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.

Geronimo!

I have lost all impulse control.  If I think it I say it.  This can be disruptive but it's a lot of fun.  I don't know if other people like it but I'm enjoying it immensely.  As I've said before once you hit 60 you can do whatever the fuck you want.  Not like I didn't do that before 60 but now I have an excuse.

The share from the woman yesterday who talked about not putting a good or a bad label on a painful experience was tremendously uplifting for me.  I think that's a real breakthrough for her.  I think that shows a huge leap in spirituality.

"It seems almost a sacrilege to ask someone so deeply hurt to forgive those who caused it.  Yet unforgiveness causes damage almost as devastating as physical wounds, or more so.  There is great stress in bearing grudges and the abused do not need any new pain or new problems.  Forgiveness does not set the abusive free, but the abused."  Geronimo

I'm continuing my daily practice of writing down one thing that I'm grateful for.  One of the benefits is that I'm able to see little things that are ordinarily submerged under the big ones: health, a good marriage, wonderful friends, and the like.  Today I wrote down the names of two men from my long ago past who are long gone themselves: Ron something and Charlie Michaels.  Both guys were big, blustering, physical men, very powerful personalities and very forceful.  These guys were brawlers, rarely backing down from a fight, even if they ended up in jail.  I couldn't  stand either of them.

Then this . . . Ron had a stroke and he needed to be helped to meetings.  I spent some time talking to him.  You could see that the words and thoughts were in there but he couldn't verbalize them, saying the same few things over and over.  I always listened and it helped us develop a connection.  He was visibly glad to see me.  Charlie chaired a meeting once and did this to me each time: "Before we get started I want to check in with Stevie Seaweed and see how his week is going."  Really pissed me off.  I guess I thought he was picking on me or judging me although for a guy who craves the limelight today I have to laugh at this.  I'd marry anyone - man or woman - who asked me to share first at every meeting.  Who's better than me?  His son was my dentist and I told him about this after Charlie passed.  He laughed and shook his head, telling me that his big bear of a father was a softie at heart and he was showing me how much he loved me.

A spiritual being:

Slow and calm, breathing deeply and mindfully.                                                                                         

Positive and optimistic, cheerful, wearing a big smile, quick to see the good in things while not fearing what could go wrong.

Quick, quick, quick to love and understand and forgive while no longer expecting, demanding that these be returned.

I have such a Western, Christian sensibility, where everything is practical and logical and efficient, rules-based, handed-down from long ago and not to be trifled with.  These Buddhist concepts of loosening my grip on everything really appeals to my "you aren't going to tell me what to do" sensibility.

You Are Such An Asshole . . . .

The woman who led the meeting today has 20+ years of sobriety and is going through one of those "Alcoholics Anonymous is a big pain in the ass and I don't want to do anymore" periods of sobriety.  Look, I get it.  Recovery is inevitably going to get stale from time to time.  It is a big time suck and we can get resentful while remembering that the time commitment is a drop in the bucket compared to the time spent in maintaining active alcoholism.  I trust the process and soldier through it when these spells hit me.

My buddy Willy and I had a similar but more real-life discussion today.  He's in one of those "my job and my family are big pains in my ass and I don't want to do it anymore" periods of life.

"How old are you?  62, right?  You're not bored you're just getting old."

"You are such an asshole," he said.  More on that later.

One of my good friends shared after our leader kicked things off by talking about how he's in the "one is too many and a thousand aren't enough" club where I, too, am a member in good standing.  Anything that makes me feel good - hell, that makes me feel different - kicks in a need to keep doing it more and more.  Drugs, alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, sugar, salt, all obsessions of mine as are the endorphins released during exercise or sex or success at work.  I crave more.  This is why I don't think I'm cured of alcoholism or I can relax in my recovery.  If I can hold off on stuffing that first cookie in my mouth I have a chance but once I get started the whole bag is in peril.

After the meeting I took my beach walk and sat down for my fifteen minute "listen to the waves meditation."  About halfway through a very nice man commented on how beautiful the day was and then engaged me in conversation for a while.  He was dressed nicely so I knew a member of a religious organization that sets up a stand every day on the boardwalk.  After ten minutes or so he brought up the Bible and I smiled politely, held out my hand, and wished him a good day.  It was irritating enough that he took up some of my valuable free time chit-chatting but I wasn't going to let him intrude on my personal spiritual beliefs.  I talked with him and I enjoyed the talking because I was able to keep in my mind my daily prayer "to be shown how I can be of service to someone else today."  This rarely comes in the form of ways I want to be of service but then again who knows what tricks my kooky higher power has up his or her or its sleeve.  There's a guy who lives across from me who likes to stroll over when I'm meditating or reading on my front porch and this guy I don't like.  Again . . . har har de har says my H.P.

A woman shared today about trudging forward with a daughter who is in recovery from Stage Four breast cancer and a letter from the IRS sitting on her kitchen counter and a boss who "wants to talk to her today" in the queue.  

"Guess what?"  she said.  "I can have peace of mind even with a sick child and a possible tax bill and imagined conflict with my boss staring me in the face."

Again and again and again I say: there are no good things and no bad things . . . just things.  We often can't see far enough ahead to know why they're happening.

A friend of mine texted me last night about the possibility of a friend of his attending the  Keep It Complicated today and wondered if I could introduce myself.  This to the dude who tackles anyone he doesn't know.  The guy was there and I hope I made him feel welcome.  The miracle, of course, was that someone asked me to be the face of anything.  No one was asking me to represent anything when I was out there practicing my craft.

When the time for sharing was through today my buddy started to announce that we were now going to hear from the secretary about group matters.  Midstream I said loudly: "I'm Seaweed and I'm an alcoholic!" as if I had a need to share so urgent that we'd have to extend the meeting past its normal closing time.

"No you don't, Seaweed," she said.

"But I have a burning desire!" I said.  "I'm lonely and I'm shy and I really need to talk!"

"You are such an asshole," she quipped.

Twice I was an asshole before ten in the morning.

Alice Cooper Did a Song Called "Dead Babies"

Impermanence.  Everything changes and nothing lasts forever.  In the time it took me to write this the cells in my body have changed and I'm not the same person I was.  This is the correct view of life, seeing things as they really are.

When I first started traveling to places that required long flights I would get on the plane with an eye as to how far I was from the noisy bathroom and to the clattering galley, looking suspiciously around at anyone sitting close to me, looking for crying babies and coughing sick people and those idiots who don't bring a book on a plane so they don't have anything to do but talk loudly about nothing at all.  I was taking something that was going to change and assigning all kinds of labels to it even though those labels were totally, completely wrong or were themselves going to morph into something different and unexecteed.  I was on a long-haul overnight flight when I wanted to get some sleep and found myself close to a fussing baby.  My first thought was this: "How can I kill this baby and not get caught?"  It was fleeting, of course, but I had to go there because it was the only completely assured solution to the problem.  I think it was Oscar Wilde who famously said: "A dead baby is a quiet baby."  This is not one of his most memorable quips but the truth of it is without question.  Anyway, I am aware that the human body is designed to notice change and to ignore steady state conditions.  I found that if I actively listened to the squalling brat my mind would get bored and naturally drift to something else . . . like what kind of Turkish prison would I be put in if I killed a baby, that kind of stuff.

Here's the Buddhist take on things.  Let's say a baby is crying.  This is nothing more than lovely, complex patterns of vibration that my brain turns into electronic stimulation.  Pretty cut and dried. There's no good or bad assigned to the vibrations.  But what do I do?  I immediately apply a narrative to the "problem" and brainstorm solutions to a transient "situation."  The baby probably won't cry for long, anyway.  I'll probably get tired and fall asleep despite the noise.  But . . . no!  I get to work.  Should I ask the mother to muzzle the kid?  Should  I complain to the flight attendant who can do absolutely nothing about it?  Maybe I can move to another seat but then I might be next to someone who couldn't explain the concept of deoderant.  You see what happens?  I take a simple, ephemeral situation and make it into a whole thing, my brain so worked up I couldn't fall asleep even if it was quiet.

Buddhist meditation teaches us how to scrutinize our own perceptual process with great precision.  We learn to watch the arising of thought and perception with a feeling of serene detachment.  Buddhists view this way of looking at things as a correct view of life and their texts call it "seeing things as they really are."

I do feel the need to assure everyone that I'm not going to kill anything today, let alone a baby.  In fact, I'm the kind of guy that can't squash a spider I find in my house.  I'll either nudge it onto a sheet of paper, take it outside, and release it into the natural world, unless it's a particularly large or fearsome looking spider at which point I might say some reassuring words to it and wish it well as I back slowly away.

Namaste.

Old Man River and Gotama The Buddha Make a Good Team

I think this idea of impermanence is really something to grab onto.  Nothing is going to be here forever; ergo, is anything real?  I've heard that looking at the existence of a river can be helpful.  Big, old river, always there, always right there in front of me, full of water, full of water flowing by so that from one instant to the next you're looking at an entirely new river, yet all you see is that big river, same as it always was.  So what exactly am I looking at?  The river?  The water?  What am I looking at?  What is there?

"Where does this pain come from?  It comes from your own inattention.  You failed to look closely at life.  You failed to observe the  constantly shifting flow of the world as it went by.  You set up the collection of mental constructions, 'me,' 'the book,' 'the building,' and you assumed that those were solid, real entities.  You assumed that they would endure forever.  they never do.  But you can tune into the constant change.  You can learn to perceive your life as an ever-flowing movement.  You can learn to see the continuous flow of all conditioned things.  You can learn this.  It is just a matter of time and training."  Henepola Gunaratana

Just:  Only; simply.

Fucking word, just.  All you have to do is work at it assiduously, forever.  One of my bits of A.A. advice is to "trust the process."  It works; many of us have stayed sober for years; so slog and trudge away.  "Time takes time" is another good aphorism.  When someone has finally gotten a tiny sliver of sobriety I often remind them that if you want to get 31 days you've got to get 30 days first.  Every day is a little victory.  Don't tell me you "just" have 30 days.

I have a dear, old, old friend who loves history and calls himself an archivist.  He is the greatest collector and organizer of stuff that I've ever met.  He has two storage lockers to keep his meticulously organized stuff in.  Two!  He has a condo and then two storage lockers full of stuff, some of it, to my way of thinking, bizarrely trivial.  For the longest time I was critical of this behavior.  Today, not so much, although my perception is that he spends an inordinate amount of time, both physical and emotional, maintaining that stuff.  One of the greatest stress reductions I experienced in my life was moving from a big house to a small one and doing so over a long distance.  It was easy to hang onto stuff when I could just chuck it into a corner of the basement or the rafters of a garage.  It wasn't easy chucking all of these things but it was incredibly freeing.  And I miss so little of it.  Look, I get it - it's fun to pore over mementoes from high school or pictures that I've taken years ago but I don't hardly ever do it.

"Come and see."  Gotama the Buddha

This dude did not think of his teachings as a set of dogmas but rather as a set of propositions for each individual to investigate for himself.   Very A.A. in its simplicity.  I tell people all the time that they can use the 12 Steps as explained in our Program to get sober or they can do something else.  If it works, if you're sober and happy-ish, then huzzah for you.  That's the goal.  The goal is not to make someone do it the way we've done it.  I tell people this: "What the fuck do I know?  I'm a salesman, for chrissake, I don't know what you should do."

"Place no head above your own."  Gotama the Buddha

Also very wise.  Don't take my word for it.  You figure it out.  Read stuff, listen to stuff, talk to people, come to your own conclusions.

Honesty? Honestly.

Honest:  Free of deceit and untruthfulness; able to be trusted and not likely to lie, cheat, or steal.

The three pillars of Alcoholics Anonymous are Honesty, Openness, and Willingness.  The topic this morning at the meeting was honesty.  Frankly, I found the discussion a little confusing as everyone made it sound like lying was a bad thing.  I guess, although it seems unfair to those of us who were born with a natural ability to lie and to lie well and then subsequently honed our craft by diligently lying at every opportunity.  Whatever.  If lying were an Olympic sport I'd be in the running for a medal.

In A.A. we train ourselves to see reality exactly as it is, and we call this special mode of perception mindfulness. Life began to take on an unbelievable richness which I couldn't even put into words - it had to be experienced.  This wasn't my experience up to my entry into The Rooms.  I lived a life where I didn't care to look into what was really there in front of me.  Life was a series of thoughts and concepts which I mistook for reality and I was so caught up in this endless thought-stream that real reality flowed by unnoticed.  Personally, I was obsessed with activity, engrossed in an endless pursuit of pleasure and gratification and in constant flight from pain and unpleasantness.  Jesus, I really was a five year old

Duhkha, Baby, Duhkha

"Always remember that certain circumstances are not ours to alter.  We make the most of them and go on.  We can only be examples, never controllers of other people's lives, other people's children, other people's circumstances.  Some would have us believe we contribute to harsh events by doing nothing.  But some of the best work, some of the deepest caring and doing is not physically evident in the beginning.  Help of any kind must be wanted and recognized before it can do any good.  Too much help where it isn't appreciated can make even a good person helpless.  We have to be wise in our giving, and particularly wise in what we withhold, because it may be what we withhold that helps the most." V.H. Gunaratana

Someone mentioned today our proclivity for letting little niggling worries to rent space in our heads.  Whatever it is it's probably not going to happen.  And if it does happen we've got the tools to handle it.

"To the precise extent that we permit these (worries, implied), do we squander the hours that might have been worthwhile."  Big Book of A.A.

More from the Buddhists . . .  "Vipassana meditation is a direct and gradual cultivation of mindfulness or awareness.  It is an ancient and codified system of training your mind, a set of exercises dedicated to becoming more and more aware of your own life experience.  It is attentive listening, mindful seeing, and careful testing.  We learn to smell acutely, to touch fully, and really pay attention to these experiences.  The object of Vipassana practice is to learn to see the truth of impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and selflessness of phenomenon."

The Buddhist word for this is duhkha, which means literally "standing unstable."  It is a component and instigator of restless irritation which would be a great name for a hard rock band.  Existence is transient, evanescent, and inconstant.  Life is a river flowing by: the river is always there but the water is here and gone.  Still wet but somewhere else.  "Annika" is the Buddhist word for this here today gone tomorrow concept.  Nothing lasts so hold on loosely.  Eventually, you're going to be a decaying meat sack lying underground so how's that Porsche going to help you then?

Selflessness.  The self is not important.  There is suffering.  Suffering has a cause.  Suffering can cease.  There is a way to throttle the fuck out of suffering.

Three out of four Buddhist noble truths ain't bad.

Thinking About Myself is Very Important To Me, and That's a Problem

Giving is so often thought of in terms of the things we give, but our greatest giving is of our time and kindness and even comfort for those who need it.

A guy came to the meeting with a sweatshirt that had a controversial political message on it.   I didn't like that he did that.  I didn't like the political message, either, but I don't think we should wear any caps, T-shirts, or coats with political messages on them.  Of any kind.  I used to make this point quietly in an aside to the offending party but I confess to not doing that anymore.  We live in too violent a society these days.  Isn't that sad?  Isn't that awful?

Little things heal our hurts.  Sounds, scents, the spoken word, and music that may mean nothing to someone else can reach into our souls and do work that ordinary methods cannot touch.  Our work is to avoid the negative side - to think and speak only healing words, loving words.  Choices are possible.

Recovered:     A return to a normal state of mind, health, or strength.

Recovering:   Being in the process of overcoming a shortcoming or disorder.

The use of "recovered alcoholic" occurs in SoCal like nowhere else I've ever attended meetings; in fact, some of us use it sort of forcefully, as if they're daring you to say anything about it.  A few members think it's not a good practice to let new people think that members with many years of sobriety still suffer from alcoholism.  I do get it.  The word "recovered" occurs often in the A.A. literature.  I shy away from the idea.  I've seen too many people with lots of sobriety - people who would have told you they were secure in their recovery - end up drinking again.  I prefer to think that I'm a recovered drunk but that some version of my alcoholism is still latent in my being.  I prefer to think that if I keep doing what I'm doing then I'll never have to pick up a drink again.

If you're not working The Steps, if you're just coming to meetings and enjoying the fellowship, I think you may be on thin ice.  While there are many ways of getting and staying sober I'd suggest that if you're going to give Alcoholics Anonymous a shot then working The Steps is going to be worthwhile.  It's a Twelve Step program.  The Steps are the thing.  The Steps are the thing.

I will never forget my early reaction to the idea that I needed to start thinking about myself less and thinking about others more.  It still sounds weird.  I always had life laid out as a zero sum game, winner take all.

Sitting Quietly

Here's what I perceive in the world of meditation . . .  

The Christian way is a combination of prayer and contemplation.  Both of these forms of spiritual outreach revolve around concentrating on a subject whether that be in a conversation with God or in sitting quietly, not talking, instead having a hymn or a Bible verse or a bit of wisdom from a sermon as a point of focus.

The Hindus and their yogic concentration emphasize intense focus on some image or sound: chakras or a candle flame or a chant.  The idea is to sit quietly while trying to exclude stray thoughts and the goal is to have a quiet mind.

The Buddhists suggest that awareness is the goal.  Just being aware of the moment, being in the moment.  There's no attempt to control or judge any thoughts but rather to look at them without judgment and watch them come and go, neither good or bad, impermanent, always changing, rarely important.

I believe that many native cultures really emphasize the restorative power of nature.  Everything is about a respect of the natural world and a belief that a greater power can be found there.

That's all I know.  There have got to be thousands of different spiritual practices in our big, wide world whose mysteries are opaque to me.  But I do see that the most common thread is to be quiet.  Eschewing forward motion and active control.  Just sitting.  

Whew.  I have a better grasp on theoretical quantum physics than I do on just sitting.

Pure Love

Calm:  Not showing or feeling nervousness, anger, or other strong emotions.

I'm grooving on the tension between doing and being.  I find it so hard to be quiet and still and yet find it so deeply satisfying.  I get these days where I don't feel like I get much done but I'm not at all worried about it.  What's the big deal with getting a lot of productive shit done?  Am I changing the world?  Am I changing anything?  While I'm being glib here - the toilet does need to be cleaned every now and then - I'm beginning to understand that it's okay to hang out.  Just sitting is doing something.  I don't have to be moving forward in space to be accomplishing something.  I read a story about an introvert trying to explain to her extrovert husband that when she was quietly looking at the horizon she was doing something.  My brain works best when it has time to fuck around, go here and there, drift, muse, explore, hunt.

I'm in a pretty long run of calmness.  I wrote this down because it's so unusual for me to be calm.  I believe this is a manifestation of a spiritual life.  I don't think a spiritual life should be marked by chaos and energy and motion.  Sit down for a few minutes.

My Cincinnati sponsor of 25 years spent his last few months receiving hospice care for prostrate cancer and he was in a lot of pain at the end.  I was able to talk to him every day as he was dying when he was on strong palliative medication.  He was a retired judge and very specific in his life views but . . . boy . . . he got kind of loopy and goofy and funny at the end, sharing a lot of personal stories that I hadn't heard before.  Men in the U.S. born in the middle of the 20th century weren't famous for sharing their feelings.  But the one comment that has stuck with me over the years was this: "You know, Seaweed - I think that God is just an expression of pure love."  Mind you, this came from a dedicated, life-long, Catholic who went to mass every day.  Every day!  I can't do anything every day, let alone drive to a church somewhere.

Pure love.  Who wouldn't that work for?

Awareness

Awareness:  Knowledge or understanding that something is happening or exists.

"Vipassana is the practice of awareness.  Awareness of whatever is there, be it supreme truth or crummy trash.  What is there, is there.  Of course, lofty aesthetic throughts may arise during your  practice.  They are certainly not to be avoided.  Neither are they to be sought.  They are just pleasant side effects.  Vipassana is a simple practice.  It consists of experiencing your own life events directly, without preference and without mental images pasted to them.  What comes up, comes up.  Meditation is tough in some respects.  It requires a long discipline and sometimes a painful process of practice.  At each sitting you gain some results, but those results are often very subtle.  They occur deep within the mind, only ot manifest much later."

I'm so impressed with the phrase "what comes up, comes up."  It helps me avoiding straining when I meditate, trying to get a specific result.  The Seaweed family mantra: "It is what it is."  I also find it comforting when a meditation teacher reminds me that the end game is going to come very, very slowly so I shouldn't get frustrated when I don't feel like I'm making progress.  I am, in fact, making progress but it's just progress that I can't feel in the moment.  Whenever anyone comments on my meditation practice I usually remind them that I still suck at it.  I find it compelling to analyze the thoughts that pop into my head instead of glancing at them and letting them float on by.  They're just thoughts.  They aren't good or bad and they're not going to kill me or control me.  I can see the headlights as they approach and the red tailights moving away

The cars hiss by my window,                                                                                                                           Like the waves down on the beach.

I have three tools in my tool box; a hammer, a big hammer, and a sledgehammer.  If I can't fix it with one of those then I'm in a world of hurt.

The Doors

Indian Wisdom

"We no longer fall down when something challenges us.  We no longer see ourselves as victims.  But we are strong and able to overcome the most severe critic and break every habit that kept us bound."

"Few things are permanent.  We are born of change but we still have to keep a commonsense attitude or we can lose our footing.  We need to prove, long before we accept something as fact, that it is true.  If it is right, it can be proved.  Silence is golden.  We speak little and listen long.  It is wise to save words and use them only when they can be effective.  A restful moment is a perfect moment.  But we have to be open to it, and receptive to anything that gives us peace of mind with no side effects."

I'm reading a daily meditation book written by a native American woman.  While I read all the time from A.A. approved literature I also like to read stuff written by outside sources.  It really helps me feel a connection to people of all colors and ethnicities and religions which I find important because, at the heart of the matter, we're all looking for the same things so the wisdom repeats itself over and over and over again.  Finding peace by being quiet and seeing the hand of God in nature are two themes that have spoken to me over the years so this Cherokee wisdom is right down my alley.

Do Something! Anything!

Waiting tests our grit and faith, and anything else we have on the line.  We activate every nerve in us to move, to do something, to do anything, even stupid things . . . and then we wait.  We know if we wait a little longer with patience and endurance, we'll know what to do.  During this period, we can stir up the gifts that are in us, encourage ourselves to be strong and calm, to find a calm center in the midst of all the whirling debris around us.  When I wait I'm often connected to the right things.

Whatever common sense is, the heart has it, not the head.  It's having the right priorities, knowing what's important, and giving as much as, or more than, we have received.

All motion is easier than calm waiting.

Do something!  Fix it!

Meditation is not an attempt to forget yourself or to cover up your troubles.  It is learning to look at yourself exactly as you are.  The fact is that we're more selfish than we know.  Our egos have a way of turning the loftiest activities into trash if they're allowed free range.  Meditation allows us to become aware of ourselves exactly as we are, by waking up to the numerous subtle ways that we manifest our own selfishness.

The Center Roll

Habit has its beginning in thought.  Whatever becomes second nature to us has first caught on in our thinking - only to operate, in time, without thinking at all.  Breaking with deeply ingrained addictions is something else again.  Since we were old enough to understand we have been bent to a certain thought, molded to act and react until we follow though habitually.  If what we did gave us comfort or made us feel good, we did it again.  We have to fight habit with habit, deliberately changing on thought, one action, for another.

When I have a problem I try to take a look at it and move on.  Maybe the next day I'm washing the dishes and suddenly the solution is there.  It just pops out of the deep mind and I say, "Ah, ha!" and the whole thing is solved.  In my experience this sort of intuition can only occur after I've disengaged my logic circuits from the problem and given my deep mind the opportunity to cook up the solution.

We went to a play recently called "Every Special Thing" or something like that.  I can't remember bullshit details like the names of things or people.  Anyway, the premise was that the main character would write down things that made his life special, more memorable, more enjoyable.  He did this every day until he ran out of things to write down.  Some of the stuff was obviously big time: marriages, children, the death of parents, etc.,  but there were dozens and dozens of little pleasures that would pop into his mind: the halo around the moon on a misty night, hopscotch, rolling suitcases, crawdads in a creek, shit like that.  It brought to mind the cinnamon rolls that my mom would make for a breakfast treat from time to time.  They were store-bought, in-a-tube lumps of dough that probably had absolutely no redeeming nutritional value unless you consider processed white sugar as a positive nutritional additive.  She used a round baking pan to cook the rolls.  Seven were circling the outside of the pan and the one that wouldn't quite fit was stuck in the middle.  This was the roll that was everyone wanted.  It had no crusty edge where one side of the roll touched the outside rim of the pan and sometimes a bit of the frosting that mom put on top of the rolls leaked from the other rolls onto the one in the middle, this center-of-the-universe roll.  We fought over it, winner take all, snooze ya lose, no quarter for the vanquished.  Today I wonder why we didn't just split the middle one but I can't ever remember doing that.  I don't recall any regular system of rotation, either.  This was competition in its purest form.  I can clearly remember one instance where I surreptiously removed the middle roll, then repositioned one of the side rolls into the vacated center, probably to fool my little sister who must have been promised the magical roll.  I can't remember getting caught for this sleight of hand.  I bet I got away with it, all before seven in the morning.  A liar and a cheat right outta the chute.

I have a long history of poor behavior.  But . . . this I would do again, in a heartbeat.