Hitting Bottom . . . Or not

This morning I was presented with another opportunity to "be of service" while simultaneously staring "what might have been" square in the face.  The mother of the woman who nearly died of an alcoholic seizure was at the meeting, the woman who tearfully confessed to me a few days ago that she had finally "hit rock bottom" and then promptly disappeared from my meeting room.  Out of kindness to her I refrained from saying that for many people rock bottom is six feet under so pardom me if I withhold judgment for a while.  Eh, maybe I should have said it?  Who knows.  Tough love V an expression of kindness usually means a light touch with me.  I leave the  straightforward honesty to men and women better suited temperamentally to deliver it.

Mom asked me to walk with her to the daughter's apartment to say hello.  I was hesitant, not entirely sure if the daughter wanted company - actually completely certain that she didn't want any company -  but decided to go to support the mother.  The scene was not entirely unfamiliar: studio apartment, bed unmade, TV tuned to reruns of The Carol Burnett Show from like 1896, pajamas the attire du jour, and a cup of instant ramen noodles on the breakfast menu.  The young woman rarely raised her eyes above parallel.  The mother . . .  well .  . . mothering away in a fairly heavy-handed manner, very loving but trying mightily to steer her daughter into treatmen ideally but onto a healthier path at a minimum.  I didn't add much to the encounter.  To me the woman was, on this particular day, not worth my effort.  I was glad I could say hello and tell her I loved her but she clearly had no interest in any solution-based stuff.  She didn't appear to be drunk but she might have been on something and she was so, so deep into self-pity and immature defiance that any hopeful message was beyond her ability to absorb.  All I could tell mom on the walk back to her car was that it's really, really hard to get sober if you really, really want to get sober.  If you don't want to work at it then it's going to be nigh impossible.

In this case it's a lot easier for me - 36 years in and not a relation - to take this cold-sounding approach.  I'm happy to help in any way I can but I'm not going to pound my head on a rock talking to someone who isn't listening.  

This is another case that has given me a good shaking up.  It's like finding a badly injured bunny by the side of the road and watching it suffer.

Step One

Step One: "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable."

Guys, it says our lives had become unmanageable - not our wives.

The first time I drank alcohol was one Miller High Life in those clear bottles where the golden amber fluid glowed with a heavenly light.  It didn't make me feel good - it made me feel normal.  The reaction was so much more than a sense of ease and relaxation - the clouds parted, a beam of sunshine hit me and me only, and the angels sang.  I was afraid and anxious and then I was not.  I knew I had found The Answer.  When I tell this story to an alcoholic I get a knowing nod.   When I tell it to a non-alcoholic (I learned long ago not to do this) they back away as if I was Dracula.

The first time I got drunk was at a party where I spent an hour or two lying in the dark on a cement basement floor.  It was not an uncomfortable experience.  I didn't feel embarrassed or have the need to do something else.  I was drunk and lying on a cool, cool cement floor.  It made sense to me.  It seemed like a reasonable thing to do.  I had alcohol in my system so I was pretty comfortable doing what I was doing.

"Alcohol: the solution to and the cause of all of my problems."  Homer J. Simpson

The unmanageable life was quite clear quite quickly but as long as I could numb myself with alcohol I was sure I was just about to solve everything.  I didn't have the sense that things were spinning totally out of control in a way that I couldn't eventually fix.  I was driving too fast on black ice while laboring under the illusion that if I just tapped the brakes and steered into the spin I wouldn't go off that thousand foot cliff.  "Tomorrow!" I'd shout.  "Tomorrow is the day when I get my shit together!"

Man, I didn't even know where my shit was anymore.

Think! Think! Think!

There are times when it pays to take a second look - to really pay attention to those things that cross our paths.  We may have already missed a wonderful experience by hasty judgment.  When quick judgments are made from a limited point of view, the good qualities of anything are hidden.  The gifts that we receive from our Higher Power are useless if we are dull of spirit and incapacitated by our own smart minds.  In our "expert" attitudes, we sometimes allow the very things that would make us peaceful and happy pass us by without lifting a hand.

"I'm a guy who is prone to anxiety."  Sincity John-John

I'm too smart for my own good.

I'm not as smart as I think I am.

My own best thinking brought me to the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, a thoroughly broken man-child.

Nobody is too dumb to recover but there are plenty of people who are too smart - or who think they are.

Think, Think, Think!

"How are things going for you, Seaweed?  What do you have going for you?  Kids and a happy spouse?  A big house and plenty of money in the bank and two cars in the garage?  No legal woes?  Excellent, vibrant health?  A thriving career that brings in lots of cash and the respect of all of your  coworkers and supervisors?  No?  A big whiff?  Maybe you're not a high bottom drunk."  An obnoxious as shit sponsor in Chicago.

I thought because I wasn't homeless or in prison that I was a high-bottom drunk.  Sigh.  Callow youth!

Five Suckers Tomorrow

I enjoy reading articles by psychologist types who devise all these clever puzzles that help reveal how tricky our own minds can be all on their own.  My attempts at meditation show me just how rambunctious my brain is, how unwilling to cede any control whatsoever.  I was listening to a podcast by a prominent researcher who was studying hidden biases in our thinking and how innate they can be.  He spoke with a number of children under the age of ten about nothing in particular before asking them this: I'll give you one sucker now or five suckers tomorrow.  Most of the kids went for immediate gratification even though the future reward was going to be larger.  Gimme gimme gimme.

We tell new people that if they don't drink and try haltingly to practice spiritual principles they'll end up in a place where the world makes sense, where fear and anxiety aren't driving their every thought, where they will love and be loved . . . or they can say - fuck it - and drink to make the uncomfortable feelings go away immediately.  How often we take the quick fix, eschewing the long-term solution.  Over and over for most of us.

Here's the Cherokee wisdom: "Our choices have brought us to this place, right here, today.  Other people affected us to some degree, but never so much as what we choose to do and how we choose to react.  The hardest part is to stop thinking dilemma and start thinking solutions.  There is no room in problem solving for self-pity, not even revenge.  Past events may have been wrong, but now we have to see it as change, not always our doing, but we have to handle it anyway."

Quit whining, in other words.  Stop drinking.  You're drinking all by yourself and no one is making you do it.

And now the Buddhists: "Meditators are generally found to be pretty jovial people.  They possess a real sense of humor.  They can laugh at their own human failures.  They can chuckle at personal disasters."

How many of us are drawn to Alcoholics Anonymous by the laughter and good-will that we find in church basements?  How many church basements have I sat in!  Church basements are not fancy places.

Reminders

"There is stuff inside us.  Some of it information that we neither remember nor even know we have recorded.  Like old files, it needs to be cleaned out.  But how can we clean out what we don't know we have?  By self-monitoring, by plumbing the depths in writing, drawing out our own thoughts."

"Restlessness is often a cover-up for some deeper experience taking place in the unconscious.  Rather than confronting some unpleasant thought we experience, we try to bury it so we won't have to deal with the issue.  The result is that sense of unease which we call agitation or restlessness.  There is nothing you can put your finger on.  But you don't feel at ease.  You can't relax.  When this uncomfortable state arises, just observe it.  Don't let it rule you.  Don't jump up and run off.  And don't struggle with it and try to make it go away."

As a member of Alcoholics Anonymous I believe wholeheartedly that I've been involved in the greatest social experiment of the 20th Century.  I believe that - despite all of its flaws and shortcomings - that A.A. has helped more people recover from substance abuse than anything else that has been tried.  But to ensure that I don't drift into a smug, arrogant satisfaction I keep reading and studying philosophical and religious thought and I often see that A.A. is simply a re-packaging of theories and practices that have been around for a long time.  One of the above quotes comes from Native American heritage and the other from a far Eastern Buddhist tradition.  Can you tell which is which?  See the common threads with our Steps?  Restlessness, irritation, and discontentedness can't be dealt with by wishing it away or using alcohol to blunt its effects.  We have to sit with it, no matter how uncomfortable it makes us feel.  No more running away.  And how about the reminder we need to constantly self-examine and that writing is one of the most effective channels to this freedom?  Something happens, I dunno what, when I write.  Stuff comes up and comes out, stuff I wasn't able to hork up consciously.  I can't tell you how many times I'll sit down to write with nothing specific in mind only to find my pen way off in the weeds, hashing out something I was repressing or forgetting.

Old ideas.   Old, old ideas are the best ideas.  There's a reason they've survived for centuries.

Fear Based Animals

A guy in the meeting today calls himself a "fear-based animal."  I like that phrase.  He also talks about the efficacy of alcohol to a fear-based alcoholic.  Man, that shit worked like a charm for the longest time . . . until it didn't.  But it took off that edge of fear so that I could feel relaxed.  I couldn't understand how to do that all on my own.  I had no spiritual solution and I had no community of like-minded folks and I had nothing but the most superficial concept of alcoholism.  I was doomed to failure.

The wonderful phrase a "gift of desperation" was mentioned.  What a searing turn of a phrase.  At our lowest, at our most helpless stage, we were given a gift.  We were so desperate to stop and get off the hellish merry-go-round, spinning faster and faster, that we were blessed with desperation.  As I say so often: there are no good things and there are no bad things - there are just things.  We gotta go through what we gotta go through and usually it's the nastiest pain that is our greatest salvation.

I'm constantly amazed that I can talk to people whose lives are completely out of control as they maintain that things aren't unmanageable.  Your first shot was in the rough!  You put your second shot in the sand trap!  You whiffed twice and then lined four golf balls into the lake!!!  Quit being so cheerful!  This is what it's like for most of us.  This total oblivian, willful oblivian, to the destruction  we're causing.  We're vaguely aware, deep down inside, that the whole train is off the tracks but we can't or we won't do anything about it.

Cherokee Shaman

From my Cherokee shaman: "We cannot take for granted that any other human can have accurate perception and spell things out for us.  The miracles are not all in other heads, other hands, other methods.  There must be a burst of inner fire that sparks a miracle, that opens a door to a greater life, a greater calm."

I like this thinking.  Probably because it aligns so closely to my thinking.  There's a certain amount of truth to the idea that we all need to get off our asses and quit complaining about everything that isn't going the way we want it to go.  After all: It's not them - it's you.  Whatever you did yesterday is probably what you're going to do today so it's going to take effort, it's going to take work, if you want to change things.  It's all up to you.  I'm appreciative for the help and advice I've gotten in The Fellowship but ultimately it comes down to me doing the work.

Then there's this: "Be strong, be of good courage - so much that we worry about will never happen.  Put things in order, change what needs to be changed, but begin at once to count the blessings that must be told again so we will not forget."

I recall the years where I made a Worry List.  Every time I felt anxiety I would write down the feeling that I was feeling and then try to decide whether the fear came from my inaction on something that needed my attention or whether I had taken all the appropriate action and just needed to wait for events to unfold.  At the end of each year I would review this list and each year I would be astounded and disgusted to rediscover that almost nothing I worried about ever came true and the things that did come true were almost always outside of my sphere of influence - they were going to happen despite my best efforts to stop them.

I also mention my daily Gratitude List where I go over and over and over all of my blessings, really trying to pay attention to the words I'm saying.  I'm blessed.  And I'm not a naturally grateful guy.  I see the possible problems and focus in on them, like the trouble-shooting technical guy that I am.  I'm survived and thrived by being wary of what could go wrong.  A good survival strategy but not always conducive to peace of mind.

Oh, Brother, Pleeeeeease . . .

I decided to add a short guided meditation to my morning routine.  It's going okay.  It's not going great; it's going okay.  There is a lot of breathiness to it as if we're marveling at a child looking at a flower.  Everything is to be done slowly, gently, there's a lot of reminders to do something "when you're ready" and we're always being "invited" to do something: "Now, if you're ready, I invite you to slowly open your eyes."  Hey, if I want to open my fucking eyes I'm going to snap them open whether you like it or not.  There's much concentration on lights and energy of different kinds, usually glowing or pulsing and surrounding me or flowing over me or oozing up and through me, starting at the soles of my feet and blasting out the top of my head.  I'm trying to meditate and there's a bunch of pulsing, golden, vibrant light flowing all over the place?  I'll tell you - it's distracting.  It's intimidating.  It's vaguely threatening.   Chakras are mentioned often - whatever those are - and grounding myself on Mother Earth is a huge theme.  Everybody talks about a full body scan: "Start at your feet, then into your ankles, etc etc."  I like the ways they dance around the groin area: pelvis, sitting bones (my personal favorite), hips, etc.  It's kind of prurient and somewhat titillating to have a pulsing energy dancing around my junk.

Here's the bio of of someone I listened to today: "Angelique is a Soul Mentor exploring the wonders of integrating Soul magic to illuminate our everyday life with intuitive wisdom, grace, and joy.  Angelique hosts Circle of the Golden light - Angels and Ascended Masters, and is the creator of Intuitive Intelligence Tapping, working to create a greater awareness of the gifts of Soul.  She is a Reiki Master and a certified Spiritual  Director within the Post Graduate Program of the Institute of Intuitive Intelligence."

Yeah, that's right: The Institute of Intuitive Intelligence.  I looked that one up.  It featured the founder who had huge bazookas which were on display via low-cut tops in every image.  It looked kind of lewd to be honest about it.  Angelique, the creator of Intuitive Intelligence Tapping, which is something Eddie Van Halen came up with first, is a featured performer.  I'm not going to go into the specifics of the tapping that was a big part of the meditation I did this morning.  It reminded me of that exercise where you have to pat your stomach at the same time you're moving the other hand in a circular movement on top of your head.  The location provided by Google Maps was somewhere in Kazakhistan.  There were a lot of well-fed, well-dressed women on the site, none of them of Kazaki origin.

I'm clearly having some snarky fun here at the expense of the Institute of Spooky Intelligence.  Generally, I don't make fun of too many things that are connected to spiritual growth.  Maybe this stuff helps some people.  Great, I say, great.  My mind was open and I tried it and I don't believe it's going to be a regular part of my spiritual practice.  No harm in trying and nothing the matter with moving on.  Maybe tapping your forehead and your heart chakra and your groinal spirit will work for you!

Seizure Suzie

A friend of mine from The Program has been watching her daughter suffer with her alcoholism.  The younger woman has been coming to the meeting on and off for a while but not marshalling her reserves sufficiently to stay sober.  She came back yesterday and I had a chance to talk to her after the meeting.  She had a seizure.  Her heart stopped.  Ambulances came and got her internals working again.  "I hit my bottom," she said.  Whew and wow.  The lengths we go to get ready to get sober . . .  

I put a lot of effort into lightening the mood in my A.A. meetings.  A common reaction from new people is surprise at the levity and lightness in The Rooms.  No one walking into their first meeting feels light and levitated.  We skulk in, ready to join the group of silent, grumbling old men in trench coats, the residue of the paper bags that once held their Mad Dog 20/20 still stuck on the soles of their shoes.  It's hard enough to keep people sober and a dour group of pissed individuals wouldn't help.  This is especially hard if you're young as so much of socializing revolves around establishments that serve alcohol.  Some of us tentative people never developed the skill of talking to other people without some lubricating fluids.

So it's always a shock when someone dies or nearly dies or goes to prison or OD's on fentanyl.  I forget that this is a deadly serious business at its core.  There were a few instances in my drinking life where I came uncomfortably close to death.  Sometimes at the wheel of a car and sometimes when I mixed the wrong combination of drugs and way too much alcohol.  There are no bottles of medicine that say: "Yeah, we know the dose is one tablet but you can take eight of them and wash it down with a quart of Jim Beam.  Seriously - you're good.   ABSOLUTELY no problem."

Pain is Inevitable - Suffering is Not

I'm going to share some more thoughts from Venerable Henepola Gunaratana.  I am grateful for such a well-considered recap of some ideas that I find essential to my recovery, first of all, and to my spiritual growth, also first of all.  Normally, I can choose a first of all but these two are both so good I can't pick.  I find that the following stuff is often found in any type of spiritual or religious program.  

 

"You are going to run into problems.  The main trick in dealing with obstacles is to adopt the right attitude.  Difficulties are an integral part of your life.  They aren't something to be avoided.  They are something to be used.  They provide invaluable opportunities for learning.  The reason we are all stuck in life's mud is that we ceaselessly run from our problems and after our desires.  (More money!  More power!!  More sex!!!)  But there is no pleasure without some degree of pain.  There is no pain without some amount of pleasure.  Life is composed of joys and miseries.  Don't think you are special.  You are not special.  Even me - I'm not special and I'm pretty fucking special.

It is essential to learn to confront the less pleasant aspects of existence.  In the long run, avoiding unpleasantness is a very unkind thing to do to yourself.  One popular human strategy for dealing with difficulty is autosuggestion: when something nasty pops up you convince yourself it is not there, or you convince yourself it is pleasant rather than unpleasant.  Buddhism advises you not to implant feelings that you don't really have or avoid feelings that you do have.  If you are miserable you are miserable; that is the reality, that is happening, so confront it.  And this is so not what an alcoholic wants to do.  An alcoholic wants to numb that pain and avoid it until later when it can be numbed again."

Okay, obviously I added a few things in there.  There are no bad words in this book unless you want to say that "pain" is a bad word.  And Venerable actually adds this comment: "Pain is inevitable, suffering is not."  Man, that's one of my main credos of life.  As I've said when I'm asked how I'm doing I usually reply that "I've never had a bad day."  To any skeptical looks I usually add that I've had plenty of painful days but very few bad ones that weren't of my own making.

The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

The story of St. Francis of Assisi has always amused me.  As I understand it he was a rich kid who returned home, bereft and depressed, after living a life of dissipation and self-gratification.  He spent time growing his faith until he reached a point that his teachings drew some attention, so much so that he became a celebrity.  So . . . what happens?  The same thing that happens to so many teachers who become famous: churches are built and edifices constructed and styles adopted that grow monstrously until the point of his message is overwhelmed by the trappings of celebrity.  I was lucky enough to visit Assisi in Central Italy and . . . man . . . I was laughing.  The cathedral was massive and ornate and there were trinkets and tstchokes being sold everywhere and the monks and brothers and priests were dressed to kill.  We strolled into one shop stocked with robes and clothes for these people and . . . man . . . it looked like the dressing room for The Funkadelics.

"What the hell is this?" I twittered.

"It's for the monk impulse purchase," SuperK quipped.

We thought that monks were supposed to be dressed in coarse sackcloth and hair shirts.  Who knew?

Francis himself grew weary of the luxury and retired to a cave-like structure outside of town for his remaining years.  I'm amazed that you rarely hear religious figures bring up all of the times Jeebus downplays the worth of stuff.  People don't want to hear that they should give away all they own and follow the Master.  They don't care in principle for the story of the Master deflecting criticism of the poor widow who drops a mite into the offering box while the wealthy ostentatiously giving large sums - sums that are nothing to them while the widow is giving all she had.  The parable that suggests that the rich man has as much chance of getting into heaven as a camel has getting through the eye of a needle.  This is all in the Bible, folks, but it doesn't play well in your average suburban church.  They prefer the Gospel of Prosperity which - in case I'm mistaken - is nowhere to be found in the texts.

Here's the famous prayer of St. Francis of Assisi:

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. 

O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love.  For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.  Amen.

Now, c'mon, that pray kicks ass.  I'm done with the rote memorization of prayers of my youth where I repeated words and phrases mechanically without any consideration of their meaning.  The content of many prayers are fine - it's my inattention to the content that is lacking.  I will say that in my Quiet Time prayers I do ask each day that I try to understand and to love with no regard for my own well-being.  For some reason I canNOT remember the consoling part.  There are three things to remember and I can only get two of them.  In my defense they're the best two parts unless you need consoling.  Obviously.

Seaweed: Hypocrite

Hypocrisy:  The practice of claiming to having moral standards or beliefs to which one's own conduct does not conform; a pretense of having a virtuous character, morals or religious beliefs or principles, that one does not really possess.

I crossed paths on my beach walk yesterday with a man I know from The Program who offends me on several levels.  I say this without irony and with the assurance that he doesn't care one bit about what I think.  Often, I'll point to my ear buds and give him a fist bump as we pass because I simply don't want to talk to him, to possibly listen to a jeremiad about the downfall of society.   But the thing is he's aware of his own defects, more or less, and he stays true to his beliefs.  He also laughs at himself easily.  I like people who don't take themselves seriously.  Often I'd rather talk to someone I don't care for who is genuine than someone I like who pours forth sanctimony.

Abuela

I was in line today at Costco a couple of customers behind a little Spanish abuela.  There was a bit of a commotion and I caught enough of the conversation to gather that she didn't have enough money to pay for all of her purchases.  She took out her wallet and put a bunch of change on the conveyor - including a pile of pennies - that the attendant began to separate out.  The customer - a tiny woman dressed very neatly - was in the spotlight.  I know older people (Ed. Note: she was probably my age), especially immigrants, have a lot of pride so this was unwelcome attention; reminded me of sitting on the sidewalk while a cop radioed my information back to the station while I tried to avoid the stares from passersby.  That kind of attention.  She needed to either cough up some more cash or start taking items out of her basket.  I took out my wallet, ducked around the people in front of me, and asked the attendant how much she owed.  The bill was thirty-five dollars or so and she had put down fifteen dollars, more or less, so she needed another twenty bucks.

Fuck, I thought, standing there with smy wallet out, Big Man coming to the rescue, assuming that because they were counting pennies, that she was a little short.  She wasn't close.  She wasn't in the game.  I handed the clerk a twenty.  I couldn't see how I could say: "Nah.  Changed my mind.  Carry on."  The bill made a ripping, groaning, screaming sound as it exited my wallet and there was one final, blood-curdling shriek as I handed it to the clerk who gave me back a few thin dimes.  The abuela nodded to me, thanks, and said something to the clerk in Spanish and left and into eternity, as far as I was concerned.  I wanted, of course, for sirens and whistles to go off and a rain of confetti to fall from the ceiling as the lights went out and a big spotlight danced on my humble form.  Silence.  Solitude.  I eased back into my space in line.

When the attendant started to ring up my items she turned to me and said: "That was very kind of you."

I said: "That twenty dollars is going to bring me a hundred and twenty dollars worth of peace of mind.  I'm going to float on that twenty dollars for a couple of days."

She checked out a few more items and then said: "She told me 'my god was with me here today.' "

And what do you say to that?  "Well, I've been called the devil a few times . . . "

This whole idea of doing something for someone else with no quid pro quo is still somewhat alien to me.  I still feel vaguely screwed when I'm doing it.  I joined a sponsee for lunch the other day and the bill for way too much food was seventy-five bucks.  I have more money than he does so I offered to pick up the tab.  "No, we'll split it," he said.  He paused a few beats and then added: "Tell you what . . . you get this one and let's do lunch more often."  

That never works out.  :)

Cherokee Wisdom

"All of us have come to the present with some memory, some experience, that has affected us negatively.  It would be hard to live in a world of hurt and not be touched by it.  Remember that when we seek we find.  And it may be by helping others."  Walking Buffalo

The Cherokee elders had this figured out a long time ago.  I was paging through my original 12&12 today when I ran across this definition for egotism that I had jotted down a long time ago: "The practice of talking and thinking about oneself excessively because of an untrue sense of self-importance."  Whew, doggie.

"Meditation takes energy.  You need courage to confront some pretty difficult mental phenomena and the determination to sit through various unpleasant mental states.  Laziness just will not serve."

My hope originally for meditation that it would help me make unpleasant mental states go away by learning to ignore them.  I was unhappy to discover that the point was to sit with those negative feelings, to look at them squarely and without flinching.  When I ignore things I don't like they get stronger and stronger, as if I'm feeding them energy.

In my quest for even more impressive spiritual awareness I've been listening to some podcasts about the inner workings of the human brain.  Clever little animals, our brains, conditioned by instincts and upbringing and self-protection to take all kinds of sneaky shortcuts to ease our transit through the carnal world.  This one stuck with me recently: the difference between independence (common and cherished in the Western world) and interdependence (as practiced by most of the rest of the world).  And the thing that's so interesting to consider is that any way of living that didn't work in the long run eventually died out so that each system still in play today has stood the test of time and proven beneficial to a society.  We find out, of course, that each system has its strong points and its weak ones - nothing is perfect, in other words.

Anyway, in the West we're conditioned to value independance which we interpret as the right to do whatever the hell we want to do even when we're swimming against the current.  We don't generally feel the need to ponder how our actions affect the whole system.  The freedom is amazing but it can lead to isolation and depression because we don't feel part of a larger whole.  In the East interdependence is prized.  When one acts there's a lot of consideration as to how it affects our families, our neighborhoods, our faith communities.  There was a guy who lived around the corner who flew a flag that said "Fuck Joe Biden" in his front yard.  OK, I get it - he didn't like Joe Biden but there were a lot of kids living on the street.  Obviously, he didn't care, thinking it more important that he gets to express his opinion than to consider what his neighbors had to go through to explain this to their school-age children.  This group think can be very reassuring but it can also be very restricting.  In Vietnam when two people marry they go live with the man's family while in China they end up with the woman's relatives.  This is just how it was done.  No individual could say: "I don't want to do that" and feel part of a group.  Being a Westerner even the thought of living with my in-laws makes me gag and I know SuperK feels the same way if the tables were turned.

X-Treme Wisdom!

Part of my path to Extreme Wisdom - or perhaps I should say X-Treme Wisdom! - is dipping into many different sources of spiritual thought.  I'm often amazed at how similar themes repeat themselves, suggesting to me that there's a lot of basic agreement about the foundations of spiritual principles.  I like to remember that the Alcoholics Anonymous program doesn't contain very much original material but is rather a repackaging of ancient spiritual thought in a form palatable to the rebellious drunk.

Here's a segment from my current daily meditation book that was written by a Native America woman: "When talking to someone trustworthy does not ease stress, then writing it can make a world of difference.  Writing it to ourselves can bring out many causes for sadness or anger that we didn't know we were harboring.  A daily journal has been the source of help in learning what we store away unconsciously, only to come out  and whip us at the most unlikely times."

Man, is there a whiff of the Fourth Step there?  Have any of you ever heard from your irritating sponsors that keeping a daily journal can be helpful?  Yeah, me neither.  There's something about writing to yourself that releases information that is normally, naturally suppressed.  No one likes to find out unpleasant truths about themselves, so we sit quietly and think, cleverly keeping the bad shit in a dark place.  One of my most powerful truths about writing regularly is that it doesn't make much sense to lie to oneself.

Compassion:  Recognizing the suffering of others and then taking action to help; the literal definition is "to suffer together."

This from an Indian holy man: "The most damaging psychic irritant arising in the mind, particularly at the time when the mind is quiet, is resentment.  You must remember that you practice loving kindness for the purification of your own mind.  You must remember that compassion is a manifestation of loving kindness in action, for one who does not have loving kindness cannot help others."

Resentment: A feeling of indignant displeasure or persistent ill will at something regarded as wrong, insult or injury.  (Ed. Note: I like the inclusion of the word indignant which suggests the belief, not the certainty that I've been wronged.  Persistent is good, too, as in a persistent cough or a persistent headache or the persistent whine of a gas-powered leaf-blower used by a neighbor who feels the need to blow every fucking scrap of leaf into a pile while I'm trying to meditate.  Finally, who can say anything bad about the word "regarded" which tells us that most of the time we're annoyed at something that isn't that annoying; it's only annoying to us.)

And here's A.A.: "Resentment is the number one offender."  Resentments are liking eating poison and hoping the other person dies.  And there's a whiff of the Ninth Step there, too, in the idea that you are working The Program so that you get better and healthier and happier, not for the benefit of the other guy.  Leave that other guy alone!

Gratitude List, For Real

 Here's my daily Gratitude List.  I say this every morning and I try to pay attention when I say it.  I try to think closely about these items.  I try not to think about other things and I try to really consider the implications of what's on the list.  As I've said many times: I'm not a naturally grateful person so I've had to work at developing gratitude.  Work at it.  My progress has often been slow.  It's hard to internalize gratitude when you're not prone to be grateful.  So many things in life can be improved with the saying "Fake it until you make it."  For the longest time I pretended to be grateful, I acted as if I was grateful even when I wasn't, until it became part of the natural rhythm of my thinking. I was grateful and not just pretending to be grateful.  As I've also said many times: those of us who see threats and problems are pretty good at surviving what can be a tricky existence so this wariness and skepticism has kept me alive and fed and protected while those idiots always looking on the bright side of things blissfully stumble into a running buzz saw. 

I'm grateful that I'm healthy.  Relatively healthy. I'm 67 so there are aches and pains and earlier bedtimes and longer naps but I don't have any cancers or weird afflictions or syndromes and no family history of dementia or diabetes or any other serious disease.  Now, I take good care of myself by eating right and exercising and getting enough rest and maintaining an active social life - all good things but no guarantee of a long life.

I'm grateful SuperK is healthy for all the same reasons.  No one wants to take care of an ailing spouse.  Both of us would and may have to some day but we're both trying to minimize the possibility.

I'm grateful for my marriage.  35 years coming up.  That's a long time.  I'm grateful to be paired with a woman I love but - maybe even as importantly - with a woman I like.  I love a lot of people.  I'm good at loving people.  But I'm not nearly as good at liking people.  It's a blessings to enjoy someone's company and to have a similar view of the world, what's interesting and what's not.

I'm grateful for all the people who were involved in my upbringing - my parents especially.  I can bitch and moan about how I didn't get what I really needed, how they failed me, but I turned out okay.  They couldn't have been that defective and who really has any idea how to raise children?  There's no manual.  You can't rehearse.  The product varies wildly.  It was pointed out by a wiser head who had tired of my complaining about what I didn't get from my family: "Can you imagine what a nightmare it must have been trying to raise a walking, talking train-wreck bullshit machine such as yourself?"  You know . . . fair enough and good point.

I'm grateful for all the friends I've had/still have in my life, friends who contribute so much to the richness of my existence.  Friends that I've known since I was a boy; close friends with whom I've lost touch and close friends I've become reacquainted with; new friends, fresh friends; friends that I used to admire but no longer do and some that used to get on my last nerve that I'm still close with; and that huge, huge group of people who naturally cycle in and out of our lives.  So is live.  My love is big and wide-ranging.  It's not one size or one type or one intensity.  It runs hot and it runs cold.  But it's still my love.        

Finally, at the end and almost as an afterthought, I ponder my carnal, material blessings.  I have a nice, comfortable house that I own.  While it's not the nicest house I ever lived in it's a damn nice, comfortable house and it faces South so it soaks up all the beautiful SoCal sunshine.  I have two nice cars and they're both paid for.  I really like cars so I was constantly saving up to buy the one that was just a tiny bit faster than the one I was driving but I finally have a car that I can't in good conscience replace.  It has been dependable and has no miles on it and I love to drive it.  And then, after years of living on the edge of financial distress, worrying about making enough money to keep me in quarts of Colt 45, good weed, and cigarettes, I have some money in the bank.  I don't worry about money.  I would love to have more money than I have, of course, but I could get by on less than I'm spending now.  I have always loved the fact that when the topic of gratitude comes up in a meeting Stuff is always pretty far down the list.  

You Were A Jerk

We can only make ourselves better.  Regardless of how we have been conditioned to think, we know right from wrong.  It's innate and it speaks loudly.  If we want to hear it we will.  If we want to ignore it we'll ignore it.  The official psychological term for this is the "Don't Be An Asshole Today Effect."  I didn't need to come to Alcoholics Anonymous and work The Steps and start a daily meditation practice to understand the difference between good behavior, kind behavior and being a jerk.  For many years I would occasionally turn to SuperK when I suspected I had just acted poorly - or not as good as I could have - and inquire after my behavior.  "You were a jerk" she would say from time to time.  If I tried to defend myself or ask her to expound on why or how I had been a jerk she'd reply: "You know what a jerk is."  This wasn't delivered unkindly or harshly but rather matter of factly.  The reason I was asking was that I knew I hadn't behaved well.

More meditation musings . . .  One of the toughest lessons I had to learn vis-a-vis meditation was how to deal with unpleasant thoughts and emotions.  I preferred to try to "think of something good" so I was missing the whole point of meditation.  Negative thoughts can be some of the most profitable experiences a meditator can face if only we can work through them.  When things are going my way I don't learn shit - I order something from Amazon or drink another cup of coffee.  When my back is against the wall I grow.  I needed (and still need) to observe them calmly and clearly.  I need to look at them mindfully.  After a while they lose their hold on me.  This is a kind of self-discipline I was unfamiliar with.  This is self-discipline that allows me to see through all of the hollow shouting of my own impulses and learn that they have no power over me.  It's all a show, a deception.  My impulses scream and bluster at me, they cajole, they coax, they threaten, but in reality they have no power at all.  If I try to suppress a negative emotion then it gets bigger and badder and more powerful.  I have tried to learn the lesson of just watching this stuff as it comes up - restlessness, anxiety, impatience, pain - and not letting myself get involved.

It brings to mind the phenomenon of listening irritably to a crying baby on a plane when I'm trying to get some sleep.  The best technique I've found is to actively listen to the squalling.  After a while my mind becomes acclimated to the noise; it gets bored and I doze off.  Conversely, when I try to actively ignore the noise I listen to the ebb and flow, the rising and falling of the racket, the tone and timber and pace, and the pauses.  The pauses are the worst.  That's when I sit there and try to anticipate the next shriek.  

Bat-Shit Crazy and I'm Not Talking About Me For Once

I talk regularly with a woman who just celebrated 60 days of sobriety.  I like her well enough.  I'm not enthralled with her but no shit, right?  Outside of Willie and SuperK I'm not enthralled with anyone.  She's quite religious - which is perfectly OK with me - and she's got a healthy drive to control the behavior of everyone else - which hardly makes her an outlier in Alcoholics Anonymous.  Controlling other people is like First Grade stuff for us.  Like me she's pretty self-righteous about her beliefs and pretty dismissive if your beliefs diverge from hers.  I had heard that she was surprised to discover that the members of our meeting lean one way politically so I approached her post-meeting one day just to make sure that no one had been trying to force their beliefs on her, a big A.A. no-no.  She took this as an opening to express her opinions about people on the opposite side of the political spectrum and for her this meant a quite impassioned critique of the many ills and woes and failings of the opposition.  She really got going.  Some of her thoughts were reasonable political opinions but some of them were thinkly veiled conspiracy crap.  The thing that struck me at the time is that her appearance changed.  She looked ugly and angry and aggressive.  It was really quite amazing to watch.  I demurred for a minute while she spoke until I finally just said: "I'm going to back out of the discussion here" and walked away.

This is why we keep politics out of meetings.  This is why we look carefully at our response to the world at large, to make sure that we're behaving reasonably and kindly.  The world, in most cases, has a lot of nuance to it.  Things are rarely black and white or present themselves in such stark, definitive terms.  She has a world of trouble with her daughter and I can see why - she was driving hard to the hoop and she barely knows me.  We all take liberties with those closest to us so I can only imagine how critical and overbearing she could be with family.  I was never going to be best friends with her - she always impressed me as being a little sanctimonious, a little pious, a little "my shit don't stink" in her opinions.  But now I give her a wide berth because I don't want to try to convince someone that the moon landing was faked or that there's a wharehouse in New Mexico full of well-fed aliens.  Crazy is crazy.

Make Haste Slowly

"Can you see the wind?  Can you see the fragrance of flowers floating on the breezes?  Can you see thought or what it is that changes a tree from bare limbs and brown leaves to lush green?  Can you see love or joy or peace?  We can only see evidence of these invisible things, and it's enough to make us know they exist.  The substance of life is so evident, so real and beautiful.  Why is it that we ever question the existence of our Creator, who set all things in motion?" 

Make haste slowly.  Don't overdo it.  Don't underdo it.  What you expect in your meditation practice is what you are most likely to get.  Your practice will therefore go best when you are looking forward to sitting.  If you sit down expecting grinding drudgery, that is probably what will occur.  Make it reasonable.  Make it fit with the rest of your life.  While this musing concerns my meditation practice it sure applies to everything else as well.

"One more step, one more effort may be all that is needed.  It would amaze us if we knew how close we are to stepping past an old barrier - and it would shake us to know how close we came to quitting."  Cherokee Proverb

I've always been sort of a dog whisperer.  I get down on the ground so I'm at dog level and I talk human/dog words to the dogs.  They almost always come around, eventually, even the skittish ones.  My favorite dog lives next door, a rescue dog who spent two years on the streets of Mexico City.  This dog loves me in a way that I can scarcely comprehend.  This dog sits on the porch and watches my house until I come out and pay her some attention.  This dog is always, always thrilled to see me, holds no grudges, forgets all slights.  Fair disclosure: I do give this dog a carrot so maybe all I'm doing is bribing this dog.  Who cares?  There's another, different dog that grabs his leash and holds it in his mouth as soon as he sees me.  A dog I see at the beach, a very skittish dog, barked at me at first.  Then he starting darting in to give me little nips on my hands.  Now he comes over and lets me pet him.  Who cares but me?  I just don't think animals like that don't have a divine purpose or place.

"There is a principle which is a bar against all information, which is proof against all arguments, and cannot fail to leave a man in everlasting ignorance - that principle is contempt prior to investigation."  Herbert Spencer . . . maybe . . . or firstly William Paley.

Statue of Limitations

"Parents teach only what they know to teach.  But we are not set forever in one direction.  We reach an age when we must teach ourselves.  We learn to forgive and to understand that when we get to the fork in the road we'll know the right way.  If our self-esteem has been damaged, feeding it more pity and more ill-treatment is not healing it."

The statute of limitations on blaming your parents for anything is 30.  I will admit that at one point I thought the phrase was "statue of limitations."  Like there's a statue somewhere of a mythological being called Limitations.  There are statues of Beauty and Wisdom and Youth so I just figured somewhere someone thought Limitations needed its own statue.  Not sure what it would look like.  Maybe it would half-finished.

"Remember that when you do anything, there will be someone that will find fault, no matter what you do.  The pleasure of an unhappy person is to find something wrong in others to salve his own discontent.  We all try to understand our differences of opinion, to care what effect we cause in other people.  But the bane of anyone's existence is ignorance of our own faults.  So what we find wrong in others may be a reflection of our own wrongs."

I was asked to lead the meeting this morning so I read from Step Eleven in the 12&12: "There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation, and prayer.  Taken separately, these practices can bring much relief and benefit.  But when they are logically related and interwoven, the result is an unshakable foundation for life."  I believe that prayer - talking, basically, a talent at which most alcoholics excel - is developed early in our recovery and that we're hammered into submission by sponsors and old-timers to quit looking for solutions to our problems outside of our own selves and to relentlessly, relentlessly examine our insides to see how we can improve ourselves.  After all, the outside world is just fine and none of our business - the inside world is where we need to focus.  

Meditation is a little trickier.  We want to know exactly how to do it and how to measure our progress.  We want to be excellent meditators and we want to get it over with.  It's not a Fourth Step.  It's not an amend.  It's not competitive meditation.  It's a part of Step Eleven - one of the three maintenance Steps - which can be started immediately and should be started immediately.  Here's the Book again: "Meditation is something that can always be further developed.  It has no boundaries, either of width or height.  Aided by such instruction and example as we can find, it is essentially an individual adventure, something which each one of us works out in his own way."  There's a lot of slop room there.  We can also get better at it as time passes and we practice continually.  It's an individual exercise that has no right or wrong way.  And - I love how Alcoholics Anonymous repeatedly reminds us to tap into help outside of The Rooms - we're encouraged to use whatever resources we can uncover.

Worry Redux

Worry: Give way to anxiety or unease; allow one's mind to dwell on difficulties or troubles.

The meditation experience is not a competition.  There is a definite goal but there is no need to rush.  The purpose of meditation is not to deal with problems so problem-solving is a fringe benefit and should be regarded as such.  Don't think about your problems while you're meditating!  Push them aside very gently.  Don't shove them aside as if you're trying to catch a foul ball at a major league baseball game.  But take a break from all of that worrying and planning.  Repeating myself here: For several years I jotted down whatever worry was intruding at the moment into my peace.  At the end of the year I reread this list and what a load of crap.  I worried about the most implausible things and when I couldn't hork up anything implausible I returned over and over to the same tried and true worries that are always going to be part of the human condition.  Almost none of the crap that I worried about came true and when it did I was able to handle it calmly and with dignity.

Thinking About Thinking

One of my most persistent problems and greatest joys is thinking.  Boy, do I think a lot.  Boy, am I not in control of my thinking most of the time.  My mind goes and goes and then goes faster.  Well, welcome to the human condition.  Our brains are there to think and they've been running the show for a long time and they're not going to give up this prerogative without a fight.

Here's Venerable Henepola Gunaratana waxing poetic about meditation . . . (Ed. Note: My brain interrupted while I was typing that to wonder why I bother to spell his name correctly.  Who would know? I could do this: Gunaratanabobanabannana and you wouldn't know the difference.  Do you think Spell Check tried to help me out there?  Spell Check threw in the towel.  Spell Check didn't have shit.)

"Your mind will wander off constantly.  Just note the fact that you have been thinking, daydreaming, worrying, or whatever.  Gently, but firmly, without getting upset or judging yourself for straying, simply return to the simple physical sensation of the breath.  Somewhere in this process, you will come face to face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy.  Your mind is a shrieking, gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill, utterly out of control and hopeless.  However, you are not crazier than you were yesterday.  It has always been this way, and you just never noticed.  You are no crazier than everybody else around you.  The only real difference is that you have confronted the situation; they have not."

Go Quiet

One of the truly stalwart members of Keep It Complicated is a dude named Tom.  I like Tom.  Tom is a little boring.  Tom is really a lot more boring than a little boring.  Tom is a good friend but he will never be a close friend because he's just too boring.  To me.  Tom is boring to me.  Maybe everyone else thinks he's riveting but I don't care what other people think.  When we were struggling to keep Keep It Complicated afloat post-pandemic and post-rupture Tom was one of the handful of members who came to the meeting almost every day.  Tom is an early riser so he would always arrive twenty minutes early, get the coffee brewing and the chairs set up, keep the secretary company, on the small chance that a new person would show up and want to talk.  Many a morning I'd show up ten minutes after Tom to find him and the secretary the only people in the room.  The fact that our attendance is healthy today is in no small part thanks to him.  When the meeting is over Tom books immediately while I try to hang around until there's no one else there.  

Recently we were in the kitchen cleaning up when he said he found it unusual that the woman who handles the three minute timer sometimes "forgets" to set the timer set when someone she likes is sharing but is always prompt when it's someone she doesn't care for.  Personally, this 80 year old woman is doing as thankless a task as you can do for the meeting and I think half the time she just fumbles a bit getting the clock reset and started again.  Tom, naturally, always blows through the three minute alarm, often blowing through the additional one minute reminder.  I didn't argue with him, pointing out his hypocrisy and the negligible possibility that he's right about the timer - I didn't see the point.  Believe whatever you want to believe, although I did find his comment sort of petty and oblivious - it's certainly more fun criticizing the behavior of others than analyzing mine.  My opinion of him changed not at all.  Everybody gets a pass on the occasional grouch and the occasional brainstorm.

A few hours later he called and apologized.  He had a few things going on in his real life that impinged on his ability to be understanding in the meeting.  I get it.  I thanked him and complimented him on his self-awareness.  I did NOT ask him why HE doesn't have to follow the rules while everyone ELSE does.  People aren't supposed to cross-talk in meetings, either, and I do that all the time.  We all have our foibles and we all slip on our spiritual journey and we all make mistakes from time to time.

I am really intolerant of people who talk too long in meetings.  I'm not referencing those incidents where a member is in a crisis or slogging through something particularly distressing but the ones where someone is giving a blow by blow account, "I did this, then he did that, then I said this . . . " that kind of crap.  Get to the fucking point is my attitude.  That being said I understand there are members who need this kind of detailed personal accounting.  I can imagine that when I share it might get too cerebral, too intellectual, too theoretical, too . . . well . . . pedantic . . . like I'm some kind of A.A. sage or seer, an individual who is way, way too impressed with what he is saying.

Even in quiet, I can be in a frenzy.  "Quiet desperation," Thoreau called it.  True silence for me comes from directing my thought to quiet places.  When I let my mind drift toward something that could go wrong - and let's face it anything can go wrong - then my peace is stolen and my creative capacity is a clogged toilet.  So . . . what's a catastrophizer to do?  Listen to waves and flowing water and birdsong and sussurring trees.

When in doubt - go quiet.

Decision Fatigue

There is a psychological construct called Decision Fatigue which occurs after people have made a number of decisions in a short period of time.  Subsequent decisions may not be in the person's best interests because we're just tire of making decisions.  Marketing people know this and they exploit it by upselling customers to more expensive hotel rooms or rental cars or additional warranties.  We're exhausted from making decisions so we tend to make quick decisions to get the whole process over with.  Isn't this just another version of Restraint of Tongue and Pen?  When I'm tired I delay.  It's amazing how often a perfectly logical response pops into my head if I let it percolate for a few hours.

I'm in a good spot right now.  I'm flowing along with my life in good way.  I like the river analogy - if I sit for an hour and watch a river flow by I'm simultaneously seeing an unchanging tableau of water even though from moment to moment the water is changing.  I have a group of people in my life right now and I'm enjoying their company.  I'm not hanging onto all of the people I've known in the past while valuing and profiting from these relationships.  It comes and it goes.  Quick hanging on to that spot of water in the river - it's gone and new ones are coming.  And just as importantly I've really been leaning into this state of mind where I don't care what anyone thinks of me.  I'm free to be me, with all of the agony and the ecstasy that entails.  I'm letting it rip.

Focusing on my breath when I meditate is like sawing a piece of wood - I'm not going to cut a straight line if I watch the blade go up and down, back and forth.  I'm going to throw up so I pay attention to the spot where the blade meets the wood.

Fair disclosure: I don't own a saw.  SuperK won't let me anywhere near a portable device made of sharpened steel.  She knows nothing good can come from that.

The Smirk

"The mind does not stay all the time with the feeling of breath.  It goes to sounds, memories, emotions, perceptions, consciousness, and mental formations as well.  As they fade away, we let our mind return to the breath which is the home base the mind can return to from quick or long journeys to various states of mind and body.  We must remember that all these mental journeys are made within the mind itself.  Every time the mind returns to the breath, it comes back with a deeper insight into impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and selflessness.  The mind becomes more insightful from the impartial and unbiased watching of these occurrences.  Thought is an inherently complicated procedure.  By that we mean that we become trapped, wrapped up, and stuck in the thought chain.  One thought leads to another which leads to another, and another, and another, and so on.  There is a difference between being aware of a thought and thinking a thought."

I try to remember that my progression from bad to better behavior followed the path of actions, words, thoughts, and then, haltingly, on to the most difficult vector: true spiritual acceptance.  Don't act like a jerk; don't talk like a jerk; quit thinking murderous or unkind thoughts; and then, hopefully, get to a point or get near a point or get on a path going to a point so far away that you still can't see it where spiritual kindness is a part of who I am.  Hard to do.  Never.  Going.  To Get There.

At the meeting yesterday a woman I like kicked us off and I was sitting next to a woman I really like.  At one point a third woman asked to share.  She is remarkably boring; she almost always shares, adding tons of unnecessary details and blowing right through our three minute timer; and her voice has a droning, somnolent tone and cadence to it.  I can almost never listen to what she is saying.  I can't remember one time where I was impressed and inspired by what she has said.  As she started to speak the leader turned to the woman next to me and kind of smirked.  While I got it - I was so right there with her - it demonstrated to me that oh, so elusive fourth stage of acceptance, the one where my mind doesn't go to the smirk.

Never.  Going.  To Get There.

Picayune Questions

 Here's the latest on the guy I don't like who insists on walking with me . . . 

Really, he's okay and it's not that I don't like him - rather it's more of a case that I find him a little boring and if I'm given the choice between being with people or being alone I would almost always choose the quiet solitude option.  We've reached a detente on our walks - if he stops and talks with someone . . . I mean, when he stops and talks with someone . . . I continue walking, maybe making a couple of loops before heading on my way.  This is my exercise so if he wants to chat he can stop and chat.  Actually, the other day he left me hanging and apologized for leaving me hanging: "I should have said goodbye."

I've noticed that although he has shown a ton of growth in his seven years of sobriety he has a tendency to talk about other people in a disparaging, less than complimentary way and behind their backs.  He's given me the latest on one of our members who has been renting a room in his house, intimating that the guy is drinking, a possibility not confirmed by the tenant.  He talks a lot about a homeless man who just sits on the curb all day across the street from his residence (making me wonder how he knows this as it would seem to suggest that he's sitting there watching the guy sitting there).  And today he pointed out the house where another one of our members lived with the intimation that he isn't convinced she's staying sober.  The Book tells us that we shouldn't ever intimate that someone is drinking - it should always be left up to the member in question to make any statements about their behavior.

I've been noncommittal when this happens save for the occasional bromide about everyone doing the best they can and never knowing what might be going on in someone else's life that might help explain their behavior.  Today he waved me over as I passed him sitting at an outdoor table in a restaurant and complained in great detail about the rudeness of the waiter who was not explaining in enough detail all of his questions about the menu.  All of his picayune questions about the menu.  A lot of picayune questions.   A lot of unimportant, picayune questions about the menu.  The guy is having a fucking continental breakfast, for god's sake, how important is the exact composition of the fresh fruit on top of the yogurt.  It'll be a surprise, for god's sake.  I may have to say something next time he does this.  When someone is making a simple situation complicated it's hard for me to listen to the whining.  We really do create most of our own problems and if we aren't creating we're making little irritations into bigger ones with all of our nitpicking.  He reminded me of a garrulous old man bitching about the shape of the world today.

I'm telling you I'm always learning new stuff.

Self-Righteous and Sure About It

Yesterday I noticed that one of my long-time friends at the meeting - a dude whose politics and social commentary runs counter to mine - was engaged in a lengthy conversation with a woman who's pretty new.  I ran into Jeff at the beach later and after some inconsequential chit-chat I asked if he and Cheryl had solved all of the world's problems.  He chuckled and said that she was having some trouble with what she perceived as a political bias in the members who regularly attend the meeting.  I don't see this personally but that's beside the point.  Jeff indicated to her that I might have the same trouble - a great compliment, actually, because it means that I'm keeping my politics out of The Fellowship.  Today I mentioned this conversation to Cheryl, concerned that someone said something or behaved in a way that made her uncomfortable.  We're all here for the same reason - a desire to stop drinking - and to a man, woman, or child we're showing up because we're not on a winning streak.  We're desperate, we're miserable, we're dying, so we strive mightily to make The Rooms welcoming and deliberately anodyne.

Initially, she seemed somewhat embarrassed until I mentioned that wanted to make sure she didn't feel excluded.  She proceeded to go on a pretty severe, one-sided political rant which became more and more fervent and more and more implausible in its contentions as she continued, working herself into an increasingly agitated state.  Her voice rose and her cadence quickened as the things she said became more unhinged and lacking in all context.  Another member had joined us at that point.  Finally, she made a charge so provocative that I said: "OK, I'm going to step away here" and my buddy, agreeing, joined me.  Cheryl, walking the other way, turned and said: "I hope you don't hate me now!"  I assured her that I still loved her just like I love everyone.

I found the whole episode unsettling.  I'm concerned that Alcoholics Anonymous is suffering from some of the extreme partisanship that's bedeviling the country right now.  I briefly considered asking if she wanted to sit down and have a measured conversation about any one of the many topics she brought up but caught myself short - she was so far down an extremist path that there wasn't any way to make her see another point of view and this is a tragedy, in my opinion.  I spent many years in my sobriety in an area where I was decidedly in the political and social minority and am happy to report suffered no damage from these attitudes vis-a-vis A.A.  In fact, some of my oldest and dearest friends came out of those meetings.   The old reminder that "we are people who wouldn't ordinarily mix" comes to mind.  

So valuable, so important, so fragile.

Momentary Concentration

"This unity of the mind with the present moment is called momentary concentration.  As moments are incessantly passing away one after another, the mind keeps pace with them, changing with them, appearing and disappearing with them without clinging to any of them.  If we try to stop the mind at one moment, we end up in frustration because the mind cannot be held fast.  Momentary concentration is all you need for the insight meditation practice because everything in your experience lives only for one moment." Venerable Henepola Gunaratana

It has always helped me in my meditation practice and particularly when I'm frustrated with my meditation practice to remember that my mind is made to think, that it's there for a reason.  It protects me and helps me plan and encourages me to love.  It's not just sitting there idling and waiting for my conscious self to give it instructions, especially since my conscious mind doesn't know what the fuck it's doing most of the time.   It's also telling my heart to beat and my lungs to fill with air and my stomach to digest food.  It's doing a lot of shit, man, without my input.  If I try to control it when I'm meditating . . . well . . . good luck with all that.

"There is one God looking down on us all.  We are all children of one God.  God is listening to me.  The sun, the darkness, the winds, are all listening to what we now say."  Geronimo

My memories are simply patterns stamped on my mind.  I can't let them make me believe that I've done everything wrong.  I can make new choices, find new thoughts to feed my spirit.  Intentionally cut sorrow and regret from my thought, get rid of tears and resentments and anxieties, and make myself smile even when I don't want to smile.  I don't listen to other people when their thoughts are negative.  I forget what they say and make decisions about my own life - this is my right just as it's their right to make decisions about their own lives.

Nearsighted Monkeys

 The topic today was an examination of how helpful meditation can be in tempering the alcoholic's "it's not enough, it's never enough" syndrome.  To be, to be . . . NO!  Do something!  Be productive, you lazy ass.

Too many of us are descendents of restless, never-satisfied explorer types escaping persecution and by "persecution" I mean "anyone telling us what to do."  It's no wonder we're restless people.  We get a lot of shit done but feel bad about it.  All of this falls under the It's No Wonder I Drank heading.

There are no nearsighted monkeys in nature.  We know this weird fact because it's possible to measure the ocular acuity of animals without a response.  There are instruments that can measure that.  So when you see your eye doctor don't lie because he or she knows.  You know why there are no blind monkeys?  They miss the trees.

Part of traveling is to see the amazing sights and part of traveling is to stumble into the unexpected.  Sometimes the amazing sights are jammed with tourists and unremarkable but then again to gain the reputation of amazing sometimes they really are amazing.  You'll never know until you give it a shot.  But it's the serendipitous discoveries that make me the happiest.  I find that the places I visit with the lowest expectations often end up being my favorite places.  They're not weighted down with all of my demands.

I tire of people quickly in part because I'm so fully engaged when I'm with them.  I tend to have very intense relationships that come and go.  There's this tension between the routine, the expected, and the excitement of newness.

The Great Holy Spirit

"There is wisdom in the words, 'Having done all, stand.'  Do what can be done, build faith, know there is a Great Holy Spirit that knows even the very smallest thing we need.  Having done all, stand, and refuse to be drawn back into a place of no peace."  Chief Luther Standing Bear

Doesn't this sound remarkably like a pithy version of The Serenity Prayer?"he t on my own."

The Thrill Is Gone

It's so funny to remember the feeling I had walking into my first meeting that my life was over, that I was never going to have any fun ever again.  I didn't know how to do very much without drugs and alcohol at that point.  Every place, every event, every occasion was background hum to the using and drinking.  If I had to abstain I didn't go and if I couldn't drink as much as I wanted I didn't drink at all.  Mild relaxation was not the point.  And the great irony, of course, is that for the last number of years my world got smaller and smaller and smaller.  I was afraid to drive.  I was running out of money.  The carefree carousing of youth was in the rear view mirror and I couldn't find people who drank like I did anymore.  People grew up and started adult lives.  Drinking quarts of Colt 45 and doing bong hits in front of a TV wasn't exciting for them anymore.  It was desperate, purposeful, workman-like drinking.  Drinking with a purpose and people as a general rule got in the way of that purpose.

"Worthy performances do not make us who we are, but little things and what we tell ourselves in the privacy of our own minds.  We are what we see and what we believe is important.  We are who we are by what we choose to cultivate, and all worthy performances are made up of very little parts."   Sitting Bull

If a dozen people approve of us and one does not, our thought is riveted on the one and what his reason is for not liking us. 

"She hates me so much I find it irresistible."  George Costanza

Marriage

I always include gratitude for my marriage in my morning meditation.  Love is a big part of it but, honestly, day to day, it's the Like that's incredibly meaningful.  I can love people that I don't like but if I don't like someone or don't find them interesting or have much in common with them then that's a big pain in the ass.

I spoke on the phone with a friend who has been married a long time.  His relationship with his wife has turned into more of a business relationship that centers around raising their two children than what I would consider a satisying marriage.  The next day I had lunch with a sponsee who is mired in a relationship with a woman who has some pretty significant emotional problems or hang-ups, at least, that makes his day to day life sound pretty miserable, but he has a small son to consider.  I don't think I have much to offer in the way of advice generally but when it comes to long-term relationships I've taken a vow of silence.  The complexity of these relationships is far beyond my ability to decipher and far, far beyond my ability to correct.  I'm continually amazed that people who I see as oil and water thrive and prosper while people who seem perfect for each other end up in a venomous mess.

It's my opinion that relationships - especially long term relationships - require adjustments from time to time.  I try to change as I grow older and so does SuperK so we're going to grow and change in ways that may be divergent.  It's important for us to nudge each other back onto a common path lest we find ourselves far apart and unaware of how it happened because the changes have been so small and so intermittent.

I paper-clipped a scrap of paper to my suit jacket this morning that said "Mr. Stephen E. Seaweed."  80% of the people at the meeting ignored it and those that didn't generally asked if it was there because I had forgotten my name.  

OK, that was pretty funny.

I wonder if part of the reason I tire of people so easily is that I'm so fully involved when I'm dealing with them?  Nah, probably not.  Actually I'm one of those people who can drift off into some irrelevant thinking when they're standing right in front of me.  That doesn't sound too engaged, does it?

Gorillas and Gold Watch Chains and Ebony Combs

 "We are tempted at every turn to give in to things that aren't good for us.  Numerous tangible things and acts run through our minds to delight and lure us away from our good intentions, but none as powerful as that first thought, that subtle invitation to give in.  It is always the first step, the first word, the first taste that leads us like the pipes of Pan."  Seattle (the Duwamish Indian chief of Western Washington state, not the city.  The city isn't saying anything audible).  (Ed. Note:  I do not know what the pipes of Pan have to do with this quip as that is from an ancient Greek or maybe Roman allegory.  Seattle and Pan in one quote, it's too much, man.)

I find that when I start a behavior that I don't much care for then I'm off to the races.  One coffee leads to three and a couple of Oreos leads to an empty Oreos bag.  Here's an alcoholic counting to a hundred: "One, two, three, one hundred."  It goes that fast.  Seattle was reminding us allegorically not to pick up that first drink.  Wisdom is wisdom.  A.A. wisdom is wisdom gleaned from dozens of sources that have been around for a long time.

And here's a 19th century counterpart to the saying that warns us to be careful what we wish for because we might get it from the writer O. Henry, although this one has a sweet turn of events.  An impoverished young married couple was getting ready to celebrate their first Christmas together.  The only valuable thing they owned was a gold watch that the husband's father had passed along from his father, but it was without a chain so that he carried it around with a piece of string to secure it to his belt.  And the woman had beautiful, glorious red hair that was a source of pride for both of them.  Contemplating her meager savings and full of love for her husband she went to a wigmaker and sold her hair for enough money to buy a gold watch chain.  The man came home, took one look at her, and said: "You cut off your hair."  When she gave him the chain he looked at it bemusedly and handed over her Christmas gift.  A set of ornate ebony combs to wear in her glorious hair.

SuperK and I were taking a walk when we ran into a guy I briefly sponsored who has since moved on to other meetings.  I had turned to SuperK to try to explain the exact specifics of whatever shit I had recently given him when she saw him nudge his wife and say: "This is the guy."  If I love you I'm going to bust your chops.

Gorillas have no known predators.  They aren't afraid of being attacked by anything.  They're so confident they just sleep on the ground.  But they are afraid of caterpillars and some small reptiles like chameleons.  Go figure.

There I Go Again, Again

 I heard the greatest all-time Alcoholics Anonymous Freudian slip in the meeting today.  The phrase "a psychic change" occurs three times in our literature, all of them in The Doctor's Opinion.  The dude speaking substituted "psychedelic" in place of "psychic."  As in, "we've had a psychedelic change."  There was a great deal of laughter and it was universal today.  No one did not think that was funny and I'm going to ABUSE that poor man over that misspeak.

To go along with my ongoing screed about not giving advice I'm moved to repeat a few more Musts and Do Nots.

I never yell at anyone.  I never tell anyone they're screwing up.  We know when we're screwing up and nobody needs to have it pointed out in a tone of condemnation, especially with a group of people who are remarkably hard on themselves already.

No one is thinking about me.  NO ONE!  No one is doing anything to me.  They're not planning and scheming to do things that cause me harm or discomfort.  Self-propulsion ("Most people live by self-propulsion" saith The Big Book) is the M.O. of most people.  They're deciding to do something or not to do something only after considering how they'll be personally affected.  Now, there is a hyperbole alert going off but I personally always default to the position of not being the target of anyone else's behavior.

Having someone correct me or contradict me privately, in a group of people, or in front of everyone during a meeting bothers me not at all.  Have at it.  On occasion I take what they say as constructive criticisim given in good faith and can apply it to bettering myself or ignoring it, as the case may be or maybe I should say as the mood strikes me.  Mostly, I don't care what anyone thinks of me and the payoff for this arrogance is that's awfully hard to get under my skin.  Love me, hate me, just think about me.  A motto for right living that one.

After the meeting began a new woman who I just me came in and sat in the outer row, Relapse Row.  She began collecting her things afterwards so - being the self-apointed No One Gets Out of Here Without Checking In guy - I went over and said hello and asked how she was doing.  "Not so good," she said and then proceeded to start talking about some interpersonal drama she had going on and that it was acute enough emotionally that she drank yesterday.  As she was speaking her eyes welled up with tears that began spilling down her cheeks and dripping off her chin.  I was touched and moved and amazed that she could keep talking while this was happening.  This wasn't dramatic weeping and wailing and knashing of teeth crying, feel-sorry-for-me crying - these were tears of pure misery, pure emotional misery.  I gave her a quick hug but mostly just stood there attentively while she talked.  SuperK said that often women are so grateful that someone is listening to them that it really opens up the tear ducts.  I waved a couple of women over to chime in and reminded her that if you want to get two days you've got to get one first.  A good reminder as to what lies in wait for me out there if I ever decide to drink again.  

It doesn't look good.

There I Go Again

 "It takes 20 years to become an overnight success."  Anonymous

Mindfulness practice to me is being 100% honest with myself.  When I meditate I try to watch my own mind - as horrifying as that can be at times because of all the really scary stuff in there - and I always notice certain things that I find unpleasant.  What do I do?  I try to reject them, get rid of 'em, get them outta there.  I don't like to detach myself from loved ones and I don't like unloved ones attaching themselves to me.  I don't like what naturally happens to all of us - growing old, becoming sick, slowing down, showing my age, because of a great and shallow desire to preserve my appearance.  A distant cousin of mine saw a picture of me recently and exclaimed: "Grandpa Paul!"  I know I look like the guy but sheesh.  C'mon.  I don't like anyone pointing out my faults because I take great pride in the fact that I have no faults at all and if I did they'd be well hidden and not detectable.  I don't like for anyone to be wiser than me.  

When I'm in a hate-everyone-and-everything state of mind I have to remember that the mothisre power I give people, places, and things the more miserable I become.  And I have to include the opinions, ideas, beliefs, and decisions of others in there, too.  When I'm unhappy or discontented then I need to use mindfulness to track down the roots of my malaise because those roots are within me.  If I'm content in my own mind no one can upset me because then I don't give a shit what they think of me.  I can listen to someone point out my faults, calmly, because, boy, it's a lot easier seeing your defects than paying attention to mine.  I have blind spots.  We all do.  So I try to take criticism of my faults and shortcomings as a hidden treasure, an opening of a door to becoming a better person, for it's only by becoming aware of my faults that I can start to correct them and I can do this while overlooking the fact that the person pointing a finger has faults as well.  I have to step away from the finger-pointing that I love so much: "Yeah, sure, I'm an asshole but you're a huge asshole" or "okay, I did that but you did this."

To repeat myself for the thousandth time: I never give advice because I don't know what's best for you.  I never criticize because virtually everyone I know is too hard on themselves as it is.  I'll tell you what I did and how that worked out for me; I've read the literature dozens and dozens of times so I can tell you pretty accurately what's found in there; and I'll encourage you to talk to many, many people because you're going to hear many, many opinions and one of them is going to be right for you.

When greed, hatred, and ignorance reveal themselves to me I try to track them down and comprehend their roots.  Quit reacting!  I never make good decisions when I'm reacting quickly.

Fibonacci Sequence

I have come to believe . . . no, embrace . . . that I have no fucking idea how anyone else should live their life.  I believe we're all geared for and prepped for and intuitively/intrinsically suited for all manner of stuff.  It sounds childish to me to have to say that but I've really gained a great understanding at how varied people are and how I have no clue what's best for anyone.  One of my great A.A. truths is that I never give advice, ever, even when someone asks for my advice because really what they want is for me to validate whatever they're doing.  I tell people what I did; I ask them questions that might help them gain new insights into their motivations; I can quote A.A. literature and provide info in some of the spiritual texts I've read; and then I end the discussion with some form of "I'm sure you'll figure it out"  or maybe "I can't wait to see what happens."  Why am I suited to marriage?  Fuck if I know.  Do I regret not having children?  Only in the most peripheral, abstract way.  Should I have finished optometry school?  Do.  Not.  Know.  

Rock on, little brother.  Be happy, be content, push yourself, sure, but never lay your head on the pillow at night with any sense of "it wasn't enough" today.  My tendency is to beat myself up for falling short.  Fuck it.  Fuck it big time.  I'm 67.  I'm going to be dead in 20 years.  I'm going to feel bad about something?  Fuck it.  It was enough.  It is enough.

Someone today referenced the Fibonacci Sequence in her share.  I mean .  .  . the Fibonacci Sequence!  I was too stunned to listen to the rest of her share.  I have no idea what the reference was.  I have no idea how I can get the Fibonacci Sequence into an  A.A. comment.

"Make a decision."  That's great and everything but I still have to take action.  I can make a decision to take a walk but I have to get outside and take a walk.

Alcoholics Anonymous Eponymous

"You are an A.A member if you say so.  You can declare yourself in; nobody can keep you out.  We just want to make sure that you get the same great chance for sobriety  that we've had.  So you're an A.A. member the minute you declare yourself."

At the start of Alcoholics Anonymous the central office pinged all of the existing groups and asked for their membership rules.  The list that came back was long.  Real long.  Nobody could have gotten in.

" . . . we would never punish nor deprive any A.A. of membership, we must never compel anyone to pay anything, believe anything, or conform to anything?"

Rules and Ringing and Beer in the Sun

 Rules.  Most people hate rules but alcoholics really hate rules.  This is why we have twelve suggested Steps.  You can do 'em or you can not do 'em, no skin off our noses.

The symptoms of tinnitus can vary significantly from person to person.  You may hear phantom sounds in one ear, in both ears, and in your head.  The phantom sound may ring, buzz, roar, whistle, hum, click, hiss, or squeal.  The sound may be soft or loud and may be low or high pitched.  It may come and go or be present all the time.

A repeat: SuperK and I sat down for lunch on a sun-drenched terrace overlooking a valley in a tiny, tiny village in Northern Spain after a long, satisfying hike.  We were tired and happy and thoroughly enchanted with the whole process of ordering as best we could using a Spanish-only menu from a woman who spoke about as much English as we spoke Spanish.  We were unsure what we were going to get and we didn't care at all.  Sitting between us and the balustrade was a young man.  On his table was a half-finished beer in a clear glass, sparkling in the sun.  He smoked for a while and looked at his phone before taking one final pull on the beer.  There was beer left in the glass.  I looked on, amazed and horrified, as he stood up and left.  The beer sparkled on.  This being Spain the waitress was in no hurry to clear the tables so that beer just sat there, glowing, as the minutes dragged by.  I felt like running over, picking it up, and chasing down the man who left it there.  It seemed as if all of the energy of the sun was focusing more and more on this glass, as if God itself was blessing those dregs.

Came outta nowhere.  This is how I know I'm still a recovering alcoholic.

Holy Man!

Never say you aren't important.  You're not just important - you're essential.  You have a definite purpose and it's a sacred responsibility.

Here are my suggestions for meditation:

1.  Don't expect anything.

2.  Don't strain.  You're not working out.  This isn't a project.  There's no such thing as Competitive Meditation.

3.  Don't rush.  There's no hurry.  There's no place to get to and if there was you'd never get there, anyway.

4.  Don't cling to anything and don't expect anything.  You're going to be disappointed.

5.  Let go.  (Where have I heard this before?)

6.  Accept everything that arises.  There's no rule book here.  This is your meditation.  If you're meditating you're doing a great job.  There's no bad meditation.  There's meditation, period.

7.  Give yourself a break.  Almost no one meditates so you're a star if you're making an effort.  Even people who have been meditating for years think they suck at it.  You've made an improvement even when a thought intrudes on every breath you take.

8.  Question everything.  Take nothing for granted.  Don't believe anything anyone says without investigating it yourself.  Even if it comes from some pious holy man.  Especially some pious holy man.  There are plenty of holy men who are self-serving, self-seeking dumb asses.

9.  View all "problems" as challenges.  Remember AFGO.  Another (ahem) Goshdarned Growth Opportunity.  Quit sorting things into Good and Bad.  Try looking at them as Pleasant and Painful.  Here's a news flash for all the other emotional six year olds out there - you're not getting everything you want and you're going to have to suffer from time to time, like all of us.

10.  Don't think.  Don't ponder.  There's nothing to figure out.  There's nothing that's good or bad.  It's just stuff.  It's just shit.  Watch it float by.

Nam Myoho Renge Kyo

I find it salutary sometimes to plug into a guided meditation, particularly first thing in the morning when my brain is juttering left and right, up and down, here and there and everywhere.  I have a meditation app on my phone that I use.  I'm careful not to buy into the messages too deeply because, really, who are these people?  They're people who think they're wise and smart enough to upload a guided meditation onto a free app.  Some of them have been very helpful to me.  I'm sure some of them are completely selfless, only wanting to help . . . while making a little coin with a subscription.  And I'm sure some of them are full of crap.   If I ever decide to upload a Seaweed Meditation I'd make it a fantasy of sarcastic suggestions.

For instance today I listened to a guided meditation called The Course of Miracles.  Maybe.  Maybe it was called something else.  Fuck do I know?  The woman had a pleasant voice, calm and measured, as she prepped me for the meat of the meditation which was repeating a mantra 108 times and I'm not making that up.  108?  That's the most random number ever and I have no idea how she kept track of how many chants she had gotten through.  Was she counting?  Maybe she hires someone to sit there and count for her.  Maybe she has one of those little clickers that baseball umpires use to keep track of balls and strikes.  I don't see how she could pay attention to the chanting sounds while simultaneously counting.  What if she falls short or goes over?  100 bottles of beer on the wall, 100 bottles of beer!

(OK, I found this: "The renowned mathematicians of Vedic culture viewed 108 as a number of the wholeness of existence.  This number also connects the sun, moon, and earth.  The average distance of the sun and moon to earth is 108 times their respective diameter."  I mean, can you believe this shit?  You still don't believe that there isn't some weirdo higher power controlling things?  You think these two numbers are just cosmic coincidences, spun up out of nowhere?  I feel sorry for you.)

Her voice was pleasant.  She repeated the mantra as sort of a dyptich: first she chanted without inflection and then her voice rose on the third sound.  To me it sounded as if she was saying: "Numb your hiding gecko" although the gecko might have been "holy" or "holding."  If the gecko was hiding that seems a reasonable thing for a gecko to do.  Maybe it was indeed holy although I wouldn't associated geckos with spiritual power or greatness.  The holding is more sinister - could our mantric gecko have been holding drugs?  I don't know.  I do know that it can be helpful to concentrate on a regular sound or to repeat a regular prayer.  Sometimes The Serenity Prayer or a chant can force me to listen to the words or sounds and clear a channel choked with fear and self-seeking to my Higher Power.  Nonetheless, I can still find my thoughts drifting off even while I'm listening to the sounds or even when I'm saying the words, for chrissake, and I can even think about something else when I'm reading something out loud.  My capacity to indulge my wandering mind is limitless. 

Nam Myoho Renge Kyo is what the woman was actually chanting.  First of all, I couldn't remember those sounds if I had as many lifetimes as there are stars in the sky.  Secondly, I can't remember what my second point is.  I will, God bless Google, reveal that this phrase can be translated as "Devotion to the Mystic Law of the Lotus Sutra."  Whew.

More from Google: "The unique teaching of the Lotus Sutra and its ultimate goal - indeed of Buddhism as a whole - it to enlighten all people; to relieve them of their suffering and enable them to experience genuine happiness, thereby establishing a society that values peace and the  dignity of life."

Whew, again.