An Evil and Corroding Thread

I'm really riding the Toltec gravy train . . .  

"Fear of failure: What am I afraid of?  Where does this fear come from?  Am I willing to let fear keep me from pursuing my passion?  Focusing on all the steps it may take to achieve your final goal can have the effect of fanning the flames of fear.  Instead, just take one small step forward in the direction of your passion."

It is so fascinating to me as a True Believer of the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous, as someone who had as unmanageable a life as it's possible to have, to see what are essentially, more or less, the spiritual principles that serve as the bedrock of our lives, spoken so clearly by a people who lived in the jungles of Central America ten centuries ago.  Fear!  Attacking my problems one small bite at a time . . . or One Day at a Time.  Unbelievable how universal spirituality is.

"Practicing awareness takes discipline, a strengthening of our will that allows us to remain in a state of harmony with the world around us."

Or, in A.A. speak, ". . . and to practice these principles in all our affairs."

Practice:  To perform or work at repeatedly so as to become proficient; exercising a skill regularly  in order to be able to do it better.

I'm also struck by how often the concept of "work" appears.  Working the Steps; Working with Others; How it Works; Into Action.  It goes on and on.

What IS the Point?

"I don't think happiness or unhappiness is the point.  How do we best learn from them and transmit what we have learned to others, if they would receive the knowledge?  When pain comes, we are expected to learn from it willingly, and help others to learn.  When happiness comes, we accept it as a gift, and thank  God for it."

As Bill Sees It.

I have come to really embrace this idea that looking for "happiness" is a dicey proposition.  Too often I'm looking to get what I want - or what I want to avoid - and then I'll be happy.  This ties how I feel to external events or forces.  I have learned to embrace the word "content."  This ties how I feel to my internal state.  I laughed when I read the line that this search for happiness isn't "the point."  The point is, as I understand it, to look at whatever is going on with wisdom and perspective, certain that the pain will eventually end and striving to learn from it so that I can pass my experience on to others and so that I don't live my life afraid of future pain . . . which will certainly come for me.

Surrender

A guy with about a year of sobriety led the meeting this morning.  I thought he did a good job although I wasn't able to discern a specific topic.  When other members started to share they talked about the amends process.  I have no idea why.  I heard absolutely nothing about making amends during the leader's share.  Probably, I wasn't listening closely, but I will say that one of the things that happens to me when I lead a meeting is that people pick up on some obscure point that pales in comparison to what I intended to be the main thrust of my talk and off they go, sharing about whatever they want to share about.

I'm going to be traveling in a foreign country and won't have access to live meetings.  I'll be okay.  I'll miss these idiots and knuckleheads, I'll tell you that.

Since I should be prohibited by law from drinking anything that contains caffeine I usually have a cup of herbal tea at the meeting.  I picked Ginger Infusion or Peach Surprise or some such shit for my selection today.  I ripped off the top of the packet which didn't quite expose the tea bag.  The packet was made of some kind of plastic-ey material so I couldn't get down far enough to grab the tea bag and my efforts to tear it along one of the side edges failed, too.  I handed the packet to a woman I know.  She was useless.  I handed it to a guy I know - a retired engineer - and he was as feckless as the woman.  I started to look for something sharp - like a knife or screwdriver to puncture the bag, aware that I was getting close to an outcome that would lead to spilling of blood, but don't tell me I can't do something because then I have to fucking do it.  Mind you, I wasn't upset or in a bad mood I just couldn't believe I couldn't open a tea bag.  So there I am in the kitchen, jabbing ferociously at the still sealed packed with a ballpoint pen - it wouldn't have been out of place if I had been shrieking "Banzai!  Banzai!" as I was doing this.  The two people I had asked for help were definitely edging away at this point.

Luckily, my diligence paid off.  I plopped the bag into my cup, poured in some hot water, and started chatting with a friend.  I did notice after the tea had steeped for five minutes that my efforts to free the imprisoned had obviously punctured the tea bag so that I had a cup of hot water full of floating bits of tea leaves.  In my defense I took the cup out to  my engineer friend and showed him the result of my efforts so he could have a nice laugh at my expense.  God knows I laugh at him all the time.

I poured out the tea and had a cup of coffee.  I have learned the meaning of the word "surrender."

Who Knows?

I have a friend in A.A.  - a male friend, yes, I have a lot of those, too, trying to stay out of hot water with SuperK this morning - who is early in sobriety and about the age my child would have been.  He had just lost a grandmother that he was very close with and - to add grief to misery - he is dealing with a woman that he adores who is pulling back from the relationship to work on her own stuff.  He's the sweetest kid in the world, hard on himself, prone to overthinking things, prone to believing that everything is his fault .  .  . in other words like most of us.

I sent him a note this morning.  If I were to speculate I would guess he's blaming himself for the end of the relationship, wondering what he did wrong, wondering how to revive things, and - failing that - certain he's never, ever going to find happiness with a partner.  What do you say to staunch that kind of blood flow, that kind of self-inflicted misery?

I return over and over to the notion that pain and loss and death are facts of existence and that I do well if I learn how to sit with the feelings instead of fleeing from them or trying to change them or burying them with external substances.  It's hard to be uncomfortable, damn hard, no one likes to be uncomfortable, and alcoholics absolutely abhor anything distasteful.

I'm reminded of a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the knights storm a castle and come under withering fire and after a moment King Arthur starts yelling: "Run away!  Run away!" all the knights join him in this chant and they all run away.

I always encourage people to sit with their feelings, take a good, hard look at them, and try to figure out what the lesson is, no matter how painful or objectionable those feelings are, how irritating it is when they say something you don't want to hear.  Maybe his lesson is that this isn't a relationship with real potential.  Maybe the lesson is he's not ready for any kind of serious relationship right now and - holy shit - maybe he's one of those guys who isn't wired in a way that he'll ever be happy with a long-term partner.  Maybe the lesson is that the kind, loving action at this moment is to think of the well-being of another person and not spend so much time thinking of his own damn self, that the right course of action will open up sometime in the future.

Who knows?  He doesn't know right now.  I sure as shit don't know.  All I can do is assure people that if they stay the course, live a kind, stable life, that they will reap untold benefits.  I have literally never met a long-timer active in a recovery program who says it hasn't been worth it.  Never, not once.

Here's the Toltecs: "When we try to hold on to beliefs that no longer serve us, the result is suffering.  Trying to hold on to old beliefs just because they're familiar is easy to do; we prefer the known to the unknown; the status quo that's OK to the new adventure that might fail.  But following your heart will never lead you astray."

Start Surrending

The word surrender has a negative connotation.  It implies having a weakness or deficiency, the final act of a loser.  I beg to differ.  I see it as the art of letting go, of giving up  the ideas of what should or shouldn't be.  It is giving up the fight when fighting is useless.  I also see that surrender shouldn't make me a doormat.  I'm not going to start letting people walk all over me.  I plan on moving through life changing the things I can and not worrying about the things that I can't.

Surrender: To stop resisting.

Revealing a Little Bit at a Time

I'm constantly amazed at how difficult it is for new people to share what's going on in their lives.  We really seem to resist sharing the nuts and bolts, the mundane minutiae of our lives with other people.  I chat frequently with a 45 year old guy - the man who was raised in foster care and does not know who his parents are - who has been in an on again/off again relationship with a woman in A.A. for a long time.  I love both of them and think they're good people trying to learn how to maintain a healthy relationship after enduring difficult childhoods and then drinking at life for many years.  Here's the thing . . . the manifestation of how hard new people make it to help them . . . I am constantly flummoxed to hear that the relationship - it was definitely over last week or was it definitely back on last week, I can't keep track of all the sudden, jarring twists and turns, feints and weaves - is back without a word or a hint being shared, with me, anyway.  The episode that made me laugh, ruefully, anyway, was hearing that my buddy came home one day to find all of his stuff in a pile out in the garage - that relationship sounded over to me - and then receiving a few pictures of them happily hanging out together.  WTF, right?

I don't believe that he's being purposefully deceptive or trying to hide something - I think he doesn't consider bringing anyone else into whatever conversation he's having with the world.  I know I didn't.  I had parents who weren't that engaged in my life - and that's on me as much as it's on them - so I was used to doing whatever I wanted, whatever I thought was best, all of the time.

That's Going to Work?

"As we go through our day we pause if we feel upset or filled with doubt, and ask for the right thought or action.  We constantly remind ourselves that we are no  longer running the show.  We say to ourselves many times each day, 'Thy will be done'  We are then in much less danger of dear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions.  We become much more efficient.  We do not tire as easily, because we are not burning up energy foolishly like we did when we were trying to control everything in our lives without help from a Higher Power.

It works - it really does."

I can just hear the new person saying: "What?!  That's not going to work.  Are you telling me that works?"

I like that the word foolish shows up twice.

Foolish:  Someone or something lacking good sense, judgement, or discretion, often appearing silly, unwise, or irrational.