New Is Good

Some A.A. members are rascals and coyotes who trick and surprise new people; some are harsh taskmasters trying to whittle down ego and pride, others teach more through honoring and encouragement, nurturing the best in a fellow member; some lecture like a professor; and others can melt someone open with love and compassion.  But the greatest gift and the strongest power emanates from the sense of freedom and joy that comes from the more experienced member.

It's a basic principle of my spiritual life that I learn the deepest things when I'm in unknown territory.  Often it's when I feel most confused inwardly and am in the midst of my greatest difficulties that something new will open.   I awaken most easily to the mystery of life by exploring and challenging my weakest side.  I've been to sixty-five countries - a number of them more than once - and forty-eight states - and not just stopping in an airport on a brief layover - and I'm not done yet.  I don't want to go back and do something I've already done.  I've done it.  I want to do something new because new is challenging.  New is exciting.  I want to be challenged.  If I'm not challenged I get bored quickly.  And I say this while understanding that new can be frustrating.  I had to get in and out of a rubber zodiac bouncing on an ice-covered ocean and I was incredibly nervous the first time I did it.  I'm not coordinated at all and I kept playing an internal video of the guides trying to fish me out of water that was at approximately 32.07 degrees Fahrenheit.  But I did it!  It was a thrill of a lifetime!  

Serenity Now!

Continuing on yesterday's theme of combating that terrible sense of isolation I make it my purpose to remember something - anything - about each and every person I know/meet/encounter in the Rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.  In fact, with anyone, anywhere, at any time, I should be able to ask a pertinent question or share something about myself that's relatable to that person.  I see you.  I listen when you talk.  I want you to tell me how you're doing, really, and not always get that "I'm fine.  I'm good" response.  If you're fine that's great but if you're not I'd like to hear about it.  Really.  I really would like to know what's going on with you.  If you can't share your fears and pain and frustration then no one will be able to help you dig yourself out.

I have a friend in Alcoholics Anonymous who is relentlessly cheery and upbeat, or at least presents that face to the public.  Her sponsor - after hearing the response "I'm fine" one too many times - sighed and said: "If you don't tell me how you're doing I'm not going to be able to help you."  That was one of most trenchant and wise things she could have said.

I repeat the details of the Seinfeld episode where one of the characters would shout "Serenity now!  Serenity now!" whenever he was upset.  And the fact that he was clearly pissed when he was shouting this only makes the scene more delicious.  One of his friends was impressed, so impressed he, too, took up this chant, and it worked and it worked and it worked until it didn't, and then he destroyed a room full of computers.

His apology: "Let me tell you, George.  Serenity now.  Insanity later."  This is funny and this also has an uncomfortable amount of truth in it.

The Terrible Sense of Isolation

"What are we likely to receive from Step Five?  For one thing we shall get rid of that terrrible sense of isolation we've always had.  Almost without exception, alcoholics are tortured by loneliness.  Even before our drinking got bad and people began to cut us off, nearly all of us suffered the feeling that we didn't quite belong.  Either we were shy, and dared not draw near others, or we were noisy good fellows craving attention and companionship, but never getting it - at least to our way of thinking.  There was always that mysterious barrier we could neither surmount nor understand.  It was as if we were actors on a stage, suddenly realizing that we did not know a single line of our parts."  

The old pangs of anxious apartness.  There are some passages in our literature that - for me - stand on their own merits.  I find them so spot-on that they require none of my fairly shallow explanations.  The above paragraph from The Big Book was a solid two-by-four whomping to the side of my head.  It described how alone I felt before I got sober.  I felt like everyone else had a playbook for life and that I had a child's coloring book or one of those mazes printed on the back of a table placemat at a cheap chain restaurant: "Can you find the treasure?"  Any five year old could figure out how to manuever through the maze to get to the treasure but I had to admit: "No!  I can't find the treasure!  I can't find a pen!  My pen doesn't work!  And the treasure appears to be a bag of French Fries!"  I was lost.  I was clueless.  I was drifting around in a sinking kayak in the Arctic Ocean.

Describing the initial meetings or gatherings in Akron at Henrietta Sieberling's gate house: "The expression on the faces of the women, that indefinable something in the eyes of the men, the stimulating and electric atmosphere of the place, conspired to let him know that here was haven at last."

The buzz of the Keep It Complicated meeting as I walk down the steps into the fairly dingy and ordinary church basement.  It's really something.  It has a positive, excited tone.  It sounds good.  It sounds happy.  I know I was expecting a room full of dirty old men in trench coats.  Living a life of misery where the temporary relief of alcohol was the only thing I had to look forward to and then learning that I had to give that up was beyond terrifying.

Where Does It Go?

Impermanence - The fact or quality of being temporary or short-lived; the philosophical problem of change that is addressed by many religions and assumes the belief that all existence is temporary;  in Buddhism: everything that comes also goes.

But where does it go?

The uncertain and temporary nature of much of what we regard as reality is the foundation of impermanence. 

It's all going to go eventually.  Everything.  All of it.  This can be frightening to contemplate but mostly it's a liberating concept.  How can I waste time worrying right now, about something that is probably never going to happen, about something that has already happened, wasting this minute, when I'm going to lose it all anyway?  This is a message I prefer to pass along when someone is doing well, when it is merely irritating, than when things are falling apart, when the message can be frustrating and terrifying.  The powerlessness!  The only thing I can count on in life is change.  I love change.  I want change.  It drives me insane but it fills me up.  

The way I grew after Mom and dad died (Ed. Note: Autocorrect gave Mom a capital but left dad lower case.  Hmmmm.) remains a defining point in my life.  It really drove home the point that we're all destined for the dust bin.  It leveled me for a good three or four months,  in an epic leveling.  I can take a good, robust leveling but this one put me on the ground.  I was panicky.  I was bereft, unmoored, unhinged, for that period of time.  I could not rationalize my way out of the panic.  Knowledge was not helpful.  Trying to intellectualize the finality of death was one of the most fruitless, feckless things I've ever tried to do.  It made me painfully aware of the limits of the mind and the power of the emotions.

Stuff

Loving kindness is about me removing barriers to love that I've built within myself.  It's not transactional.  It doesn't demand or require a specific reaction or response from someone else.  It's my own personal freedom, showing me that I've learned to love myself, to like myself, to be comfortable in own skin.

Touch is healing.  I love to pat someone on the arm or shoulder when I walk by.  "I see you there."

Paying attention is the beginning of change.  Inventory shows us what we have.

Stillness shows us what is there.

We're no longer glued to our own internal Television set.

I have a responsibility to be better that . . . what?  I used to be?  The general negative, chaotic behavior of the world and it's inhabitants?  The world tends toward disorder.

You Are Not Alone

 I got a Happy Father’s Day wish from one of my A.A. daughters today.  I don’t have actual children so I can’t tell you how full this filled my heart.

I talk to the brand new people all the time before and after the meeting and I try to direct the guys with mid-range sobriety to introduce themselves.  There’s a dude right now with about three weeks of sobriety and he’s so wrecked and tentative . . . well . . . it really takes me back.  There’s a woman attending with about six months now who comes across as quiet and low-key and then I swap stories with her after the meeting and she’s quite the hellraiser in her personal life. I hope she stays around. I hope I get to see her grow into her own skin.

"Fearless compassion recognizes the inevitable suffering in life and our need to face the suffering in life and our need to face the suffering in order to learn. Sometimes only the fire of suffering itself and the consequences of our actions can bring us to deeper understanding, to feel kindness for all beings, and to liberation." Jack Kornfield

I'm often reminded how easy it is for one alcoholic to talk to another because - and this I can guarantee you - whatever you've gone through, whatever pain that you've had in your life, whatever wreckage you've caused, someone else has gone through the same thing and worse, and they're probably sitting in the meeting you're attending right now.

You. Are. Not. Alone!

Walked Through The Fire

"The ground for compassion is established first by practicing sensitivity toward ourselves.  True compassion arises from a healthy sense of self, from an awareness of who we are that honors our own capacities and fears, our own feelings and integrity, along with those of others.  It is never based on fear or pity but is a deep supportive response of the heart based on the dignity, integrity, and well-being of every single creature.  It is a spontaneous response to the suffering and pain we encounter.  It is our feeling of mutual resonance and natural connectedness in the face of the universal experience of loss and pain.  As our own heart is opened and healed, it naturally seeks the healing of all it touches.  Compassion for ourselves gives rise to the power to transform resentment into forgiveness, hatred into friendliness, and fear into respect for all beings.  It allows us to extend warmth, sensitivity, and openness to the sorrows around us in a truthful and genuine way."

Jack Kornfield

Tantric:  Involving the doctrines or practices of Buddhist or Hindu tantras, in particular the use of mantras, meditation, yoga, and ritual.

Once again I find that the simple spiritual tools and principles that we use in Alcoholics Anonymous are the simple spiritual tools and principles that have been around for five thousand years.  Especially this idea that those of us who have been through a painful time of our lives, who have been tested by fire, burned to our inner core, are the people best situated to pass along a message of recovery to someone else.  In The Big Book we hear the skeptical and resistant newcomer say something along the lines of "Yes, that's me, I drink like that" over and over.  No one likes to be told what to do by someone who hasn't had to do that very same thing.