Deeper, Yet

Analogy:  A comparison between things that have similar features, often used to explain a principle or idea.  (Ed. Note: I can SuperK wailing, "No, not another one of your analogies!")

"Mindfulness is pre-symbolic.  It is not shackled to logic.  Nevertheless, mindfulness can be experienced - rather easily - and it can be described, as long as you keep in mind that the words are only fingers pointing at the moon.  They are not the thing itself.  The actual experience lies beyond the words and above the symbols.   So, it is important to understand that everything that follows here is analogy.  It is not going to make perfect sense.  It will always remain beyond verbal logic.  But you can experience it.

When you first become aware of something, there is a fleeting instant of pure awareness before you conceptualize it.  That is a state of awareness.  It takes place just before you begin thinking about it - before your minds says, 'Oh, it's a dog.'  That flowing, soft-focused moment of pure awareness is mindfulness.  You experience a softly flowing moment of pure experience that is interlocked with the rest of reality, not separate from it.  Mindfulness is very much like what you see with your  peripheral vision as opposed to the hard focus of normal or central vision.  In the process of ordinary perception, the mindfulness step is so fleeting as to be unobservable.  We have developed the habit of squandering our attention on all the remaining steps, focusing on the perception, cognizing the perception, labeling it, and most of all, getting involved in a long string of symbolic thought about it.  The original moment of mindfulness is rapidly passed over."

Yeah, I have little to no idea what he's talking about, either.  I've read this particular text a few times and when something resonates with me I'll underline a sentence or passage, maybe jot down a thought or two, but these concluding pages are notable for the lack of notations.  They're virgin pages.  I've gotten little out of them during my previous time with the book

I talk about meditation a lot and I'm often asked about my practice, usually by people who aren't meditating or who are new to meditation.  I always say that it's crucial just to simply try to meditate.  Nobody knows what they're doing while they're doing it.  To get to a stage where you have at least a middling grasp of the concept requires time spent wandering about lost in the mental bog of thinking and conceptualizing and labeling.  I think that masters spent a lot of time totally lost at the start, too.  It's not easy at all, this quieting and focusing of the mind.  But, boy, are the benefits amazing.

Here Come Those Cherokees Again

 The Cherokees offer this up . . .  

"Sometimes it takes another person standing on the outside of our emotional problem to do for us what we can't seem to do for ourselves."      

Or in A.A. speak: "He has commenced to accomplish for us those things that we could never do for ourselves."   

See how healthy spirituality crosses all lines?  BTW, the word "ourselves" appears in the A.A. literature 176 times.  That should be our hint that we need to stop working on other people and concentrate on our own personal asses.

"It isn't the Cherokee's natural bent to discuss a problem openly with anyone.  Silence is not only golden, it is safer and does nothing to make a problem grow as he believes talking will.  But he knows the time, the place, and the right person will avail themselves to him, and then he can talk.  We know the power of the word to make matters worse if we talk in a negative way about our needs."

I've always enjoyed the allegory about the two wolves who live within us, in continual battle: one good, one not so good.  Which one will win?  

The one you feed.  Think negative thoughts and they'll gain in power.

"The past is to be respected for its rich store of experience - mistakes and all.  In it are all the trials and wisdom of our elders, the timeless suffering and seasoning that came to us with a brave front.  We do not relate it to our fellows word for word - where or why we did something, wise or unwise.  It is better to take what we have learned and build on it.  We tend to see ourselves as far more shrewd and able than we are."

When I was first in A.A. - a 30 year old child with no adult skills - I enjoyed hanging around men who were a lot older than me because the advice, the counsel, they gave me was without judgment or preconditions.  They told me things that I knew already, things that my parents would tell me, and I'd listen to them.  When figures in authority told me stuff I didn't want to hear I pushed back, even when I knew I was only harming myself.  I hope that today I can stand in as a father figure to some of the younger people trickling in.  Or an insane unkle, maybe.

"Words are important in love and forgiveness - and courage.  It's good to hear them - better to speak them.  Forgiveness is not just to make someone else feel better about us but to help us think better of ourselves.  When we forgive someone we stop resenting them."

And in A.A. parlance: "Often it was while working on this Step with our Sponsors or spiritual advisers (Step Six is being referenced here) that we first felt truly to forgive others, no matter how deeply we felt they had wronged us."

Getting A Little Deep Here

 "Concentration slows down the arising of these mental states and gives you time to feel each one arising out of the unconscious even before you see it in consciousness.  Concentration helps you to extend your awareness down into that boiling darkness where thought and sensation begin.  In developing mindfulness we're temporarily suspending the conceptualization process and focusing on the pure nature of the mental phenomena.  'I' is a concept.  When you introduce 'I' into the process, you are building a conceptual gap between the reality and the awareness viewing that reality.  Thoughts such as 'me,' 'my,' or 'mine' have no place in direct awareness."   

Whew.  It's hard to take the sensation of pain, for instance, and separate it from the construct of self.  To say that the pain is just a meaningless sensation, just pure energy, and it has no meaningful connection to the experience of existing is a tall order.  We're being asked to separate sensation from thought.  If you hear a dish break in the next room while you're meditating, you're almost certainly going to create a narrative around it - who dropped the dish and which dish was it and how much glass is on the floor etc. etc.  But all that has happened is a physical manifestation produced by your environment; sound waves moved through the air, struck your eardrums, and were translated electronically by your brain into an image, a memory, an event.  The trick, as I understand it and not as I do it, I can assure you that, is to react to the physical sensation without building a story around it.  Now, certainly, one type of meditation centers around listening to a noise without judgment; say, waves on a beach.  Mostly, the idea is to get back, again and again, to the breath.  Sounds so simple and yet it's so maddeningly hard to do.

This is conceptual thinking.  It is not part of a good session of meditation.  And it can be really hard to grasp this construct when it comes to pain.  After all, pain occurs when a noxious stimulus triggers a pain receptor which sends an electronic impulse to the brain where it is interpreted as pain.  It's only painful because the brain says it is.  But can I look at it this way?  God, no, it hurts, it serves a purpose, it keeps our hands away from a hot stove.  The trick, as I perceive it, is to apply this separation to my life.  Really, really hard to do.

Why give into every negative suggestion when all we have to do is tell ourselves it is not, and never will be, acceptable?

The Ladies

There has been a group of 30-something women who have been attending my meeting along with a handful of 50-something women who have some decent sobriety time.  They're joined by some long-timers who fill a great need as mentors or A.A. mothers, good stabilizing figures.  Yesterday it so worked out that a number of the younger women were there.  I wish I knew how cute I was when I was thirty.  If you're thirty years old - man or woman - and you don't weigh 800 pounds or have a large cancerous growth bulging out of your neck, then you're cute.

Also in attendance was this one guy who comes for a while, cops a resentment and pitches a bitch, disappears for a bit, then comes back.  I think he's living in his truck.  I'm not sure exactly how sober he is.  He talks a lot and I perceive a lot of skill in manipulating people coming out.  It's okay that he's there and it's kinda okay that he talks a lot but I try to keep my eye on him.  He mentions getting ripped off from time to time and I'm wondering if this is an attempt to generate some pity so that someone kind will give him something.  Like money.  Alcoholics in general have learned how to manipulate people as a naked survival skill and homeless people are in the PhD program for personal manipulation.

After the meeting I saw this ne'er-do-well talking to one of the new women, a striking girl who is the epitome of a California beach girl.  She's a very sweet, kind woman, always eager to please.  As she was leaving the meeting with her girlfriends I stopped her and said: "You don't have to talk to Chris."  She gawked and I repeated myself.  She grabbed my arm and said: "Thank you.  Thank you."  I try to remind women that if they're ever in a position where they feel uncomfortable by the attention of some dude they can excuse themselves politely and say they have to catch up with one of the older members.  Nobody should feel unsafe or uncomfortable in a meeting.  Nobody.  It's not a social club or a dating app.  And this from a guy who has been happily married (mostly :) anyway) for 35 years and who met his wife in A.A.  We can socialize while making sure that socializing isn't the main focus of our attendance.

It Can Work

From the forward to the Twelve and Twelve:  "A.A.'s Twelve Steps are a group of principles, spiritual in their nature, which, if practiced as a way of life, can expel the obsession to drink and enable the sufferer to become happily and usefully whole."  

I've always liked this concept which suggests that our Twelve Step program can work.  It also implies that one needs to practice the principles.  It also implies, less distinctly but the implication sneaks through nevertheless, that we hold no monopoly on recovery.  If you like our Program: great.  If you can stay sober and achieve a reasonable degree of happiness doing something else: great.

But then, Bill W, always self-indulgent and certain of his beliefs to a fault, adds this: "Many people, non-alcoholics, report that as a result of the practice of A.A.'s Twelve Steps, they have been able to meet other difficulties of life.  They see in them a way to happy and effective living for many, alcoholic or not."

I helped start this movement that has proved so beneficial to so many alcoholics maybe I can save the whole fricking world.  I relate to this all-or-nothing attitude most alcoholics have.  Since I just spent a few minutes talking to a new guy maybe I can save every man, woman, and child on earth.

How about just talking to the new guy?  

"It was then discovered that when one alcoholic had planted in the mind of another the true nature of his malady, that person could never be the same again."  Step One Page 23 12&12

Be In the World

The longer I'm sober the simpler life becomes.  To put this in layman's terms: I'm getting stupider and stupider, happily so.

I spoke to the secretary of the Saturday meeting yesterday before the festivities got underway.  He's a heavily tattooed man, Hispanic, heroin addict, not especially educated, so someone I would have ignored before I gained a tiny bit of humility.  He quit coming to meetings during Covid but has recommitted himself to his recovery, getting a new sponsor and delving into The Steps again.  I got to hug him and tell him I love him.  There was a woman standing nearby, another dear friend, who I met at her second meeting eight years ago.

"Watch this," I told Paul.  I patted my cheek without looking at the woman, who came over and planted a loud kiss on said cheek.  I nodded to Paul: "How about that?"  "You did notice the sound effects?  I made a special effort," she said.

Before all of this kissing and loving began a man I know asked me if I had a minute as we walked to the meeting.  He has had a difficult year health-wise and he has married into a Lebanese immigrant family who interact together in a way that leaves him on the outside.  I think he's lonely.  I bet he's kind of afraid.  Getting older and weaker can be frightening.  He wondered if we could get together and . . . just have coffee.  "Of course," I said, touched that I had affected him in a way that allowed him to make this offer to me.  It's a great compliment.  It tells me that people understand that I see them.  It's so easy to put someone into a box of preconceived notions.  You're this and you're that and . . . let's see . . . it all adds up to someone I don't want to spend time with or someone who's going to bore me so keep moving . . . 

Into the kitchen I went after the smooching, pretty smugly, I should add.  I like the kitchen pre-meeting because that's where the coffee is - critical for a 7 AM meeting - so I get to greet almost everyone that comes in.  Post meeting I walked for an hour on the beach - on a delightfully foggy June morning - with a great, great friend, a guy who's diligent about his Program and actually interests me.  I know, I know, there are a few of them out there.  I excused myself halfway through the walk and sat down to meditate while listening to the waves.  I like nature sounds in the background when I meditate.  They're not disruptive to my concentration while helping me to connect to the natural world, a place that connects me to my Higher Power.  I mean, c'mon, I'm listening to wave sounds caused by the pull of the moon on the ocean, eternally repeating, as certain as my dislike for almost everyone on earth.

I strolled into the downtown area and bought some bok choy and white radishes at the weekly farmer's market before heading to my favorite coffee shop so that I could sit outside and read the paper and judge people as they passed by.  A young woman who works at the cafe walked outside to deliver breakfast to someone.  I had befriended her when I first started going to this particular establishment but because of my traveling and various quirks in our schedules and routines I hadn't seen her in a long time.  She glanced over and her face positively lit up - she rushed over for a hug and a brief chat before returning to work.  I was surprised at how effusive she was.  I mean, it really warmed my heart that this almost-child had that reaction.

While I was sitting there a young guy from the meeting stopped to say hello.  He has schizo-affective disorder and spent the last week in the hospital trying to get his meds rebalanced.  He's a nice kid but it can be somewhat uncomfortable dealing with him because he's clearly got some mental challenges.  Not scary-weird but autistic-weird.  I make a great effort to talk to him.  I make a great effort.  We're all psychos in recovery.  Nobody is too out-there that they can't recover but some people are harder to warm up to.  "Constitutionally unable to be honest," my ass.

Sort of the highlight of my morning was mugging it up with a young dad who was helping his daughter get the hang of taking her first steps.  Babies are always interested in my face for some reason.  Plus, I act like a two year old most of the time so maybe they recognize a kindred spirit.  I mean . . . who wouldn't look at a 67 year old hipster-doofus playing hide and seek with a newspaper while seeming to enjoy it immensely?  The parents loved it.  They were laughing as much as the infant.  We exchanged pleasantries as they left when I heard them speak in a foreign language and asked what it was.  Turns out they're a Dutch couple visiting SoCal on an extended trip so we a long conversation before they moved on.  Trust me - I know how refreshing it can be for SuperK and me to talk to someone who isn't one of us when we're on a long trip.  I hope I made them comfortable.

This is why I'm in recovery.  So I can be in the world.  So I'm not outside the looking glass watching other people be in the world. 

Taking It Down a Notch

There's a man that attended the Keep It Complicated group regularly before the Great Schism drew him to the hardliner meeting.  He has a horrific back story - convicted of murder committed during a crime followed by a 25 year stint in prison, where he got sober.  He was paroled from prison and has completed this parole so he's a free man for the first time in 30 years.  He has started attending Keep It Complicated again and I'm really struck by the difference in his personality - to my way of thinking, anyway - since I last saw him regularly.  He was so committed to Alcoholics Anonymous - so fierce in his desire to help others recover, especially the low bottom drunks - that he came across as somewhat preachy and fervent and inflexible about how The Program should be worked.  He talked at every meeting and he talked for a long time when he talked.  I found him somewhat annoying.  I like the words pious and sanctimonious.  They imply that one's shit doesn't stink.  They imply that if you're not doing it the way I say it should be done that you're doing wrong.

Today he has taken the whole thing down a notch.  Down a notch can be good.  I tend to overdo most things so I've developed a thing for dialing back the intensity; so much so that it's automatic and unconscious a lot of the time.  When I realized that my intensity was fucking with my enjoyment of life I began to see that maybe a little less was okay, that it still allowed me to accomplish my goals without making them so odious that they became thankless chores.

Slower can be good.

Distractions

Take a good, strong look at the emotional response you're trying to get rid of.  Actually ponder it.  See how it makes you feel.  Look at what it's doing to your life, your happiness, your health, and your relationships.  Try to see how it makes you appear to others.  I think that this relentless self-examination that we do in Alcoholics Anonymous is one of the keys to a contented life.  When I'm uncomfortable I usually try to do something that makes me comfortable or I try to convince myself that I'm not really uncomfortable.  This is missing the point.  I need to look at whatever is causing my discomfort and then just sit with it.  Don't try to make it go away.  

It's a plagiarism morning . . . 

"Distractions come in all sizes, shapes, and flavors.  Buddhist philosophy has organized them into categories.  One of them is the category of hindrance."  He goes on to list some hindrances such as greed, aversion, desire, lethargy, agitation, and doubt.  I like that lethargy and agitation come right next to each other.  It's kind of a "I'm pissed but I'm not going to do anything about it"  situation.  Desire and greed I get.  Fair enough.  Normal emotions but often overdone.  Aversion?  That's my sweet spot.  That's my middle name.  Aversion is in my wheelhouse.  At worst I'm going to rope a double down the right field line with aversion.  "Having a strong dislike or opposition to something."  To something?  To everything!  You know what the opposite of aversion is?  Trick question!  Aversion is everything!

Blue Fog

Living catches up with us quickly when we let everything become routine, become drudgery, become a task to be shouldered through.  We stop learning.  We quit looking with interest, and we stop being aware of our own needs and feelings.  Everything becomes routine and nothing new is on the horizon.  

I blame too much on age.  It's a convenient excuse.  A convenient cop-out.  Age has little to do with the blue fog I let settle over myself and the things that I usually care about.  It's my lack of energy brought about by my lack of vision.  My memory is dulled by lack of interest.

Life has a way of working out to certain ends.

Thinking is Great

 I've come to believe that the distractions I encounter when I meditate are the whole point.  The key for me is to learn to deal with this crap.  Learning to notice them without being trapped in them.  That's what I'm trying to do.  That's why I meditate.  When my mind wanders I find it unpleasant, to be sure, but today I know that this is the normal operation of the mind.  It thinks.  It DOES NOT like things to be quiet.  It likes chaos.  It demands that it be in control.  I have let it ramble freely for much of my life, not always unpleasantly, to be sure.  Why would I expect it to buckle under and behave now?

So when a random thought pops into my mind while I'm meditating I try to look at it briefly, stare into its beady little eyes, and make the fucker the object of my meditation for just a moment.  I try to be aware of its characteristics: what is it?  how strong is it?  how long does it last?  And then back to the breath.

Thinking is great, as far as it goes.  If I want to be kind I can think kind thoughts but eventually I have to go out and do kind things.  A lot harder.  Thinking is easy.   Talking is harder but not by much.  I'm a good talker.  I'm a great thinker.  It's my doing that needs constant maintenance.

And once we decide to do something - especially change a habit or behavior of long-standing - we shouldn't expect to change it in one broad sweep.  The behavior that has taken over in tiny, incremental ways has to be edged out in a similar fashion.  The fact of taking these tiny steps is a great accomplishment because, little by little, we can reform our habits.

Risk Analysis or Process Control Managment?

 Risk Analysis:  A process that helps organizations identify and analyze potential issues that could negatively impact governmental projects or business projects.  The goal is to help organizations avoid or mitigate these risks.  

Process Control:  A discipline that uses industrial control systems and control theory to achieve a production level of consistency, economy, and safety that could not be achieved purely by human control.

So I didn't really take a liking to very many people on our cruise.  This, in and of itself, is not that unusual as I don't take a liking to very many people anywhere.  The drawback for me was that the more of anything a person has the more entitled and special they feel; whether this is money, power, athletic prowess, beauty, or any of the other very important but overly valued instincts and dark arts.  "What do you/did you do for a living?" is right up there with an interest in a person's hometown as the most likely question one is asked.  Long ago, embarrassed at saying "salesman" I started trying to embellish the title somewhat, never to a great deal of personal satisfaction.  It's my impression that the people who ask what I do for a living want to tell me what they do for a living and that they're not really interested in what I do for a living except as a necessary impediment to get through so they can tell me what they do for a living, about which I could give a shit.

So, purely for my own personal amusement, I started telling people I was a partner in a process engineering firm.  No one ever asks follow up questions to that and if they do they're easily parried, as I do have some inkling of what process engineering is.  I was involved with processing engineering in an oblique and peripheral way but that's about it.  I could even field a few follow up questions confidently and once, when some one questioned me a little too thoroughly, I answered: "I don't know - I had employees that figured that stuff out for me."  That was a regal addition to my fabricated life.  I figured that if I was talking about a job I didn't do I could delegate tasks to people who didn't exist.  It's all in the cloud, baby.

On this cruise I was reading a book where the main character really was a risk analyst.  He worked with insurance companies who wrote policies for ships and mines and factories in foreign countries and were interested in knowing about political and social unrest that could threaten their investments.  Sounded pretty cool so I tried it out a few times.  It was a bit dicier since I didn't know what a risk analyst was or what a risk analyst does so if someone asked more than a few shallow questions - unlikely, I wagered - I was cooked, revealed a liar.  I have decided that my pleasure in the deception was worth the potential embarrassment at being caught out as a liar and that if I was caught I could just chuckle, raise my hands, and laugh it off as a harmless bit of fun on my part, like wearing a spooky mask at Halloween.

Right Living

Another key to Right Living is to quit talking and start listening.  Based on my behavior you're better off not talking so much because the other person isn't listening that closely - if they're listening at all - and on the rare occasions that they are actually listening they're not very interested in what you're talking about.  They're thinking about what they're going to say to advance their own agenda and convince you - if you disagree with them - that you're wrong and they're right.

Can't you see this, especially, when people talk about politics or religion or other touchy subjects?  People aren't listening.  You're not going to change their minds.  If someone brings up politics and uses one of these words in the first few sentences - always or never - then I'm not going to engage with them.  They're done.  They're cooked.  It's over.

I'm not great at remembering prayers but one section of the St. Francis of Assisi Prayer has stuck with me: "Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood as to understand: and to be loved as to love."  When I'm talking to someone I try to put aside my prejudices and preconceived notions and really understand where they're coming from.

Negative thinking is a habit that can be changed - if we really want to change it.

Time and space have a way of putting things into perspective so that we can see the right and the wrong to be able to forgive or ask forgiveness.  Life has a way of working itself out to certain ends, a time for everything, and what has been lost will be regained many times over.

Metal Body Parts

I have come to the conclusion that the key to the whole mess that is life is to be in the moment.  I think that's the answer to everything.  If I'm in the moment then everything is just fine.  Even if I'm in pain - emotional, mental, spiritual, physical, doesn't matter - I'm okay if I'm in the moment.  My problems all arise when I get into the future - where terrible things are happening to me - or drift back into the past - where I'm full of regret about all the terrible things I've done.  I struggle against my tendency to want to be doing something - usually something else - which comes more naturally to me than sitting quietly in the space I'm actually in.  It was that way with my drinking.  At the end I wasn't doing it to feel better - I was doing it to feel different - or better yet to not feel anything at all.

I'm in my 67th year of life and I ask this of you, people: How the fuck did this happen!?  I'm grateful that I’m healthy and loved and secure.  Don't get me wrong here . . . I'm bitching with a smirk on my face and a smile in my heart - but I'd really rather be like 30 years younger with the knowledge of life that I have now and enjoying the material comforts and lack of commitments that I currently wallow in.  It really isn't fair that we don't gain all of this knowledge when we were younger and could put it to good - or at least better - use.

We were in the security line at the airport getting ready to board a flight for another one of our incredibly self-indulgent voyages, queing up for the bomb sniffer machine which cannot possibly be attached to anything real, when the TSA agent asked SuperK if she had any metal.  The woman started to point out her watch and a bracelet when he interrupted: “No, ma'am - do you have any metal body parts.”  When she demurred he gently waved us past the sniffer.  Apparently, we didn't look to bomb-worthy at that point.  I didn't hear the exchange because if I did I would have just turned around and gone home.  The implication that I might have a metal body part was too much to comtemplate. 

A Perverse Satisfaction

It strikes us that on the few cruises we've taken we find the crew a lot more interesting than the other passengers.  I'm not saying the other passengers aren't that interesting - I'm implying it, of course - but that the people who are working on the ship have much better back stories.  The people we interacted with frequently this time were from Thailand, the Phillippines, Peru, and a number of African countries like Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Peoria, Illinois.  I think that they're generally treated well by the other guests but in the guise of service workers to whom one is polite on an impersonal level and because it's socially proper.  If given the choice I'd rather talk to a thirty year old woman from Mauritius - remembering that it must be hard for someone that young to be away from friends and family for four months at a time - than some overly-entitled couple from Dallas, Texas or Peoria, Illinois.

Here's another irritant in my life: smiling for photos.  There's way too much fake smiling going.  Can't we just assume pleasant expressions and let it go at that?  I'm not so happy I smile all the time so why would I have a blinding, fake-looking smile every time I'm captured in a photo?  Plus, everyone under thirty has had braces growing up so all the smiles look exactly the same and they're all about stretching your lips as wide as you can so that we can see all that great dental work.  Do I really need to be able to see your molars, for chrissake?  What's the matter with a pleasant, relaxed expression?

One of the big themes of my life is analyzing why I get so much pleasure from the fact that so many people annoy me.  In most cases it's more of an exasperated, condescending annoyance but still . . .  In Step Six in the 12 & 12 there's this much beloved passage: "In a perverse way, we can actually take satisfaction in the fact that many people annoy us, for it brings a comfortable feeling of superiority."

Ahhh, superiority.  Thinking I'm better than other people.  I LOVE superiority.

Making a Difference

 I was at the coffee shop yesterday behind a scruffy looking guy who ordered something While he was fingering a handful of change, including a bunch of pennies.  I leaned over to check the register - one whole dollar - so I offered to add his drink to my tab.  It turned out he was just getting a coffee refill and the change was to put in the tip jar for the staff so he declined my offer.  Afterwards he came over and told me about some mentoring he was doing at one of the tougher high schools in the area.  It was a nice talk, spiritual, full of the spirit of service.

When we got back from our trip I swung by my bank to deposit a check and the woman there who has helped me with a few matters in the past came over to say hello.  As she approached I held out my hand for a shake and she stopped with a surprised look on her face: "Oh.  I was coming in for a hug."  I laughed and gave her a hug.  A bank employee asked me for a hug.  A woman bank employee.

When we were getting off the ship one of the staff members - a woman from the Phillippines - gave SuperK and me a bag of mango candy, common in her country.  We protested, not wanting to take one of the trips that might remind her of home.  That, and we were literally being buried alive in food.  "Actually, I bring a few packages of these with me to give to my favorite guests."  Her colleague told her not to give me our passports - passports we needed to get off the ship - so that we couldn't get off the ship.

When the meeting ended this morning a new kid asked if he could join me on my beach walk.  I said yes.  Honestly, I had some good music cued up to play and then I really enjoy taking twenty minutes to meditate while I'm listening to the waves but I said yes, anyway.  The spirit of service and taking the time to pass along the message so freely given to me and all that crap . . . Boy, I forgot how boring new people are and how delusional they are and how all they want is for someone to listen to them while they're talking and not be judgemental or eager to dispense unwanted and unsolicited advice.

Yacht Wind Sprints

Share yourself and the world will respond.  Why in the world do I spend so much time looking for the world to supply me with happiness?  Why do I think I need to take and get and receive to be happy?  It makes no sense.  Either that, or it makes perfect sense.  Sometimes it's hard to overcome the very human instincts that keep me alive while often making me unhappy.  "If only I had that piece of stuff - then I would be happy.   If only that bad piece of stuff would go away then I would be comfortable and then I would be happy."  I'm the black hole of needs.  Everything gets sucked into this void, to disappear and never come back, and the void's maw is always gaping and there's never enough stuff to fill up that hole.  I'm a big morass of inexhaustible holes that can never be filled.

Jeebus H. Christ, am I an idiot.  I was on a cruise ship recently.  A very small cruise ship as cruise ships go but it was still pretty big.  I was marveling at the fact that there are billionaires with yachts bigger than this ship.  I can't imagine it.  What would you do with all that room?  I can see having a yacht, even a pretty big yacht, even a really big yacht, but a yacht that's one hundred fifty yards long?  What are they doing on that ship - wind sprints?

Fools Rush In

 "If you argue with a fool you will end up being one."  Ahhhh, yeah.

How often have I wanted to respond angrily to something small, to react in the same manner which someone used with me.  But there's an increasingly insistent voice inside me that now asks: "What's that to you?"  The best revenge is to refuse to fight.  What good does it do me to argue with an idiot?

"The quiet companionship of a comforting person is like balm to the soul.  These kindred spirits seem to be able to take our hand and walk with us through the difficult places they have already traveled.  They keep us from the loneliness that pervades our experiences, waiting for a word that we have passed through safely.  And best of all, they never bring it up again but let the past take care of the past.  Their eyes are on tomorrow, their hands on the present time so that we never hear empty echoes and are never reminded that we were unhappy.  And then, we, in quiet ways, can reach back and take someone else's hand."

What a great condensation of The Twelfth Step from a native American.

Think and talk pleasant things.  When pressures are too much, turn around and think and talk on  another subject.  Most of us are victims of our own emotions.  Love can be a mere glance, a brief word, a silent touch.