Sunday, March 31, 2024
Oh, Brother, Pleeeeeease . . .
Thursday, March 28, 2024
Seizure Suzie
A friend of mine from The Program has been watching her daughter suffer with her alcoholism. The younger woman has been coming to the meeting on and off for a while but not marshalling her reserves sufficiently to stay sober. She came back yesterday and I had a chance to talk to her after the meeting. She had a seizure. Her heart stopped. Ambulances came and got her internals working again. "I hit my bottom," she said. Whew and wow. The lengths we go to get ready to get sober . . .
I put a lot of effort into lightening the mood in my A.A. meetings. A common reaction from new people is surprise at the levity and lightness in The Rooms. No one walking into their first meeting feels light and levitated. We skulk in, ready to join the group of silent, grumbling old men in trench coats, the residue of the paper bags that once held their Mad Dog 20/20 still stuck on the soles of their shoes. It's hard enough to keep people sober and a dour group of pissed individuals wouldn't help. This is especially hard if you're young as so much of socializing revolves around establishments that serve alcohol. Some of us tentative people never developed the skill of talking to other people without some lubricating fluids.
So it's always a shock when someone dies or nearly dies or goes to prison or OD's on fentanyl. I forget that this is a deadly serious business at its core. There were a few instances in my drinking life where I came uncomfortably close to death. Sometimes at the wheel of a car and sometimes when I mixed the wrong combination of drugs and way too much alcohol. There are no bottles of medicine that say: "Yeah, we know the dose is one tablet but you can take eight of them and wash it down with a quart of Jim Beam. Seriously - you're good. ABSOLUTELY no problem."
Wednesday, March 27, 2024
Pain is Inevitable - Suffering is Not
Monday, March 25, 2024
The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi
The story of St. Francis of Assisi has always amused me. As I understand it he was a rich kid who returned home, bereft and depressed, after living a life of dissipation and self-gratification. He spent time growing his faith until he reached a point that his teachings drew some attention, so much so that he became a celebrity. So . . . what happens? The same thing that happens to so many teachers who become famous: churches are built and edifices constructed and styles adopted that grow monstrously until the point of his message is overwhelmed by the trappings of celebrity. I was lucky enough to visit Assisi in Central Italy and . . . man . . . I was laughing. The cathedral was massive and ornate and there were trinkets and tstchokes being sold everywhere and the monks and brothers and priests were dressed to kill. We strolled into one shop stocked with robes and clothes for these people and . . . man . . . it looked like the dressing room for The Funkadelics.
"What the hell is this?" I twittered.
"It's for the monk impulse purchase," SuperK quipped.
We thought that monks were supposed to be dressed in coarse sackcloth and hair shirts. Who knew?
Francis himself grew weary of the luxury and retired to a cave-like structure outside of town for his remaining years. I'm amazed that you rarely hear religious figures bring up all of the times Jeebus downplays the worth of stuff. People don't want to hear that they should give away all they own and follow the Master. They don't care in principle for the story of the Master deflecting criticism of the poor widow who drops a mite into the offering box while the wealthy ostentatiously giving large sums - sums that are nothing to them while the widow is giving all she had. The parable that suggests that the rich man has as much chance of getting into heaven as a camel has getting through the eye of a needle. This is all in the Bible, folks, but it doesn't play well in your average suburban church. They prefer the Gospel of Prosperity which - in case I'm mistaken - is nowhere to be found in the texts.
Here's the famous prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
Now, c'mon, that pray kicks ass. I'm done with the rote memorization of prayers of my youth where I repeated words and phrases mechanically without any consideration of their meaning. The content of many prayers are fine - it's my inattention to the content that is lacking. I will say that in my Quiet Time prayers I do ask each day that I try to understand and to love with no regard for my own well-being. For some reason I canNOT remember the consoling part. There are three things to remember and I can only get two of them. In my defense they're the best two parts unless you need consoling. Obviously.
Sunday, March 24, 2024
Seaweed: Hypocrite
Hypocrisy: The practice of claiming to having moral standards or beliefs to which one's own conduct does not conform; a pretense of having a virtuous character, morals or religious beliefs or principles, that one does not really possess.
I crossed paths on my beach walk yesterday with a man I know from The Program who offends me on several levels. I say this without irony and with the assurance that he doesn't care one bit about what I think. Often, I'll point to my ear buds and give him a fist bump as we pass because I simply don't want to talk to him, to possibly listen to a jeremiad about the downfall of society. But the thing is he's aware of his own defects, more or less, and he stays true to his beliefs. He also laughs at himself easily. I like people who don't take themselves seriously. Often I'd rather talk to someone I don't care for who is genuine than someone I like who pours forth sanctimony.
Saturday, March 23, 2024
Abuela
Thursday, March 21, 2024
Cherokee Wisdom
Wednesday, March 20, 2024
X-Treme Wisdom!
Monday, March 18, 2024
Gratitude List, For Real
Here's my daily Gratitude List. I say this every morning and I try to pay attention when I say it. I try to think closely about these items. I try not to think about other things and I try to really consider the implications of what's on the list. As I've said many times: I'm not a naturally grateful person so I've had to work at developing gratitude. Work at it. My progress has often been slow. It's hard to internalize gratitude when you're not prone to be grateful. So many things in life can be improved with the saying "Fake it until you make it." For the longest time I pretended to be grateful, I acted as if I was grateful even when I wasn't, until it became part of the natural rhythm of my thinking. I was grateful and not just pretending to be grateful. As I've also said many times: those of us who see threats and problems are pretty good at surviving what can be a tricky existence so this wariness and skepticism has kept me alive and fed and protected while those idiots always looking on the bright side of things blissfully stumble into a running buzz saw.
I'm grateful that I'm healthy. Relatively healthy. I'm 67 so there are aches and pains and earlier bedtimes and longer naps but I don't have any cancers or weird afflictions or syndromes and no family history of dementia or diabetes or any other serious disease. Now, I take good care of myself by eating right and exercising and getting enough rest and maintaining an active social life - all good things but no guarantee of a long life.
I'm grateful SuperK is healthy for all the same reasons. No one wants to take care of an ailing spouse. Both of us would and may have to some day but we're both trying to minimize the possibility.
I'm grateful for my marriage. 35 years coming up. That's a long time. I'm grateful to be paired with a woman I love but - maybe even as importantly - with a woman I like. I love a lot of people. I'm good at loving people. But I'm not nearly as good at liking people. It's a blessings to enjoy someone's company and to have a similar view of the world, what's interesting and what's not.
I'm grateful for all the people who were involved in my upbringing - my parents especially. I can bitch and moan about how I didn't get what I really needed, how they failed me, but I turned out okay. They couldn't have been that defective and who really has any idea how to raise children? There's no manual. You can't rehearse. The product varies wildly. It was pointed out by a wiser head who had tired of my complaining about what I didn't get from my family: "Can you imagine what a nightmare it must have been trying to raise a walking, talking train-wreck bullshit machine such as yourself?" You know . . . fair enough and good point.
I'm grateful for all the friends I've had/still have in my life, friends who contribute so much to the richness of my existence. Friends that I've known since I was a boy; close friends with whom I've lost touch and close friends I've become reacquainted with; new friends, fresh friends; friends that I used to admire but no longer do and some that used to get on my last nerve that I'm still close with; and that huge, huge group of people who naturally cycle in and out of our lives. So is live. My love is big and wide-ranging. It's not one size or one type or one intensity. It runs hot and it runs cold. But it's still my love.
Finally, at the end and almost as an afterthought, I ponder my carnal, material blessings. I have a nice, comfortable house that I own. While it's not the nicest house I ever lived in it's a damn nice, comfortable house and it faces South so it soaks up all the beautiful SoCal sunshine. I have two nice cars and they're both paid for. I really like cars so I was constantly saving up to buy the one that was just a tiny bit faster than the one I was driving but I finally have a car that I can't in good conscience replace. It has been dependable and has no miles on it and I love to drive it. And then, after years of living on the edge of financial distress, worrying about making enough money to keep me in quarts of Colt 45, good weed, and cigarettes, I have some money in the bank. I don't worry about money. I would love to have more money than I have, of course, but I could get by on less than I'm spending now. I have always loved the fact that when the topic of gratitude comes up in a meeting Stuff is always pretty far down the list.
Friday, March 15, 2024
You Were A Jerk
We can only make ourselves better. Regardless of how we have been conditioned to think, we know right from wrong. It's innate and it speaks loudly. If we want to hear it we will. If we want to ignore it we'll ignore it. The official psychological term for this is the "Don't Be An Asshole Today Effect." I didn't need to come to Alcoholics Anonymous and work The Steps and start a daily meditation practice to understand the difference between good behavior, kind behavior and being a jerk. For many years I would occasionally turn to SuperK when I suspected I had just acted poorly - or not as good as I could have - and inquire after my behavior. "You were a jerk" she would say from time to time. If I tried to defend myself or ask her to expound on why or how I had been a jerk she'd reply: "You know what a jerk is." This wasn't delivered unkindly or harshly but rather matter of factly. The reason I was asking was that I knew I hadn't behaved well.
More meditation musings . . . One of the toughest lessons I had to learn vis-a-vis meditation was how to deal with unpleasant thoughts and emotions. I preferred to try to "think of something good" so I was missing the whole point of meditation. Negative thoughts can be some of the most profitable experiences a meditator can face if only we can work through them. When things are going my way I don't learn shit - I order something from Amazon or drink another cup of coffee. When my back is against the wall I grow. I needed (and still need) to observe them calmly and clearly. I need to look at them mindfully. After a while they lose their hold on me. This is a kind of self-discipline I was unfamiliar with. This is self-discipline that allows me to see through all of the hollow shouting of my own impulses and learn that they have no power over me. It's all a show, a deception. My impulses scream and bluster at me, they cajole, they coax, they threaten, but in reality they have no power at all. If I try to suppress a negative emotion then it gets bigger and badder and more powerful. I have tried to learn the lesson of just watching this stuff as it comes up - restlessness, anxiety, impatience, pain - and not letting myself get involved.
It brings to mind the phenomenon of listening irritably to a crying baby on a plane when I'm trying to get some sleep. The best technique I've found is to actively listen to the squalling. After a while my mind becomes acclimated to the noise; it gets bored and I doze off. Conversely, when I try to actively ignore the noise I listen to the ebb and flow, the rising and falling of the racket, the tone and timber and pace, and the pauses. The pauses are the worst. That's when I sit there and try to anticipate the next shriek.
Thursday, March 14, 2024
Bat-Shit Crazy and I'm Not Talking About Me For Once
Wednesday, March 13, 2024
Make Haste Slowly
"Can you see the wind? Can you see the fragrance of flowers floating on the breezes? Can you see thought or what it is that changes a tree from bare limbs and brown leaves to lush green? Can you see love or joy or peace? We can only see evidence of these invisible things, and it's enough to make us know they exist. The substance of life is so evident, so real and beautiful. Why is it that we ever question the existence of our Creator, who set all things in motion?"
Make haste slowly. Don't overdo it. Don't underdo it. What you expect in your meditation practice is what you are most likely to get. Your practice will therefore go best when you are looking forward to sitting. If you sit down expecting grinding drudgery, that is probably what will occur. Make it reasonable. Make it fit with the rest of your life. While this musing concerns my meditation practice it sure applies to everything else as well.
"One more step, one more effort may be all that is needed. It would amaze us if we knew how close we are to stepping past an old barrier - and it would shake us to know how close we came to quitting." Cherokee Proverb
I've always been sort of a dog whisperer. I get down on the ground so I'm at dog level and I talk human/dog words to the dogs. They almost always come around, eventually, even the skittish ones. My favorite dog lives next door, a rescue dog who spent two years on the streets of Mexico City. This dog loves me in a way that I can scarcely comprehend. This dog sits on the porch and watches my house until I come out and pay her some attention. This dog is always, always thrilled to see me, holds no grudges, forgets all slights. Fair disclosure: I do give this dog a carrot so maybe all I'm doing is bribing this dog. Who cares? There's another, different dog that grabs his leash and holds it in his mouth as soon as he sees me. A dog I see at the beach, a very skittish dog, barked at me at first. Then he starting darting in to give me little nips on my hands. Now he comes over and lets me pet him. Who cares but me? I just don't think animals like that don't have a divine purpose or place.
"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and cannot fail to leave a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation." Herbert Spencer . . . maybe . . . or firstly William Paley.
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
Statue of Limitations
"Parents teach only what they know to teach. But we are not set forever in one direction. We reach an age when we must teach ourselves. We learn to forgive and to understand that when we get to the fork in the road we'll know the right way. If our self-esteem has been damaged, feeding it more pity and more ill-treatment is not healing it."
The statute of limitations on blaming your parents for anything is 30. I will admit that at one point I thought the phrase was "statue of limitations." Like there's a statue somewhere of a mythological being called Limitations. There are statues of Beauty and Wisdom and Youth so I just figured somewhere someone thought Limitations needed its own statue. Not sure what it would look like. Maybe it would half-finished.
"Remember that when you do anything, there will be someone that will find fault, no matter what you do. The pleasure of an unhappy person is to find something wrong in others to salve his own discontent. We all try to understand our differences of opinion, to care what effect we cause in other people. But the bane of anyone's existence is ignorance of our own faults. So what we find wrong in others may be a reflection of our own wrongs."
I was asked to lead the meeting this morning so I read from Step Eleven in the 12&12: "There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation, and prayer. Taken separately, these practices can bring much relief and benefit. But when they are logically related and interwoven, the result is an unshakable foundation for life." I believe that prayer - talking, basically, a talent at which most alcoholics excel - is developed early in our recovery and that we're hammered into submission by sponsors and old-timers to quit looking for solutions to our problems outside of our own selves and to relentlessly, relentlessly examine our insides to see how we can improve ourselves. After all, the outside world is just fine and none of our business - the inside world is where we need to focus.
Meditation is a little trickier. We want to know exactly how to do it and how to measure our progress. We want to be excellent meditators and we want to get it over with. It's not a Fourth Step. It's not an amend. It's not competitive meditation. It's a part of Step Eleven - one of the three maintenance Steps - which can be started immediately and should be started immediately. Here's the Book again: "Meditation is something that can always be further developed. It has no boundaries, either of width or height. Aided by such instruction and example as we can find, it is essentially an individual adventure, something which each one of us works out in his own way." There's a lot of slop room there. We can also get better at it as time passes and we practice continually. It's an individual exercise that has no right or wrong way. And - I love how Alcoholics Anonymous repeatedly reminds us to tap into help outside of The Rooms - we're encouraged to use whatever resources we can uncover.
Saturday, March 9, 2024
Worry Redux
Worry: Give way to anxiety or unease; allow one's mind to dwell on difficulties or troubles.
The meditation experience is not a competition. There is a definite goal but there is no need to rush. The purpose of meditation is not to deal with problems so problem-solving is a fringe benefit and should be regarded as such. Don't think about your problems while you're meditating! Push them aside very gently. Don't shove them aside as if you're trying to catch a foul ball at a major league baseball game. But take a break from all of that worrying and planning. Repeating myself here: For several years I jotted down whatever worry was intruding at the moment into my peace. At the end of the year I reread this list and what a load of crap. I worried about the most implausible things and when I couldn't hork up anything implausible I returned over and over to the same tried and true worries that are always going to be part of the human condition. Almost none of the crap that I worried about came true and when it did I was able to handle it calmly and with dignity.
Friday, March 8, 2024
Thinking About Thinking
Wednesday, March 6, 2024
Go Quiet
Tuesday, March 5, 2024
Decision Fatigue
There is a psychological construct called Decision Fatigue which occurs after people have made a number of decisions in a short period of time. Subsequent decisions may not be in the person's best interests because we're just tire of making decisions. Marketing people know this and they exploit it by upselling customers to more expensive hotel rooms or rental cars or additional warranties. We're exhausted from making decisions so we tend to make quick decisions to get the whole process over with. Isn't this just another version of Restraint of Tongue and Pen? When I'm tired I delay. It's amazing how often a perfectly logical response pops into my head if I let it percolate for a few hours.
I'm in a good spot right now. I'm flowing along with my life in good way. I like the river analogy - if I sit for an hour and watch a river flow by I'm simultaneously seeing an unchanging tableau of water even though from moment to moment the water is changing. I have a group of people in my life right now and I'm enjoying their company. I'm not hanging onto all of the people I've known in the past while valuing and profiting from these relationships. It comes and it goes. Quick hanging on to that spot of water in the river - it's gone and new ones are coming. And just as importantly I've really been leaning into this state of mind where I don't care what anyone thinks of me. I'm free to be me, with all of the agony and the ecstasy that entails. I'm letting it rip.
Focusing on my breath when I meditate is like sawing a piece of wood - I'm not going to cut a straight line if I watch the blade go up and down, back and forth. I'm going to throw up so I pay attention to the spot where the blade meets the wood.
Fair disclosure: I don't own a saw. SuperK won't let me anywhere near a portable device made of sharpened steel. She knows nothing good can come from that.
Sunday, March 3, 2024
The Smirk
"The mind does not stay all the time with the feeling of breath. It goes to sounds, memories, emotions, perceptions, consciousness, and mental formations as well. As they fade away, we let our mind return to the breath which is the home base the mind can return to from quick or long journeys to various states of mind and body. We must remember that all these mental journeys are made within the mind itself. Every time the mind returns to the breath, it comes back with a deeper insight into impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and selflessness. The mind becomes more insightful from the impartial and unbiased watching of these occurrences. Thought is an inherently complicated procedure. By that we mean that we become trapped, wrapped up, and stuck in the thought chain. One thought leads to another which leads to another, and another, and another, and so on. There is a difference between being aware of a thought and thinking a thought."
I try to remember that my progression from bad to better behavior followed the path of actions, words, thoughts, and then, haltingly, on to the most difficult vector: true spiritual acceptance. Don't act like a jerk; don't talk like a jerk; quit thinking murderous or unkind thoughts; and then, hopefully, get to a point or get near a point or get on a path going to a point so far away that you still can't see it where spiritual kindness is a part of who I am. Hard to do. Never. Going. To Get There.
At the meeting yesterday a woman I like kicked us off and I was sitting next to a woman I really like. At one point a third woman asked to share. She is remarkably boring; she almost always shares, adding tons of unnecessary details and blowing right through our three minute timer; and her voice has a droning, somnolent tone and cadence to it. I can almost never listen to what she is saying. I can't remember one time where I was impressed and inspired by what she has said. As she started to speak the leader turned to the woman next to me and kind of smirked. While I got it - I was so right there with her - it demonstrated to me that oh, so elusive fourth stage of acceptance, the one where my mind doesn't go to the smirk.
Never. Going. To Get There.
Saturday, March 2, 2024
Picayune Questions
Here's the latest on the guy I don't like who insists on walking with me . . .
Really, he's okay and it's not that I don't like him - rather it's more of a case that I find him a little boring and if I'm given the choice between being with people or being alone I would almost always choose the quiet solitude option. We've reached a detente on our walks - if he stops and talks with someone . . . I mean, when he stops and talks with someone . . . I continue walking, maybe making a couple of loops before heading on my way. This is my exercise so if he wants to chat he can stop and chat. Actually, the other day he left me hanging and apologized for leaving me hanging: "I should have said goodbye."
I've noticed that although he has shown a ton of growth in his seven years of sobriety he has a tendency to talk about other people in a disparaging, less than complimentary way and behind their backs. He's given me the latest on one of our members who has been renting a room in his house, intimating that the guy is drinking, a possibility not confirmed by the tenant. He talks a lot about a homeless man who just sits on the curb all day across the street from his residence (making me wonder how he knows this as it would seem to suggest that he's sitting there watching the guy sitting there). And today he pointed out the house where another one of our members lived with the intimation that he isn't convinced she's staying sober. The Book tells us that we shouldn't ever intimate that someone is drinking - it should always be left up to the member in question to make any statements about their behavior.
I've been noncommittal when this happens save for the occasional bromide about everyone doing the best they can and never knowing what might be going on in someone else's life that might help explain their behavior. Today he waved me over as I passed him sitting at an outdoor table in a restaurant and complained in great detail about the rudeness of the waiter who was not explaining in enough detail all of his questions about the menu. All of his picayune questions about the menu. A lot of picayune questions. A lot of unimportant, picayune questions about the menu. The guy is having a fucking continental breakfast, for god's sake, how important is the exact composition of the fresh fruit on top of the yogurt. It'll be a surprise, for god's sake. I may have to say something next time he does this. When someone is making a simple situation complicated it's hard for me to listen to the whining. We really do create most of our own problems and if we aren't creating we're making little irritations into bigger ones with all of our nitpicking. He reminded me of a garrulous old man bitching about the shape of the world today.
I'm telling you I'm always learning new stuff.