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."