Legwork Only. Stay Out of the Results Business.

The Second Agreement: "Don't take anything personally."  In other words nothing other people do is because of you.  It is because of themselves.

From my current morning meditation book: "Tonight we may feel we failed in some way today.  Even though we may have done our best, we may now believe we could have done more, done it better, or tried harder.  But there are things out of our control.  One of them is the outcome of any  circumstance.  Though we strive to do our best and to make everything better, we need to remember the outcomes are not in our control."

Another of the constant reminders that basic spiritual principles are eternal and unchanging.  What do we say in Alcoholics Anonymous again?  "Do the legwork and leave the results up to God."  I know what I want, what I think is best, but I don't know what is best in the long run.  Disasters turn into blessings and earthly pleasures can complicate things.  Sometimes, anyway.  Not always, but sometimes, so could I please stop putting labels on what is happening?

I like the image of roots growing from the bottoms of my feet when I'm meditating, roots that go deep into the earth, that fill every space in the entire earth, mingling with the roots growing from every other human and plant and animal on earth, all of us communicating with each other and helping each other.   I like the fact that plant life competes with other plant life but also lives in harmony and synchronicity with all the other plant life.  A tree will grow tall to get as much of the sunlight as it can, potentially starving other plants from that nourishment, but if a damaging insect arrives or a fungus, the tree can send out chemical signals to the other trees warning of the dangers.

I was in the lobby with an engineer from our corporate headquarters when our main competitor walked in.  Our contact was nonplussed until my colleague said: "We're competitors - not enemies."

I'm Better Than EVERYONE

"I once heard a speaker say, "I am trapped inside what I think you think about me.  Today I realize I have experienced what Bill W. calls our 'spiritual kindergarten.'"

I've written too much about this married guy I know who is pushing 50 but still fancies himself a player with 30 year old women.  I think he behaves well - technically, officially - but he's out there walking on thin ice, I say as a married guy who knows my wife wouldn't appreciate me hanging out with or sniffing around much younger women, much younger single women.  Today a group of people went out to coffee after the meeting and one of my A.A. daughters invited me to tag along, mostly because there's a brand new man that I've been talking to and who was also going to be coffee drinking.  I deferred, as I had previously made plans to take a walk with The Player Guy who - I need to stress - is a nice man who works hard at recovery and spends a lot of time sponsoring new guys.  In my much beloved smart ass way I said something along the lines of "I get to listen to him drone on and on and on about problems of prosperity" with a huge smirk on my face and a well-known propensity for dishing out good humored shit to my friends.  (Ed. Note: while I was joking he really does this when we take a post-meeting walk on the beach.  I'm fine with it.  I think he appreciates the ear of someone who is interested in his comings and goings and is willing to call him on any bad behavior.  His real sponsor is a sweet man who doesn't push back, I don't think.  Nothing wrong with that most of the time but all of us need to be called to account from time to time.)  The young woman said: "Yeah.   Been there.  One of his unlimited time shares was about how his $5,000 refrigerator broke."

Rich people.  Jaysus, as the Irish would say.  I drive a Porsche and the woman who dropped the one liner on Rich Guy only found out about it last week.  I've known her two years.   If I have Ferrari problems I don't have to call them "Ferrari Problems" - I can call them "car problems."  The word for this is Humble Brag.  "The air conditioning on my private jet wasn't working on the flight to the French Riviera."

I think Rich Guy would be somewhat taken aback at the comment of one of the women he thinks he's dazzling.

In the "Restraint of Tongue and Pen" department I offer this quote from The Grapevine: "I've heard that if I make space between the stimulus and my response, I'm making room for the universe, or God, or peace, or common sense or for anything better to get in between me and the stimulus.  And that room gives me a chance to think about how I might be able to bring something good to the situation, rather than think about what I need to get out of it."

Good advice for someone who just did a ton of writing trying to convince you I'm better that Rich Guy.  I'm not better than anyone.  

Recovery? Recovery!

I asked someone recently what recovery meant to him.  Beyond the obvious structural changes - no drugs and no alcohol - and the obvious structural benefits - no jails, more money, better relationships.  What are the benefits of being in recovery?  He stammered and stumbled along, to my great amusement, being a guy who loves to see other guys suffer, while making me think: "How would I respond to that question?  Beyond the obvious benefits enumerated above?

Well . . . .

I'm much calmer and slower in my thinking and actions.  I'm not so reactive and quick to scuffle.  I pause and consider and this helps me to act like a sane person, a reasonable adult.

I'm aware and I'm present.  I love the imagery of my essence floating up above my carnal being and watching what's going on instead of being right in the thick of everything going on.  Watching before acting. I used to be the guy getting on the haunted roller coaster in the deserted, haunted amusement park while a killer is on the loose.  Now I'm the Floating Guy who reaches down and gently tugs on the Stupid Guy's collar and says: "Hey, let's go get some pizza instead."  I can see the Big Picture more easily.  I'm more aware of what's going on, what's really going on.

I now possess genuine love and concern for other people.  I used to think I did while dedicating all my free time to expressing love and concern for myself.  Eventually, because of the spiritual lessons I gleaned during my time in Alcoholics Anonymous, I started to pretend like I loved and cared for other people while pretty much still indulging my obsession for my own well-being. Better, sure, but not that much better.  Today?  It comes naturally.  While I still think of myself a lot I think of other people more.

I'm more tolerant of everyone else.  People do not annoy me to any serious degree anymore.  I'm all like "whatever, dude."  I love everyone; I like most people well enough; and a few of you annoy the shit out of me.  That sounds fair.  That sounds pretty good.

I have a slower, lower motor.  Probably some of this is a blessing of the aging process but I'm not moving forward at great speed in a car with no brakes.  I still run hot but it's manageable hot.  I'm satisfied with what I've done . . . most of the time . . . some of the time . . . one time millions of years ago in a universe a million light years away.

I have a great deal of gratitude.  I've got it good.  I've got it good.

Heresy:  Any belief that strongly opposes established, official, or orthodox standards.

Apostasy:  An act of refusing to continue to follow. obey, or recognize a religious faith.

A heretic has beliefs.  An apostate has none.

Okay, Just Books, Then

Crime and Punishment.  War and Peace.  Right and Wrong.  Good and Evil.  Is a lie a bad act when it spares someone's feelings?  When it damages someone's reputation?  When it spares me, myself, and I some discomfort?

I have been under some internal mandate of unknown origin to continue to pare my life down.  Stuff.  Whew, stuff.  Stuff has so much promise in the acquiring and can be so disappointing in the possession.  I was digging through some drawers that contained several pounds of paper that I have been hauling around for years - fifty years in some cases - and never rereading.  Newspaper and magazine articles about the glory years of the Cincinnati Reds, scorecards from Spring training games when I was deep in my addictions and still getting away with it, a few books and pictures and cards.  Memorabilia.  I can say with certainty I have not looked at any of this stuff in 30 years and to say it has been 40 years wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility.  I didn't read all of it this time and I know I wouldn't take it back out anytime soon, so I boxed it all up and took the package to the Post Office to mail to a friend who still follows the team like I did in my teens, aware that there is a lower rate for sending books through the mail.  While the package didn't technically contain books it did contain paper with words written on them.  What is a book anyway?  If I took all of the newspaper clippings and put them into a binder would that be a book?  Maybe the Post Office should have a manuscript rate.  This is on them, not me.  If you buy a lamp you get a twenty page pamphlet tell you, for instance, not to plug the lamp into an electrical outlet and take a shower so it's not too much to ask the Post Office to put some thought into their Book Rate.  Spell it out!

I'm an individual who is a slave to logical behavior.  I hate things that don't make sense, that aren't logical.  I like numbers.  One plus one equals two and that's that. There are generally ways to do something that are better than all the other ways to do something and when this is the case - not always but pretty often - I push back when I'm asked to do something the way that isn't the best.  To wit: I set the package down on the counter and told the old guy working that it contained "books and papers."  This was not true and this means, technically, I lied.  It contained papers.  I took the concept of a "Book Rate" and modified it somewhat to fit my concept of what could be shipped under the guise of a "book."  I didn't want to pay the much higher rate you have to pay to ship other shit and I decided I could change the facts in my favor.  A little twisting and bending and jamming and forcing, heating those facts up until they melt a little and can be reconfigured to my liking.  The guy looked at the box and said: "If you take the papers out I can give you a much better rate."  I looked at the box and pondered a moment, fighting back a low-grade urge to explain how the United States Post Office could do things better.  He wanted me to cut the box open, take some stuff out, seal the box back up, mail it, take the papers home and repackage them and then return to the Post Office to mail the papers.  I took a beat and then said with a straight face: "OK, it's just books."  What the fuck, right?  All I was going to do was take the package to another Post Office and tell them "Books - just books" because I'm not stupid, right?  And what was the guy going to say: "Sir, you just said it's books and papers."  I didn't see it happening.  I played the odds.  I made the calculation he wasn't going to get into it with me.  He just wanted to make it to lunch time so he could eat his baloney and cheese sandwich in the break room, not argue semantics with stone-cold liar sociopath.

The guy processed the order.  He wasn't unpleasant but he wasn't chatty, either.  I told him one thing and then I told him another and he knew one of them wasn't true so he knew he was dealing with a liar.  Not a horrible, evil liar but I didn't come clean with him.  You know, I didn't care.  His organization was illogical and inefficient and being a slave to the truth was going to inconvenience me.  The cost was $8.50 instead of $30.50 so that helped my calculus, too.  I was effusive in my praise of his service that morning.  I felt/feel no guilt about what happened.  Get your shit together, Post Office.

I told this story to SuperK when I got home.  I didn't perceive it as being anything that special or out of the ordinary and pretty typical of something I might do or say and she lost it, collapsing with laughter.  It surprised me, actually.  Like "shit, maybe I am a psychopath."  

I told her that she just bought an entire year of bad behavior with her reaction.

God! Dog! Palindrome!

 There are four stages to life: youth, middle-age, old age, and "You look great!"                                     Unknown (but pretty goddam funny)

You do enough.  You have enough.  You ARE enough.

You are not alone.  You are loved unconditionally.  You are supported.  You are strong.  You are ENOUGH.

One meditation visualization that I hear often and just as often forget is to imagine that there are roots emanating from the bottoms of my feet and entering the ground and traveling through every bit of this earth and intermingling with the roots of every other person, connecting me with all of them.

I'll toss in this ChatGPT summary of animism, a topic I've investigated in the past and one that continues to fascinate me even though I'm not really sure how to incorporate it into my own personal, learned and installed root system:

Animism is the belief that spirits, souls, or a living essence exist not only in humans but also in animals, plants, natural features, and sometimes objects such as rivers, mountains, rocks, or even tools.

Key ideas of animism include:

• Nature is alive and spiritually significant.
• Humans are part of a larger community that includes animals, plants, and other beings.
• Relationships with these beings often involve respect and reciprocity.

Animism is found in many Indigenous and traditional cultures around the world, including among some Native American, African, Australian Aboriginal, and Asian peoples.  It is often considered one of the oldest forms of religious belief.

Every time we travel we pick up a few rocks from wherever we end up.  I'm assuming I'm not supposed to do this but as with many things I'm not supposed to do I do it anyway, partially because I have a great deal of respect for rocks - they're amazing things that have been around for a long time - and partially because it connects me to an old friend from high school who was also a rock guy.  And with SuperK's geologist brother who knew a lot more about rocks than I'll ever know and who passed this love on to his sister who passed it on to me, a gift I'm deeply grateful for.

Rocks!

I felt the presence of The Divine as deeply as I've ever experienced during our trip to Antarctica.  Man, that place got into my bones.  Man, that was a beautiful place.  God - or Dog - was oozing out of that place.

When we got back from our last trip the Mexican rescue dog who lives next door and who loves me with a love I cannot fathom glimpsed me for the first time since our return.  She lost it.  She looked like a demon possessed.  She was bouncing and thrashing around so much that she lost her balance and fell heavily on her side - it looked like it hurt to me - but she just hopped up and continued to thrash.  You tell me there's nothing divine in that?  You tell me that isn't the essence of love distilled?

God!  Dog!  You notice anything similar there!?!

Actions V Intentions For the Fiftieth Time

People are watching what we do.  They judge us by what we do.  I was under the illusion that people judged me by what I said I was going to do.  Even worse, I hoped that they judged me by what I was thinking I was going to say that I was going to do.  I was a hell of a guy in my own mind and it was just too bad that you didn't live up in there, too.  What we say and do matters, even if we don't realize it.  It's not the intention that matters - that's just a starting point.  But, hey, even failure is part of recovery.  Failure doesn't define us - it's what we do afterwards that defines who we are.

The Toltecs have their own take on this: "Many of us have spent years creating stories about ourselves based on other people's ideas and expectations, then we struggle through life trying to live up to these false images that we agreed to.  But there comes a point when you say to yourself: "This is who I am - no story needed."

I've added a guided meditation to my morning Quiet Time routine.  Some of them are good, a few are great, and some of them rub me the wrong way.  The quiet, breathy, murmuring voices, using words like gently and nourishing.  Yeech.  "Mindfully take a gentle, nourishing breath of clean, energizing air."  Brother, give me a break.

And how about chakras?  I try to keep an open mind on matters of spirituality but the chakras are more than I can handle.

1. Root Chakra  — Base of the spine
   • Associated with survival, stability, grounding.
2. Sacral Chakra  — Lower abdomen
   • Associated with creativity, pleasure, emotions.
3. Solar Plexus Chakra — Upper abdomen
   • Associated with confidence, willpower, personal power.
4. Heart Chakra — Center of the chest
   • Associated with love, compassion, connection.
5. Throat Chakra  — Throat
   • Associated with communication and self-expression.
6. Third Eye Chakra  — Between the eyebrows
   • Associated with intuition and insight.
7. Crown Chakra  — Top of the head
   • Associated with spirituality and higher consciousness.

From a spiritual perspective, practices such as meditation, yoga, breathwork, chanting, and visualization are often used to balance or awaken the chakras.

From a scientific perspective, chakras are not recognized as physical structures or measurable energy centers in the body. They are generally understood as spiritual, symbolic, or psychological concepts rather than anatomical ones.  In traditional Tantra, chakras were primarily tools for spiritual transformation and meditation, not simply centers associated with personality traits or emotional wellness. 

One thing I find fascinating is that the concept of chakras is found in many original texts but they've changed and modified over the centuries - at their essence the same but morphing into many different forms.  A relatively modern invention is assigning colors to each chakra center.  In my background the Bible is the Big Kahuna; a book that is essentially the same but has changed and been modified over the centuries as well.  So wherever your spiritual traditions or practices lead you let them lead away - you can find spiritual mentors or advisors that help immensely but at the heart of the matter they're human beings, too, with all kinds of prejudices and shortcomings.  Beware the teacher who is cocksure that they're all that and never wrong.  These people, in my estimation, can be the biggest fuck-ups out there.

Here's a visualization technique I like: A blue sky with clouds drifting across it.  The sky is my mind - always there, never changing - and the clouds are my thoughts - coming and going, changing constantly while not affecting the essence of the sky itself.  Within the sky but not the sky.

Let's Try the Red One

"Remember - you are not a helpless bystander to the tyranny of your mind."

Toltecs

 

Reflecting on my day I'm now much more conscious of how much time I spent talking about myself or focusing attention on myself or my issues.  SuperK went out to lunch with some friends from her golf league and got stuck to a woman who asked her not one question (just back from Denmark!) while prattling on and on in great detail about herself.  Borrrrringggg!  I'm not sure what I would have done but then I'm not as nice as my wife is - she actually cares what other people think about her.  But I know that I'm not so important that I need to keep a constant watch over myself.  I can stop watching myself and start noticing others.  I can continue to discover the world around me.

"One must do more, think less, and not watch oneself live."

Sebastien de Chamfort

"Sometimes we have habits or practices that cause us pain, yet we continue to do them.  This is because that same action also brings us comfort in some way.  Being honest with ourselves in this regard is key to knowing whether or not we really want to change them."

Toltecs, again

This is an alcoholic, pondering the ruination of his life, fully aware that he simply cannot drink and survive, pouring the next drink.  He has learned what the problem is; he is aware that there is a solution; but he doesn't change his behavior.

"Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol.  The sensation is so elusive, that while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after time differentiate the true from the false.  To them, the alcoholic life seems the only normal one."

Doctor's Opinion, The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Homer Simpson, in an effort to get free cable, climbs up a utility pole where he finds a red connection and a green connection.  He attaches the cable wire to the green connection - makes sense - and is promptly shocked into next Wednesday.  "Hmmmm," he muses.  "Must be the red connection."  For a second time he gets the shit shocked out of himself.  Frazzled, he pauses, smoke rising from his singed hair, and states, with some purpose and confidence: "Let's try the green one."  and is promptly knocked right off the pole.

This is an alcoholic pondering the next right move as he looks back on an endless stream of bad choices, before deciding to try the alcohol solution . . . one . . .  morrrrre . . . tiiiiime . . .