Toltecs

"The habitual comfort of a familiar place keeps us where we are - even when we are not happy there.  The hurt of leaving something we have grown accustomed to makes it more difficult.  Until we lose the world we once knew, we cannot fully adjust to a new one.  It is a slow, strange unraveling of old ways of thinking and doing."

In A.A. speak: "I'd rather sit in my own shit than get up and move."

"As the Toltecs teach us, the reward is to transcend the human experience of suffering, to become the embodiment of God.  That is the reward."

I ask my Higher Power each morning to help me channel the peace and love that is my experience with spirituality and ooze it out into the carnal world each day.

From time to time a couple of friends travel from one of the outlying villages into my neck of the woods to attend Keep It Complicated.  They're about my age with about the same amount of sobriety.  They get it.  They have it.  It isn't hard to pick out the people that have internalized the spiritual path to recovery that we try to embrace in Alcoholics Anonymous.  They have that sense of ease and comfort and relaxation that most human beings search for.  It's just in their pores at this point.  I can't rattle them with my wry (read: sarcastic) sense of humor.  You can't rattle me anymore.  I don't have anything to do with what you think of me or say to me.  I listen because there is a message in your words and actions that I need to pay heed to from time to time, but mostly it's just your view of my place in the world, which is none of my business.

They remind me of the men and women - but especially men - that were around when I was getting sober.  The men I knew before my A.A. life were in my family and in my church and school.  My dad was distant and when he delivered messages to me it was often with an angry tone, both implied and explicit.  And when teachers and church folk delivered messages to me I was often being pushed to go further or criticized and warned about my behavior, in a manner that was both implied and explicit.  Often the messages were delivered kindly and with my best interests at heart - I'm not blaming the messangers here - but for a kid who was fearful and incredibly hard on himself my reaction was usually: "I'm a failure.  I'm a fuck up.  I'm not worth anything."  This was depressing and caused me to pull further and further into my own mind.  But the men in A.A. told me what they did and how that worked personally and urged me to find my own path forward.  They assured me they didn't know what my path was.  I learned quickly that they weren't going to tell me what to do, going so far as to say they had no idea what I should do and often encouraged me to listen to may different voices in recovery besides theirs because surely I'd find a message that would resonate with me.

Usually I'd argue with them for a bit which never seemed to rattle anyone and then I'd go off by myself and think about what I'd heard.  Those guys always seemed to make pretty good sense after the fact.  "Here's what I did.  This may or may not work for you.  I have no idea what you should do.  Talk to a lot of other people and go to different meetings so you can hear different opinions.  Then find your own path.  Good luck.  We're here to help in any way we can."

They were so fucking infuriating!