This Is What I Did

This is from a pamphlet entitled "A Member's Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous" which is reprinted from a talk one of our member's gave concerning the disease of alcoholism to a group of counselors at a large university.  It's a good pamphlet but - boy - can you ever see the gentle sexism and overt Christianity come out.  It's not moderated at all.  There are a lot of Bible passages referenced.  I can't see how this would pass muster today.     

Anyway . . . "Instead of a constant and on-going rat-a-tat-tat of 'This is what you should do,' he heard an instantly recognizable voice saying, 'This is what I did.'  The intuitive understanding the alcoholic receives, while compassionate, is not indulgent.  The new man is not asked what he is thinking.  He is told what he is thinking.  No one waits to trap him in a lie.  He is told what lies he is getting ready to tell.  In the end, he begins to achieve honesty by default.  There's not much point in trying to fool people who may have invented the game you're playing."

Yeah, well, welcome to Alcoholics Anonymous, right?  

"The Twelve Steps are so framed and presented that the alcoholic can either ignore them completely, take them cafeteria-style, or embrace them wholeheartedly.  No member is ever told he must perform these Steps.  We change our mantra from 'A.A. is all you need' to 'A.A. is all I need.'  It remains then for each member to discover and to share whatever works for him.  The supreme catalyst seems to be the word 'share.'  The alcoholic's omnipresent, ever-lurking need to withdraw from the mainstream and turn in upon himself.  Learning to substitute a group, no matter how large, for one's own self-centeredness is only partial recovery." 

One Resentful Alcoholic at at Time

Yesterday I received a phone call from a disgruntled member friend in Alcoholics Anonymous and I also received a text from another disgruntled member that had a similar tone and timbre.  I need to reply with some thoughts to both of them.  I'm going to work it out here before I commit to opening my mouth.  Look before you leap.  Measure twice - cut once.

I sent this note to a guy who was full of resentment and grievance that no one in A.A. was staying in touch with him while he's going through some medical issues but that his wife's family - from a Middle Eastern country - are constantly checking in.  Out of kindness I'm at this point not going to mention that I will occasionally send him a note and that he never does the same.  Or that when I sent him some pictures from Antarctica is response was not expansive.  Dismissive wouldn't be an outrageous characterization of his response.  But, my job here is to be positive and not negative.  Most people respond better to kindness than they go to opprobrium.  

"As you know I have lived in five states during my recovery and in two of those states I lived in different cities.  My experience has been: Out of sight, Out of mind.  I've always tried to be proactive in staying in touch with people in A.A.  My experience is that once I'm not present my memory fades quickly.  I found I was doing a lot of work staying in touch with my friends and they weren't doing any work staying in touch with me.  So I began to develop a resentment which I nurtured for the longest time before deciding that I didn't want to be mad at my friends so maybe my staying in touch with them was my way of Being of Service.  My experience is also that No One is Thinking About Me and I say this with only a touch of irony.  I spend all day thinking about myself while getting resentful that everyone else is thinking about themselves and not me.  I say this with absolutely no irony.  It's so stupid and short-sighted that it's not ironic.  It's just selfish.

When I was in Antarctica - which is pretty amazing! - I was gone - for a month!! - and I received precisely . .  . hmmm . . . . add the  first three columns, divide by the square root of twenty-seven and subtract the mean weight of a European swallow . . . and the total is . . .  Zero!!!  Precisely no one checked in to see how I was doing!!!!  And when I sent pictures out to people the responses were brief and perfunctory.  This bothered me not at all.  This is far more common that anything else.  And when I returned some people said: "Welcome back.  How was your trip?" and that was the end of the commentary.

I don't think what you're experiencing in the hustling and bustling United States.  I think what you're experiencing with your Syrian friends is indicative of that culture.  So I'm also asking myself: What am I contributing?  What am I doing to ease the mind of a friend or fellow member?

The Way Out

"As a Master of Self, the way out is to remind yourself that you are perfect in this moment and you don't need to do or achieve anything in order to be complete.  It's absolutely fine to want to accomplish things, to see what your strengths are and see what you are able to do;  but your priority is to love yourself unconditionally throughout the  process of working toward any goal you have set for yourself.  There is no place to go, nothing to do or achieve, because any seeking of perfection outside of yourself is actually a movement away from perfection."

Did you know that the original title for The Big Book was going to be "The Way Out?"  It made me laugh to see that phrase in a Toltec book.  The way out of alcoholism, of guilt and longing and self-flagellation.   The way out!

"Any change you want to make or goal you want to achieve is undertaken because you really want to do it, not because of a feeling of inadequacy or not being enough."

Masters of Manipulation

One of the newer men I talk to after our meeting is in his 40s, recently divorced, and - like most of us when we were new - worried about his future, remorseful over all the mistakes he made while drinking and eager to charge into a new life that he's constructed in his mind.  How often do we see this!  We've made a grand mess of things and we're in a hurry to make up for lost time.  But here's the thing about time: it doesn't really care what you think or what you want.  It's an immutable fact of existence.  It has always been here and it will always be here and it's never going to change.  We can count on time to be reliable.  Sometimes time seems to slow down and sometimes it seems to speed up but that is only our human perception.

My friend is/was in a relationship that he values but things have hit a snag.  His girlfriend has pulled back and he's understandably finding this very frustrating and worrisome.  I see the same behavior over and over in people who want something and are determined to manipulate events so that it works out the way they want it to work out.  Sometimes we behave consciously and sometimes our motives are hidden under thick layers of self-justification.  We're masters of this kind of behavior: we wheedle and whine and try to get our way by making our target feel sorry for us and react out of guilt; we drive forward forcefully and try to overpower our target to get them to do what we want; we practice passive-aggressive behavior, a masterful, subtle, and powerful skill that alcoholics have honed into a razor-sharp technique; we get pissed off and slam doors shut for good, forever, unwilling to wait patiently to see how things play out, to allow our target to work through their issues.  We do all of this stuff.  What we have trouble doing is to act with patience and consideration, to put the needs of the other person ahead of our own.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

And We Change Our Minds

For a variety of reasons holidays can be difficult for people - loneliness for some, pressure to have the "perfect" celebration, the stress of being around family members and friends with whom you don't feel particularly close or even close at all or maybe you don't even like them a little bit and maybe you  can't stand their stinking guts . . .  these are all more common than we like to think.

SuperK and I aren't really wrapped up in the expectations of the Holiday Season.  We just aren't.  Our family histories are part of this as is our natural skepticism of behaving in a conventional, appropriate manner.  So often we travel.  When we aren't gone I poke around in my meeting to see if there are any members at loose ends or alone that might want to do something with someone.  I know a new-ish woman who moved here not long ago from New York and when I asked her if she wanted to join SuperK and me for a Christmas meal she immediately accepted.  I was somewhat surprised, and even more skeptical that she would follow through, so I assured her later that if she changed her mind it would be no problem.

Here's the thing about new people: they are so eager to please that they agree to things without carefully considering the implications of what they're agreeing to.  We're afraid to hurt people's feelings by saying no and this is compounded by the fact we don't even know yet what we like to do or don't like to do.  So I kept checking my messages.  I was skeptical this was going to go off as planned.  Nothing.  Nothing.  Then, half an hour before the meeting, she cancelled, with vague reasoning.  I was not surprised.  Why this young woman would want to go to lunch with some diffuse hipster old enough to be her dad and some woman she doesn't know - strangers are intimidating to new people, just being with folks we don't know - and she doesn't appear to be a morning person and the winter weather wasn't cooperating and she recently moved about a half an hour inland so . . . yeah . . . not surprised this happened.  My rule with new new people is to never make plans to meet them unless it's someplace I'm going to anyway.  That way their understandable and totally predictable unreliability doesn't affect my mood.  Before I walked into the meeting - well attended on Christmas Day - I paused to send her a text assuring her all was well all was well all was well, and she immediately responded with gratitude I could feel infusing the satellite waves and wafting over the miles.  Her guilt was oozing over the mountains from her new home and the last thing I want to do is make someone feel worse.

The Authentic Self

"Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities.  'How can I best serve Thee - Thy will (not mine) be done."  Big Book P 85

Don't you love how we had to add "not mine" in parenthesis?  That we need to be reminded that my will is not God's will?  I wouldn't have been surprised if Bill had added "you idiot" in parenthesis at the end of the sentence to top things off.

I also have to remember that I need to be true to myself while being of maximum service to others.  I'm not going to be helpful if I'm not authentic.  Here's the Toltec's take:  "We often project an image, or an identity, of how we want other people to see us in the world.  We use these images or identities to help us relate to other people while understanding deep down that they are not the real us.  So we can assume these identities to be helpful with the full knowledge that we can discard them when they're no longer needed.  So, for instance, we don't try to fit into our loved ones' ideas of who we should be because when we don't meet these standards, or standards that we've set for ourselves, that are projected onto us then we end up rejecting ourselves."

The power of the Authentic Self.  Man, o man.

Willpower and Such

"No one is responsible for your emotional reactions except you.  When you find yourself in a difficult situation or you're dealing with a difficult person restrain yourself from doing or saying anything at that moment if that is an option.  Then remove yourself from the situation until you have more clarity.  Let no one tell you that being a Master of self does not involve willpower, as in certain situations exercising restraint may require  all the willpower you have."  Toltec Proverb

"No one ought to say the A.A. program requires no willpower; here is one place that may require all you've got."  12 & 12 Step Five

Uh-huh.  Okay.  Looks like the same stuff to me.  One originated in the jungles of Central America ten centuries ago and one originated in Akron and New York a hundred years ago.

When I think about it most of the Gods or god-like figures I'm familiar with are .  .  . nice.  Jesus was nice.  The Buddha was very nice.  I can't imagine Jesus being a dick to the staff at a coffee shop or The Buddha cutting someone off in traffic.  Whenever I become conflicted about the whole god thing I figure if I'm just nice then I'm covering my bases.

Some Advice on Giving Advice

" My serenity is inversely proportional to my expectations.  I ask myself: 'How important is it, really?'  I never just sit and do nothing while waiting for God to tell me what to do.  Rather, I do whatever is in front of me.  When I stopped living in the problem and began living in the answer, the problem went away."      

"Today, I find that being an alcoholic is the best thing that ever happened to me.  This proves I don't know what's good for me.  And if I don't know what's good for me, then I don't know what's good or bad for you or for anyone.  So I'm better off if I don't give advice . . .  Before A.A., I judged myself by my intentions, while the world was judging me by my actions."     

This idea of not giving advice is found again and again in our literature.  It must be one of those things we keep doing over and over so it has to be repeated again and again.  So the advice is to stop giving advice.

Personally, I'm doing the best I can today with the tools I've been given and with the upbringing I lived through.  I can only hope that when I disappoint or offend someone that they can try to see beyond the actions to the history and experience that underlie them.  That doesn't give me the right to be offensive but to the person with empathy it may lead to a gentle understanding.

I'm a Pretty Big Deal

I need to remember that whatever is upsetting me today is not going to amount to a hill of beans in the long run.

"This is indeed the kind of giving that actually demands nothing.  He does not expect his brother sufferer to pay him, or even to love him.  And then he discovers that by the divine paradox of this kind of giving he has found his own reward, whether his brother has yet received anything or not."

The Big Book p. 109 

Boy, the Theory of Relativity is easier for me to understand than the idea that if I give I get more than I lose.  Really, really weird stuff.

Today I strive for authenticity, for allowing Authentic Seaweed to run amuck.  I hope that I don't behave in a fashion that conforms to your idea of how I should behave.  Don't get me wrong - sometimes I alter my behavior out of kindness or comity.  But if I'm not true to myself, to my own nature and my own beliefs about what is right and what is wrong I'm going to suffer for this self-deception.  No one likes a phony or a liar.  No one likes a shape-shifter.  This isn't a horror movie.  I don't think it's hard to get to know me.  I think what you perceive in the first few minutes is what you're going to see in the future.  I let it rip.

SuperK shared a suggestion about releasing negativity with me a while ago but neither of us can remember the exact expression.  The basic idea is that I should just stop being negative.  Drop the negativity!  It takes more effort to be negative than it does to be positive and it's more exhausting emotionally.

Hot Tub Guy Et Al

There's a dude I see often at the pool.  He's not a bad guy -  he's socially awkward and he's totally self-absorbed which hardly makes him a freak in today's society.  He's one of those people I'd rather not run into; not because he's evil but because I find him quite boring.  Where I have to be careful is with his politics - which run counter to mine - and this is especially true if he's with Hot Tub Guy.  True believers can generate a lot of true beliefs when they're agreeing mightily with each other.   Anyway,  those two were talking loudly in the hot tub the other day where I was trying to decompress after my swim when - against my better instincts - I decided to chime in briefly.  I knew I should have stayed out of it.  They weren't talking to me.  They weren't asking for my opinion.  They didn't have a secret agenda to annoy me.  True, they could have turned down the volume a little bit as their discussion veered into some potentially inflammatory areas.  But, once again and as always, if I had kept inside my own hula hoop I wouldn't have taken some incoming fire from them.  Their comments weren't vicious by any means but they were pointed and the effect was pretty harsh.  I was offended.

I stewed about this during the day.  I didn't want to overreact but I wanted to make sure that I stood up for myself and that they didn't talk to me like that again.  I thought of all kinds of ways to do this.  I thought I might wear some fake ear buds and pretend I was on the phone.  I thought I might turn my back to them and peer into the distance.  Or maybe get out of the hot tub if they walked in.  I considered asking them politely to leave me alone.   Again, the idea is not to make a mountain out of a molehill while still getting to relax in the hot tub.  The books tell me that if I sit quietly with a problem that I'll intuitively understand how to react, that a solution will pop up after a while.  So . . . I'll go swimming a half hour earlier than I normally do!  Brilliant!  Revolutionary!  It's not exactly what I want to do but it's an easy, calm solution that won't hurt anyone and won't inconvenience me too much.

My God has a sense of humor.  My God likes to fuck with me.  As I sat down to meditate at the beach this morning, after the Keep It Complicated meeting, the non-Hot Tub Guy strolled up and basically apologized.  He apologized for the political tag he attached to me yesterday.  He did kind of blame Hot Tub Guy for sparking the confrontation - not without merit, I have to say - but he apologized.  He knew he had been unkind.  He also had a lot of questions about Alcoholics Anonymous, referencing his own past drinking and drug use, intimating he might like to meet me at a meeting one day.  As he walked away I was laughing to myself at how my God rewards me for trying my best to solve a problem by just taking the problem away.  Poof!  Problem?  What problem?

I heard a story long ago in sincity where a member shared that because of some bad blood he had with a next door neighbor he was told by his sponsor to pray for the guy for two weeks.  He did so, gritting his teeth at the start, but eventually coming to a peaceful place with his attitude to his neighbor.  He got up one morning near the end of the two weeks, walked outside to get the paper, and there was a For Sale sign in his neighbor's yard.

True story.  Most of it.  Some of it.

Help Is Not Always What I Want To Give

At the conclusion of my morning meeting the secretary asks for anyone willing to be a sponsor to raise their hand.  Which I do not do.  The ostensible and actually quite plausible excuse I make is that I'm traveling so often I wouldn't be a good fit.  The real reason, more or less, is that I don't want to do it.  This isn't outrageous in its egregiousness but it's pretty self-absorbed.  Be that as it may I do it anyhow and regret it nohow.

Several months ago a guy who clearly wanted to ask me to be his sponsor commented on this and I told him I'd be happy to step in while reminding him I was going to be gone quite a bit.  He brushed this off while continuing to drink, the only reason he could find for stopping was getting arrested for driving while intoxicated.  He has been sober since but I don't think he really works a . . . you know . . . Program of any kind.  If he does it's news to me and I supposed to be his fucking sponsor.  In my estimation some of us are hands-off as we work with new people, preferring to let our actions be the  message and some of us are hands-on, setting up tasks and schedules and the like.  Both are fine and both work with the right messenger and the right message-receiver.

I spoke with this dude this morning.  It went as it always does.  He talked a good deal about himself and his difficulties while implying that his difficulties were mostly illogical and unfair.  If he had expressed even the most remote interest in what I might have to say I might have said something but he clearly wanted to talk and that was that.  I knew this was coming so I made sure I had something productive to take up my time while he was droning on and on, his voice a tinny afterthought in my severely muted earbuds.  My point is that he wanted someone sympathetic to listen to his spiel.  He did want my advice.

Telling It Like It Is

From an A.A. pamphlet called "A Member's Eye View of Alcoholics Anonymous" I came across these thoughts on how members try to pass along the message to new people . . . 

"The intuitive understanding that an alcoholic receives while compassionate, is not indulgent.  He is not asked what he is thinking.  He is told what he is thinking.  No one waits to trap him in a lie.  He is told what lies he is getting ready to tell.  In the end, he begins to achieve honesty by default.  There's not much point in trying to fool people who may have invented the game you're playing."

In terms a tad more crass: You can't bullshit a bullshitter.  It's not especially hard to spot the people who are doodling along without much conviction in their first tentative actions.  Face it - most people are not going to get sober or they are not going to get sober in Alcoholics Anonymous or they are not going to get sober in the meetings I attend.  This, while sad, is neither here nor there, and I say it without judgement.  It simply is.  It's hard to get sober and for this reason most people don't carry through with our Program.  Many of us are committed evangelists for the A.A. way of life at the start.  Many of us learn that trying to convince someone of something when the individual isn't open to the idea is not going to go very far.  Again, this is not a criticism.  It's an indicator of how hard it is to get sober.  And maybe how pigheaded we all are at the beginning.

Pass It On

"There is a direct linkage among self-examination, meditation, and prayer.  Taken separately, these practices can bring much relief and benefit.  But when they are logically related and interwoven, the result is an unshakable foundation for life."  12&12 p. 98     

I love this reminder.  Synergy - the concept that the combined effect of two or more entities is greater than the sum of their individual effects.

The twelfth month of the year often stimulates a discussion on our Twelfth Step work.  Responsibilities might be a better word as we're reminded time and time again that nothing so much ensures our sobriety as work with another alcoholic.  And Dr. Bob, in his summation of why he continued to go to meetings, listed repayment of his debt to the men who took the time to pilot him through early sobriety.  They didn't ask for this repayment; he understood that the gift they received by helping someone else was one he could also expect to receive . . . so long as he jumped in and began to help new people.  A guy in my meeting recently said that his sponsor told him that "the first year was all about you and after that it's about what you can pass on to someone else."  Good advice.  Great advice.

Alcoholics are not easy to talk to early on.  They are resistant.  One of the benefits of Alcoholics Anonymous is that our members really try to speak as an equal, as a fellow sufferer instead of as an authority who is telling someone what to do, either as a punishment for bad behavior or as an enticement towards good behavior.  Man, do we hate to be told what to do.  Man, does it ring hollow when someone without the alcoholic affliction tries to give advice - advice often given with good intentions and a genuine desire to be helpful.  I never tell anyone "I know what you're going through" unless I know what they're going through.  It's insincere to tell someone who is suffering that I understand when I don't, in fact, understand.

 

Lost in the Fog

I am not my thoughts.  The idea is to be aware of them and watch them arise and subside without judgement or criticism.  The idea is to look at them with curiosity but no attachment.  They're just thoughts!  Electrical impulses between neurons!  Or something!  Am I aware or am I lost in the fog?

Without awareness my attachments and history coerce me into taking actions that conform to the belief systems of other people.  I don't like other people so why would I try to conform to their belief systems!  This isn't free will at all.  What I've done is to give up my personal freedom in order to maintain ideas that others planted in me long ago.  I traded in who I really am for what I think you think I should be. You're probably an idiot!  No offense but most people are idiots!  I'M an idiot!  This transference can be particularly troublesome when I'm dealing with other people because I'm not really seeing who they are today but rather projecting an identity on them that's outdated and based on our shared past.   

Then there's my contrarian nature.  Even when I have good intentions doing the opposite simply for the sake of being different isn't free will.  Here I'm letting the opposite choice create my identity.  To put it bluntly - I'm still allowing you to define who I am.

Instead of being tied to an automatic decision or its opposite, awareness allows me to be conscious of all the possibilities that are available.  The more I practice awareness the less automatic my choices and judgements will be.  The more I will be me.

The simple act of pausing before making a decision or taking an action, thinking about what I really want in a situation versus what may be an automatic choice, is the first step in breaking the cycle of the automatic.

To My Mineral Ancestors

 I like nature.  I find a great deal of peace when I'm connecting with natural things.  Much of the time this is as simple and common as listening - with my eyes closed - to the birds in the orange trees surrounding my little backyard patio or the waves susurring on the beach.  These noises help me relax and connect.  They allow me to focus on something besides my own deranged thoughts.

I was fortunate to be able to take a trip that plopped me in Antarctica.  If you want to feel small and young and transient, a mote of dust in a scirocco, one breath in ten thousand years worth of breaths, go to the Antarctic.  The continent of Antarctica is the driest desert on earth - the Sahara, the Great Outback, the Mojave all get more precipitation than Antarctica.  While this is mind-blogging in its own right what totally blew my mind was seeing ice that was miles thick.  I still cannot intellectually conceptualize how ten miles of ice can form in a frozen desert.  And all of it is atop rock that has been there for millions of years.  Sometimes I felt like the environment was just going to subsume me.  A "You useless speck of organica - get thee away" kind of thing.

There was a scholar on board - an anthropologist - who spoke for a bit about animism, likely the most ancient spiritual pursuit on earth and one found in many disparate indigenous cultures.  This is, as I understand it, the attribution of a life force to all things that exist, not just living things like fauna and flora.  It's less a structured religion and more a fundamental worldview that everything possesses a spiritual essence.  I spoke with him after the talk and he admitted to struggling with the idea that rocks have a life force but he was giving it a go. 

And then there's this: ice is a mineral.

I think I am going to become an animist.  Maybe a Christian animist and my mother is howling from the grave on that one.  It's easier for me to think that a bit of me is going to be absorbed into the natural world - trees and plants and animals - than to imagine that the rocks outside my front window are having a conversation about the weather.  No matter and more to come on that one but the idea that the world, that life, is very, very big and that I am very, very insignificant was presented to me in technicolor down there in Antarctica.  It was so big that the expedition staff would point out that the mountain in front of me was ten thousand feet high and not the few thousand feet that my mind was estimating.  It was so big and the terrain was so featureless that I lost all perspective.

See ya.  I gotta go talk to some rocks.

Dr. Paul, Dr. Paul, Dr. Paul

"In the hospital, I hung on to the idea I'd had most of my life: that if I could just control the external environment, the internal environment would then be comfortable.  Life keeps gettingg simpler as we try to take care of the internal environment via the Twelve Steps, and letting the external environment take care of itself."  

"I was always able to see the flaw in every person, every situation.  A.A. has taught me that there is a bit of good in the worst of us and a bit of bad in the best of us; that we are all children of God, and we each have a right to be here.  When I focus on what's good today, I have a good day, and when I focus on what's bad, I have a bad day.  If I focus on a problem, the problem increases; if I focus on the answer, the answer increases."

I don't believe there is many a truth more universal than the tendency of substance abusers to find what's wrong and to ignore what's right.   This is probably a survival mechanism of long-standing efficacy.  The dumb people don't study their environment for threats and they get eaten by velociraptors or bit by pit vipers or they eat poisoned persimmons or they don't find anything to eat at all, poisoned or not.  So, great, I have good survival skills to rely on should I be dropped into an extremely hazardous place but the problem is, as I see it, that these skills have a certain amount of redundancy and are extraneous if I'm sitting in the sun on my porch.

A Tutorial

 How to Be an Alcoholic: A Tutorial

Alcoholics are negative.  If you're a positive person get the fuck outta here.  I've never met a naturally positive alcoholic and I've met a lot of alcoholics.  You need to be careful when talking to alcoholics because even if you are complimentary they will find a way to spin it negatively.

Alcoholics have a need for speed.  Alcoholics are not patient.  They do not drive the speed limit.  They never say: “No rush - take your time.”  They knock you down trying to get to the next thing that they need to do even if they don't even want to do it and especially even if they don't know what the next thing even is.

Alcoholics are terrified of change even though they aren't satisfied with the way things are and they want to change everything all at once and right now!  Not later!  I don't have to fucking think about it!

Doctor Paul, First Take

I'm not a huge fan of popular things.  I confess to a tendency to not like stuff that other people like.  I confess to a tendency to swim upstream, against the crowd.  If you tell me to do it then I can almost guarantee I'll do something else, usually the exact opposite.

Which brings me to Dr. Paul's story in the Big Book; originally it was called Doctor, Addict, Alcoholic but has been since changed to Acceptance Is The Answer.  It is very, very popular and oft quoted in meetings.  As I've been reading back through the story section of the Big Book I finally got to this story and I steeled myself against it.  I was prepared to dislike it.  

First of all, the dude is really funny.  Here are some quips that made me laugh out loud.

"I had sent Max (his wife) to four consecutive psychiatrists and not one of them had gotten me sober."

A reminder that it's always me.  It's never them.  No matter how much I want it to be them it's always me.

As his estimation of her mental health got worse and worse he eventually contacted a psychiatric hospital: "So, when it ended up in a psycho ward, I wasn't that surprised.  But then when that steel door slammed shut, and she was the one that went home, I was amazed."

Part of his treatment plan included group activities: "They wanted me to make leather belts, of all things!  Had I gone to school all those years just to sit and make leather belts?  Besides, I couldn't understand the instructions.  The girl had explained them to me four times, and I was too embarrassed to ask her again."

So if anyone ever makes a comment about drugs not being an appropriate topic in Alcoholics Anonymous let's at least remember that one of our most beloved stories had "Addict" in the title and there are a ton of highly descriptive passages about his drug use and they are uniformly hilarious.  Here's a sampling:

"The pep pills affected my hearing.  I couldn't listen fast enough to hear what I was saying.  I'd think, 'I wonder why I'm saying that again  - I've already said it three times.'   Still, I couldn't turn my mouth off."

"I found it hard to practice good medicine while shooting morphine.  At night I would put the  needle in my vein and then try  to figure out exactly how much medication to inject to overcome the pep pills while adding to the sleeping pills while ignoring the tranquilizers, in order to get just enough to be able to pull out the needle, jerk the tourniquet, throw it in the car, slam the car door shut, runs down the hall, and fall in bed before I fell asleep."

Dr. Paul, of course, began to see the light and to be truthful with himself.  For most of us, being honest with ourselves is one of the highest hurdles to overcome.  "I never in my life took a tranquilizer, sedative, or pep pill because I was a pill head.  I always took it because I had the symptom  that only that pill would relieve.  For me, pills don't produce the desire to swallow a pill; they produce the symptoms that require that the pill be taken for relief.  I had a pill for every ill, and I was sick a lot."

His epiphany about his drug use led him to this conclusion:  "Today, I feel I have used up my right to chemical peace of mind."

Not Fitting In

I've been rereading the stories in The Big Book.  Most of them are very familiar.  Some of them really hit home and some of them bore the shit out of me.  There's a lot of emphasis on the drinking part of our stories and not enough on the recovery part in some of the stories.  There are a few written by men and women who sound like pompous assholes or those interested in grandstanding, making their tales more dramatic than they need to be . . .  or probably were.  Most of the people I've met over the years in Alcoholics Anonymous have been functioning - or partially functioning - people trying to deaden the pain of the dissatisfaction they felt in their own lives.

There are also some themes and threads to be gleaned.  One if the tremendous relief and gratitude that we all feel when we find a solution that works for us.  Another is the responsibility we feel towards The Program and we turn this into the service work that sustains us as we bumble through life.  The one similarity that has been surfacing over and over is the feeling that we were lost in the game of life, that we felt different and disconnected and that we didn't know how or why and that we didn't know any other way to make these awful feelings go away except to drink to excess.  What a relief it has been to those of us who have been able to internalize the spiritual approach that manifests in the Twelve Steps.  Not for everyone, for sure, and we don't try to be but what a relief for those of us who find an answer in A.A.

Like, This is a Good One

One of the lessons I learned early on in my career as a Salesguy was that it was much more important to listen than to talk.  An incredibly difficult lesson to take to heart.  Our tendency is to want to convince another person of our point of view.  It is not a natural impulse to listen to their point of view.  I evolved in my profession so that I began to see how many times the other person was waiting for me to finish talking so that they could say what they wanted to say.  I learned that look meant that very little I was saying was sinking in so that my first best technique was to stop talking and start listening.  I also learned that most people are very uncomfortable with silence.  This is why you hear so many ahs and ums and you knows when people talk.  Even that second of silence is a killer so they have to fill it with a noise and if they keep talking they often gave me valuable information that I would have had to extract using some kind of powerful, turbo-charged suction machine. There's a new guy at our meeting who tosses in the nervous filler noise "like" many times when he, like, talks, at a, like, meeting.  He's trying to get his feet back on the ground and it makes him sound intellectually lazy.  He's a smart guy and he sounds, like, dumb.  I may have to say something to him.  I know, I know, I should keep my fucking mouth shut but I have a bit of influence over him and I can't help but think that this, like, might be a helpful bit of advice.

In one of my spiritual books the author was discussing how we can better deal with contentious people or just people with whom we have a differing opinion.  

Here were his suggestions:

1.  Look at the person's body language.

(Crossed arms?  Forget about it.  They're not receptive.  Backing away?  Looking off to the side?  Looking at their phone?  You're toast.  You've lost.  It's over.)

2.  Try to understand where they're coming from.

(I quit trying to explain the technical aspects of an infrared sensor to the purchasing agent.  And I didn't try to explain the cost/benefit analysis to the engineer.)

3.  Listen without planning your reply.

(Epically important!  If I'm thinking about my brilliant retort or quip then I'm not listening!)

4.  Express your opinion only after the person has finished talking, and only if they ask.  

(It goes without saying that they're almost never going to ask.  You'll be lucky if they, like, stop talking for a minute.)

5.  Notice your own attachments.

(Like, dude, if you don't buy a piece of my, like, stuff, I'm never going to make any, like, money.)

6.  Feel your own emotions.  

(If you're ticking me off then I'm tempted to come out swinging.)

Toltecs V A.A.

"I know I can cause real damage if I yield to temptation and give opinions and advice on another's medical, marital, or religious problems.  I can share how I came through similar situations without drinking, and how A.A.'s Steps and Traditions help me in dealing with my life."

The Daily Reflections

Never.  Give.  Advice.  Nobody wants to hear my advice.  Even on the odd occasion when someone asks for my advice they still don't want my advice.  They may think they want my advice, they may believe they want my advice but they don't really want my advice.

"People will often not act the way you want them to, or the way you think they should.  They will not always agree with your ideas or your beliefs."

Toltec Proverb

Uh, yeah, no shit, Sherlock.  I don't need any ancient Toltec wisdom to remind me that most people don't recognize my wisdom and my intelligence and my ability to deftly handle all of life's little ups and downs.  Most people think they're doing just fine without my input.

"Do I remember that I have a right to my opinion but that others don't have to share it?  Am I still trying to change others? Do I remember that my opinions are mine, and yours are yours?  Do I remember that my opinions come from my experience?"

The Daily Reflections

Great.  Now Alcoholics Anonymous is piling on, reminding me that I'm not the All Powerful Wizard.

"Avoiding all conflict is impossible, so when conflicts arise, your job is to look within, see what is true for you in the moment, and find a way to honor your own beliefs while simultaneouosly respecting the choices and beliefs of others."

Toltec Proverb.  Another one.  

Almost as irritating as the first one today.

Fear

"Do I remember that I have a right to my opinion but that others don't have to share it?  Do I remember that my opinions are mine, and yours are yours?  Do I remember that my opinions come from my experience?"

From the Daily Reflections

One time, long ago, when I was working with a man who ended up being a long-time sponsor, and this incident was early in our relationship, I shared about a situation where my family was driving me bonkers and when I was done I asked him what he thought I should do.  He laughed and said: "Oh, no, you don't.  I'm not going to tell you what to do because I don't want to get blamed if it doesn't work out the way you want it to."  I understood at that point the idea was for him to ask probing questions - often questions that made me consider a situation from a novel viewpoint, one I hadn't been considering - to share his experience of how he might have behaved in a similar situation and how that worked out for him, to remind me of the importance of talking to other people - a lot of other people - to get their take on the matter, to probe their experience, strength, and hope, and finally to use our reference literature to see if I could find any pertinent wisdom there, and then to make the best decision I could at the time.  If things worked out to my satisfaction - fine, I could take full credit - and if they didn't work out how I wanted them to - fine, I could take full credit.  In both cases - success and failure - I would have learned a lesson by taking responsibility for my own actions, something I was loathe to do when shit blew up in my face.

"Your mind's first reaction is often to make an assumption of someone's meaning through your projection of their intention.  Every time you fall into a trap and react instead of respond, ask yourself, What am I afraid of?  Once you know this, you can look deeper to find out where the fear comes from."

Man, I'll tell you . . . the wisdom that comes from understanding that most of my problems and conflicts come from a place of fear is so universal as to be almost universal.  It is a Truth, I think.  The above passage was from the Toltecs who thrived when Europe was mired in the Dark Ages.  Here's what Alcoholics Anonymous has to say about the matter:

"All these failings generate fear, a soul-sickness in its own right.  Self-centered fear is the chief activator of our defects.  Sometimes we think fear should be classed with stealing.  It seems to cause more trouble."

I like that last sentence.  We'd be better off being a thief than being consumed with our own self-centered fears.  Think about that: you can go to prison for stealing so Bill and Bob were really emphasizing how destructive our fears are.

Big Book Stories

I'm reading through the stories section of The Big Book, Third Edition.  I haven't read them from start to finish in a long time.  I think the stories are most helpful to newer people.  The text of the first 164 pages can be somewhat confusing and abstruse but all of us find a story or two or even three that we can really relate to, one where we say: "Wow.  That sounds like me.  That's what I did."  We identify and don't feel so separate.  And this is one of the themes that arises over and over - this sense of apartness, that we were standing off to the side, all by ourselves, while everyone else had some kind of game plan or playbook that they used to figure out the rules to go through the day.

Other themes:

Leave me alone. Get outta my face, I'm not bothering anyone but myself.

A vague sense that we weren't doing ourselves any good.

The relief when we found a group of people that felt like we did, that we weren't a unique freak of nature.

The relief when we understood that we aren't all there is, that Something was bigger than we were, and the immense relief this provided when we saw that we didn't have to run the world any more.

Today's Posting!!!

Am I expressing unconditional love for others today?  Even irritating people?  And, God, there are so MANY irritating people!  Respect comes through my expression of unconditional love.  You are just perfect the way you are.

If I'm coming from a place of awareness then the right words are going to come out of my mouth.  I will make the right decisions.  I'll say the right thing.  I'll take the right action.  I won't even understand why I'm making a decision and it will be the right one!

Remember!  I'm only in control of my own words and my own actions and not for how others perceive my words and my actions.  I only have control over myself.  I was in the hot tub this morning explaining the Hula Hoop theory of peaceful living to an Earth Person.  He nodded slowly.  "You guys came up with that?" he asked.  Yes!  We came up with everything!  This was not Hot Tub Guy by the way.  I avoid that dude like he's radioactive.   He's perfect just the way he is but he can be perfect elsewhere.

Sometimes exiting a situation and not returning to the situation is the best option to avoid further conflict.  He may be perfect just the way he is but I'm sure not perfect and he irritates the hell out of me!  He's irritating as hell!!

If I respect everyone then I have a gambler's chance of coming from a place of unconditional love.  Hot Tub Guy. on the other hand, has no respect where I'm concerned so he is doubling down and really trying to subjugate me to his will.  I will not be subjugated!  I will stand tall and take long strides into the future!  Get outta my way, Hot Tub Guy!

Engaging further with Hot Tub Guy is not going to be helpful to either of us.

I should seek to love rather than be loved.

40,000,000,000

For some unexplained reason this knowledge that it's all going to go - all of it, including me, especially me - has been richocheting around the inside of my head like a deranged marble.  Maybe it's because that everything I read in the spiritual realm reminds me that there is no time like the present.  If I'm not in the present I got nuthin'.  The past is gone, the future is uncertain and may not ever come, so I better squat right where I am.  Again, I stress that I find this funny and not at all depressing.  It's sure helping me keep some balance as I maneuver my way through the vagaries of life.  What am I getting upset about?  What am I not doing that I think I should be doing and why do I give a shit?  As a childless human my legacy on this earth will be astonishingly short.  Do I think my name and reputation is going to be bandied about a year after I'm gone?  Five years?  Twenty years?  Do I think someone is going to bring up my name twenty years after I graduate to the Big Meeting in the Sky?  Ridiculous.  Preposterous.  Outrageous.

I asked ChatGPT how many people have lived since the year 1 A.D.  I was amused to see that I really taxed its abilities.  It did, however, come up with a guess-timate of 40 billion people.  That's 40,000,000,000 people.  I am a grain a sand on the beach.  I am a fragment of a grain a sand on the beach.  The fact that I'm consumed with my circumstances is hilarous.  It is hysterical, uproarious, ludicrous.  

Right here.

Right now.

Passing It On

"The only thing that matters is that he is an alcoholic who has found a key to sobriety.  These legacies of suffering and of recovery are easily passed among alcoholics, one to the other.  This is our gift from God, and its bestowal upon others like us is the one aim that today animates A.A.'s all around the globe."  12 & 12.

I've read the Books many, many times yet every now and then I'll come across something that I can't recall ever seeing before . . . .  

Another Fact of Existence is that things come and go.  Sometimes they go a little bit; sometimes they go and then come back; and sometimes they go forever.  To this day I have a tendency to hang on to the things I like, forgetting that all things are going to go eventually and seeing them off with a cheerful wave.  Change is constant.  The universe tends toward disorder.  I try to remain present so that I can take note of what is.

I'm planning to go to Antarctica.  For a guy who loathes cold weather this is a perplexing choice.  All I can say is that the beauty of our planet continues to astound me.  I also know that experiences that make me uncomfortable are great teachers.  I remember the uncomfortable experiences, the challenging experiences, in three-dimensional technicolor.

The Toltecs On A Sunday

"You are sure to encounter many situation that have the potential to hook your attention and knock you off-balance."

 

"When you  are faced with an important decision and you are unsure of which course of action to take, one thing that can help you is to focus on how you feel about the options presented instead of being consumed with the stories your narrators are spouting.  This is called 'listening with your heart instead of your head.' "

Yeah, I've never heard this before.  I can't always trust my head because my head is trying to play defense, to drive me to get more! more! more! but my heart is a gentle and kind soul.  It does not lead me astray very often.

"Anytime you feel a burst of anger, frustration, guilt, shame, or any number of other negative emotions, that's your cue to look within and see what is happening.  Whether your tendency is to be consumed with anger and rage or to sulk silently in the corner, the underlying cause of all of these emotional reactions is always fear . . . "

Isn't this right out of the Big Book?  It's fear.  It's always fear.  I can turn my fear outward in anger or I can turn my fear inward in depression but it still always comes back to fear.

"You are stuck, unable to move forward, until you look more deeply at whatever the emotion is trying to tell you."

I see in new people - and remember, after the fact, regrettably - how difficult it can be to dislodge the thought patterns that are lodged so deeply in our subconscious.  I spent years and years feeding and nuturing these thought patterns that, even when I began to see they were injurious, it was hard to rid myself of them.  Even though I was becoming aware that my reactions were not helpful, I still would respond in anger or depression anytime something set off one of these hidden and deeply entrenched characteristics.

"But there will always be those moments when you can't walk away, when you just have to deal with the person or situation at hand right then.  You can stay balanced much more easily if you find out why this person has the ability to provoke a reaction in you.  This is a very special gift they are offering you, and freedom awaits as soon as you can find out why that is.  The reason this person bothers you is based on a past experience rather than the current situation."

Balance:  Mental and emotional steadiness; habit of calm behavior, judgement, etc.; composure.

I've looked up the definition of balance so many times and I still can't always get my mind around the concept.  To be in the middle of.  To stay away from the ends of things where I so often tend to go.  Not too hot.  Not too cold.  Just right.  Not too hard.  Not too soft.  Just right.  I've pondered deeply the lesson that a great lesson is to ponder deeply why things that upset me upset me.  I find much of the time that I am not reacting to the person or the situation but to some facet of my personality that was installed in me long ago and which I have nurtured and fertilized for so long that it just doesn't want to come out.  I know that when SuperK is mad at me it's often because I'm exhibiting a behavior from someone vexatious in her past - often from the family relationships - that devalued and humiliated her.  If I can keep my  fucking mouth shut and say to myself: "Aha!  That was exactly something her alcoholic father said to her when she was a young girl."  And isn't the reminder that when I find a person vexatious I need to remember that I'm being given the opportunity to grow, to learn a lesson?  So annoying these opportunities to grow.  AFGO - Another Fucking Growth Opportunity.

My Hidden Engine

From the story entitled "Growing Up All Over Again" in the Big Book . . . 

"No one could live such an irresponsible, immature life as I had without consequences."  

I had to learn that actions have consequences.  It was an irritating lesson.  I make it a point to share the part of my story that details how my life continued to get worse for a while after I quit drinking.  I had spent many years planting explosives in hidden areas of my life and the fact that - sans alcohol - that I wasn't planting any new explosives was no help when I triggered an old explosive.  I had to become a sapper and clean out the old bombs before my life began an upward trajectory.

"Admitting that I am wrong or that I do not know is difficult for me."

SuperK often points out that I never admit that I'm wrong.  I often defend myself by saying that if I ever find myself in a situation where I am - in fact - wrong - I'll be the first to admit it.  This goes over about as well as you can imagine.  For most normal people this would be a clue to stop saying what I'm saying but my abnormality is well-established at this point.

When I was selling process control instrumentation to process control engineers - people who had four year college degrees in process control engineering - I tried to hide the fact that I've never seen the engine in my car and I am not making this up.  It's in the middle of the car.  I know it's there because the car goes places after I turn it on and it makes a lot of noise when I accelerate but it's under a cowling of some kind that I'm afraid to remove because there's nothing in there that I need to see, really, and one of my fundamental rules of life is Don't Take Something Apart that You Might Not Know How to Put Back Together, a rule that has served me well.  I'm afraid to walk into Lowe's or Home Depot because I think a security guard would corner me and say something like: "I'm sorry, sir, but we're going to have to ask you to leave the premises."  It's clear to everyone that I have no idea what most of the stuff in there is used for.  What?  Do I look like I'm shopping for a router?  I look like a potential lawsuit.  "Clueless man hurt trying to turn off the router he mistakenly turned on."

Where was I . . . . ? My tendency when I was newly sober was to try to hide my ignorance if I was asked a question that I could not answer.  I avoided lying as much as possible but I noticed I would remain silent or direct the conversation elsewhere.  Then I discovered this simple but magical line: "I don't know but I can find out for you."  The response to this statement was almost always magical as well.  People were very happy to be talking to someone who admitted that he didn't know the answer to something.  A few times there was some manifest frustration but I would just say: "If you have a minute I can call our engineering department and get the answer for you right now."  That usually shut them the fuck up.  Seriously, though, nobody knows everything and everybody loathes those of us who pretend that we do and then proceed to make some situation worse.  It is important to note that when I learned something new I tried to . . . you know . . . remember it so that as my career progressed I was stumped with less regularity.  That, at least, accrues to my credit.

Transient Seaweed

Transient:  Lasting only for a short time; impermanent.

During my recent trip back to the Midwest where I saw old high school friends and old friends from my time in Alcoholics Anonymous one of the more profound realizations/reminders that I saw was that life really is transitory.  So much has changed in the ten short years since I've been back.  And as I grow older I can see that there is an endpoint to all of this nonsense.  And I say this cheerfully.  That nothing is forever, that it all comes and goes, that I'm here right now but not forever.  This has not been depressing at all.  It has been . . .  calming in a way, reassuring, grounding.  So some guy doesn't use his turn signal in front of me and I'm going to lose my shit?  Really?  Seriously?  I'm going to be dead sooner rather than later and I'm going to seethe over some perceived slight which is probably just a mistake?

Shallow and Fairly Obvious Advice

I'm still interacting with this new guy, the one who asked me to be his sponsor.  Always suspicious of new guys so my technique is to immediately assign a writing task which very people do and he proved no exception.  I say this in a bemused fashion, not meaning to be critical.  I did not understand the concept of "work" when I was getting sober; as in, "work The Steps."  I wanted results that were clearly going to require work without actually doing any work.  As you may recall I consider myself a taker and not a giver.  Anyway, I am in contact with this guy in a way that he seems to feel is helpful and I seem to feel is low-intensity bullshit but . . . hey . . . help is what someone wants and not what I want to give.

As I have been passing along my shallow and fairly obvious wisdom I continue to be struck by the realization that sometimes we just have to make a decision even if that fucking intuitive thought doesn't present itself.  Sometimes I have to just walk into the dark and trust that everything is going to be okay.

Those Goddam Toltecs Again

Some things I've found interesting in my perusal of the ins and outs of the spirituality practiced by the Toltecs . . . 

The word "resentment" is French in origin and it literally means "to feel again."  There are so many great analogies tossed around in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous but one I really like is that a resentment is like taking poison and hoping that your enemy?  opponent?  average person who is pissing you off for the most trivial and stupid reasons? dies.

And the Toltec aphorism in slightly different words: "This is what resentment is: self-inflicted suffering with emotional poison we wish for another."  I think about the many low-level discussions I've had in my mind with Hot Tub Guy who - and I can guarantee the accuracy of the following statement - has never once, not ever, thought about me for one minute.  I'm taking the poison.  I'm the idiot taking the poison even though he's the real idiot.

"You also need to forgive yourself - you were doing the best you could at the time; there is no need to beat yourself up."  I like to apply this principle to people who have had a significant effect on my life.  I take great comfort in migrating from the idea that my parents didn't give me what I needed to the one that they were doing the best they could with the tools that they had and while - I may add - dealing with a nightmare of a difficult, depressed, defiant teenager.  In that light they did a pretty good goddam job.

"Don't subjugate yourself with 'I have to.' "  Man, the time I spend criticizing what I have left undone would fill up the Panama Canal.  It's never enough with me.  Never.  Enough.

"Nothing anyone does is because of you.  It's never personal, even if someone intends it to be so, as you are simply standing in the target zone."  Or in A.A. speak: No one is thinking about me.  I spend all day thinking about myself and not one goddam minute thinking about you yet I continue to live in the fantasy that everyone else is always thinking about me.  Goddam I'm an idiot.

"If you have clouded your Personal Dream with resentment, the first step to changing this is to become aware of it."  How much of my life was spent pre-recovery seething at all the slights and sins and arrows and darts shot my way while protesting that nothing was bothering me.  

EVERYTHING was bothering me!  You're bothering me right now!  Stop what you're doing IMMEDIATELY and quit bothering me!

The Nature of Existence

I've been talking to a new guy who is making his way through a whole pile of whoop-ass chaos.  It is unnecessary to say that much of it is of his own doing.  Some of it is acute and can be traced directly to an action he has taken or to one that was left undone.  And some of it is the result of the slow, diseased, malignant creep of a life geared totally to self-interest.  When I'm doing what I want and thinking about myself constantly the result is a slow drip, drip, drip that degrades my relationships and whittles away at my soul.

The decision that was immediate required him to choose between staying in SoCal or leaving for a while? for good? to return to the Midwest and care for his elderly parents.  I, of course, have no idea what he should do and I made this clear to him.  What I can say is that much of the time when I sit quietly with a decision, talk to some people, do some reading and writing, then the answer slowly materializes out of the miasma and murk that constitutes my thinking.  But sometimes not.  Sometimes the choice is not, in fact, clear.  I told my friend that this may be one of those cases where he is just going to have to make a decision and then wait for events to play out before he knows if it was helpful to himself and to others.  Because he has done all of the necessary legwork to prepare for the decision then he is going to make the "right" one.  It may not be helpful.  It may be painful.  It may backfire and blow up in his fucking face.  We don't get to perceive the future with perfect clarity.

I really love the concept of the Nature of Existence.  It helps me to relax when I grapple with the fact of pain and suffering and the unknown.  This is how things are.  This is how the universe operates.  Why?  Beats the hell outta me.

What I Say and What You Hear

So I have to ask myself all the time if my love and acceptance of the person in front of me is somehow contingent upon them agreeing with me or doing what I want them to do.  I have a tendency to subujate others so that I can establish my vision of peace and harmony.  I have a tendency to think that my way is the right way so why would you do it any differently?  This is absurd.  I cannot expect anyone else to do something that is against their will?

"What really matters is my intention.  When I come from a place of unconditional love, I can have the confidence that whatever action I take is the right one, and the outcome of any situation is beyond my control.  I do the best I can and I release my attachment to the outcome. and that's all the space I control.  Your opinion of me is none of my business.

"I am responsible for what I say, but I am not responsible for what you hear."

Toltec Proverb

Each morning I pray that I be shown how I can be of service to someone else.  I pray that I seek to love rather than be loved; comfort rather than be comforted; and understand rather than be understood.

"What really matters is my intention.  When I come from a place of unconditional love, I can have the confidence that whatever action I take is the right one, and the outcome of any situation is beyond my control.  I do the best I can and I release my attachment to the outcome."

Michael Ruiz

Different But the Same

I have been slowly and mindfully reading the stories portion of The Big Book again.  When I was trying to get sober I was much more reassured by the stories than I was from the first 164 pages where the nuts and bolts of The Program are laid out  in detail.  That stuff was, by and large, over my head and beyond my ability to comprehend.  As I read the stories I'm struck by the fact that although the details of the lives and drinking careers of the members vary tremendously - from gutter row drunks to titled aristocrats from England, men and women, oldsters and youngsters - there are threads that appear over and over.  The one that is jumping out at me this time is the idea that we feel different, estranged from Earth People somehow.  I share the fact that most of the time what alcohol did for me is that it made me feel normal. Especially at the end it was no longer fun but rather a coping mechanism.  I felt like I was peering at the world through a cloudy, smoking piece of glass or that it was misting heavily or that a dense fog was swirling around me.  Whatever toolbox or guidebook that was informing these Earth People was not included in my lexicon.  I'd think: "What the fuck, that was a great idea!  Why didn't I think of that?"  They were moving around indistinctly.

One of my eternal conflicts with SuperK - not a conflict, really, but more of an ironic discussion - is that I draw a distinction between being weird and acting weird.  As if that makes my behavior acceptable.  She thinks that my drawing such a distinction is the definition of weird.  I dunno anymore.  I don't often fit in and I don't care.  I don't like people as I've pointed out innumerable times so why would I try to behave in a way that enables me to slide right into whatever dull and shallow world that they live in?

It is so peaceful being who you're supposed to be.

That Damn Tenth Step Again

"Continue to watch for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear.  When these crop  up, we ask God at once to remove them.  We discuss them with someone immediately and make amends quickly if we have harmed anyone.  Then we resolutely turn our thoughts  to someone we can help."

"When we speak or act hastily or rashly, the ability to  be fair-minded and tolerant evaporates on the spot."

"Our first objective will be the development of self-restraint."   

"And when we were wrong promptly admitted it."

"It is a spiritual axiom that every time we are disturbed, no matter what the cause, there is  something wrong with us."

As this is the Tenth Month our Daily Reflections collection is basing the readings on our Tenth Step: "Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it." 

 

I definitely like the reminder that we "continue" to take personal inventory.  Most of us are so relieved and full of our selves about the progress we're making that after we complete our Fourth and Fifth Steps we think there's nothing left to do.  Not so fast, buster.

 

I like the reminder that this is a "personal" inventory.  We have quit inspecting and correcting the defects of others, no matter how glaring and obvious they are.  The phrasing is definitely not "continue to take your inventory," no matter how delicious a prospect that is.

I like that the Step says "when" we were wrong.  It definitely does not say "if" we are wrong.  It assures us that we have been wrong, we will be wrong, and we're probably doing something wrong right now.

I like that we're asked to be "prompt" in our admission of our faults.  Now.  Not later

Lying Liars Return

The most efficient way for me to let people get inside my head and bang around in there is for me to give them permission to do so.  I try to avoid the trap of letting other people's opinions of me - good or bad, right or wrong, true or false - define who I am.  I guard against mislabeling these opinions as facts.  This is particularly troublesome when I was young and some older person, some person in authority with control over parts of my life, repeats the same warnings or criticisms over and over, in a stern and serious voice.

"There is nothing so absurd that if you repeat it often enough, people will believe it."

William James

I hold myself responsible only for the clarity and truth and integrity of what I say and not for what others hear and feel because I don't control the perceptions of others.  I have to remember that beliefs don't exist out there in the world; they exist only in my own mind and only as long as I continue to believe them.  Damn, though, some of them are really firmly lodged in there.  They have become part of my identity and sometimes I'm not ready to let them go.  I think of my studied intolerance of other people - which must feed some twisted and warped sense of superiority - and my perfectionism - which drives me to unrealistic expectations of myself and can lead me to always feel that what I've done or accomplished is not enough.

"If you repeat a lie often enough, people will come to believe it, and you will come to believe it yourself."

Joseph Goebbels

Liar!

One of the meeting riffs yesterday was about lying.  There are so many great quotes and quips about lying.  One of my favorites, oft-repeated, is from my hero Homer Simpson: "I HATE being called a liar unless I've just told a lie or I'm about to tell a lie or I'm currently lying."

A new one that came up was "If you tell the truth then you never have to remember what you've said."  Brilliant!  One of my favorite schticks, oft-repeated, is that I have no real moral objection to lying: I'm a naturally good liar, I have many years of practice in the art of lying, and it can get me out of and through a lot of sticky situations.  The reason I no longer lie . . . or try not to lie so much . . . is that I hate getting caught in a lie.  Very embarrassing!  Plus, lying is truly exhausting.  When I was drinking I had the Main Lie and then I had to construct this elaborate structure of supporting, side lies to bolster the effectiveness of the Main Lie.  I told so many lies for so long that I became confused as to what was true and what was illusion.  It was exhausting!  And one of my favorite and most insidious traps is to remember that I'm not telling the truth just because I choose my words carefully so that - while I technically don't say any lying words - the person to whom I'm lying believes something that isn't true.  Liar!

In the funny way that meetings work the nice woman who lead the meeting and brought up the topic did not, I believe, mean for this to be what the members were going to focus on.  It was probably something she needed to hear.

Let me conclude with a perspicacious quote from another one of my heroes, the Master Liar George Costanza:  "Remember.  It's not a lie if you believe it."

The Magic of Giving

One of my favorite phrases from the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous is "The gift of desperation."  How great is that concept?  It reminds me that I can and must and often find the greatest gifts in my life have come from some of the darkest places.  It reminds me that if I'm always pursuing pleasure and running to escape pain then I'm going to miss a lot of important stuff.

From one of the Big Book stories: "I wish I could tell you  how and why A.A. works, but I don't know.  I only know that it does.  I think that no one comes to A.A. until he's tried everything else.  I lived a life where I couldn't enjoy anything.  I was scared to death.  And as long as alcohol eased situations socially, it helped just fine, but somewhere along the line it backfired."

Backfire is a great word.  It's when an internal combustion engine undergoes a mistimed explosion in the cylinder or exhaust.  A "mistimed explosion."  If I ever write a story for the Big Book I'm going to title it "A Mistimed Explosion."  Today, of course, it has come to mean when a plan or action rebounds adversely on the originator, having the opposite effect of what was intended.  Maybe I could write a second story and call it "Adversely Rebounding Actions."

Yesterday at my coffee shop I asked the youngster behind me what she was planning to order.  I do this to ensure that the patron isn't going to get some huge, overpriced specialty coffee drink that is going to set me back $28.99.  She was pleased and a little embarrassed (and did not refuse the offer which always kind of irritates me because I'd rather hoard my cash to fund my own huge, overpriced specialty coffee drinks) and scuttled off to the area reserved for people waiting for their drinks.  A bit later she came over and told me she was from Turkey and her face lit up when I told her that SuperK and I had recently visited Turkey and absolutely loved it.  She scuttled away and I went outside to hand my wife the hugely expensive slice of coffee cake I had purchased, hoping she wouldn't eat any of it while being pretty sure she would claim her half.  I always have to fight back the urge to stuff the whole thing in my mouth - eating all of it myself because I love coffee cake! - but the crumbs clinging to my lips would give me away.   When I strolled back into  the shop little Miss Turkey came over, asked if I had any dietary restrictions, then opened a container she was carrying, revealing a Turkish specialty treat she had made to share with her fellow employees at the clothing shop where she works, and told me to dig one out.  I pointed out SuperK and told her to head out to our table.  She called SuperK "Krees" which tickled my spouse no end.  She told us where she worked and we said we were going to stop by later for lunch and she said "great" (I often forget that in many cultures the sharing of food is paramount and an example of hospitality) and the whole thing was just magical.  It reminds me that the magic is in the little things.  It reminds me I fall short when I try to inflate myself in the eyes of the world.  

It was the highlight of my day and nothing else was even close.

Toltec V A.A. - You Make the Call!

"Unconditional love is recognizing the divinity in every human being we meet, regardless of his or her role in life or agreement with our particular way of thinking."  Toltec Proverb

Or in A.A. speak: "God, I pray that I seek to love rather than be loved; to understand rather than be understood; and to comfort rather than to be comforted."

It's all the same stuff.  The Toltecs flourished in Central Mexico around 1000 A.D., preceding the Aztecs.  Alcoholics Anonymous . . . well . . .  we're not quite that old but we're still flourishing.

"Every form of attachment starts with 'If this happens, then I will be happy and feel love' and 'If this does not happen, then I will suffer."  Toltec Proverb

"Until now, our lives have been largely devoted to running from pain and problems.  We fled from them as from a plague.  We never wanted to deal with the fact of suffering."  Step Seven in the 12 & 12.

I like how we try to differentiate between pain - which is inevitable - and suffering - which occurs when we try to get away from pain . . . which we absolutely cannot do all of the time.  Trust me - it has been tried and it cannot be done.  It's a part of existence whether we like it or not.

"Consequently the moment you start trying to control others is the same moment you place conditions on your love and acceptance of them.  We will look at the practice of having unconditional love for ourselves first and foremost, as you cannot give to others when you don't have for yourself."  Toltec Wisdom

"Either we tried to play God and dominate those about us, or we had insisted in being overdependent on them."  Step Twelve in the 12 & 12

If you're bored try this: look up the word "control" in the Alcoholics Anonymous literature.  It's in there a lot.  A lot.  "He has lost control."  "We know that no real alcoholic ever recovers control."  "As we redouble our efforts at control, and continue to fail, our suffering becomes acute and constant."  (I like this - acute and constant suffering.  Boy, that brings me back to the Dark Times.)  "The idea that somehow, someday, he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker."  (I like the phrase "abnormal drinker."  I like the reference to an obsession - a persistent disturbing preoccupation with an often unreasonable idea.)

You Can't Go Home Again

I'm just back from a longer than normal visit to my childhood home town and one where I spent most of the first twenty years of my sobriety.  I've been gone for fifteen years which is not that long unless you're in your late sixties; a time when people start . . . you know . . . dying off or moving away or no longer attending Alcoholics Anonymous meetings and I mean that last part in a positive way - men and women who have been sober a long time and are getting older don't have the need or - frankly - the energy to make it to as many meetings as they used to.  And A.A. is a fluid society.  The make-up and composition of meetings changes often.  If you go back to a meeting you attended years ago don't be surprised if you don't see many people that you knew back then and don't be stunned if you don't recognize anyone or even if you recognize someone and they don't recognize you.  One guy I know had throat cancer and was indecipherable trying to talk through a trach tube and another was gasping for air courtesy of COPD.  This is how it goes.   This is the nature of things.  We're all just passing through and the length of the trip is not certain.  I include in my morning gratitude list thanks for good health.  It's a big get.

The purpose of the trip was ostensibly to attend a ceremony for an old high school friend who was being recognized for a long history of community service.  And it was the fiftieth anniversary of my high school reunion which is pretty cool and honestly a little terrifying.  My class was small  - fifty souls - and fifteen showed up and ten are dead so that's a fifty percent engagement which is pretty good, if you think about it.  There were some amazing personal interactions, some unexpected, with both my A.A. community and my high school class.  I heard a few anecdotes about me that I barely remembered from people I barely remember talking to.  There were some surprisingly powerful encounters, people glad to see me and vice versa, and not always for reasons that were clear to me.  It made me think about the fact that how we affect people can be opaque in the moment, only clear with the  passing of time.  One A.A. guy was at the point of tears, hugging me more than once.  Had no idea this was going to be a thing.  Did not remember any personal interactions with him but something I did or said, some way that I carried myself must have made an impression.  A high school friend pulled me aside and told me that he didn't have that many close friends but that I was one of them.  He was emotional saying this.  Another guy that I barely knew in high school said: "Man, I saw Seaweed was here.  I gotta go talk to Seaweed."  Would not have predicted that.  At.  All.

The city itself had changed quite a bit and I have no idea why this was so unexpected.  Buildings have sprung up or been torn down, retail areas I used to frequent have undergone a complet transition, traffic is worser and worser and the sprawl of a big Midwestern town continues apace.  People were very nice but in a different way than here in Southern California - more friendly in the moment but also a lot more guarded, more reserved.  It's easy to fit in quickly here because so many people are transplants but then that sense of place and time is harder to find.  It was the first trip were I felt like a visitor instead of a local who has been gone for a little while.  It didn't feel like "home" although it's the place I'll always call home.  "I'm going home," I told people prior to my flight.

Guilt, Rewards, and Threats

I am intrigued by the concept that as we grow up our personality is forced into a semi-permanent mold by a combination of nature and nurture.  I do think we all have some internal wiring that is going to determine how we behave.  More or less.  Not that we can't change these behaviors but if you're outgoing then you're outgoing and no amount of Step work or counseling is going to change that.  You can learn to shut your mouth from time to time when you want to talk but you're not going to transmogrify into an introvert.  And then we're raised in a certain way - sometimes it's a wonderful experience, sometimes it's a disaster, more often than not it's a combination of the two.  Lots of us bitch about our parents and our childhood circumstances but admit grudgingly, cursing under our breath, that it wasn't as bad as we're making it out to be so it's time to quit complaining about it already.  Nothing worse than a thirty year old bitching about their parents.  Nonetheless, there's a tendency for well-meaning parents to socialize their children with a combination of guilt and reward.  "Finish your breakfast so you can grow up big and strong like Superman"  (Reward.)  "Finish your breakfast or you're not getting any dessert tonight." (Threat.)  "Finish your breakfast.  Don't you know there are starving children who aren't getting enough to eat today?"  (Guilt and Shaming.)  Maybe the child is full, did you ever think about that?  If he/she complies there's a reward!  If he/she doesn't, there's punishment of some kind!  So the tendency is to sort our decisions out on the Reward - Threat - Guilt paradigm.

A couple of lines from The Big Book that caught my eye today . .  . 

"The last two years of my drinking my personality changed to a cynical, intolerant and arrogant person completely different from my normal self."  There's a reference somewhere about the Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde syndrome.  Normal drinkers lose some inhibitions.   Alcoholics lose themselves.

"There comes a time when you don't want to live and are afraid to die.  By now it had become difficult to visualize a life without alcohol."  This is the Jumping Off Point where the alcohol no longer has the ability to soothe the tortured mind but the alcoholic can't imagine not drinking.  Really, really awful, is this realization.

"He cannot imagine life without alcohol.  Some day he will be unable to imagine life either with alcohol or without it.  Then he will know loneliness such as few do.  He will be at the jumping-off place.  He will be at the end."

I love the phrase "jumping-off place."  We walk on our journey until we get to the cliff at the end of the trail.  We can recover . . . or we can jump.

Everybody Knew

This caught my eye in The Big Book . . . 

" I continue to be surprised by people I meet who say, 'You haven't had a drink in a long time, have you?'  The surprise to me is the fact that I didn't know that they knew my drinking had gotten out of control  That is where we are really fooled.  We think we can drink to excess without anyone knowing it.  Everyone knows it."  This section contained the phrase "drink planning."  Everybody knows it.  My well-used quip is that when I began the face to face amends process no one argued with me.  Not one person.  Nobody said: "Get outta here."  The responses were more along the line of "Thank God you're finally getting some help."  Remember having to calculate how we could drink as much as we wanted while navigating any social, personal, or business obligations we had?  No sense in going if I couldn't drink enough.  The hotel rooms with a sink fall of beer cooling on ice so that I could show up well-lubricated.  This story remarked that this guy's wife could never understand how he got so drunk on just one cocktail.

Odds and Ends from the Toltecs . . . 

"It may seem counterintuitive but you choose to let go in order to be in control.  Self-mastery is not an isolated idea within the Toltec tradition, as every form of spiritual discipline provides a map to help us live in harmony by freeing us from the tyranny of our own thinking and being affected by the projections of others.  Knowing that others see you in a specific way gives you choices when you engage with them.  Your awareness of that allows you to stay true to yourself and not give in to the temptation to take on others' definition of who you are."

Letting go.  Hmmm . . . where have I heard that before?  Not letting myself be defined or controlled by what others think . . . or To Thine Own Self Be True.   Hmmm .  .  .  sounds kind of familiar, too.

SinCity

This year is my 50th high school reunion - a statement that is as depressing as hell if I think about it.  Thankfully, I know how old I am so I'm not up or down about it.  One of my oldest and dearest classmates is going to receive an award for his public service and I decided to make a last minute trip to go back.  (A humorous side note - a mutual friend nominated Andy for this award and when he contacted me to explain the mechanics of the ceremony my first thought was: "Omigod - he nominated me and I won."  Ego dies hard.)  It has made me consider deeply the difference between old, old, dear friends and the close friends I've made over the years in Alcoholics Anonymous.  There are dudes I've known for fifty plus years - dudes I talk to every few years - and dudes I've known for twenty years in A.A. - dudes I'm in contact with regularly, on a deep and personal level, who walked with me hand in hand through some of the darkest times in my life and shared some of my most shining successes, who I saw a few times a week for years and years.  As opposed to my high school friends with whom I speak - or more likely, text - every few years.

Enter the trip.  The last time I went back to sincity I was only in touch with my A.A. friends and a couple of guys from high school who were also in town.  I didn't even bother to get in touch with my only sibling, a sister with whom I'm not now or have ever been close.  We get along well and love each other but she just isn't part of my life.  Plus, I can't stand her husband and he can't stand me so there's that.  The trip is long and expensive.  I've decided to do whatever I want.  I can't get to everyone and I decline to participate when I'm being slotted into whatever activities and interests that occupy the locals on a day to day basis, fully and ironically aware that if I were to suggest something that I want to do that the offer would float like a lead balloon.  

I'm saying this stuff to hear myself say it.  I'm secure in my behavior and ready to play defense if I'm pressured to stop by at this time or meet this grandkid or go to this restaurant.  The challenge for me is - if the situation develops - to decline in a kind and loving manner without taking any shit from anyone.  If someone hasn't bothered to reach out to me for five years then I feel no obligation to spend an afternoon with their grandkids - wait . . . you have kids? . . . and they're married? . . . and they have kids?  Seriously, that's about where things stand with some of these guys.  It's okay and fine.  Everyone is living their own lives and consumed with careers and raising children.  I get it.  But that focus relieves me of the obligation to do what you want me to do if I don't want to do it.  I realize this sounds self-absorbed.  I want to be kind and obliging to everyone.  I'm also making a long and expensive trip to my childhood home and want to spend some time strolling old neighborhoods and reflecting on my life there and wondering where I'm heading in the near future.