when it’s raining and you have a headache and traffic is heavy and your cell phone rings and you're running late for an appointment . . . 

Managed - when a mistake is made that doesn’t have consequences that are dire.  I.E., instead of quitting your job and selling all your possessions to write a movie script, taking a series of smaller steps - like joining a writing contest - where failure wouldn’t have terrific consequences.

A Shit-Ass Way To Live

"Somewhere among our best times is a lost day.  It was not lost all at once but minute by minute.  We take care to keep out the bigger drain on our time, and let the little irritations, the times of melancholy and doubt steal our common sense and ruin the day."     

In A.A. speak: Don't let the small shit bother you.  And it's all small shit.

"Doing your best is taking the action because you love it, not because you're expecting a reward.  If you take action just for the sake of doing it, without expecting a reward, you will find that you enjoy every action you to.  Rewards will come, but you are not attached to the reward."    

I sort of get this, kind of, when we're referencing gainful employment.  I enjoyed the work I did much of the time and sometimes I didn't.  I had bills to pay and instead of pursuing what I love or want to do . . . well, yeah, I had bills to pay.  But the sentiment is strong and healthy, worthy as hell.  I wanted to be a rock star or a second baseman, not a salesguy hawking process control instrumentation.  When I was walking around on the production floor of a manufacturing plant my main goal wasn't to sell anything but instead just not tumble into a piece of machinery that was hot or moving fast or full of sharp edges or all three at once.  I ruined some shoes and some shirts but I still have all my fingers.  I think.  Let me check.  I did find that if I really, honestly tried to solve a problem for a client and in a way that met their budget and didn't cost more than they needed to spend then I felt good about myself, made a little scratch come commission time.  I actually found that my sales numbers went up because people who aren't getting hustled relax and buy what they want which is almost always more than they need.

It's in my personal relationships that this approach to life really pays off emotionally and spiritually.  If everything I do is a quid pro quo then my life is reduced to a business transaction.  I give only if I get is a shit-ass way to live.