Assume:  To accept something as true without proof (commonly held definition); to pretend to have a different name or to be someone you are not, or to express a feeling falsely (how interesting!).

I assume most people are idiots while assuming the identity of someone who doesn't think most people are idiots.  A Win-Win for Seaweed!  The evolution of words can be so interesting.  Assume was a Latin word that roughly meant to take on oneself but evolved into this more sinister meaning over the years.  An assumed identity.  I assumed that I knew what the fuck I was doing.  No one else assumed this but I assumed I was fooling them.

There is a very human tendency to write a story based on assumptions.  I see someone in a Porsche I assume they're rich.  I see someone digging a ditch I assume they're not smart.  I see . . . I see . . . I see . . . There was a man in Cincinnati who had more sobriety than I did but no front teeth.  He dressed in clothes that suggested a life of manual labor.  Arrogant prick that I am I created a persona for this guy and I was way, WAY off.  I took the time to get to know him and this dude read more that me and I read a LOT.

The Toltecs warn against this tendency of our flawed minds to filter everything through our past experiences, to supplement new information with these existing beliefs and experiences.  And voila! we know the future!  Assumptions based on past experiences can wreak havoc on our lives.

If I draw two thirds of a triangle on a piece of paper or an incomplete circle or half of a bicycle most people will finish the picture in their minds based on what they have already experienced.  I assume this satisfies some ancient instinctual impulse but it also can lead to mistakes in our awareness.

Because I love thinking about the human mind, trying to understand why we do what we do, I'll toss in something called the Action Bias which is the tendency to choose some action over doing nothing.  The best example is a soccer goalie defending against a penalty shot.  The goalie will almost always try to anticipate an attempt to the left or to the right and dive in that direction while - statistically - standing in the middle of the goal is going to give him or her the best chance to block the shot.

Eck-wah-NIM-eh-tee

Equanimity:  (In many spiritual traditions) A balanced, stable state of mind that remains undisturbed by life's ups and downs.  It means meeting pleasure and pain, praise and blame, or success and failure without clinging to them or fighting with them.  It is an alert, caring presence and not emotional coldness.

The Eight Worldly Winds: (In Buddhist traditions) Gain and Loss.  Pleasure and Pain.  Praise and Blame.  Fame and Disrepute.  Equanimity lets a person watch these shifting conditions pass by without letting emotional storms control their actions.  

True equanimity cares deeply while staying non-reactive.  This doesn't mean doing nothing - it means creating the clear mental state needed to make wise decisions.  It's the liberating quality that  allows us to keep our hearts open and balanced, quiet and steady, in the midst of life's inevitable vagaries.  We don't scream "Foul!" when things don't go our way and we don't sit there with a self-satisfied look on our faces, nodding smugly, when we get what we want because we don't know what we want, most of the time, and even when we get it we're just going to want more.  If that's not frustrating enough sometimes when we get what we want it doesn't work out in our favor in a real meaningful way.

I'm reading a Mark Twain novella right now which is centered around a dude named Satan.  Not that Satan, who we all can agree is a pretty bad dude, but a nephew named after his uncle.   Nephew Satan is slumming around on earth, really quite dismissive of humans and their often cruel, self-centered natures, always preferring the company of animals who he believes have purity in their actions and intentions.  In the course of his wanderings he befriends three young boys and tries to teach them that all of our actions mean something in the long run, that if we get what we want that it may cause incalculable suffering later on.  As an example, he tells the boys that one of their friends is going to sneak out of the house one evening and then drown in the river while attempting unsuccessfully to save a child who was swept into the current.  The boys are bereft and ask Satan what they can do to change the course of events so that their friend stays alive.  Satan agrees to do this but only if they will allow him to show them how their friend's life will play out in this changed reality.  The friend contracts polio and lives for many years, bedridden and in pain, trapped in an iron lung and the small girl is forced into a life of prostitution when her parents are killed in a train accident.  The lesson is we are not assured that if we let our puny human minds decide the future will  improve.  It is the reminder that we need to stay present and enjoy every minute, doing the best we can to be good, decent people, certain in the knowledge that life is unspooling in a manner that we'll never be able to comprehend.

Equanimity is a profound quality of strength and evenness of mind undisturbed by emotional upheavals.  The ability to maintain an inner balance and calm, no matter what may be happening around us.  We try to strengthen our observation skills so that we may see and understand the whole situation instead of one little part.  The Pali word is upekkha which means "balance" and it refers to our ability to arrest the mind before it falls into extremes.

"When you listen to the voices in your head, do you hear words of fear and judgment and stories that cause inner conflict and struggle?  Or do you hear words of support, unconditional love, and self-acceptance?"

The Toltecs

Root Canals!

 Mindfulness means paying attention to the present moment on purpose and without judgement. It is the basic human ability to be fully aware of where you are, what you are doing, and how you feel, rather than being overly reactive or overwhelmed by thoughts.

Mindfulness means maintaining a moment by moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment through a gentle, nurturing lens.  Mindfulness also involves acceptance, meaning that we pay attention to our thoughts and feelings without judging them.  Without believing, for instance, that there's a "right" or "wrong" way to think or feel in a given moment.  When we practice mindfulness, our thoughts tune into what we're sensing in the present moment rather than rehashing the past or imagining the future.  Life slows down.  I make better decisions when I'm listening for that small, still, inner voice instead of careening down the freeway at a hundred miles per hour.

This is from a Hazelden meditation book: "Today we can slow down the pace and notice the things around us."  More mindfulness.  More reminders to be present.

The Toltecs: "If I see working through the filter of 'I want to" it is because I have placed my intent in that direction; I am working willingly.  Remembering this makes all the difference in the world.  Recognize you always have a choice, and once you've made a decision, follow through without  resistance.  You don't 'have to' do anything; but do choose to do many things, for many different reasons."

I dunno.  This is one lovely intent but it's pretty tough to willingly go and have a root canal.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is a conscious, voluntary decision to let go of resentment, bitterness, and anger towards someone who has hurt you.  It is aimed at personal peace and emotional healing rather than forgetting the offense or reconciling with the wrongdoer.

Forgiveness is not forgetting the event but releasing the emotional hold that it may have over you.

Forgiveness is a release of resentment and anger.

Forgiveness is the intentional and voluntary process by which one changes their feelings and attitude toward the offender and in so doing overcomes the impact of the offense, including negative emotions like resentment and a desire for vengeance.

Vengeance!  Vengeance is mine!

Forgiveness helps me.  It releases me.  I try to compare the impact of a wrong done to me with the slow, grinding pain that I endure while plotting revenge for that wrong.  It's a slaughter.  It's not close.  

Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge.

Always forgive your enemies - nothing will annoy them more.

This is all plagiarized from brilliant thinkers and seers and sages across time.  Except for one little bit that's mine.  How hard is it to forgive and how wonderful the benefits!  That we're shocked about this is what's shocking.  How easy it is to nurse a grudge, to feed it well, keep it warm and safe while it grows from a mouse to a T-Rex.

Ozzie and Montaigne and Ralphie . . . Sitting in a Tree . . . .

Sometimes things make sense and sometimes I'm clueless.  I'm clueless more often than I'd like to be but I'm encouraged by the fact that I'm not always clueless and that some of the time the bouts of cluelessness aren't absolute.  I was lost in the wheels of confusion.  I was the guy that other people were watching and saying: "That dude has no clue."

Here's a side note: for a while when I was struggling to come to terms with the concept of a Higher Power I considered using Ozzy Osbourne.  I was vaguely aware that this wasn't a great idea but being vaguely aware of anything was a big step up from being completely clueless.  I figure I could do worse.  Here are sample lyrics which explain why he was even a candidate:

Lost in the wheels of confusion,

Spinning through valleys of tears.

Eyes full of angry delusion,

Hiding in everyday fears.

I heard these lyrics and they buried themselves deeply into my subconscious immediately.

Ironically, most of the lyrics were written by the bass player Geezer Butler who was a seriously religious kid and seriously considered entering the priesthood.  Go figure and before you judge someone in a band called Black Sabbath mayhaps you should keep an open mind.

Sometimes I have a topic which I write about and sometimes I don't.  So here I am writing about Black Sabbath in a blog ostensibly about recovery.

Okay, let's go deep:
"The height of wisdom is to take things as they  are . . . to endure what we cannot evade."
Montaigne

Lest you look down your nose at me for worshipping Ozzy Osbourne consider this quote from Montaigne, one of the most influential writers of the French Renaissance.  He wrote in the 16th century which was a long time ago to be so smart.  Basically, this quote is a forerunner to The Serenity Prayer.  Have the wisdom to understand what you can do and what you cannot.  It's not always action.  Action is easier than waiting.

I once had a T-shirt that had two vultures sitting on a tree branch, one of them quipping: "Wait?  Dammit, I want to kill something."

"What must I do is all that concerns me - not what people think.  It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion, it is easy in solitude to live after our own - but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Now Ralphie was writing in the 20th century and so was Ozzy and Geezer so there's that.  Ralphie has as a core philosophy that the natural world was a living, spiritual canvas where God, humans, and the universe were deeply unified.  How cool is that shit?  I tell people all the time that if you're having trouble establishing your own personal Higher Power connection go outside in as quiet a place as you can manage and look around you, have a listen, because there's a lot going on and much of it is pretty cool.

"I greet the ups and downs of life's journey with unconditional love for myself and the people in my life by understanding that I am only truly alive in the present moment:  the future is a projection that does not exist."

The Toltecs

Error . . . . Uhhhhh . . . . One Day at a Time!

Negative Seaweed

"I grew up to have my father's looks, my father's attitude, my father's posture, my father's opinions, and my mother's contempt for my father."

Jules Feiffer

Negativity Bias: The human tendency to give more attention, weight, and value to negative words, experiences, and information than to positive ones of the same level.  They're more psychologically intense.  If you eat a good pear - it's delicious! - but if you eat a bad piece of meat - you're dead!

Starting out with a bad attitude, a suspicious one.

Tomorrow I have a cardiologist appointment in the morning and a dentist appointment in the afternoon.  I'm feeling some negativity here.  And I'm swimming before the appointments which doesn't count as a positive experience.

Luckily, we are not our thoughts.

I'm Listening . . . .

The awesome power of bouncing ideas off of another person, maybe someone you don't always agree with or with someone that you definitely disagree with.  Just listening to what someone with a different viewpoint has to say is an example of how I can practice extending grace.  It's important to have these exchanges of ideas.  Sometimes someone else has a better approach than me.  I have to remember that I thought a life of drug and alcohol use was a good - was the only solution to my angst and depression - when all it did was worsen the symptoms without addressing the root causes.  We need each other and we need our Higher Power to grow.  Talking back and forth sharpens and challenges each person's faith.

I've been edgy the last many days.  Hey, it happens.  Lean into the edgy.  Look at the edgy.  What is the lesson the edgy is trying to teach me?  My struggles occur when I try to get what I just think is the cause of the edginess into a chokehold and wrestle it to the ground, subdue the edgy.  I find my discomfort is heightened when I'm "off" somehow and don't exactly know why and, when this happens, little, minor upsets take on gigantic proportions.   I need to remember that an elephant is a mouse built to an alcoholic's specifications.  I am a certified Master Explosives Expert when it comes to taking something small and making a big explosion.

Originally the A.A. Program was built around Six Steps - not Twelve - but Bill, the Master Complicator had to double the total and I'm not saying this is a bad thing, just that Twelve is more than Six.  A lot more.  Twice as many.  Some of us occasionally simplify recovery to Three salient points:  Find God, clean house, help others.

My minister friend: "One result of the genuine bedrock Christian principle that all are welcome and all are forgivable, redeemable, is that it makes me more accepting of people who I once sneered at.  (Ed. Note: Good word, sneer is.  Sneer: A look, smile, or remark that shows scorn, contempt, or lack of respect.)  (My friend veers religious here, maybe more religious than I'm comfortable with but he's a minister for chrissake . . . )  "Christ showed me, made it ok for me to admit I'm as messed up as anybody, one of the most freeing feelings one can have .  . . not having to pretend to be so perfect or so normal, and this made me 100% more comfortable in my own skin."

How incredibly important it is to learn the skill of listening!  I had very little grasp of the concept of listening to someone else because I was so consumed with talking, with making sure I was getting my point across, I was being heard, that you understood me.  How many times have I heard a story I've heard once or twice or many times before.  Most people just want to be heard.  Most people figure things out on their own and the act of someone listening while they talk things out is all that's necessary.  I used to think they wanted my advice, they wanted me to tell them what to do, to solve their problems, this dude who needed a haircut and was obviously half-drunk and fully-high, THAT'S the dude who's got all the answers.  Sheesh.  The ego!  I have been cleaning out and organizing some old photos and occasionally I'll come across one of me where the image is so alarming I'll let out a yelp.