Zen I Found the Answer

Zen:  an anti-rational Buddhist sect developed in India; it differs from other Buddhist sects in seeking truth through introspection and intuition rather than in scripture.

Being a skeptic and a know-it-all, I spent some time in early sobriety investigating other religions and approaches to a spiritual life.  I was fed up with the church of my youth and thought it would be cool to pick some obscure, ancient Far Eastern religion to be the new foundation of my life.  I wanted to be something that no one else was, I think.  I wanted to be different so I bought books and I read a lot.  I wanted to strip away all of the dogma and tradition and find Truth.  I'm not saying this wasn't admirable -- I think if you're sick of something then you owe it to yourself to go try and find something else.  But I was a little arrogant while I was doing it. 

I can hear SuperK saying: "You're not a little anything."

Of course what I found was that if you strip away all of the tradition and the dogma and the doctrine everything starts to look pretty much the same.  Especially when you get rid of the people:  the saints and the leaders and the prophets.  It was very illuminating. 

Lose the self-interest.  Love everybody.  Quit pursuing pleasure and running from pain.  Try to find a strength outside of yourself.  Be quiet and calm and peaceful.  It's all been around for 1000s of years.  People have come to the same conclusions.

Like what did I think I was going to find?

Really Good Ideas

I'm constantly amazed at how easily I forget that I don't know what's best for me.  Each morning I get up and figure that today will be the day that everyone will see how brilliant my ideas are.   The main reason that I try to write a little every day is that it's a good way to work out problems that otherwise would get trapped in my head and bounce around in there like a bottle rocket in a steel drum, like the idea that I know what's really going on.   I can't seem to get a grip on the idea that my ideas are not that good.  They seem to be good, when I'm walking around mumbling to myself in public places.

"%$&!! god's plans," I might say.  "My plans are clearly better."
"Mommy, what's the matter with that crazy man?" a little girl will say, as her mother tugs her furiously in the other direction.
"Wait!" I shout after them.  "I have some really good ideas to share with you."

One of the great things about a little sober time is that we start to see that stuff works out for the best, in the long run.

Willie

I'm having some more trouble understanding exactly what the proper use of my will is.  You'd think that after a while I'd get the hang of it.  And it's not that there aren't a lot of good tools available to me.  Our literature really tries to address this issue.  It explains in great detail that a lot of our problems arise when we try to bludgeon the world with our wills.  I don't think that it says that we should lose our will entirely and flop around like a fish out of water.  We aren't supposed to be will-less.  Rather we need to learn how to use our wills in an appropriate manner.  I figured my will was a great battering ram.  I'm the general of an army of mongol hordes with burning torches using my will to break down the door to the castle.

I get to fire my will up every morning.  This is permitted in a spiritual life.  My will growls like a 70s muscle car with a bad muffler.  I should fix the muffler.  I run into difficulties when I get into traffic or forget to open the garage door before I floor the accelerator.  When I'm working a somewhat good program I start to get a feel for the ebb and flow of life.  Sometimes I pull into the street and it's a nice day and there isn't any traffic and I get that bad boy cranked up and moving fast toward whatever it is I want to get to.  But sometimes I need to inch along, in a snowstorm falling on rush hour traffic.

I don't believe we need to lose the will.  Just get a net over the damn thing.

Unnatural Tendencies.

Tendency:  An inclination or disposition to  move in a particular direction or act in a certain way, especially as a result of some inherent quality or habit.

I have a tendency -- a strong tendency -- to imagine that the worst is going to happen.  I may have mentioned this in the past.  I may have droned on and on about it interminably.  I really have no idea.  I'm lucky if I can find my car keys or the glass of water I poured 28 seconds ago.  My future would be bright if I could figure out how to get paid for walking around in mismatched clothes mumbling to myself.  I feel a strong kinship to people who do that.

"That poor soul, " SuperK will say if we see someone who dresses in a similar fashion.
"Maybe he's looking for his glass of water," I'll say.
"You know," she'll say.  "He has a little better sense of fashion than you do."

A few years ago I noticed that our mass media was increasingly obsessed with whatever bad thing was happening or might happen in the future, no matter how ridiculous or implausible said bad thing might be.  Remember swine flu?  Bird flu?  SARS?  Little girls being abducted by deranged loaners?  Don't travel, or you'll die in a bear attack or shark strike or terrorist incident!  Do you know anyone who got bird flu?  Neither do I.

I quit listening.  I've found that meditation is a better way to spend my time.  I have enough trouble trying to remain positive without the encouragement of people who are trying to attract viewers by scaring the shit out of everyone.  Apparently it's easier to show pictures of the guy recovering from the bear attack than to try to tease out the differences in the Mideast peace process.

Anyway, remember to be very aware of your surroundings today.

I'd Like to be In Control

I wish that people did what I wanted them to do.  All of the time, and promptly.  I wish that they would be respectful while doing what I want them to do.  A deferential attitude would be nice, given my standing in the world.

Things would g more smoothly for me, I'm sure, if people did what I wanted them to do all of the time.  If I were in control of the actions of everyone else, I'd definitely have an easier time of it.

If not me in control, who?  You?  Seriously?

Very Bad Things

One of the greatest lessons that I have learned in The Program has been understanding how critical it is to my well-being to move beyond the unpleasantries of life.  First of all, The Program helped me understand that there were going to be unpleasantries, which was a particularly nasty unpleasantry in itself.  Then I had to learn how to deal with stuff I didn't like, and there's a lot of that.  There are the things I don't like that happen to everybody and are unavoidable, like hemorrhoids and bad weather.  There are the things I have brought upon myself.  This is a large list: DUIs and firings and broken relationships.   But the most frustrating things are the unfair things.  Suffering a serious injury or losing a child to illness or a job to downsizing.  Things that weren't caused by my behavior but happen anyhow.

I could never get beyond the anger I felt because something crappy was happening to me.  Today I have been able to reduce the list considerably by starting to behave in a quasi, semi-responsible fashion.  Bad behavior leads to bad outcomes.  The real gains have occurred when I began to address problems like an adult.  Sometimes I can fix problems and sometimes I can't.  There are situations that are beyond my control to repair.  Maybe some counseling can fix the bad marriage and maybe it's time to move on.  I could never figure that out when I was drinking.

Like I can figure it out today.

Dream On

Dream:  Anything so charming, lovely, or transitory, etc. as to seem dreamlike.

Dream big.  Dream on.  Personally, I hate to restrict myself to sane, manageable choices.  Swing for the fences, I say.  Dreaming's free, I say. 

I used to play Small Ball.  I was so afraid that I was going to strike out and make a fool of myself that it was all I could do to get into my Uniform of Life, which was a pretty cool uniform.  Kind of an amalgam of super hero and sports hero and rock star.  Practical in a way, but very flashy and hot. 

No more.  Today I get in my cuts.  I whiff at plenty of pitches in the dust and wave at the occasional fastball 2 feet over my head, but every now and then I really smoke one.  It's gratifying to watch the ball sail over the center fielder's head and clang against the wall. 

There was an old Pittsburgh Pirates catcher named Manny Sanguillen.  Manny would swing at anything.  Manny got his cuts in.  I loved that guy.  He made me laugh.  He struck out a lot, though, but it didn't seem to bother him that much.

"Joy is just the shadow made by pain."  Swedish National Curling Team Member.  Not a real one.  One on The Simpsons.

In This Corner . . . Weighing in at 180 pounds . . .

Fight:  To struggle against opposition; try to overcome someone or something; contend.

I'm not quite the fighter that I used to be.  I don't want to suggest that I never fight anymore.  I just don't fight all the time.  In the past if I wasn't fighting I was itching for a good fight.  I did whatever I could to get something started.  I was quite the provocateur.  Unfortunately, I lost far more fights than I ever won.  I got slaughtered half the time.  Made no difference to me.  I kept fighting.  I was born to fight.

For a 98 pound weakling I had a remarkable lack of fear when it came to The Opposition, which was anyone who wasn't me.  I would take on an entire army of well-armed aliens without blinking an eye.  It never occurred to me to turn around to see if there was a hole I could crawl into until the aliens went pillaging somewhere else.  I was the guy who put my boat in the water and paddled upstream, right into the Raging Rapids of Doom.  I didn't see the point in going with the flow.

Today I try not to fight so much.  It takes a lot of energy to be at war all of the time, to say nothing of all of the wounds and blood.  Our Book suggests that we have to quit fighting everyone and everything.  It suggests we have to do this or it kills us.

I still like to fight.