Inventory and the Fifth Step and Instincts Gone Astray

Rampage:  Rush around in a violent and uncontrollable manner; a state of violent anger or agitation.

Balk:  Hesitate or be unwilling to accept an idea or undertaking. 

Instincts on rampage balk at investigation.

Ceaselessly: Continuously and without end.

These fears are the termites that ceaselessly devour the foundation of whatever sort of life we try to build. . . .

I had a friend in sincity who loved the use of the wood-devouring insect termite as a metaphor - or is it a simile? - for his mind. I'd catch him on the phone and inquire after his mental health. Sometimes he'd just say: "Termites" and we'd both laugh at the image of a horde of negative thoughts eating away at his serenity. Unseen, unbidden, destroying from within without leaving any visible signs of destructions.

We should be sensible, tactful, considerate, and humble without being servile or scraping.  As God’s people we stand on our feet; we don’t crawl before anyone.

We spend a great deal of time trying to reinforce the idea that we need to make amends; that we need to make amends without any qualifiers, with no "buts;" and that the reaction of the amendee is none of our business. We are sweeping our side of the street. Many if not most of the amendees have our best interests at heart and are thrilled to hear that we're trying to get some help while remaining understandably suspicious. We've said we're sorry and that we won't do it again so many times and then promptly doing it again that most other people are a tad wary of our lying bullshit. That being said the sincere apology for past behavior is the amend. We may need to apologize more than once as we practice being actually sincere and to assure the amendee that we are indeed sincere but then it's enough already. We don't beg for forgiveness. We don't apologize forever. We don't listen to an airing of the grievances over and over and over. We are no longer pieces of garbage living in the garbage dump. We're fuck-ups, sure, but we're trying to fuck up with less frequency so having another person - to whom we've apologized - rehash our behavior forever is not going to cut it. We're looking forward with optimism and confidence and listening to someone detail our mistakes repeatedly is a hindrance and not a help.

Bankrupt Idealists

". . . most alcoholics are bankrupt idealists."

Idealist:  A person who is guided more by ideals than practical considerations.

Idealism:  The practice of pursuing ideals, especially unrealistically.

This is a great fragment of a great passage from The Big Book.  This was me.  Shooting for the stars while not taking care of the mundane aspects of living.  Wanting to bring peace and serenity to all of mankind while cutting someone off on the highway or ignoring the young person making my coffee.  Idealism is great.  I still shoot for the stars but I don't forget to take a shower at the end of the day.

"It's none of our business about your drinking.  We're not up here trying to take any of your rights or privileges away from you.  Now, if you don't want it, we'll not take up your time, and we'll be going and looking for someone else."

One of the greatest realizations for me in my A.A. recovery life is that nobody has an agenda as far as I'm concerned.  Nobody is telling me what to do.  Nobody is criticizing me.  People tell me how they behave and I can decide all by myself how I want to behave.  I relaxed almost immediately when I found out that I get to do what I want as long as it doesn't affect anyone else negatively.  I was free to find my own path.

A few hundred pages into one of the spiritual books I'm reading - a hundred pages of detailed, in-depth instructions and suggestions about how to enlarge one's life using meditation and centering techniques - I came upon a chapter discussing the value of psychotherapy, how valuable it came be, how necessary it is for a lot of us, how important it can be to have a trained medical professional help us clear up some of the wreckage of our past.  There's a sentence or two somewhere in the literature about the fact that professionals - medical, religious, social - can be of tremendous help.  Some of us have suffered in the past from circumstances out of our control that require more help than prayer and meditation can offer.  I always tell new people that if you fall down and break your arm you really should go to the hospital instead of finding an A.A. meeting and working on your acceptance skills.  First things first.  I need to be reminded from time to time that A.A. can't solve all my challenges nor does it want to or suggest that it can.

Exaggerated Self-Esteem

Pride: Most of the definitions of pride mention "reasonable self-esteem" but there are secondary definitions that characterize pride as "exaggerated self-esteem." There's an old joke about an elephant being a mouse built to an alcoholic's specification . . .

For pride, leading to self-justification and always spurred by conscious or unconscious fears, is the basic breeder of most human difficulties, the chief block to true progress.

Self-justification: When individuals rationalize their actions, beliefs, or feelings to maintain a positive self-image, even when those actions contradict their values or beliefs.

Boy, that's a doozy of a definition. Boy, that sounds like me when I was running and gunning, vaguely aware that what I was doing was none too smart but doing it anyway. "I'm on LSD and I've downed a twelve pack . . . but I'm good to drive!" This was usually spoken with bright optimism.

Being convinced that self, manifested in various ways, was what had defeated us . . . 

Pride slips in to justify our excesses.

The Bible defines pride as something a lot more sinister: an excessive and sinful self-regard, often characterized by arrogance, haughtiness, and a rejection of authority. It implies that pride is self-worship. It's one thing to be proud of an accomplishment and another altogether to refuse to admit to any faults or poor behavior because I think I'm better than you so I must be doing a lot.

My perception is that a lot of my personal spiritual growth has revolved around an expanding awareness of self. I was too aware of my own self pre-recovery - which is bad enough in and of itself - but my awareness was jacked. It was an illusion, a hallucination, a wraith. I don't know who's self I was aware of but it wasn't mine because the self I was reviewing was not acting the way I was acting. I was imagining a self that wasn't my own self and if you had showed me a video of that non-existent self I would have thought "What an asshole." That's where pride steps in! Exaggerated self-esteem! What's the matter with that? Who's got a problem with that? THAT'S the asshole, not me.

The Big Book Speaketh

 Self-righteousness, the very thing we had contemptuously condemned in others, became our own besetting evil.  This phony form of respectability . . . 

Self-righteous: Characterized by a certainty, especially an unfounded one, that one is totally correct or morally superior.

After the leveling blow that definition delivered to my head I'm going to have to spend some serious time getting up off the carpet. And I love the addition of "phony" to the definition.

Phony: Represented as real but actually false; intended to deceive.

I'm going to have to stop looking up these definitions or I'm going to end up in the hospital. The brilliance, the touch, it's so amazing that many of us use the phrase "divinely inspired." I don't know about the divinely part but there does seem to be a touch of the otherworldly in the text.

As psychiatrists have often observed, defiance is the outstanding characteristic of many an alcoholic. 

Defiant: Showing a disposition to challenge, resist, or fight; proudly refusing to obey authority.

Ever wonder why we have no leader in our meetings who can compel anyone to do anything beyond following standard social niceties like not peeing on the floor or playing rap music loudly on a boom box while someone else is talking? No one comes in to The Rooms eager to listen. We come in eager to shoot holes in anything anyone says that we don't like, which is pretty much everything. We don't do what any member says until we've tried - and failed at! - absolutely everything else there is to try.

Selfishness - self-centeredness!  That, we think, is the root of our troubles.

Self-centered: Preoccupied with oneself and one's affairs; to be self-centered is to believe that everything is about you without giving due consideration and attention to others.

Yeah, there aren't any self-centered people in Alcoholics Anonymous. Not a one.

Who's The Wise Teacher?

"A wise teacher calls forth the strength and wisdom of the student.  When we are supported in this way we realize how much of spiritual life is our growing ability to give.  In this spiritual life, what finally makes us happy is not what we get, but what we can give, what we can give to a community and what we give or ourselves."

Boy, the more I explore and expand my spiritual program the more I believe that everything can be distilled down into smaller and smaller bits and pieces.  What am I learning?  That it's all about making the most of the moment I'm in, that living in the future or the past is a useless exercise.  That the more I think about myself the more miserable I am, that the act of giving, selfless giving is deeply satisfying.  That I should seek to love rather than be loved, comfort rather than be comforted, and - maybe most importantly - understand rather than be understood.  So if I'm living in the moment, thinking of others and what I can bring to them instead of what I can take from them, then I'm doing pretty good.

Now, I just need to stop thinking that I'M the wise teacher.

Be Present

The whole point is to be present.  This is the goal in its entirety.  This is all I really need to focus on.  Good or bad, pleasant or painful, be present.

From my Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield I often see the parallels between a spiritual practice and recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous:  "With commitment we bring our full energy to follow a path and its discipline, such as prayer, through its inevitable difficulties and confusions.  In it we learn to trust The Fellowship, its principles, and ourselves in deeper and deeper ways.  We are asked over and over, to persist in its development, to stay with it, to give ourselves to it, to bring our full heart and energy to the practice.  The Dalai Lama says we can best tell if our practice is working by looking at its results after five, ten, or twenty years."

Now THAT'S commitment to the cause.  Risking the possibility that after twenty years something isn't working.

I mention often that I'm a terrible athlete.  I found that I was more successful in sports when I was simply in better shape than you were.  I didn't have to be more talented physically if I could outrun you.  After ten years of inactivity and a whole shit ton of Winston 100s and bags of weed I decided I'd start to run again.  I made it about a hundred yards before I began to believe I'd swallowed a package of razor blades.  My lungs were pretty much shredded.  The fact that I continued to run and eventually got to the point where I could run longer distances and more effortlessly at that was a testament to my faith that I could reverse some of the pulmonary damage I'd done over the last decade.  This is like A.A.  I tell new people that it really can be effective.  It really does work for a lot of people.  It's rarely a quick process and this is so frustrating that many - or even most - of us fall by the wayside before we get to a place of peace and contentment.

Street Sweeping Seaweed

Some will object to many of the questions posed, because they think their own character defects have not been so glaring.  To these it can be suggested that a conscientious examination is likely to reveal the very defects the objectionable questions are concerned with.

I did not/do not/will not ever enjoy taking a good, long, honest look at my own behavior and my own motivations because I'm afraid of what I might find there. Nobody likes to admit their faults. No alcoholic, especially. We've behaved badly much of the time and have found it easier to just pretend we haven't. And when I find another person to be foul and distasteful one of these close examinations inevitably shows me that I possess some of the selfsame defects that are so revolting when I perceive them elsewhere.

We are there to sweep off our side of the street realizing that nothing worthwhile can be accomplished until we do so, never trying to tell him what he should do.  His faults are not discussed.  We stick to our own.  We have made our demonstration, done our part.

It's SO much easier to blame someone else and it's so SO much easier to dig at the weak spots in their character and behavior. I can spot a fault in another person at a thousand yards, at night, in a driving snowstorm, with my eyes closed, more easily than I can perceive them in myself. We're taught to admit where we're wrong, apologize for the slight or insult, and then to start behaving better. Saying I'm sorry is a poor beginning if I continue to act like a dick. "His faults are not discussed." Try to wiggle out of that one with some clever rhetoric. "We stick to our own." There is no nuance there. We look at ourselves and leave the other person clean out of it.

Giving Freely? What? WTF?

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.  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.

Practically every A.A. member declares that no satisfaction has been deeper and no joy greater than in a Twelfth Step job well done.  "Freely ye have received; freely give . . . "

We would have to develop the sense of being in partnership or brotherhood with all those around us.  We saw that we would need to give constantly of ourselves without demand for repayment.

A kindly act once in a while isn't enough. You have to act the Good Samaritan every day, if need be.

So this idea that selfless behavior is its own reward is sprinkled through the literature of Alcoholics Anonymous. It's the basis of Step Twelve. It's the foundation of most of the world's philosophies and religions. My bad joke is to ask people if they want to have a good day and then suggest that they go somewhere quiet and think about themselves. It's a wonder that discounting my own well-being and elevating the well-being of others brings me great peace of mind, great serenity. I still have trouble getting my mind around it sometime.

A Few Ramblings

The joy of giving.  The joy of living outside of one's self.  Initially when I gave my time or money to someone I did it as a task.  I did it because I was told that it was the right thing to do.  I didn't feel a ton of satisfaction.  I still mentally stored away the good deed so that if it wasn't returned then I could brand the ingrate as an asshole.  Today, it's internalized and I just do it as a natural part of who I am.  I don't analyze how it makes me feel because I know it is increasing my self-esteem.  Today I'm able to take true pleasure in the good fortune of others.  This is something that still surprises me, that I'm able to be happy for someone else.

When something isn't going my way today my reaction is immediate - search for a solution and fix the problem.  I want to overcome what I see as a difficulty rather than see how it fits into the ebb and flow of my life and spiritual development.

Act well.  Speak well.  Think well.  Finally, I'm well.  

Plagues! Locusts and Boils and Rivers of Blood!

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.

The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear - primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded.  Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration.

There is more than one reminder in the literature that we find any pain or discomfort to be anathema. We do not want to have to experience it. We want to go around it, to take evasive action, or to put something into our body to make it disappear or fade into the background: alcohol, drugs, caffeine, nicotine, sugar, the endorphins that come from exercise or sex or work. We never wanted to deal with suffering. Jeez, how direct is that? I've come to believe that there's a big difference between pain - which is inevitable - and suffering - which is an emotional reaction to pain. The plague! That's what we think pain is

And then there's this reminder that our destiny is to be disturbed as long as we allow fear to drive our emotional reaction to people, places, and things. To make us run from pain and look for pleasure. We're always going to be dissatisfied. We don't have what we want and then, when we do get it, we're afraid it's going to be taken away.

But also like others, we often discover a greater challenge in the lesser and more continuous problems of life.  Our answer is in still more spiritual development.

The development of our spiritual selves is never-ending. We're never going to be done. And the funny thing - wry funny, not ha-ha funny - is that we're likely to suffer the most from the small, ordinary bedevilments that bedevil the best of us. We're going to handle death and dismemberment better than the pox of the guy in front of us not using his turn signal.

Throughway

Meditation reminds me that I'm part of the human family with all of its beauty and tragedy, suffering and freedom.  It teaches me that the way to freedom is through.  Meditation is not a task.  We're not trying to gain anything - we're just learning how to be present.  Quit looking for results in meditation - the practice is the thing.   

I tease other people unmercifully and I get away with it most of the time because I take shit with such equanimity.  I can't remember the last time someone made me angry.  Sure, I get mildly annoyed with people and life from time to time but really angry?  Whew.  There's a direct correlation here to the Ninth Step amends process where the act of admitting our faults (with the subtext being that we're asking for forgiveness - asking for it, not demanding it or expecting it) means that we can finally begin to forgive others.  And ourselves!  Who's more of a dick to me than me?

Making Amends

 We continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along.  We vigorously commenced this way of living as we cleaned up the past.  We have entered the world of the Spirit.  Our next function is to grow in understanding and effectiveness.  This is not an overnight matter.  It should continue for our lifetime.  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.  Love and tolerance of others is our code.  We have ceased fighting anything or anyone - even alcohol.

SuperK will remind me how stubborn I am. I dig in my heels and disagree with this sentiment. She remarks that I don't often admit that I'm wrong. I usually say: "What? I was wrong about something? Give me an example. Give me more than one example and be specific, backing up your contention with written information. Because I think you're mistaken." This is not a funny thing to say in her opinion, especially because when she quickly begins to reveal her evidence I put my fingers in my ears and start yelling: "Whooo! Whooo! Whooooo!" or I turn up the Black Sabbath real loud. And, the kicker, the punch to the balls, the knife in the back, is when she points out that I never say I'm sorry when I am wrong . . . which brings us back to the problem that I'm never wrong so what's a boy to do? Once long ago, on a distant planet in a fawaway universe, in another time and dimension, I quipped: "Well, if I'm ever wrong I'll apologize" but this went so poorly for me that I don't say it anymore. I think it, of course, but "restraint of tongue and pen" after all.

While I did enjoy writing that paragraph which has far too much truth in it to be dismissed outright I do strive to recognizing my faults and errors immediately and correcting them as soon as I can. I want a clean slate. I don't want to have to avoid anyone. I want to be in the realm of the Spirit, to spend my time helping other people instead of impeding their forward progress, to develop a code of love and tolerance. We grow and talk things over and ask for help - from our fellows and from our Higher Power - and continue this for a lifetime, recognizing that the quick fixes of alcohol and drugs are no longer an option.

"We have ceased fighting anything and anyone!" We have to, or it kills us.

You Could Do Worse Than Mr. Peanut

I'm always trying to balance the tension between striving versus straining and struggling and forcing things.  This is one of the Themes of My Life.  I think about this balancing act when I'm trying to do almost everything.  Am I pushing forward or am I using my big sledgehammer to pound a square peg into a round hole?  I don't want to put out this fire because it's so integral to who I am.  Who would I be without this engine revving high?  I cannot imagine a laid-back Seaweed.  It would be weird.  But, on the other hand, I have so many self-inflicted injuries caused when I've repeatedly try to walk through a cinder block wall, face first.  I'm not great at learning lessons when I think I've got a good idea.  I'm terrible at listening to advice to other people when I've got my mind set on something.  But without this internal fire I'd have trouble getting things done.  

I want to get things done!

I wouldn't call this a mental illness.  Maybe a baked-in character trait?  I'm assuming I'll spend the  rest of my life learning how to deal with it.  I'm no longer trying to get over it.  Maybe I should burrow under it.  Maybe I should dress in a disguise to try to fool it.  Maybe Scrooge McDuck or Mr. Peanut.  Don't laugh - you could do worse than Mr. Peanut.

New Is Good

Some A.A. members are rascals and coyotes who trick and surprise new people; some are harsh taskmasters trying to whittle down ego and pride, others teach more through honoring and encouragement, nurturing the best in a fellow member; some lecture like a professor; and others can melt someone open with love and compassion.  But the greatest gift and the strongest power emanates from the sense of freedom and joy that comes from the more experienced member.

It's a basic principle of my spiritual life that I learn the deepest things when I'm in unknown territory.  Often it's when I feel most confused inwardly and am in the midst of my greatest difficulties that something new will open.   I awaken most easily to the mystery of life by exploring and challenging my weakest side.  I've been to sixty-five countries - a number of them more than once - and forty-eight states - and not just stopping in an airport on a brief layover - and I'm not done yet.  I don't want to go back and do something I've already done.  I've done it.  I want to do something new because new is challenging.  New is exciting.  I want to be challenged.  If I'm not challenged I get bored quickly.  And I say this while understanding that new can be frustrating.  I had to get in and out of a rubber zodiac bouncing on an ice-covered ocean and I was incredibly nervous the first time I did it.  I'm not coordinated at all and I kept playing an internal video of the guides trying to fish me out of water that was at approximately 32.07 degrees Fahrenheit.  But I did it!  It was a thrill of a lifetime!  

Serenity Now!

Continuing on yesterday's theme of combating that terrible sense of isolation I make it my purpose to remember something - anything - about each and every person I know/meet/encounter in the Rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous.  In fact, with anyone, anywhere, at any time, I should be able to ask a pertinent question or share something about myself that's relatable to that person.  I see you.  I listen when you talk.  I want you to tell me how you're doing, really, and not always get that "I'm fine.  I'm good" response.  If you're fine that's great but if you're not I'd like to hear about it.  Really.  I really would like to know what's going on with you.  If you can't share your fears and pain and frustration then no one will be able to help you dig yourself out.

I have a friend in Alcoholics Anonymous who is relentlessly cheery and upbeat, or at least presents that face to the public.  Her sponsor - after hearing the response "I'm fine" one too many times - sighed and said: "If you don't tell me how you're doing I'm not going to be able to help you."  That was one of most trenchant and wise things she could have said.

I repeat the details of the Seinfeld episode where one of the characters would shout "Serenity now!  Serenity now!" whenever he was upset.  And the fact that he was clearly pissed when he was shouting this only makes the scene more delicious.  One of his friends was impressed, so impressed he, too, took up this chant, and it worked and it worked and it worked until it didn't, and then he destroyed a room full of computers.

His apology: "Let me tell you, George.  Serenity now.  Insanity later."  This is funny and this also has an uncomfortable amount of truth in it.

The Terrible Sense of Isolation

"What are we likely to receive from Step Five?  For one thing we shall get rid of that terrrible sense of isolation we've always had.  Almost without exception, alcoholics are tortured by loneliness.  Even before our drinking got bad and people began to cut us off, nearly all of us suffered the feeling that we didn't quite belong.  Either we were shy, and dared not draw near others, or we were noisy good fellows craving attention and companionship, but never getting it - at least to our way of thinking.  There was always that mysterious barrier we could neither surmount nor understand.  It was as if we were actors on a stage, suddenly realizing that we did not know a single line of our parts."  

The old pangs of anxious apartness.  There are some passages in our literature that - for me - stand on their own merits.  I find them so spot-on that they require none of my fairly shallow explanations.  The above paragraph from The Big Book was a solid two-by-four whomping to the side of my head.  It described how alone I felt before I got sober.  I felt like everyone else had a playbook for life and that I had a child's coloring book or one of those mazes printed on the back of a table placemat at a cheap chain restaurant: "Can you find the treasure?"  Any five year old could figure out how to manuever through the maze to get to the treasure but I had to admit: "No!  I can't find the treasure!  I can't find a pen!  My pen doesn't work!  And the treasure appears to be a bag of French Fries!"  I was lost.  I was clueless.  I was drifting around in a sinking kayak in the Arctic Ocean.

Describing the initial meetings or gatherings in Akron at Henrietta Sieberling's gate house: "The expression on the faces of the women, that indefinable something in the eyes of the men, the stimulating and electric atmosphere of the place, conspired to let him know that here was haven at last."

The buzz of the Keep It Complicated meeting as I walk down the steps into the fairly dingy and ordinary church basement.  It's really something.  It has a positive, excited tone.  It sounds good.  It sounds happy.  I know I was expecting a room full of dirty old men in trench coats.  Living a life of misery where the temporary relief of alcohol was the only thing I had to look forward to and then learning that I had to give that up was beyond terrifying.

Where Does It Go?

Impermanence - The fact or quality of being temporary or short-lived; the philosophical problem of change that is addressed by many religions and assumes the belief that all existence is temporary;  in Buddhism: everything that comes also goes.

But where does it go?

The uncertain and temporary nature of much of what we regard as reality is the foundation of impermanence. 

It's all going to go eventually.  Everything.  All of it.  This can be frightening to contemplate but mostly it's a liberating concept.  How can I waste time worrying right now, about something that is probably never going to happen, about something that has already happened, wasting this minute, when I'm going to lose it all anyway?  This is a message I prefer to pass along when someone is doing well, when it is merely irritating, than when things are falling apart, when the message can be frustrating and terrifying.  The powerlessness!  The only thing I can count on in life is change.  I love change.  I want change.  It drives me insane but it fills me up.  

The way I grew after Mom and dad died (Ed. Note: Autocorrect gave Mom a capital but left dad lower case.  Hmmmm.) remains a defining point in my life.  It really drove home the point that we're all destined for the dust bin.  It leveled me for a good three or four months,  in an epic leveling.  I can take a good, robust leveling but this one put me on the ground.  I was panicky.  I was bereft, unmoored, unhinged, for that period of time.  I could not rationalize my way out of the panic.  Knowledge was not helpful.  Trying to intellectualize the finality of death was one of the most fruitless, feckless things I've ever tried to do.  It made me painfully aware of the limits of the mind and the power of the emotions.

Stuff

Loving kindness is about me removing barriers to love that I've built within myself.  It's not transactional.  It doesn't demand or require a specific reaction or response from someone else.  It's my own personal freedom, showing me that I've learned to love myself, to like myself, to be comfortable in own skin.

Touch is healing.  I love to pat someone on the arm or shoulder when I walk by.  "I see you there."

Paying attention is the beginning of change.  Inventory shows us what we have.

Stillness shows us what is there.

We're no longer glued to our own internal Television set.

I have a responsibility to be better that . . . what?  I used to be?  The general negative, chaotic behavior of the world and it's inhabitants?  The world tends toward disorder.

You Are Not Alone

 I got a Happy Father’s Day wish from one of my A.A. daughters today.  I don’t have actual children so I can’t tell you how full this filled my heart.

I talk to the brand new people all the time before and after the meeting and I try to direct the guys with mid-range sobriety to introduce themselves.  There’s a dude right now with about three weeks of sobriety and he’s so wrecked and tentative . . . well . . . it really takes me back.  There’s a woman attending with about six months now who comes across as quiet and low-key and then I swap stories with her after the meeting and she’s quite the hellraiser in her personal life. I hope she stays around. I hope I get to see her grow into her own skin.

"Fearless compassion recognizes the inevitable suffering in life and our need to face the suffering in life and our need to face the suffering in order to learn. Sometimes only the fire of suffering itself and the consequences of our actions can bring us to deeper understanding, to feel kindness for all beings, and to liberation." Jack Kornfield

I'm often reminded how easy it is for one alcoholic to talk to another because - and this I can guarantee you - whatever you've gone through, whatever pain that you've had in your life, whatever wreckage you've caused, someone else has gone through the same thing and worse, and they're probably sitting in the meeting you're attending right now.

You. Are. Not. Alone!

Walked Through The Fire

"The ground for compassion is established first by practicing sensitivity toward ourselves.  True compassion arises from a healthy sense of self, from an awareness of who we are that honors our own capacities and fears, our own feelings and integrity, along with those of others.  It is never based on fear or pity but is a deep supportive response of the heart based on the dignity, integrity, and well-being of every single creature.  It is a spontaneous response to the suffering and pain we encounter.  It is our feeling of mutual resonance and natural connectedness in the face of the universal experience of loss and pain.  As our own heart is opened and healed, it naturally seeks the healing of all it touches.  Compassion for ourselves gives rise to the power to transform resentment into forgiveness, hatred into friendliness, and fear into respect for all beings.  It allows us to extend warmth, sensitivity, and openness to the sorrows around us in a truthful and genuine way."

Jack Kornfield

Tantric:  Involving the doctrines or practices of Buddhist or Hindu tantras, in particular the use of mantras, meditation, yoga, and ritual.

Once again I find that the simple spiritual tools and principles that we use in Alcoholics Anonymous are the simple spiritual tools and principles that have been around for five thousand years.  Especially this idea that those of us who have been through a painful time of our lives, who have been tested by fire, burned to our inner core, are the people best situated to pass along a message of recovery to someone else.  In The Big Book we hear the skeptical and resistant newcomer say something along the lines of "Yes, that's me, I drink like that" over and over.  No one likes to be told what to do by someone who hasn't had to do that very same thing.

Boundaries

"Setting boundaries and limits, shifting from a dependant and entangling love to one based on mutual respect, learning to give while honoring one's own needs, all of these can entail a profound growth  in self-esteem and self-awareness that parallels the healthy development of self."

Jack Kornfield

I used to be such a shape-shifter with other people, constantly resizing myself to fit other people's expectations.  Now I don't really give a shit.

I like this idea of living a life of kindness and compassion while standing tall on my own merits.  I try to be nice but I'm through with letting the needs of others overwhelm my own.  I get that I should give more than get but . . . c'mon . . . enough's enough already.  I get a piece of pie, don't I?  Just not the whole pie.

Right Here, Right Now

Ephemeral:  Lasting a very short time; ephemerality is the concept of things being transitory, existing only briefly.

I just returned from a long trip that was spent hiking in rural areas of Scotland and then on an expedition cruise ship exploring the archipelago of Svalbard, an island chain that is awfully close to the North Pole.  First of all, it was cold.  Goddamn, I forgot how much I hate being cold!  But it was also glorious.  As I seek to find a deeper connection with my Higher Power I like to immerse myself in nature.  It's so beautiful that I can't question the existence of something bigger than myself.  And not being around other people helps, too.  There isn't that constant background hum and chatter of people talking about nothing.  How much of what we talk about is worth a shit anyway?

The other thing that I always find remarkable is that SuperK and I can live comfortably out of a couple of smallish suitcases for six weeks.  Don't get me wrong - we get to see each other in the same stuff over and over, stuff that isn't always that clean, but we have plenty of stuff.  I come home and look in my closet and wonder at how much crap is in there.  Jeebus, do I need twenty-five shirts?

I've grown to take great comfort in making my life smaller and smaller and simpler and simpler.  I take great comfort in knowing that it's all transitory and I don't mean for this to sound dark.  Everything is here but for an instant and then it's gone.  I know that I'm deeply loved and deeply appreciated by many, many people and this gives my life deep meaning but I've also come to realize that I'm going to go eventually and the memory of Little Stevie Seaweed will go, too, and probably  damn quickly.  Again, I find this comforting instead of unsettling.  It lets me concentrate on the moment and let all the rest of it go.  It's going to go, anyway, so why not get to work letting it go right now?  I don't have children so once I move along the memory of me is going to go in a hurry.  In five years?  Ten years?  Fifty years?  No one is going to remember me even if I leave a huge cache of stuff behind.  No one is going to want to read my journals or look at my knicknacks or ponder my pictures.

There were reindeer on Svalbard.  We came across the bones of a dead reindeer and the expedition guide pointed out that the teeth of this herbivore were so ground down that it probably starved to death which is a very common cause of death with reindeer.  My intial reaction is why the hell would God design an animal so that it would starve to death?  And then I thought that this is the nature of existence: birth, life, death.  Sometimes it's pleasant and sometimes it's violent.  Maybe the reindeer is looking down at us from reindeer heaven pitying the poor guy hooked up to tubes in a hospital, trying to extend his existence, desperately extend his existence, even though he's going to die anyway and his life isn't very pleasant, thinking: "Man, that looks terrible."

My interest in a spiritual existence has shown me that there are so many ways to look at What Comes Next.  Maybe nothing.  Maybe Heaven.  Maybe I come back as a bullfrog or artic fox or a calla lilly.  Maybe I come back as a rock star or a peasant in Russia.  Maybe everything just goes black although I find that unlikely and I totally reject the idea of Hell.  I think if I behave badly I suffer enough on earth so that a kind and benevolent God isn't going to roast me on a lake of fire for all eternity.  

At one point I was standing on the edge of a lake that formed as a result of glacier melt.  It was a bright day and the water was calm; so calm that the snow covered mountains behind it were reflected perfectly.  There was the sound of water trickling and a few birds and the waves hitting the skree on the "beach" a ways off but that was it and it was so staggeringly beautiful that I couldn't believe it.  I was able to be in that moment.  My hands and face were freezing and my shirt smelled like old socks but I still could not believe that the tableau in front of me existed and that I was there for it.

Not Glum Seaweed

"There you will find release from care, boredom, and worry.  Your imagination will be fired.  Life will mean something at last.  The most satisfactory years of your existence lie ahead.  Among the future fellows of Alcoholics Anonymous you will make lifelong friends.  You will be bound to them with new and wonderful ties, for you will escape disaster together and you will commence shoulder to shoulder your common journey.  Then you will know what it means to give of yourself that others may survive and rediscover life.  You will learn the full meaning of 'Love thy neighbor as thyself.'"

At the conclusion of many meetings we read The Promises even though they sound so optimistic as to be implausible to a still wet behind the ears alcoholic.  It's worth pointing out here that the texts are full of Promises.  I like the above passage from the chapter "A Vision For You."  Pretty good vision.  Pretty good phrases, too, like "lifelong friends" and "wonderful ties" and especially "most satisfactory years of your existence."  Like most people I just assumed my life would be over once I deprived myself of drugs and alcohol.  I love the word "glum."  I thought I would be glum.  Then I read "We are not a glum lot" and thought how odd it was that someone used the word "glum" to describe an emotional state.  Look at how it's spelled.  Say it over and over again until it sounds stupid in your ears, until Semantic Satiation takes over and it doesn't even sound like a real word again.  Say it until you think "what the fuck is this guy talking about anyway, I thought we were discussing Promises?"

See?  See how fun this is?  See how this fits right into the concept of a most satisfactory life?  That I'm able to waste some time writing this crap and that I find it most satisfactory?

Glum:  Sullen or gloomy; dejected; morose.

The Hand of Doom

 "He cannot picture 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 wish for the end."

This passage probably sounds hyperbolic to people without a drinking problem but there are few passages in The Book that resonate more deeply with me.  The very last time I drank I could not get drunk and I was not able to sink into oblivion.  I was aware of the desperation of my drunken condition with absolutely no sense of release or relief.  It was the first time that this had ever happened that I can recall.  The release from the sense of doom that hung over my head was getting shorter and shorter as I neared the end of my drinking but I always got at least a momentary release.  This time . . . no.  It did not come.  I was so drunk I was incapacitated.  I couldn't walk or talk coherently but this time I didn't get to the place where I didn't give a shit that this was the case.  I was as miserable with the alcohol in me as I was stone cold sober.

Those of us who grew up with televisions that relied on cathode ray technology will remember what happened when the power was switched off:  the picture collapsed toward the center from the periphery until there was just a tiny spot of light at the center of the screen . . . then it would blink off.  Total darkness.  That's what it felt like at the end for me.

Whaddya Ya Got For Me?

There are traditionally three kinds of giving detailed in Buddhist philosophy: tentative giving, brotherly or sisterly giving, and royal giving.

I use the word transactional to describe how I used to approach giving.  I wanted something back.  I'm not a chump.  If I give you something I better be getting something in return and something of similar worth.  Don't take advantage of me, man.  It was in Alcoholics Anonymous groups that I first learned about giving with no expectation and - most importantly - that this is the source of real contentment: giving is its own reward.

"Because our inner experience is still one of need, giving is usually done with a subtle expectation of getting in return.  Alcoholics Anonymous groups often use the term codependence to describe such misuse of generosity, in which our unskilled assistance helps others avoid facing the true difficulty in their life.  There are also people who have trouble saying no, no matter what is asked of them.  After many years of this they find themselves filled to the brim with resentment without understanding how they got that way."