No Bullshit Angels

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy:  A type of psychological therapy which states that thoughts, feelings and behavior are all connected, and that individuals can move toward overcoming difficulties and meeting their goals by identifying and changing unhelpful or inaccurate thinking, problematic behavior, and distressing emotional responses.

Dammit!  Everything I read comes back to a goddam Gratitude List, a goddam Inventory, a goddam personal inventory.  If you think bad shit then you become bad shit.  And who exactly is in charge of my own thinking?  I am what I think.

The obvious question: why think bad thoughts?  It's all me.  It's not you.  Why do I blame you for something I'm doing?  

Guilt:  A feeling of distress or responsibility for some offense, crime, wrong, etc.; an unhappy feeling, whether real or imagined.

There it is: imagined.

Imagine:  To believe in something created in one's own mind.

Isn't god created in one's own mind?  

Our meeting topic yesterday was how to come to an understanding of a power greater than one's self.  I myself, personally, fall into the category of Once Had Faith But Lost It.  I was a pretty religious kid and for the longest time I took a great deal of comfort in my faith.  Of course, I overemphasized the negative parts while giving the positive parts short shrift but it was still an anchor in my life, one I turned to with great frequency over the years.  Growing up can be pretty scary, especially for an overly-sensitive, fearful child, and the idea that some big force has your best interests at heart can be very reassuring.

Alas, as alcohol began to have its way with me, overwhelming the positive messages and lessons from my religion, I became disillusioned.  There are, after all, plenty of priests and pastors with drinking problems, men and women of great faith who cannot stop drinking by dint of their faith alone.  I'm happy to report that, over time, I was able to piece together different parts of religion, philosophy, and theology into a spiritual program that works for me.  It was fun yesterday listening to all the ways that people have accepted a faith that works for them.  Lots of different paths, that's for sure, none of them right and none of them wrong.  This is why The Fellowship is so effective: we encourage everyone to find their own conception of a higher power.

Right now I've picked up this flock of angels.  One of the Old old people in the book I read about aging talked about these angels that took care of him.  It reminded me a lot of The Program; all I had to do was substitute "higher power" for "angel" and his concept sounded identical to mine: do what you can with what you've got, solve problems to the best of your ability, and then step back and let life spin.  He let his angels work on whatever problems he had.

What is the correct term for a group of angels?  You know - like a pride of lions or a murder of crows?

Anyway, my flock can be a sullen, sarcastic crowd.  They look angelish - white robes, wings, leather sandals laced all the way up their calves, the whole get-up.  They sit around me, partially obscured by clouds or mist or fog, on different levels, in a vaguely suspended but not flying airborne way, reading the paper, and do a lot of grumbling and bitching.  They eventually take care of business but not always on my time frame.  They move off to their task mumbling among themselves, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee, gesturing my way as they get to work.  My angels definitely don't sing and you almost never see them smiling.  I don't think this is because they aren't happy; they just aren't frivolous.  

These are no-shit, practical, hard-working angels.