More Quiet Time Pop-Ins

"More than the profound concentration of many meditation practices, therapy has the quality  of investigation and discovery.  In an unfortunate way, many students of Eastern and Western spirituality have been led to believe that if they experience difficulties, it is simply because they haven't practiced long enough or somehow have not been practicing according to the teachings.   We may have been taught that experiences we have at the 'spiritual' level in meditation, as if by magic, will have power to transform all the other levels of our being.  In truth, the need to deal with our personal emotional problems is more the rule in spiritual practice than the exception.  Without dealing with these issues, we will not be able to concentrate during meditation, or we will find ourselves unable to bring what we have learned in meditation into our interaction with others."

Jack Kornfield

If you break your leg go to the hospital.  Don't pray for acceptance.

Here's Doctor Bob: "So long as I'm thinking as I'm thinking now, and so long as I'm doing the things I'm doing now, I don't believe I'll ever take another drink."  While I realize I need to keep doing today what I've been doing I have no trouble believing that I'll never have to drink again.  One day at a time, for sure, but with a long-term goal in mind.

Here's some Quiet Time pop-ins:

There's a guy at my fitness club that I really can't stand.  He's a big, loud, super-confident bald guy who shouts out his opinions - many of them fatuous - while holding court - holding people hostage is a better way to put it - often after eavesdropping on someone else's conversation.  He's such an idiot that I have trouble with the "restraint of tongue" concept.  Yesterday he informed everyone that exercise only really helps you feel good while you're exercising and won't make any difference in your health long term.  I leaned over to the guys he was haranguing and quipped: "Well, that's the best rationale for using heroin today that I've ever heard."

I stopped in to see a good friend yesterday who never really came back to meetings after the pandemic ended.  His company was starting to make me feel a little uncomfortable.  A lot of the time when someone starts slacking on their recovery I get this sense of an individual who is stuck and no longer growing, of a lack of any forward progress.  I walked into his store and he was clearly very excited to see me which actually didn't make me feel great initially.  I haven't been "seeking to comfort rather than be comforted."  I have been more concerned with my own personal comfort than the comfort of a good friend.   He just bought a vacation home in a small Mexican town and gave me the scoop about the local A.A. club in great detail.  Who knows what causes us to change direction? 

So many of us in America are uncomfotable with the direction our country is taking.  On the left, on the right, in between, in our opinions we seem lost and it came be frightening and disconcerting.

It's all going to go.  All of it.  The stuff, the people, you, it's all going to go.  So what are you hanging on to today?  Whatever it is I can guarantee you that it's temporary.

There is absolutely nothing more important than being in the moment.  I've said it many times before and I'll say it many more times because I need to keep reinforcing it in my mind.