God! Dog! Palindrome!

 There are four stages to life: youth, middle-age, old age, and "You look great!"                                     Unknown (but pretty goddam funny)

You do enough.  You have enough.  You ARE enough.

You are not alone.  You are loved unconditionally.  You are supported.  You are strong.  You are ENOUGH.

One meditation visualization that I hear often and just as often forget is to imagine that there are roots emanating from the bottoms of my feet and entering the ground and traveling through every bit of this earth and intermingling with the roots of every other person, connecting me with all of them.

I'll toss in this ChatGPT summary of animism, a topic I've investigated in the past and one that continues to fascinate me even though I'm not really sure how to incorporate it into my own personal, learned and installed root system:

Animism is the belief that spirits, souls, or a living essence exist not only in humans but also in animals, plants, natural features, and sometimes objects such as rivers, mountains, rocks, or even tools.

Key ideas of animism include:

• Nature is alive and spiritually significant.
• Humans are part of a larger community that includes animals, plants, and other beings.
• Relationships with these beings often involve respect and reciprocity.

Animism is found in many Indigenous and traditional cultures around the world, including among some Native American, African, Australian Aboriginal, and Asian peoples.  It is often considered one of the oldest forms of religious belief.

Every time we travel we pick up a few rocks from wherever we end up.  I'm assuming I'm not supposed to do this but as with many things I'm not supposed to do I do it anyway, partially because I have a great deal of respect for rocks - they're amazing things that have been around for a long time - and partially because it connects me to an old friend from high school who was also a rock guy.  And with SuperK's geologist brother who knew a lot more about rocks than I'll ever know and who passed this love on to his sister who passed it on to me, a gift I'm deeply grateful for.

Rocks!

I felt the presence of The Divine as deeply as I've ever experienced during our trip to Antarctica.  Man, that place got into my bones.  Man, that was a beautiful place.  God - or Dog - was oozing out of that place.

When we got back from our last trip the Mexican rescue dog who lives next door and who loves me with a love I cannot fathom glimpsed me for the first time since our return.  She lost it.  She looked like a demon possessed.  She was bouncing and thrashing around so much that she lost her balance and fell heavily on her side - it looked like it hurt to me - but she just hopped up and continued to thrash.  You tell me there's nothing divine in that?  You tell me that isn't the essence of love distilled?

God!  Dog!  You notice anything similar there!?!

Actions V Intentions For the Fiftieth Time

People are watching what we do.  They judge us by what we do.  I was under the illusion that people judged me by what I said I was going to do.  Even worse, I hoped that they judged me by what I was thinking I was going to say that I was going to do.  I was a hell of a guy in my own mind and it was just too bad that you didn't live up in there, too.  What we say and do matters, even if we don't realize it.  It's not the intention that matters - that's just a starting point.  But, hey, even failure is part of recovery.  Failure doesn't define us - it's what we do afterwards that defines who we are.

The Toltecs have their own take on this: "Many of us have spent years creating stories about ourselves based on other people's ideas and expectations, then we struggle through life trying to live up to these false images that we agreed to.  But there comes a point when you say to yourself: "This is who I am - no story needed."

I've added a guided meditation to my morning Quiet Time routine.  Some of them are good, a few are great, and some of them rub me the wrong way.  The quiet, breathy, murmuring voices, using words like gently and nourishing.  Yeech.  "Mindfully take a gentle, nourishing breath of clean, energizing air."  Brother, give me a break.

And how about chakras?  I try to keep an open mind on matters of spirituality but the chakras are more than I can handle.

1. Root Chakra  — Base of the spine
   • Associated with survival, stability, grounding.
2. Sacral Chakra  — Lower abdomen
   • Associated with creativity, pleasure, emotions.
3. Solar Plexus Chakra — Upper abdomen
   • Associated with confidence, willpower, personal power.
4. Heart Chakra — Center of the chest
   • Associated with love, compassion, connection.
5. Throat Chakra  — Throat
   • Associated with communication and self-expression.
6. Third Eye Chakra  — Between the eyebrows
   • Associated with intuition and insight.
7. Crown Chakra  — Top of the head
   • Associated with spirituality and higher consciousness.

From a spiritual perspective, practices such as meditation, yoga, breathwork, chanting, and visualization are often used to balance or awaken the chakras.

From a scientific perspective, chakras are not recognized as physical structures or measurable energy centers in the body. They are generally understood as spiritual, symbolic, or psychological concepts rather than anatomical ones.  In traditional Tantra, chakras were primarily tools for spiritual transformation and meditation, not simply centers associated with personality traits or emotional wellness. 

One thing I find fascinating is that the concept of chakras is found in many original texts but they've changed and modified over the centuries - at their essence the same but morphing into many different forms.  A relatively modern invention is assigning colors to each chakra center.  In my background the Bible is the Big Kahuna; a book that is essentially the same but has changed and been modified over the centuries as well.  So wherever your spiritual traditions or practices lead you let them lead away - you can find spiritual mentors or advisors that help immensely but at the heart of the matter they're human beings, too, with all kinds of prejudices and shortcomings.  Beware the teacher who is cocksure that they're all that and never wrong.  These people, in my estimation, can be the biggest fuck-ups out there.

Here's a visualization technique I like: A blue sky with clouds drifting across it.  The sky is my mind - always there, never changing - and the clouds are my thoughts - coming and going, changing constantly while not affecting the essence of the sky itself.  Within the sky but not the sky.

Let's Try the Red One

"Remember - you are not a helpless bystander to the tyranny of your mind."

Toltecs

 

Reflecting on my day I'm now much more conscious of how much time I spent talking about myself or focusing attention on myself or my issues.  SuperK went out to lunch with some friends from her golf league and got stuck to a woman who asked her not one question (just back from Denmark!) while prattling on and on in great detail about herself.  Borrrrringggg!  I'm not sure what I would have done but then I'm not as nice as my wife is - she actually cares what other people think about her.  But I know that I'm not so important that I need to keep a constant watch over myself.  I can stop watching myself and start noticing others.  I can continue to discover the world around me.

"One must do more, think less, and not watch oneself live."

Sebastien de Chamfort

"Sometimes we have habits or practices that cause us pain, yet we continue to do them.  This is because that same action also brings us comfort in some way.  Being honest with ourselves in this regard is key to knowing whether or not we really want to change them."

Toltecs, again

This is an alcoholic, pondering the ruination of his life, fully aware that he simply cannot drink and survive, pouring the next drink.  He has learned what the problem is; he is aware that there is a solution; but he doesn't change his behavior.

"Men and women drink essentially because they like the effect produced by alcohol.  The sensation is so elusive, that while they admit it is injurious, they cannot after time differentiate the true from the false.  To them, the alcoholic life seems the only normal one."

Doctor's Opinion, The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Homer Simpson, in an effort to get free cable, climbs up a utility pole where he finds a red connection and a green connection.  He attaches the cable wire to the green connection - makes sense - and is promptly shocked into next Wednesday.  "Hmmmm," he muses.  "Must be the red connection."  For a second time he gets the shit shocked out of himself.  Frazzled, he pauses, smoke rising from his singed hair, and states, with some purpose and confidence: "Let's try the green one."  and is promptly knocked right off the pole.

This is an alcoholic pondering the next right move as he looks back on an endless stream of bad choices, before deciding to try the alcohol solution . . . one . . .  morrrrre . . . tiiiiime . . . 

The Tony Morgan

"Ask yourself the most important question: 'Who am I?' "  Who you are is who you are at the center.  The answer is beyond all knowledge and cannot be expressed in words.  Meditate on this today."

Things go better for me when I'm honestly looking at myself.  Sometimes I have trouble with the "honestly" part.  Sometimes I need voices from outside my own head to chime in.  Others can see my self-righteous dishonesty without prejudice.  Who likes to admit to being a jerk?  And sometimes I'm fully aware of my defects and just don't give a shit.

An example: when I was finally getting on my feet financially - I'd like to say "back on my feet" but I had never been anywhere near on my feet - I was pleased to be able to buy some clothes that didn't make me look like a schizophrenic drug addict listening to eerie, ominous voices audible only inside his own head.  Not Saks Fifth Avenue clothes - Eddie Bauer clothes, Lands End clothes.  Not fancy stuff, just adult-ish stuff, reasonable looking, no tears or rips or stains.  Anyway I bought this lightweight vest.  I still have it.  The quality is excellent, it's water-resistant and lightweight which makes it great for traveling, it has a little bit of style.  Not long after I bought the jacket I wore it to a meeting.  Across the room what did I see but a friend wearing the exact same vest.  Here's the thing: he was not an especially fit friend and he looked kind of like an over-stuffed sausage in the vest.  He did not flatter the vest, the very same vest I was wearing, and  I'm not saying I was rocking the vest but I looked better in it than he did.  For a moment I felt like going outside and stuffing my vest into a garbage can.  He had ruined the spoils of war that I had finally begun accumulating.

As I said I still have the vest.  I don't begrudge Stuffed Sausage Guy his vest, either, and I hope he still has it.  As I continue to judge my spiritual progress or lack of I'll share the fact that the vest has long had a name - The Johnny Morgan - and it is always and only called The Tony Morgan as in: "Hey, SuperK, have you seen The Tony Morgan?"  "Yes, The Tony Morgan is in the wash."  That kind of fairly gossipy humor.

Still makes me laugh, though.

I'm trying to get better.  I'm better than I was.

"Life has every right to say no to our endeavors.  We are judging and rejecting ourselves before life has had a chance to express a choice.  This self-rejection stops us from living the life of our dreams and keeps us trapped in disillusionment.  When life says no to us, as it inevitably will sometimes, we respect that choice also, without self-judgment." 

Angry Guy V Inappropriate Guy

I have a friend in A.A. who has a temper.  It's a guy, naturally, and I'm talking about quite the temper.  Take a swing at you, scream obscenities kind of temper.  Scary temper.  I've watched him make great progress in his recovery, so much so that he now works as an intake counselor at a drug rehab center.  Early in his journey he threatened a coworker at his place of employment and was promptly fired - even though he didn't carry through on his threat his company had a policy of no violence, actual or implied.  Kind of unbelievable that companies have to actually make a policy like that.  It doesn't speak very well of the society we live in.  Anyway, he paid the price, learned from it, and has continued to grow.  For a while - quite a while - I'd usually ask him how he was doing with his anger management.  He reported in but I didn't think he especially appreciated the nudges.  It's almost as if I was saying: "How's it going, you fuck-up?"  But we're close enough that I felt comfortable poking at his sore spots, at his deficiencies and defects, and he was savvy enough to listen.

At the meeting yesterday he came into the kitchen area as the meeting was getting underway where I was waiting for the kettle to boil and provide me with hot water for my tea - cursed secretary made coffee but didn't take care of the tea drinkers, curse her, although does any red-blooded A.A. member really trust anyone who chooses tea over coffee? - and he was boiling mad.  He overheard one of our other members make a couple of jokes that he thought were disrespectful to women.  This guy has also made a ton of progress in his recovery but his jokes are sometimes funny and sometimes they make me wince a little.  Not terribly inappropriate but not what you'd like to see in someone growing spiritually.  Early on this guy talked a lot about money and women, clearly reliving what he thought were past successes in the money and and sex department to someone who could not have cared less.  Anyway Temper Guy got in Inappropriate Guy's face about the comments.  My job, I thought, was just to get Temper Guy to calm down.  Which I did, so hooray for me!  Temper Guy then said: OK.  I need to make amends" which pretty much floored me.

I like to see this kind of progression, this kind of growth.  While I was happy he didn't take a swing at Inappropriate Guy he coulda kept his mouth shut.  Progress is incremental and it can be painfully slow.  Next time maybe he'll throw down a slew of curses mentally while keeping quiet.  The goal, of course, is not to react with anger at all.  Lofty goal, indeed.  The funny thing is that Inappropriate Guy took the amends well and 'fessed up to some maybe, kinda, not-so-great behavior on his part.  So what do I know?  While I do believe that kindness and positive reinforcement work best most of the time sometimes we need to have someone point out clearly bad behavior.  Maybe my gentle tolerance for the off-color stories was interpreted as tacit agreement or acceptance of the behavior.  Maybe some direct commentary, honest, face-to-face, was necessary.

At Costco yesterday I was waiting - with my turn signal on - for traffic to clear so I could enter one of the lanes running between the parking spaces when the guy behind me sounded his horn.  First of all, never go to Costco on Friday, which is apparently their busy day.  Actually, that's it - there's no second of all.  There is a point, however, which I may or may not get to eventually.  Here's the action: SuperK said: "Did that guy just beep at you?" and then we both burst out laughing.  Old Seaweed has grown, too, from someone who would have stood on his horn while flashing the bird to someone who would have left his horn dormant while cursing mightily to someone who laughed merrily.  This was not easily attained behavior.  This took time.

My Little Man's an Idiot

"Facts are stubborn things."

John Adams

"Ain't we got all the fools in town on our side?  And ain't that a big enough majority in any town?
Huck Finn

I got a text yesterday from a friend in The Program - a friend who is not effusive in their emotions - asking about the wisdom of sponsoring a person of the opposite sex.  The conventional wisdom is that this is not a great idea.  We can have good intentions and still allow attention from - in some world, in some life - someone who might be a possible mate to sway us and color our emotions.  I work like Hercules trying to stay neutral when I'm dealing with another person and I try to stay neutral even though I have a strong opinion and even though I'm a genius who is always right and should be appointed The Supreme Leader of the Universe and of All Its Many Life Forms.  That would be a tough thing to fit on my name tag but I still like it.  My M.O. is to ask questions, to refer back to a passage or story in The Big Book that might apply, to encourage the uncertain questioner to get feedback from lot of other alcoholics and to sit quietly, listen to that small, still voice.  My desire to run The Show, to tell other people how to behave, to imply that I have All The Answers can overwhelm my Intentions.

There's a Seinfeld episode where George is struggling with a decision and Kramer tells him to listen to the Little Man inside - what is the Little Man saying?  George: "My Little Man doesn't know.  (Comedic pause.)  Ahhhh, my Little Man's an idiot!"

Yes.  My Little Man can be an idiot, too.

Then, because my Morning Meditation currently includes a story out of the latest Grapevine, I read this: "I don't actually know what's best for anyone else.  That's my ego.  It says what's right for me is right for all.  How freeing this knowledge is, this wisdom.  I, an alcoholic, have had a spiritual awakening as the result of working A.A.'s Twelve Steps, one which gives me a very good sober life.  That doesn't mean I need to tell anyone else what they should do.  How scary, too, to my ego at least. It means simply being available for a fellow alcoholic, rather than being in command or control.  It means a lot of letting go."

All Over the Place This Morning :)

 "Remember - you are not a helpless bystander to the tyranny of your mind.  By becoming aware of your thoughts you can help set the tone for your day and night. "                                                             The Toltecs

You have given your mind free reign to do whatever it wants for so long that it won't give this control up easily.  Minds are made to think so when we try to redirect them onto a calmer, more peaceful track they're not happy about it.  They resist.  They push back.  They shove back.

We give people what they need and not what they want, not what we want them to need.

How about today we say nice things to everyone we run into?  Come up with something nice, something complimentary, something to let that person know that you see them and appreciate them.  I'll tell you it's a lot easier than being a prick.

"We ought to hear at least one little song every day, read a good poem, see a first-rate painting, and if possible speak a few sensible words."                                                                                                  Von Goethe     

Some people need a lot of attention and some people don't.  How about today we let the independent folks do their thing, chalking up any silence or distance as their modus operandi, while lavishing some extra time on those who process the events of their lives by sharing with others?  I'll tell you that it's harder to deal with those who are on the opposite end of the spectrum.

"Humility is not thinking less of yourself - it's thinking of yourself less."                                                 C.S. Lewis

"Humility is the quality of having a modest, accurate view of one's own importance, accompanied by a lack of pride and an openness to others."

"When pride comes, then comes disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom."                                         Proverbs 11:2

Meet Them at the Door, Laughing

 This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in. 

Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

This is a poem by the Sufi mystic poet Rumi that I heard for the first time while doing a guided meditation.  Mostly I sit quietly when I meditate but sometimes I listen to a teacher.  Sometimes I'm too energized and distracted to sit quietly and I need some guidance.

What a great poem!  Once again I learn that it's all okay, it's all part of the journey, I can learn something from everything.  When I try to control the outcomes and the circumstances - always pleasant and always in my favor, of course (More money! More sex!! More power!!!) - my day turns to shit, it becomes an exercise of wrestling with Existential Dread, afraid I'm not going to get what I want or that I'm going to lose whatever I already have.  I cannot stress enough the misery that this flavor of life approach brings to me.  I cannot believe that I once thought I had that kind of power over my life.  I'm the guy being tossed out of my canoe and into the rapids of a raging, rock-filled river, all the while saying: "OK, I'm going to manage this.  I'm not going to swallow any water and I'm going to avoid all the rocks," all of this happening as I'm smashing into the rocks and swallowing river water.  But when I open my arms and welcome life's occasional bullshit into my life I'm much more relaxed and serene.  OK, I never open up my arms but at least I'm not slamming the door shut on my troubles.  I say it often and I'll say it again - I'm more content when I look at things as pleasant and painful and not as good or bad.  Who knows what lessons I'm going to learn from my annoying guests?  

Come on in, teachers.

And a special thanks this morning to Spandex who shared his oh-so-temporary troubles with me last night and graciously listened to me say, with great wisdom and perspective: "Fuck if I know what you should do.  Good luck with all that."  I guess my wisdom is that if I simply listen with attention then the talker will eventually figure out what to do all on their own by listening to their own words, in their own voice.  How many times have I been sharing something only to think: "I should shut up - I sound crazy."

"To maintain your opinion, do you need to ignore or defy other people's opinions or disregard new information that's come to light?  With awareness, say to yourself: 'As a Toltec hunter, I will notice when I start to struggle, so I may see the illusion I am trying to hold on to.  Once recognized, I vow to let it go with ease and grace.' "

Maybe I'm Just Annoying?

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

Toltecs

Have you  ever heard of the concept of The Smoky Mirror?  It refers to the filters that we all have when we're viewing reality.  Whatever we see is distorted by our own beliefs and ideas, or our preconditioned point of view.  This helps me to see my prejudices and it also helps in my relationships with other people.  Am I dealing with the person I see or am I working through a thick haze of smoke, trying to penetrate their belief systems to see what's really going on?  Is it me or is it a show? 

Showtime!

I've come to believe that different people need different things from me.  Or from other people.  I used to have a One Size Fits All approach to life - this is what I like to give and this is what I like to receive and you damn well better fit into this approach.  Remember the square peg in the round hole?  Remember the big hammer?  Remember the sledgehammer?  I have a young guy who texts me almost every day and he almost always says "I love you!" and sometimes this is all he says.  I have other friends who respond to half of my texts.  I don't reply to every text the guy sends me - it's not my preferred form of communication and it's enough with the "I love you!" crap already.  So when my other buddies don't respond to my texts each and every time I don't get my feelings hurt and I'm not upset that I'm always the one who starts the texting chain . . . but, come to think of it, maybe I'm just annoying and that's why they don't respond hmmmm?  Whatever, dude, going to keep doing it.  With my A.A. daughter I believe that when I check in that it's a reminder that someone is thinking about her which is not something she could rely on from her homeless, drug addict real dad before she came into Alcoholics Anonymous.  I don't have to be specific with my emotions or my intentions - it's letting her know someone is paying attention, someone has her best interests in mind.

And I know that those of us who are very self-sufficient can get bent over backwards when - as is going to happen from time to time - a whole swath of tough, painful things, stuff that we could easily handle one at a time, hit us all at once.  This is why it's important to keep those lines of communication open - we don't know when communicating is going to be critical.

What a Jerk

When I was in my early 20s, still stinging from my great failure and ignominious ejection from Optometry College I talked my two best friends in the world - brothers - into making a drug and alcohol-fueled road trip from Ohio across the country to California and back.  I need to stipulate that it was me who was being fueled by drugs and alcohol.  I was digging through some old pictures to share with these guys - still my two best friends in the world - and I can confirm that in every instance I was clearly drunk and/or stoned.  There was often alcohol in the picture.  I listened to a man talk recently about trying to hide his cocaine habit from his loved ones.  He thought he was successful in his subterfuge.  Pshaw.  I was fooling precisely no one and neither was he.

One set of photos detailed a hiking/camping trip that we took on a coastal trail north of San Francisco.  I have no doubt that this was my idea because it was rash and poorly conceived.  We are clearly not prepared for camping in this environment.  After many miles we reached the beautiful campsite right on the Pacific Ocean.  Our plan was to put a tarp on the ground and climb into our sleeping bags after heating up some water on a grill for our freeze-dried meals.  The wind was blowing a gale.  There were bear poles at each site so your food could be stored out of any ursine reach. We were getting vaguely worried, out of our element, all the other sites were equipped with harsh weather tents and were up and thriving.   We struggled to get the coals lit and then to heat the water which -  after a while - turned a gorgeous smoky brown, clearly unfit for human consumption.  We peered at the water for a while, our brains struggling to accept the scope of the unfolding tragedy, until one of the brothers said: "So . . . we outta here?"  One of the greatest lines ever uttered in my presence.  We did manage to make it back to our car, night falling quickly as we hustled to gain shelter before it became pitch black . . . in bear country . . . taking a much shorter route but one that climbed and descended a series of ridges on the return trip.

I don't think I carried in alcohol but I was packing drugs.  The older brother really lit into me when we made it back to the car and deservedly so.  This was typical of my life then and can still be today - impulsive, controlling, oblivious, driving myself and everyone around me relentlessly forward with scant thought of the consequences or the wishes of anyone else.  I wanted to blast down the road like a bat out of hell to a new place each night and to run myself ragged doing so, unconcerned about the welfare of anyone else.  It's not like I didn't care about them - it's that I wanted to do what I wanted to do and it was my job to convince you to follow my lead, often stupid and ill-conceived.  Self!  Most of my memories reveal trying to get what I wanted and to force you into line behind me.  Once again: good intentions, crappy actions.  I sincerely wanted you to be happy, too, but I wanted you to be happy following my lead.

So much of my pre-A.A. life reveals a boy/man who wanted his own way.  I was the actor trying to control the set, the dialogue, the actions of all my fellow actors.   Everything would be great if you did what I wanted!

There was another instance on this trip where I fell asleep in the car as we drove through the night from Las Vegas to Los Angeles, too drunk and high to take my turn at the wheel as we had decided to brave the desert drive at night when the temperature was lower in our car with no air conditioning.  When we arrived at a campsite the next morning I pitched a bitch because it was a dusty, crowded place still on the fringes of the desert.  My buddy took my head off that morning, too.  Man, was I a jerk.  You drive all night by yourself AND find a campsite by yourself that meets my specifications  Man, what selfish prick I was.

"Whenever you classify something as 'good' or 'bad' you stop looking at it with an open mind."

Toltecs.

A God or The God?

One of my favorite movies is "Groundhog Day" starring Bill Murray.  Oddly enough given the cast of comedic actors the message is very spiritual.  The premise is that Murray's character is a self-absorbed prick who is in Puxatawny to report on Groundhog Day and he gets stuck in a time loop where every day starts out with him reliving Groundhog Day.  Nothing he does seems to change this so he starts to engage in self-absorbed activities: drug use, crime, manipulative sex and is dismayed to find out that each day gets more and more frustrating and banal.  He starts committing suicide to no lasting effect - he wakes up again on Groundhog Day.  He finally confesses to a coworker that he might be God.  She's skeptical.  He says: "I didn't say I was the God - maybe I'm just a God."  He doesn't think he's omnipotent just that he's been around for a long, long time.

Don't we all feel that way from time to time?  That we're God?  I do.  In fact, I feel that way almost all of the time.  I think any wisdom I may have accumulated isn't because I'm wise but rather that I've done stupid things so many times, over and over again, that I finally figure out that I shouldn't do these stupid things.  Does that sound like wisdom?  Or does it sound like the reaction a chipmunk would have if you shocked it every time it touched its food dish?  You wouldn't call the chipmunk wise - you'd say it got tired of getting shocked   Maybe I'm not even a God.  Maybe I'm a chipmunk.

So the character begins to behave generously.  He takes thousands of Groundhog Days to learn how to play the  piano and he helps a homeless guy and he buys tons of insurance from an annoying agent.  Things turn out well.  Eventually, he wakes up and it's Groundhog Day plus one and he's escaped the loop and re-entered linear time and all is well, all is well, all is well.

I'm not sure at the moment whether the point is to encourage all of us to good behavior or to convince everyone that I'm a God.

This and That

I pinged my A.A. daughter a few days ago just to check in.  A while back I told her that she was a terrible Millennial because she never texted me.  "Eh," she quipped.  "I just wait for you to text me."  THIS is why I love this girl.  Anyway, the text landed at the right time because she had gotten an update on her real father - homeless, with no real desire to change - that she found upsetting.  Smart woman that she is she did the right things and worked through it.  I think my text helped but the work is hers to do or not to do.  I reflect and share my belief that your mother and father are your mother and father - good behavior or bad behavior, close relationship or not, intimate connection or distant - and it's not possible to be non-reactive in a manner that's healthy emotionally.  They're your parents.  I know when my mom died my grief was pretty muted even though I was a mama's boy - I was on good terms with her and I didn't have anything left unsaid or any behavior I needed to have corrected.  My alcoholic, emotionally distant, impatient and volatile father, however, passed and I suffered when it happened.  Part of me wondered if I couldn't have applied the tools I learned in my recovery life to have been more understanding.  Who knows?  The point is that we're connected with our birth parents and that's that, nothin' you can do about it.

There's a boy at the meeting who is about the right age to be my son. He is the nicest, kindest man you could ever hope to meet.  He takes everything to heart, makes everything his fault, and feels it deeply, deeply, deeply.  I try to tell him every time I see him what a special person I think he is.  I think he needs this feedback.  He stands there and looks at me like I've tased him.  Such an easy kindness on my part!  Such an easy gift to give and a heartfelt one at that!

I got a text before the meeting yesterday from the guy I know who expresses a little too much interest and lavishes a little too much attention on the younger women in The Program.  His actual behavior has been okay but I've never approved of it.  I don't think that kind of attention to women is helpful in the long run - at the very least it keeps them from interacting with . .  . you know . . . other women - and I can't imagine that there is a subtext that stresses out his relationship with his wife, despite his insistence that he loves her deeply and is deeply committed to her.  SuperK is completely understanding when I share something about my A.A. daughter but she also finds it irritating from time to time.  Completely understandable.  It makes me peer at my behavior very closely.  Sometimes it's not the behavior but the fact that it is attention I've giving to someone else and not to her.  Yesterday we picked up a floor mat at the car dealer, had lunch, and did a little outlet mall shopping.  It was fun and it was with my wife.  It didn't have to be a huge extravaganza - it just needed to be something between the two of us.

Just Another Big-Ass House

I used to deal with the world in a transactional fashion - if I gave I wanted to get.  I became annoyed and enraged if I did something for someone and it wasn't reciprocated in a manner that pleased me.  And I expected that others would think about me before I thought about them.  That was the hallmark of a "winner."  Getting without giving, Hoo Boy, that was some sweet shit.  Today?  Not so much.  I work diligently at giving with the critical caveat that I should have no expectation of return.  I tell people that you can make me happier but it's hard to make me sadder.  I send out a text.  If you reply I feel good - if you don't .  . . maybe you're busy, maybe you forgot, maybe I'm no big deal in your world.  All good.  I've learned - most of the time - to give generously.

So then there's my sister . . .  I do not today and have never had a close relationship with my sister, my only living blood relative.  My sister is a perfectly fine human being.  My sister values status and appearance and she often has a blunt, somewhat insensitive manner.  She is much more attached to these things than I am and her irritation when I've succeeded in these areas is pretty obvious.  In my opinion it's as important to her to have more than you as it is to have something.  To compound her bedevilments, she married a brilliant man and kept working while he went back to school (s) so that he could get advanced degrees, and then watched in frustration as he puttered around and never made much of a success of himself in the business world.  Business requires a healthy amount of competitiveness.  In The States we don't have capitalism - we have Brute Capitalism.  It's the lions versus the gladiators.  He didn't have that kind of fight.  In the academic world you studied hard and rose in the class rankings.  In business, you tried to kill your opponent and take his women and castles, metaphorically speaking.

Anyway, one day he came home and said he'd quit his corporate attorney job and never really had any financial success after that, so my sister had to go back to work so they could afford health insurance, which indicated to me some strains in their finances.  All of this is none of my business and I've kept my nose way, way out of it.  We've never been in touch on a regular basis and this has only become more pronounced as we get older.  I don't think she really likes me.  I'm sure she loves me but I think I irritate her with my lifestyle.  I'm quite happy to report I don't really care - I try not to wave anything in her face but if I irritate her that's on her.

Anyway, they finally retired, sold their Big Ass house, and moved to a warmer climate.  I assume that a lot of the money to do this came from the gains accrued from the appreciation in their Big Ass house.  Good for them.  Downsize, simplify, detach somewhat from the need to keep up with the Joneses.  Because her birthday is coming up I asked for their new address and - curious - took a look at the house they bought.  Holy Mother of God, it's a huge four bedroom house with a big sun porch and a hot tub and a pool on a good-sized lot.  Their children are long gone and they don't know anyone in their new state.  I mean - WTF? Right?  I confess to a little penis envy right out of the chute - I want a Big Ass house, too, yeah? - but then I started doing the calculus.  How do you furnish a place that big?  Who's cleaning it?  Who's cutting the grass and maintaining the landscaping?  How much does it cost to heat and cool that place?

Mostly, I'm pleased to be free from all of that grasping and accumulating.  That is one of the miracles of my recovery - to enjoy what I have without needing more and without trying to top anyone else.

The last time I visited home I didn't tell my sister.  I wonder under what circumstances I'll see her again?

Stealing From Monks

I told SuperK this morning that one of her greatest gifts to me was letting me be who I am.  I can't imagine this is always easy.  I'm not a person who behaves in a conventional manner.  This must be irritating to a much more normal, conventional person.  I believe that a relationship goes through a few phases.  First, when you're falling in love you can overlook aspects of the other person you don't care for because you're in the thrall.  Then, after a while, shit starts to irritate you so the natural inclination is to try to change the other person, to mold them into the person you'd like them to be.  I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing - SuperK showed me that there were times to be unconventional but that sometimes that could hurt my chances when I was in a more conventional situation.  But then comes the critical point: letting the other person be their own authentic self.  This requires tremendous personal, spiritual growth.  SuperK talks about coming to the realization that I was just being me and that it didn't reflect on who she was.

We were in Japan several years ago in a city that has a lot of famous shrines and monasteries.  I asked a local guide about one of the most famous sites.  He said: "If you want to go there I'd suggest getting a guidebook - these are written by people who have done a lot of research and know more about that shrine than I'll ever know.  However, if you want to get a little off the beaten track . . .  " and then he suggested a few less well-known temples.  Wow, I'll forever be grateful that he did that.  We took a taxi to this big complex and walked inside, free to explore on our own.  We kind of stumbled around for a minute until one of the staff who spoke a little English noticed that we were lost and offered to ferry us around.  She was so great - she'd explain the importance of a room or exhibit and then she'd stand there quietly while we absorbed it all.  If we took a minute, she waited for a minute.  If we needed five minutes, she waited for five minutes.  She did not talk after her initial explanation unless we had a question.  At the end of the complex she bowed politely and dissolved into the background.  There was an older monk sitting at a table with some literature laid out in the final room - this guy looked like he was a monk right out of central casting: orange robe, shaved head, big, thick glasses, beatific smile on his face.  We chatted with him for a minute and then he said: "I think, right now, you are the happiest couple in the world."  Well, yeah, we bought a book after that comment.  He took a minute to inscribe something inscrutable on the inside cover and then we were off.

In The States I'd have chalked that up to some sales bullshit from someone trying to sell me something but in this environment I believe that man saw something in how we carried ourselves and spoke a truth.  Sometimes it's hard to hear a compliment.  I'm a suspicious, paranoid guy by nature, often suspecting some kind of jive or angle.  But, you know, I do believe that if you work The Steps and live a spiritual life then you start to give off an aura.  People feel your peace, they sense it, and it makes them feel calm and good.  I believe this monk has so trained his mind that he has a great intuitive feel for peace and calm and good intentions.

Oh, yeah, I shoplifted some shit from the monastery.  That monk was a sucker.  I know an easy mark when I see one.

Man, Is the Boat Guy in my Head

When I don't know what to do I don't do anything.  I cannot TELL you how difficult a skill this has been for me to learn.  I'm a charge-into-the-future kind of guy.  I like to make shit HAPPEN and the fact that sometimes I don't know what to do rarely impedes me.

I like the analogy of a canoe on a river.  I would take my canoe and put it in the water and start to paddle furiously upstream because that's where I wanted to go.  It just never occurred to me to turn the canoe around and go downstream and see what was around the bend.  In other words if I have a round peg and there's a square hole I go get a huge hammer and pound on that goddamn stupid peg until it's in the fucking hole.  THAT'S problem solving.  There's nothing that can't be fixed with a bigger hammer.  That's why we have sledgehammers.

"When we ask for guidance, instead of direct results, the right path always seems to unveil itself."

The Grapevine

"We may believe that by thinking of the problem, we are working on a resolution.  But we are really only dwelling on the futility of the problem.  It's only when we are released from worry that we can see solutions clearly.  How can I free myself from worry's constraints?"  Unknown writer.

"Physical fear is a natural reaction to a clear and present danger.  Irrational fear triggers that same physical reaction, but there is no actual physical danger present.  The main causes of irrational fear come from making assumptions or projecting about some future event."  The Toltecs

Funny how when I do the legwork that suggestions and possible solutions to problems pop up.  The above passages seemed appropriate to me as I make the Boat Guy a bigger problem than he really is.  How important is it in the big picture?  This is not that important but I naturally tend to worry that it's going to get worse or it's never going to end and that any possible solution is going to end up in an angry confrontation.  

"Projecting some future event," indeed.

When I keep my mind open - vis-a-vis the Boat Guy, for instance, these little reminders pop up and help out.

Neighbors Are the WORST

When we retired we moved into a community where the residents have to be over fifty-five.  You can, apparently, go out and get a trophy wife if you want to after you've moved in but even then she has to be forty.  No twenty-five year old trophy wives.  We like it here.  We weren't sure we were going to but it ends up being a nice place to live if a little dowdy and doddering at times.  It's quiet; we know our neighbors; everyone takes care of their little properties.  No kids, no large dogs, no semis parked on the street.  A while back the park management decided it would be acceptable for an adult child to move in with a parent as long as the child is serving as a "caretaker" if by "caretaker" you mean a "shiftless ne'er-do-well who's still comfortable living with their mother."  I'm being unkind here for comedic effect but you've either got to be really selfless to live in a mobile home with your mom or you're not doing too well in the real world.

So a sketchy looking dude moved in with his mother in the home right behind us and - at some point - his mother moved out.  So we've got a middle-aged handy-man working on cars and trucks and boats fifty feet from our bedroom while using the backyard to store a ton of crap that would do the term "trailer-trash" justice.  Since we got back we have enjoyed a woman yelling at the dude at midnight (gratefully quieting down when I stepped outside and said "hey, guys" to alert them to the fact that they were disturbing others although at that point she did suggest that she needed to get something out of her truck which was apparently parked in the dude's driveway and was inexplicably locked and politely told me I might just have to call the police which did get the dude's attention because the ruckus quieted after that; a lot of grinding gears and backing noises the next night as the dude and his friend backed a large boat under the small canopy; and finally the commencement of The Grinding phase where the dude is doing some kind of work on the boat that involves the destruction of something metal, intermittently, I'm so pleased to report.

I'm sure approximately none of this would pass park rules but the manager is very conflict-adverse, preferring to isolate in the management office most of the day instead of circulating among her people.  So what do I do?  Confront the sketchy due respectfully face-to-face and risk pissing an occasionally volatile man off who lives fifty feet from me?  Rat to the manager who will either do nothing or say something to the dude who will probably know immediately who's complaining and then I'm in the same boat (hah-hah) that I'd be in if I took the first course of action; or do nothing, hoping the work won't last too long and feeling grateful it isn't a constant irritation?  Sometimes I do things that end up making a situation that really isn't that bad much, much worse.  Sometimes I sit back and take it when I should do something to remedy a situation where I'm in the right.

I've talked to a few people.  I've kicked ideas around with SuperK.  I'm writing about it.  At this point I have no good feel for a right course of action which I've learned that I should not - yet, at least - take any action.  

Very frustrating for an action-oriented self-righteous guy who has The Law on his side in this particular instance.

Yadda Yadda Yadda Blah Blah Blah

Here's a couple of good thoughts from stories found in The Grapevine . . . 

"It's a great day when things are going well and I don't drink, and it's an even better day when everything goes wrong and I don't drink."

"And as it turns out, the less I obsess over getting my way, the more life seems to cooperate.  I used to think my legacy would be stamped on an award or etched into the cure of some terrible disease, something grand, something undeniable.  Who knew the real achievement would be this - living a life well won."

I struggled - still struggle sometimes, to be honest about it - with the mundane aspects of life like bathing and using the toilet and sleeping and going to work and all that boring crap that makes up  so much of life.  I wanted life to be the first Friday night at the start of my vacation week, the booze and drugs starting to work their magic, at the top of a big ass roller coaster right before the car starts to fall over that big first drop, the LSD just starting to hit . . .  THAT'S life, right?

That's bullshit is what that is.  Sobriety allows me to take a great deal of pleasure in the simple act of living.  I could not imagine an existence where that would be the source of deep satisfaction.  It sounds so . . . boring, so mundane, so routine, yadda yadda yadda blah blah blah.

"We are sure God wants us to be happy, joyous, and free.  We cannot subscribe to the belief that this life is a vale of tears, though it once was just that for many of us.  But it is clear that we made our own misery.  God didn't do it.  Avoid them, the deliberate manufacture of misery, but if trouble comes (Ed. Note: As it surely will - you can take that to the bank), cheerfully capitalize it as an opportunity to demonstrate his omnipotence."

Alcoholics Anonymous P. 133

The Fellowship

 We talked about the importance of The Fellowship of Alcoholics Anonymous at the meeting today.  We're surprised at how isolated we've become.  The Book talks about the loneliness of the professional isolator and the loneliness of the noisy good-times fellow.  We feel apart and we don't know why and it's a crappy feeling.  Sometimes we're sitting alone with the lights out and the blinds drawn watching crappy TV and we feel lonely and then sometimes we're at a crowded bar and we feel like we're on the outside looking in.  Lonely when alone and lonely in a crowd.  Lonely is bad enough but we're lonely and feeling sorry for ourselves.

I had the pleasure of sharing a cup of hot chocolate with my A.A. daughter this week.  A fiercely independent woman who decides what to do and then just does it.  Not a needy person which suits me just fine.  The thought of anyone checking in with me every day gives me The Shivers.  Sometimes I feel my best self is existing like one of those electronic defibrillators you see hanging on the wall to be used when people my age have coronaries and you get to shock the shit out of them in the hopes their heart starts to beat again.  You don't want to have to use it and you know you won't have to use it very often but it's damn good to know it's there.  If I have just a little time with her she starts to tell me what's going on in her life in more detail and then is surprised that I tell her she talks about herself.  We all need to be the center of attention some of the time.  Not all of the time and not never but some of the time.  It's okay to be the focus of attention.  When I'm expressing myself to a friend I learn things simply by listening to myself talk and I get the counsel of others, people who may have more experience or a different way of looking at whatever I've got going on.

I had the pleasure of talking with one of my A.A. sons after a meeting as well.  The kindest man I know, with a heart as big as Mt. Everest, who internalizes everything and makes it his fault and then he figures out what he needs to do to make the other person feel better.  This makes him kind but it also predisposes him to the agony of the futility in trying to save everyone in the world.  Not everything is his fault although he seems to think so much of the time.  This guy I have to have to praise all the time and he's like a deer in the headlights when I do so, clearly uncomfortable that someone isn't blaming him for everything.

Where's that Doggone God, Anyway?

Back from a long trip to rural Denmark for some green, green Spring hiking.  As a guy who grew up in a temperate climate but now live in a semi-arid one it was deeply, deeply satisfying to be smack in the middle of all that green.  And because we arrived at the very start of Spring and left as Summer was getting under way we got to see how the green changes from a very light shade, becoming darker and darker, the woods bare and sparse at the start and full and dense at the end.  If you're having trouble connecting with a higher power go take a hike in an isolated place.  It doesn't have to be a long one or a difficult one and you can stop when you start to get tired.  You don't have to get anywhere in particular and take time to stop and listen and look and take a deep whiff of the air.  KK has an app that can identify birds by analyzing their songs and I have one that tells you what kind of tree or plant you're looking at so it's important for us to stop from time to time and see what's growing and listen to what's singing.  Even after one short month listening to birds we'd never heard of before we could start to recognize different species by their song.

And nothing forces me into the moment like traveling.  Everything is new and different so I'm forced into a focused awareness.  How do I do this or that, how do I do everything?  Not a lot of regular chores or routine to follow so I can just be where I am.  I can eat a weird cookie or try to figure out a washing machine in a foreign language or . . . or . . . everything!

An Evil and Corroding Thread

I'm really riding the Toltec gravy train . . .  

"Fear of failure: What am I afraid of?  Where does this fear come from?  Am I willing to let fear keep me from pursuing my passion?  Focusing on all the steps it may take to achieve your final goal can have the effect of fanning the flames of fear.  Instead, just take one small step forward in the direction of your passion."

It is so fascinating to me as a True Believer of the Program of Alcoholics Anonymous, as someone who had as unmanageable a life as it's possible to have, to see what are essentially, more or less, the spiritual principles that serve as the bedrock of our lives, spoken so clearly by a people who lived in the jungles of Central America ten centuries ago.  Fear!  Attacking my problems one small bite at a time . . . or One Day at a Time.  Unbelievable how universal spirituality is.

"Practicing awareness takes discipline, a strengthening of our will that allows us to remain in a state of harmony with the world around us."

Or, in A.A. speak, ". . . and to practice these principles in all our affairs."

Practice:  To perform or work at repeatedly so as to become proficient; exercising a skill regularly  in order to be able to do it better.

I'm also struck by how often the concept of "work" appears.  Working the Steps; Working with Others; How it Works; Into Action.  It goes on and on.

What IS the Point?

"I don't think happiness or unhappiness is the point.  How do we best learn from them and transmit what we have learned to others, if they would receive the knowledge?  When pain comes, we are expected to learn from it willingly, and help others to learn.  When happiness comes, we accept it as a gift, and thank  God for it."

As Bill Sees It.

I have come to really embrace this idea that looking for "happiness" is a dicey proposition.  Too often I'm looking to get what I want - or what I want to avoid - and then I'll be happy.  This ties how I feel to external events or forces.  I have learned to embrace the word "content."  This ties how I feel to my internal state.  I laughed when I read the line that this search for happiness isn't "the point."  The point is, as I understand it, to look at whatever is going on with wisdom and perspective, certain that the pain will eventually end and striving to learn from it so that I can pass my experience on to others and so that I don't live my life afraid of future pain . . . which will certainly come for me.

Surrender

A guy with about a year of sobriety led the meeting this morning.  I thought he did a good job although I wasn't able to discern a specific topic.  When other members started to share they talked about the amends process.  I have no idea why.  I heard absolutely nothing about making amends during the leader's share.  Probably, I wasn't listening closely, but I will say that one of the things that happens to me when I lead a meeting is that people pick up on some obscure point that pales in comparison to what I intended to be the main thrust of my talk and off they go, sharing about whatever they want to share about.

I'm going to be traveling in a foreign country and won't have access to live meetings.  I'll be okay.  I'll miss these idiots and knuckleheads, I'll tell you that.

Since I should be prohibited by law from drinking anything that contains caffeine I usually have a cup of herbal tea at the meeting.  I picked Ginger Infusion or Peach Surprise or some such shit for my selection today.  I ripped off the top of the packet which didn't quite expose the tea bag.  The packet was made of some kind of plastic-ey material so I couldn't get down far enough to grab the tea bag and my efforts to tear it along one of the side edges failed, too.  I handed the packet to a woman I know.  She was useless.  I handed it to a guy I know - a retired engineer - and he was as feckless as the woman.  I started to look for something sharp - like a knife or screwdriver to puncture the bag, aware that I was getting close to an outcome that would lead to spilling of blood, but don't tell me I can't do something because then I have to fucking do it.  Mind you, I wasn't upset or in a bad mood I just couldn't believe I couldn't open a tea bag.  So there I am in the kitchen, jabbing ferociously at the still sealed packed with a ballpoint pen - it wouldn't have been out of place if I had been shrieking "Banzai!  Banzai!" as I was doing this.  The two people I had asked for help were definitely edging away at this point.

Luckily, my diligence paid off.  I plopped the bag into my cup, poured in some hot water, and started chatting with a friend.  I did notice after the tea had steeped for five minutes that my efforts to free the imprisoned had obviously punctured the tea bag so that I had a cup of hot water full of floating bits of tea leaves.  In my defense I took the cup out to  my engineer friend and showed him the result of my efforts so he could have a nice laugh at my expense.  God knows I laugh at him all the time.

I poured out the tea and had a cup of coffee.  I have learned the meaning of the word "surrender."

Who Knows?

I have a friend in A.A.  - a male friend, yes, I have a lot of those, too, trying to stay out of hot water with SuperK this morning - who is early in sobriety and about the age my child would have been.  He had just lost a grandmother that he was very close with and - to add grief to misery - he is dealing with a woman that he adores who is pulling back from the relationship to work on her own stuff.  He's the sweetest kid in the world, hard on himself, prone to overthinking things, prone to believing that everything is his fault .  .  . in other words like most of us.

I sent him a note this morning.  If I were to speculate I would guess he's blaming himself for the end of the relationship, wondering what he did wrong, wondering how to revive things, and - failing that - certain he's never, ever going to find happiness with a partner.  What do you say to staunch that kind of blood flow, that kind of self-inflicted misery?

I return over and over to the notion that pain and loss and death are facts of existence and that I do well if I learn how to sit with the feelings instead of fleeing from them or trying to change them or burying them with external substances.  It's hard to be uncomfortable, damn hard, no one likes to be uncomfortable, and alcoholics absolutely abhor anything distasteful.

I'm reminded of a scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where the knights storm a castle and come under withering fire and after a moment King Arthur starts yelling: "Run away!  Run away!" all the knights join him in this chant and they all run away.

I always encourage people to sit with their feelings, take a good, hard look at them, and try to figure out what the lesson is, no matter how painful or objectionable those feelings are, how irritating it is when they say something you don't want to hear.  Maybe his lesson is that this isn't a relationship with real potential.  Maybe the lesson is he's not ready for any kind of serious relationship right now and - holy shit - maybe he's one of those guys who isn't wired in a way that he'll ever be happy with a long-term partner.  Maybe the lesson is that the kind, loving action at this moment is to think of the well-being of another person and not spend so much time thinking of his own damn self, that the right course of action will open up sometime in the future.

Who knows?  He doesn't know right now.  I sure as shit don't know.  All I can do is assure people that if they stay the course, live a kind, stable life, that they will reap untold benefits.  I have literally never met a long-timer active in a recovery program who says it hasn't been worth it.  Never, not once.

Here's the Toltecs: "When we try to hold on to beliefs that no longer serve us, the result is suffering.  Trying to hold on to old beliefs just because they're familiar is easy to do; we prefer the known to the unknown; the status quo that's OK to the new adventure that might fail.  But following your heart will never lead you astray."

Start Surrending

The word surrender has a negative connotation.  It implies having a weakness or deficiency, the final act of a loser.  I beg to differ.  I see it as the art of letting go, of giving up  the ideas of what should or shouldn't be.  It is giving up the fight when fighting is useless.  I also see that surrender shouldn't make me a doormat.  I'm not going to start letting people walk all over me.  I plan on moving through life changing the things I can and not worrying about the things that I can't.

Surrender: To stop resisting.

Revealing a Little Bit at a Time

I'm constantly amazed at how difficult it is for new people to share what's going on in their lives.  We really seem to resist sharing the nuts and bolts, the mundane minutiae of our lives with other people.  I chat frequently with a 45 year old guy - the man who was raised in foster care and does not know who his parents are - who has been in an on again/off again relationship with a woman in A.A. for a long time.  I love both of them and think they're good people trying to learn how to maintain a healthy relationship after enduring difficult childhoods and then drinking at life for many years.  Here's the thing . . . the manifestation of how hard new people make it to help them . . . I am constantly flummoxed to hear that the relationship - it was definitely over last week or was it definitely back on last week, I can't keep track of all the sudden, jarring twists and turns, feints and weaves - is back without a word or a hint being shared, with me, anyway.  The episode that made me laugh, ruefully, anyway, was hearing that my buddy came home one day to find all of his stuff in a pile out in the garage - that relationship sounded over to me - and then receiving a few pictures of them happily hanging out together.  WTF, right?

I don't believe that he's being purposefully deceptive or trying to hide something - I think he doesn't consider bringing anyone else into whatever conversation he's having with the world.  I know I didn't.  I had parents who weren't that engaged in my life - and that's on me as much as it's on them - so I was used to doing whatever I wanted, whatever I thought was best, all of the time.

That's Going to Work?

"As we go through our day we pause if we feel upset or filled with doubt, and ask for the right thought or action.  We constantly remind ourselves that we are no  longer running the show.  We say to ourselves many times each day, 'Thy will be done'  We are then in much less danger of dear, anger, worry, self-pity, or foolish decisions.  We become much more efficient.  We do not tire as easily, because we are not burning up energy foolishly like we did when we were trying to control everything in our lives without help from a Higher Power.

It works - it really does."

I can just hear the new person saying: "What?!  That's not going to work.  Are you telling me that works?"

I like that the word foolish shows up twice.

Foolish:  Someone or something lacking good sense, judgement, or discretion, often appearing silly, unwise, or irrational.

Courage

Often life goes in a direction I couldn't have imagined.  The question then becomes: how do I react when this happens?  Am I open to seeing that life had better plans for me than I did?  Or do I mourn and grieve and bitch and lament, thinking that everything would have been better if only this had happened?

This is a rhetorical question.  Of course I mourn and grieve and bitch and lament.  Just for not as long as I used to.

From our Daily Reflections: "One of the definitions of courage is the willingness to do the right thing in spite of fear.  Courage, then, is not necessarily the absence of fear."  Courage implies firmness of mind and will.  Courage is the ability to control fear and be willing to deal with something that is dangerous, difficult, or unpleasant.

Yeah, well, there's some scary shit out there.  Fear can be productive.  I was messing around with the electrical connection on a cheap lamp I bought in a developing country when it occurred to me that there were three possible outcomes: 1. I blow a fuse and burn the house down.  2.  I electrocute myself.  3.  I throw the thing away.  Please note that none of the options include me successfully fixing the lamp.  There was no way that was going to happen.

"When I was drinking, I deceived myself about reality, rewriting it to what I wanted it to be.  Deceiving others is a character defect, even if it is just stretching the truth a bit or cleaning up my motives so others will think well of me.  In other words, I have begun not practicing deception."

"Remember . . . it's not a lie if you believe it."  

George Costanza explaining how he was going to beat a lie detector machine.  When Jerry asked him how he could do the same thing George scoffed and said: "That's like going up to Pavarotti and saying: 'Teach me to sing like you do.' "

The NEW Promises. The Old Promises REVISED. Something!

Here are our beloved Promises from the Plain Language Big Book:

"If we are painstaking about Step Nine, we will be amazed before we have made amends to half of our list of people.  We will find new freedom and new happiness.  We will not regret the past or wish we could forget about it.  We will understand the word serenity and we will know peace.

No matter how badly we have behaved in the past, we will begin to see how our experience can benefit others.  Any feelings of uselessness and self-pity will disappear.  We will lose interest in selfish things and begin to take an interest in helping other people.  Self-seeking will slip away.  Our whole attitude and outlook about life will change.  Fear of people and of money worries will leave us.  We will know how to handle situations which used to confuse or worry us.  We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Are these extravagant promises?  We think not!  These promises come true among A.A. members every day - sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly.  They will always come into our lives if we work for them."

Work?  Work?  Nobody said anything about work!

Sometimes real fucking slowly.

I have always objected to the assertion that these are not extravagant promises.  I think that they're extremely extravagant.  They're extravagant as hell.

I really like that the qualifier "before we are halfway through" is further explained to mean half way through the amends process.  There has been a lot of confusion about that over the years.

I note that a lot of the phrases translate word for word from the original text.  In the new version, of course, the Traditions and the Steps are not changed.  Old-timers are howling already at the apostasy of changing one word from the original book.  I can only imagine the riots that would occur if we tried to modernize the Steps.

As a kid who grew up in a Protestant church let me draw this analogy to those of you who are offended at this new offering of literature: church services were conducted in Latin - to a largely illiterate population, mind you, meaning the priest could be saying whatever he wanted because none of his parishioners could read a word  - until the 15th century.  Catholics didn't switch to the vernacular until the 1960s, for heaven's sake.  Then, the first translation was called the King James version and was packed with thous and thees and shalt nots and a lot of other stilted, old-timey language.  Eventually, this was replaced by a series of revised versions but not until the start of the 20th century.  At one point my very religious, extremely conservative parents bought me a Bible - which I read several times - that was meant to appeal to people who were a lot younger.  The cover featured hip, happy and attractive young people.  So where does this lead me as I ponder the outrage over the Plain Language Big Book?  I'm very, very, very tolerant.  I'm finding the reading to be completely inoffensive.  I don't think anything material has changed.  The message is the same - just written in the vernacular using words and phrases common in 21st century dialogue.

Big, Big Words

Resentment: A complex, long-lasting emotion combining anger, bitterness, and disappointment, often stemming from feeling unfairly treated, wronged, or underappreciated.  Experiencing a resentment is reliving an offense that injured you in the past. (The italics are mine.)   

I find it very affirming in my spiritual quests to see the same concepts repeated across the ages and shared among different philosophies and religions.  I was struck dumb recently at a Toltec passage about how nefarious and damaging resentments are to our psyche. Then, the passage quoted from the Big Book in today's Daily Reflection, is another big fan favorite: "Resentment is the 'number one' offender.  It destroys more alcoholics than anything else.  From it stems all forms of spiritual disease, for we have been not only mentally and physically ill, we have been spiritually sick."

Again, I love the choice of words: offender, destroys, spiritual disease.  Big words, big, big words with a lot of oomph behind them.  Hard to misinterpret the concept of being destroyed.

The Book is Packed

When that happens, our great natural assets, the instincts, have turned into physical and mental liabilities.

To define the word 'harm' in a practical way, we might call it the result of instincts in collision, which caused physical, mental, emotional, or spiritual damage to people.

Yet these instincts .  .  . often far exceed their natural function.   

Whenever a human being becomes a battleground for the instincts, there can be no peace.

Such is the power of the instincts to overreach themselves.

For every time a person imposes his instincts unreasonably upon others, unhappiness follows.

Unreasonable fear that our instincts will not be satisfied leads us to covet the possessions of others, to lust for sex and power, to become angry when our instinctive demands are threatened, to be envious when the ambitions of others seem to be realized while ours are not.

Instincts restored to true purpose!

Once again, look at those dang words: battleground, unreasonable (twice, mind you), angry, threatened, envious, no peace, damage.  What if I was given this option to start my day: you will spend all of your  time waging an invisible war in an internal battleground, fueled by angry, threatened, envious emotions that threaten any possibility of peace.  Sounds like a plan, a shitty plan, gotta be a better plan than that.  And I love the idea of trying to impose my demands and will on others . . . and doing it because I perceive, sometimes correctly, often not, that others are doing better than I am.  No shit!  There are always going to be people out there who are on an easier track than I am.

Instincts On Rampage

How instincts can exceed their proper function.

The collision of instincts can produce anything from a cold snub to a blazing revolution.

We have learned that the satisfaction of instincts cannot be the sole end and aim of our lives.

If we place instincts first, we have got the cart before the horse; we shall be pulled backward into disillusionment.

When the satisfaction of our instincts for sex, security, and society becomes the sole object of our lives, then pride steps in to justify our excesses.

By now the newcomer has probably arrived at the following conclusions: that his character defects, representing instincts gone astray, have been the primary cause of his drinking and failure at life.

Here's an interesting factoid: the words instinct and instincts appear about 35 times in our literature and all but two are in the 12&12.  Moreover, the two times they appear in the Big Book they are not referencing our own personal instincts.  Apparently, after a few years the founders started to be suspicious that they had really missed something important when they were writing the book.  Fair enough - it was sort of dicey and experimental at the start.  Dr. Bob had at least one seance at his house, for chrissake.

Here's one of my favorite lines in the literature: "Instincts on rampage balk at investigation."

Rampage: A period of violent, reckless, or destructive behavior, often involving a person or group rushing around frantically.  It signifies uncontrolled rage and chaos.  Synonyms include frenzy, rage, and uproar.

Bill loved those kinds of images.  He loved to portray alcoholism in graphic, powerful words and images.  I have instincts.  My instincts like to riot violently.  C'mon, whether or not you're a Bill W fan that's some pretty cool shit.

Instincts:  A way of thinking, behaving, or feeling that is not learned; a subconscious, automatic impulse driven by biological survival needs.

Instincts gone astray, exceeding their proper function, with the result that life is deeply, deeply unsettling and painful.  In fact, this state of mind leads to a deeply, deeply unhappy life, to "disillusionment."  I love the words and phrases: collision, battleground, blazing revolution, physical and mental liabilities.  I get the sense that because the instincts weren't properly addressed at the start that the founders really let 'er rip when the 12&12 was written.

Pride: A complex emotion and concept generally defined as a deep sense of pleasure, satisfaction or self-respect.

So pride appears in the literature like a billion times .  .  . I've really started to go down the wormhole.  I better be careful with all this cross-referencing.

Rampage would be an excellent, excellent name for a heavy metal band.