Intuition and Inspiration

Inspiration:  A new idea, especially one that arises suddenly and is clever or creative.

Intuition: A perceptive insight gained without the use of conscious rational processes.

Spooky sounding shit, isn't it?  But here it is: right in our text.

"Here we ask God for inspiration, an intuitive thought or a decision.  We relax and take it easy. (Ed. Note: We do what now?  And then after that we do what?)  We don't struggle.  (Ed. Note: Oh, come on now, enough is enough.) We are often surprised how the right answers come after we have tried this for a while.  What used to be the hunch or the occasional inspiration gradually becomes a working part of the mind."  BB PP 86-7.

"As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action."  BB P 87.

"We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.  We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves."  BB P 84. 

Suburban Bill called the other day to talk about this frustrating and frightening situation that he's going through at his work.  He does this even though I caution him that I'm not the best source of advice about anything beyond an unquestioned ability to rank all of the Black Sabbath albums, from best to worst.  Actually, I had lived through something pretty similar ten years ago or so and I know Bill is experienced enough to seek counsel from many different sources, both verbal and written, and that he has a rich spiritual life that is a font of strength.  He shared with me a letter that he had written to the company officers.  I could immediately see that it was not a great letter.  While it was accurate and justified and understandable it was mostly just a lot of bitching and self-interested grievance.  

I had great faith that he would work through this deliberately, in his own time and in his own way, and arrive at a good decision.  I didn't think he would send the letter - at least not in that initial form - but I was careful not to tell him not to send the letter because I have no idea what he should do.  Maybe this is a case where if he sent the letter he would have gotten exactly what he wanted and maybe this is a case where sending the letter would have so enraged the officers that they would have released him immediately.  In any case, this was a decision for Bill and for Bill only.  I had complete faith that he would go through a measured analysis and do what he felt was right.

I try to never tell anyone what to do.  I will tell you what I've done and I can often point out some relevant stuff in our literature and I always encourage people to talk to as many of their AA colleagues as they can because you never know where the intuition and inspiration is going to be found.

My sponsor Kenner once responded to my request for a specific course of action with a guffaw and this gem: "Oh, no you don't - if it doesn't work out I don't want you coming back to blame me."  

He's at the Great Meeting in the Sky, chortling away.

Simply Grateful

 I'm sort of in a back and forth thing with my sister right now about how "devastated" her daughters are because they're not getting the full-on, in-person college experience.  The kind person that I am (or, at least, am trying to become) is understanding.  That's a big shock for a young person.  The touchy, irritable person that is still lurking right below the surface rolls his eyes.  C'mon, I was worried about getting drafted to go to Vietnam so I don't have too much sympathy for someone who is upset because they have to take a semester of on-line classes.  I try to share with clueless Earth People about our relentless, tireless pursuit of The Positive without sounding cold and preachy.  It's out there and we can find it.  Sometimes it's obscured by the fog of calamity and self-pity, but it's out there.

I also try to stay grateful for the routine.  I recall this year not long ago where I caught every fucking disease that was cycling through my community.  I started out with the flu, despite my flu shot, reminding me why I get a flu shot because I do not want to get the flu ever again.  I picked up a stomach virus at some point - highly unusual for me, Mr. Cast Iron Stomach - where I threw up more times in a week than I had in the last 40 years and I am NOT making that up.  Then I concluded with this nasty chest cold that was circulating which I could not shake without antibiotics which I had not taken for 20 years.  As soon as I crawled into bed the dry, hacking, unproductive cough would start up, jerking me awake no matter the level of my exhaustion.

Lovely topic this morning, right?  When all of this pestilence finally cleared up I recall sitting in my Quiet Time chair deeply, deeply, deeply grateful that I was back at a normal, base-line level of health. 

"Why am I not more grateful that I'm a relatively healthy person?" I mused.

I have a tendency to feel that I've under-performed at the end of each day.  I could have done more: bigger, faster, further.  What a waste of my energy.

One More Success Story

 Charming:  Delightful in a playful way which avoids responsibility or seriousness, as if attracting through a magical charm.

There was this young guy who attended meetings with us when we were still renting a house here, trying to decide whether to make a permanent move or not.  I liked him a lot - he was bright and friendly and charming and totally full of shit. 

"I don't think he gets what we're trying to do here," I said to SuperK.  He was trying to skate through recovery on the basis of charm and personality and good intentions.  We all think we're fooling the long-timers when we first come in but we're almost never accomplishing this.  Bullshit is easy to spot, especially in newcomers who are mostly composed of bullshit and when the spotters are former bullshit-spotters who are expert in bullshit-spotting.  It's like a child who believes she's come up with a new way to fool the clueless parent.

Sure enough off he went for a brief period of research.  "Finishing up our lead" is how we put it.  He came back in, went to work on The Steps with vigor and success, and drifted out of my immediate orbit due to geographical reasons.

"I knew the man by name and partly recognized his features, but there all resemblance ended.  From a trembling, despairing, nervous wreck, had emerged a man brimming over with self-reliance.  I talked with him for some time, but was not able to bring myself to feel that I had known him before. " BB P. XXXI.

I now see him on a regular basis in a morning Zoom meeting.  After the first time I heard him speak I said to SuperK: "I think he's got it."  It's not at all hard to tell when someone is truly trying to live a recovery life on a spiritual basis.  Just like bullshit oozes out of a person's personality so does spirituality.  He looks bright and colorful, and he sparkles with humility and honesty.  It literally pours off his being.   

It's an amazing thing to experience.  There are so many failures in A.A. and not because of a systemic fault in The Program but because it's so goddam hard to put down the alcohol and drugs and start to do the hard work of recovery.  I'm glad I'm around to see these things.

Politics and Gratitude and The Damn To Do List

After we've been alive for a while we are who we are.  We can always change but the change becomes more incremental and more difficult.  A lot of the time I end my day feeling like I've fallen short, that I haven't checked off all of the things on my To Do List, some of which have been on the list for months and years, like dinosaur bones.  No one is going to complete that 3rd Century Roman aqueduct.  I can take "Finish Aqueduct" off of my To Do List.  It is what it is.  We don't do something else because we don't want to do something else - we want to do what we're doing.  Hopefully, there's some peace to be found in that.  And hopefully we push through that and accomplish the hard, new things that we don't want to tackle.  There's some peace in that, too.

The pandemic reminds me sometimes of all the things that I used to be able to easily do but now can't, things I took for granted and things I didn't take for granted, things that I deeply enjoyed and now miss.  I have to redouble my efforts to appreciate all the things I have in my life.  I have a Gratitude List that I review mentally each morning but still have a tendency to forget to be grateful, which makes me ungrateful to varying degrees.  Reminds me of the time I had a really nasty flu/respiratory infection and was sick for a number of weeks, coughing, coughing, coughing all the time, not sleeping with all of the coughing.  When I finally recovered I was so happy to just not start coughing as soon as I lay down to sleep that it made me realize how I took my health - my excellent health - for granted.  THAT is on the top of my Gratitude List every day.

I'm a little worried about politics and Alcoholics Anonymous right now.  This whole mask thing - incomprehensibly - is seeming to evolve into an issue of your political views instead of a public health issue.  We have a few meetings open for in person fellowship and they're militantly right-wing.  I don't care about your politics.   I have friends who have much different political views that me and I get along with them just fine . . . as long as we don't discuss politics.  I hope we don't shred some of our apolitical comity.

The Ghostly Whine of an Alcoholic Complaining

Whine: A long-drawn, high-pitched complaining cry or sound.  (Ed. Note: that definition makes me shudder and cringe.)

I've been amused/irritated to hear a mostly continuous stream of grousing and bitching from a select few A.A. members about their preference for in-person meetings over Zoom meetings.  Look, I get it - this isn't the first choice for anybody.  We all want to get back to intimate, face-to-face fellowship but after awhile the complaining just becomes tiresome.  I didn't complain about the snow in Chicago or the humidity in Ohio and I sure don't complain about the L.A. traffic (Ed. Note: I'm lying here - I'm obviously lying here.   I have complained/am complaining/will, in the future, complain, about all of these things.  I have learned, however, eventually, to quit complaining about them all the time and to make the best of whatever situation I'm in that I have no power to change.  After a while the complaining morphs into tiresome bitching.)

Anyway, I've mentioned that one of my solutions to the Zoom situation is to attend meetings back in Ohio, meetings that I attended in person for years and years.  It has been a blast.  I was looking at the Brady Bunch screen (I love how some people sit so still that they look like the frame has frozen and some are in this constant, restless, twitching movement.) and marveling at some of the faces and some of the memories.

There's one guy who I literally, truly love like a brother but with whom I hadn't been communicating for a few years.  A true friend is someone that you can sit down with after a long absence and begin talking as if one of you had stepped away momentarily to use the bathroom or grab a cup of coffee - it's that seamless and natural.  There's no "catching up on what's been going on." There's another guy with whom I was friendly in a marginal way but who really stepped in when my sponsor was dying to give me a boots-on-the-ground perspective, especially at the end when Kenner stopped answering his phone and someone needed to actually drive to the care facility to see what was going on.  There's a not-so-young anymore woman showing up, who just celebrated 20 years of continuous sobriety, the one who told the memorable story about getting yelled at for months because she always showed up for work late and then copping a resentment because no one gave her a reward when she became punctual.  There's a guy who probably doesn't remember me that was just getting sober when a few of us started a men's meeting . . . 15 years ago.  There are several folks there who I chatted with pleasantly but unremarkably when I was in town.  It's fun to see them, too.

I talk about love a lot.  I talk about how it's possible to find the solution to everything, to anything, as long as I'm willing to make an effort.

Proper Use of the Will

 "We should be sensible, tactful, considerate, and humble without being servile or scraping.  As God's people we stand on our feat; we don't crawl before anyone."  BB P 83.

One of my favorite phrases from The Big Book of Alcoholics Anonymous.  When I needed to correct bad behavior I fought the process - when I corrected the bad behavior to the best of my ability and tried to change my behavior to prevent a repeat of the bad behavior I continued to beat the shit out of my self forever.  I find that alcoholics whipsaw between apologizing for nothing to apologizing for everything.

Will: Mental powers manifested as wishing, choosing, desiring, or intending.

This is a hell of a good definition.  Very illuminating.  The idea of "turning my will over" has always been a little confusing for me.  "Turning my life over" makes more sense.  If I get up and see that I have a flat tire on my car I figure I have a flat tire on my car.  That must be in God's plan for me.  "It is what it is" is bandied about the Seaweed household all the time.  But turning my desire to never have a flat tire?  Meh.  I guess the idea is to turn off all of my wanting and wishing and desiring and lusting.  I guess the idea is that my higher power is in a better position to decide what's in my best interest and what's not.

"Every day is a day when we must carry a vision of God's will into all our daily activities. 'How can I best serve thee - they will (not mine) be done.  These are thoughts which must go with us constantly.  We can exercise our will power along this line all we wish.  It is the proper use of the will."  BB P 85.

PlayStations and Such

 This idea of prayer has always intrigued me.  Talking to god.  It makes me laugh to think of god being interested in anything I have to say.  I'm a two year old laying out the agenda for the day.  Top of the list is a new PlayStation.  Mom is nodding her head and totally ignoring me.

Petition: A supplication; an entreaty; to make a request.

"Now, what of prayer?  Prayer is the raising of the heart and mind to God.  Prayer, as commonly understood, is a petition to God.  Having opened our channel as best we can, we try to ask for those right things of which we and others are in the greatest need."  

More bullshit about other people, I see.  And I'm uncomfortable with the idea of asking, preferring the verb "to demand."

"Having opened our channel as best we can, we try to ask for those right things of which we and others are in the greatest need."

The bullshit about other people continues unabated.  It's a flood of bullshit.

And we think that the whole range of our needs is well defined by that part of Step Eleven which says: ". . . knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out."  A few lines later we see this gem: "Even so, when making specific requests, it will be well to add to each of them this qualification:'if it be Thy will.' "

We don't pay close attention to any rules or regulations so our founders had to repeat them over and over and over . . .   Not your will, dude - God's will.

With my minor back ailment I found myself asking my higher power for a very specific outcome.  I'm only human, after all, and my wish is to have the pain quotient in my life burble along in low gear.  I am, in my defense, careful to add: "But this is what I want.  If you have other plans I'm good with that.  I'll deal with whatever your will is to the best of my ability."  I feel good about asking for what I want.  I don't think this is unreasonable.  If I want a PlayStation I should ask for one.  I shouldn't demand one and I shouldn't be setting myself up to pitch a bitch if I don't get one.  I think that the asking is healthy for me - I'm acknowledging the importance of my higher power in my life.  It's a supplication.  It's a two way interaction between god and me.

Fair Disclosure: I don't know what a PlayStation is.  I do know that it hadn't been invented yet when I allegedly was asking for one.