No One Is Doing Anything to Me

I am increasingly involved with meditation and increasingly amazed, stunned, perplexed by the fact that the practice is so centered around being in the moment.  It's such a simple concept.  Be where you are.  You aren't anywhere else, after all.  Why is it so hard to do!

I've been pondering all of the friends I have and have had in my life.  I've been richly blessed and I need to remember that instead of slotting everyone into this kind of friend or that kind of friend and then expecting a certain kind of response to any of my interactions.  People are busy.  People are thinking about themselves.  They're not thinking about me.  They're not doing anything to me.

I mention again the friend who envisions a cord or tether connecting him to everyone he has known in his life.  Sometimes the tether is long and sometimes it's short, or it's strong or weak.  I have a tendency to reach out to a lot of people a lot of the time and this makes me part of who I am.  The pitfall I need to avoid is that most people aren't so proactive and most people are glib and brief in their responses.  Used to piss me off.  I felt like I was giving more than I was getting (and the irony of my obliviousness to what is, after all, a core principle in Alcoholics Anonymous - being of service - is not lost on me).  What works best in a practical sense is trying to focus on what is right in front of my fucking face instead of trying to corrall friends - often close, much-beloved friends - into a call and response situation that I'm dictating.  Don't worry about who you can't see when someone in need of a kind word or smile or pat on the back is right in front of you, even when it's not the cool, hip person you really want to be talking to.

Gratitude in All Things

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in. 

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

Rumi - Sufi poet

True Tolerance

Peace is this moment without judgement.

Dorothy Hunt

When despair for the world grows in me

And I wake in the night at the least sound

In fear of what my life may be,

I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.  

I come into the presence of still water and I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting for their light.

For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Wendell Berry, Scottish poet

Big discusion in the meeting today about prescribed medications for people in A.A. who suffer from other illnesses or conditions unrelated to their alcoholism.  There are a surprising number of people who still think that spirituality can cure all things.  I ran into one of them while on my beach walks.  He's an okay guy.  I like him okay.  We're never going to be close friends but he's been consistent in his recovery and celebrates three clean years tomorrow.  Still . . .   "OK, you break your leg - do you pray about it or do you go to the hospital?"  He hemmed and hawed about that for a bit so I followed up with "You have cancer - do you take medication for that?"  I won the argument but he did not concede.  Fair enough.  Also, to the people who won't sponsor someone who takes any medication whatsoever . . . Fair enough again.  Our coins say "To Thy Own Self Be True."  I do think there's a big difference between not sponsoring someone on medication and telling someone who takes prescribed medication not to take that medication.  That's dangerous shit, that is.

"Finally, we begin to see that all people, including ourselves, are to some extent emotionally ill as well as frequently wrong, and then we approach true tolerance and see what real love for our fellows really means."

12 & 12 P. 92

Peace is Possible

I think often about the clever studies social scientists and psychologists develop that show when I multitask I end up doing absolutely nothing very well or thoroughly.  If I'm lucky I can add the results of two tasks together and end up with one thorough task but usually I'll end up with less than that.  So the conclusion is do one thing and do it well and then do the second thing after that.  You can half-ass the second one for all I care.  Just try to do one thing well today.  Is that too much to ask?

I used to go to an art museum and leave hours later exhausted and frustrated.  As a good Type A I had to look at every piece of art and read everything written by the curators about that piece of art and look at it long and hard.  How did that work out?  I left the museum hating art with sore feet and a big resentment.  Today I know a little about art but not that much and I'm fine with that.  SuperK and I go to a museum and we walk around for an hour, and then we sit and rest for fifteen minutes, and then maybe a half hour more, and then we leave.  Sometimes we see three or four rooms and sometimes one or two.  We like something and linger or nothing moves us and on we go.  I don't have to understand everything with the result being that I understand more than I realize.  The artist has a message for sure but the artist isn't trying to jam that message down my throat.  I see what he meant to show or I don't and I bet the artist is thrilled that I'm looking at the art they created.

I don't always have to feel great.  Sometimes I can just feel okay.  Accepting that middle-of-the-road feeling and not trying to analyze it or define it gives me the freedom to have gray areas in my life.  Sometimes that gray area keeps me from bouncing off the walls or riding the emotional roller coaster.  Sometimes existing in the gray area can give me sanity.

Is peace possible in this moment?  Nothing has to be different than it is right now.

May I be safe.

May I be at peace.

May I live with ease and kindness.

Seaweed: Lunatic

Some thoughts about meditation for hard cases like me:                                                                            It's not a religion.

It doesn't require a lot of time.

No special skills are needed.

It's not about stopping your thinking or changing unwanted thoughts into pleasant ones.

It won't eliminate sadness or difficulties in your life.

You don't have to give up your passions or stop having fun in your life. 

I'm increasingly intrigued to think that all I am is one tiny flicker in the midst of a vast awareness.  I'm a wisp of cloud drifting across a limitless sky.  I'm a drop of water flowing down the middle of the Nile or the Mississippi or the Amazon.  I'm here, I'm gone, the river is still present, the sky is still there.  Here's a minute, now it's gone, that minute is just part of the flow of time.

"Notice the aware presence that exists behind your thoughts, behind your mind.  The real you is this aware presence, the space in which your mind operates."

The Toltecsd4

And then "I'll see you in the gap" makes more sense.  The inbetween-ness of everything.  

"Perhaps some 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."

The Big Book P 105

"Without prayer I should have been a lunatic a long time ago."

Mahatma Ghandi

This moment, just as it is, without judgement.                         

Clueless Seaweed

I am repeating myself again and again.  This is because I have maybe four good things to say and two of them aren't that good so I have to go to the well with the ones I like.  The guiding force for how I should act today is a reflection of my understanding my Higher Power.  Calm and slow.  Understanding.  Compassion without pity.  Listening more and talking less.  Friendly.  Funny.  Happy.  Seeking to love rather than be loved; to understand rather than be understood; comfort rather than be comforted.

Here's a story I shared with three friends who don't have substance abuse problems and aren't familiar with the dynamics of recovery, meditation particularly: A newspaper commissioned a study where they paid a violinist to busk in a local subway station.  In the time he was playing about 2,000 people passed by, many of them busy with work and families.  Cameras showed 6 people paused to listen for a while.  6/2,000 = .003 or three tenths of one percent.  A rounding error.  Here's the catch: the violinist was world famous and he was playing one of the most difficult Beethoven violin concertos written by that musical genius on a violin worth $3,500,000.

I shared this story as an example of how so many of us are so trapped in the endless loops of rushing from task to task and following whatever thoughts pop randomly in our minds that we look right through all of the beauty and majesty of life.  Instead, I got criticism of the mechanics of the study or posturing about who knew more about the specific details of the incident.  I'm not sure who's more clueless - the people who responded or me for expecting something different.

I should have left well enough alone but I felt the need to put together a cutting and incisive response.  It sort of made me feel better for a minute but it also fell on deaf ears.  

Does it need to be said?

Does it need to be said right now?

Does it need to be said right now by me?

See You in the Gap

"There is more to life than increasing its speed."                                                                                Gandhi

I have a friend in The Fellowship who attends a lot of 12 Step meetings in different 12 Step programs.  It makes me nervous, all of these programs.  While I don't dispute she needs to recover from these different diseases and compulsions I fret that she may have too many balls in the air.  I return again and again in my mind to the different studies that show that when we multi-task what we're usually doing is half-assing everything.  We're doing many things but not doing any of them well or thoroughly.  

The counterpoint is that I am an individual who likes to have a lot of balls in the air.  I'm curious and I'm relentless and I'm competitive and I want to do it all, everywhere, all of the time.  And the thing is . . . this is me.  This is part of my essential nature.  If I sit quietly and toss one ball up and down I'm not being true to my nature, to my Seaweed-ness.  If I'm not me then I'm not genuine and I lose myself in trying to be something that I'm not.  People would worry about me if they didn't see me with an absurd number of balls in the air. 

I'm going to repost this poem because it has really resonated with me - the idea that I'm looking and I'm lost and I don't know who I am but it's all okay, I "give myself" to the effort, to the curious search.  

I live my life in widening circles that reach out over the world.  I may not complete this last one but I give myself to it.

I circle around God, around the primordial tower.  I've been circling for thousands of years and I still don't know: am I a falcon, a storm, or a great song?

One of my favorite meditation guides ends each of his session with this phrase: "I'll see you  in the gap."  I like the idea of being not here, not there, somewhere in between, going to the next place from this place but not being in either.