Unvarnished Truth

 I like the phrase "Design for Living."  Alcoholics Anonymous has given me a Design for Living.  I wouldn't have stuck around for very long unless there was a practical application clearly spelled out to help me try to corral my messed-up life.

I like the easy terms we're given for developing a relationship with a Higher Power.  There are some examples in the literature of people having the so-called White Light experience, where God consciousness arrives in the form of a sudden realization, but most of us come to have an awakening of the "educational variety."

Early on in my sobriety I was often asked: "How are things going for you right now?  Not good?  Then maybe you should try something else for a change."  I had no snappy comeback to that line.

My problems, I think, are mostly of my own making.  My current nom de plume when I'm on a Zoom Meeting is "Swims Against the Current Steve."  I'm often the guy who walks up to the river, sees a lovely vista downstream and raging whitewater upstream, and starts swimming against the current.  Sanctimonious Steve and Self-Righteous Steve were also fan favorites.

I like the fact that I have a ton of long-term friends.  These guys are not afraid that they're going to hurt my feelings.  It doesn't happen often but sometimes I get the unvarnished truth when, honestly, I would have preferred some varnish. 

The First Tradition

Unity: A condition of harmony or accord.

"Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends on A.A. unity."  Tradition One (Ed. Note: One, the first number, the number that kicks things off, leading one to believe that it's an important concept.)

"The A.A. member . . . learns that the clamor of desires and ambitions within him must be silenced whenever these could damage the group.  It becomes plain that the group must survive or the individual will not.  At the outset, how best to live and work together as groups became the prime question.  In the world about us we saw personalities destroying whole peoples.  If strong people were stalemated in the search for peace and harmony, what was to become of our erratic band of alcoholics?"  12&12 P. 130.

One of my A.A. friends - who shall remain nameless because he takes far too much childish pleasure in seeing his name in this inconsequential blog - suggested yesterday that I dig a little deeper and analyze what's really going on with my Keep It Complicated fury and how I can channel this emotional energy in a positive direction.  Part of this fury is connected to my belief that - for the first time in my A.A. career - politics and social issues are intruding in the rooms.  While people aren't generally talking about controversial matters directly and openly there are other ways to make their beliefs known without vocalizing them.  Wearing a mask or not wearing one, for instance.  The break-away group is populated with people who are conservative and mask wearing has been spotty at best.  To me this is a statement.  Nobody has to say: "I think masks are bullshit."  The fact that they're not wearing them in defiance of several laws (at the time) spoke loud and clear.  What would any of us have done as newcomers if we walked into our first meeting and everyone was wearing a cap supporting whichever candidate you found offensive?  Gets dicey right quick.

And off I go on a rant . . .  See how easy it is?  I think Willie's point was that I should try to figure out how I can contribute to group unity instead of hardening my position and furthering any fractures.  A.A. has been through a few wars and the massive social upheaval of the '60s and a huge Communism scare and god knows how many other upsets and yet it still thrives today.  For me, at this moment, the breakaway assholes are frustrating me and I'm the asshole frustrating the people who have remained.  I don't feel like I'm adding much of benefit to either group . . . thus my low-key approach to meeting attendance at the moment.  I'm being careful to stay very connected to my recovery just not at too many meetings right now.

And here's the flip side . . . .  what is my responsibility as a dude with long-term sobriety? My belief is that my experience over the years has given me the status to speak up in situations that might be daunting for a newer person or one more timid and less confident.   Willie likes to tell the story of an old-timer poking him in the chest once and saying: "You know what good A.A. is - and when you see something that isn't good A.A. you have a responsibility to speak up." 

 Frankly, the anecdote sounds made up but it's so good I have to repeat it.

Drama King

Drama:  Rumor, lying or exaggerated reaction to life events: melodrama; a situation made more complicated or worse than it should be; intrigue or spiteful interpersonal maneuvering. 

This will be my last Keep It Complicated post.  Maybe.  For a while.  Until I feel like flogging the dead horse a little longer.  Little bit.  Little bit.

I have brought this topic up with my Go To guys for a long time.  My Go To guys are mostly patient with me - they ask a lot of good, probing questions, aware that I've been flogging for so long that I've got a pretty good idea why I'm upset and they're not going to be able to shed any light on a subject that I've inspected under flood lights.  Namely: that I'm an idiot.  At the end, to a man, a variation of this comment arises: "Maybe it's time to let that meeting go."

Uh, you think so?  Jesus, Mother, and Mary.  SuperK and I were reminiscing about whether in our 70 years of combined meeting attendance - encompassing dozens of different meetings of all colors and stripes in five different states - we had ever been involved with a group that got so contentious that some of the members broke away and started what is obviously a competitive meeting.  I get the old "resentment and a coffee pot" saw about how A.A. spreads - I know it happens but neither of us has ever been involved with a group that fractured . . . and here I am in a group where it has happened twice in five years.

Maybe it's time to let that meeting go.  Maybe it was time to let that meeting go after the first time.

Voting With My Feet

I'm in the throes of a bit of a meeting hiatus right now.  I have never done this in my 35 years of A.A. attendance except for the occasional stay in countries where A.A is sporadic or non-existent.  I'm not disconnecting from my recovery but I'm staying away from meetings.  I'm tired of Zoom (and this from a dude who embraced electronic meetings immediately and has attended hundreds of them); I'm not at all interested in hybrid meetings where the live portion is overwhelmed by the Big TV Screen with all of the people exercising and walking and driving and eating and riding their bikes and logging in and out and killing their video so that the screen reshuffles, all of this sucking the energy out of the room which is where the people who have actually taken the time to get up and get dressed and drive to the meeting are sitting: and I cannot yet abide the folks who ignored laws and regulations and the pleas of health care workers not to gather in large groups inside during the various CoVid surges.  It hasn't yet been a long hiatus and it certainly isn't a permanent hiatus but it's a hiatus nonetheless.  And it has been quite freeing and relaxing.  I'm enjoying it.  It has been peaceful.  The meetings were making me feel worse.

I took a call yesterday from a Program woman who I like well enough.  She's not a coffee friend but she's a friend.  A few weeks ago I made an announcement in the Keep It Complicated meeting that I was going to suggest at our next business meeting that we end the hybrid experience.  Well, sir, I really pissed some people off.  One member told me - across the room, in the meeting itself, in a textbook example of cross-talk -  that I was supposed to wait until the business meeting to bring up any topics for discussion in the business meeting which frankly sounds stupid to me.  I thought I could talk about any alcohol related topic I wanted to during an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting and I'm frankly unaware of any list that details what I can and cannot say about an upcoming business meeting.  The woman who called me - in her credit wondering if she needed to make an amends - had declined to share when she was called on at this particular meeting, stating that she was so angry she couldn't even talk.  Frankly, I had no idea she was mad at me which made her offer of an amends perplexing.  Normally I have a clue that I've pissed someone off and I'm still frankly confused as to why this announcement was so offensive.  I just thought it might be helpful - since I knew I was going to be making a somewhat controversial proposal - to let people know what was coming so they compose their thoughts.

I frankly didn't want to talk to this woman, who is sort of a repressed weirdo, in my opinion.  I did call, because it was the right thing to do, and we had a short talk.  I assured her I took no offense and that I understood the next few months were going to be confusing and will probably contain some more surprises that we can't even foresee at the moment.  I did note, with some amusement, that she managed to sneak into the conversation - again - the reasons why I shouldn't have done what I did and why everything was going to work out the way I want them to work out if I just wouldn't force the issue, something that she can't predict and that I frankly don't agree with.

This is why I'm not attending meetings right now.  Everyone is irritated and confrontational and I don't want to suck on that negative energy.  I was downtown yesterday, having a coffee at my favorite one-off coffee shop, after a walk on the beach, in perfect SoCal weather, and I stopped into this great guitar store owned by one of my best A.A. friends.  I hung out with him for an hour.  We talked about business and politics and recovery and I had a great ol' time.  It was very spiritual.  I felt like a million bucks when I left - it wasn't a meeting but it provided for me what a good meeting does.  I was enjoying myself so much that I actually blew off a regular Zoom meeting I attend to linger and chat.  I would have preferred avoiding the aggravation of having to talk to someone who had acted pretty pissy and continued being pissy even though the pretext of the call was to apologize for being pissy.  It seemed to me in retrospect to be a bit of a veiled excuse to tell me - again - why I was wrong.

Again, this is not an existential crisis - this is a temporary, statistical aberration. I shall be back and I shall be bam booming.  As my temporary sponsor in SoCal says all the time: "I need Alcoholics Anonymous a lot more than Alcoholics Anonymous needs me."

The World Wonders

 "The world wonders when it sees a person who can unexpectedly draw large and unsuspected sums from the bank for some emergency.  But what the world has not seen are the countless small sums paid into that bank, earned by faithful work over a long time.  And so is the bank of the spirit.  The world sees the person of faith make a demand of God's stores of power and the demand is met.  The world does not see what that person has been putting in, in thanks and praise, in prayer and communion, in small good deeds done faithfully, steadily over the years."

I wondered a bit during my Quiet Time this morning, as I was dutifully repeating my small list of affirmations and prayers, what the benefit was.  I have been trying to pay attention to what I'm saying.  Often with daily affirmations I find myself saying the words and not really digging into the meaning.  My gratitude list, for example.  But I've come to believe that repeating these things day in and day out makes me more grateful.  I'm not sure how it works but - even when I'm barely paying attention to what I'm saying - I believe it makes me more grateful.

Fake it 'till you make it.

I continue to wonder about how things will shake out as most of us re-emerge from a year plus of life underground.  I bet that it's going to look a lot different from here on out.  Talk about change - life ground to a screeching halt 15 months ago and now it's starting up again, fitfully and with some growing pains.  It's going to be interesting.   I'm wondering about that not insignificant group of people who hated the change and fought it tooth and nail from the git-go.  Frankly, I'm looking at these folks with a jaundiced eye.  I understand the attraction at keeping everything exactly the way it has always been - it's comforting when things don't change and it's comforting to be in control.  But now?  Meh, I'm not too impressed with many of them and I'm struggling with how to deal with them going forward.  I have tried disengaging from some of my regular routines because the thought of running into some of these folks is just too painful.  When I do I feel as if I'm walking on eggshells, afraid that something about masks or vaccines or the government is going to come up and it's not always that I disagree with them or at least that I can understand where they're coming from but that I simply don't want to have these conversations: they feel confrontational, simmering.  Pre-CoVid members of Alcoholics Anonymous were pretty good at keeping this information to themselves - there were plenty of people who I suspected looked at social, moral, and religious matters differently than me and sometimes in ways that I found offensive but we kept this stuff on the shelf  - but now?  Dunno.  I've always believed that one of our great strengths has been the intermingling of so many different worldviews.  I have had plenty of friends who would have been on the other side of the protest barriers and I'm not sure now I'm going to be able to interact with them in the future.

I find this pretty tragic.  I hope I'm wrong.

Catapulting and Rocketing

 "No matter how long we have been sober, if we try liquor again, we're as bad or worse than we ever were.  There is no exception to this rule in the whole history of A.A.."

This is one of those facts of Twelve Step recovery that I've always had a hard time getting my mind around so I don't think about the particulars very often.  I acknowledge that it's true - I've seen far too many examples to doubt it - but in a tiny, dark corner of my mind I still hang onto the feeling that if I drank again all of my time and all of the work I've put in would somehow stand me in good stead.  I don't dwell on this, of course, banishing it immediately, because it's such total bullshit.

"Your whole character changes as you reach upward for the things of the spirit - for beauty, for love, for honesty, for purity, and for unselfishness.  We often choose the way of life that best suits the body, not the way that best suits the soul.  I am in a box of space and time and cannot see spacelessness or eternity.  But God is not within the shell of time and space.  He is timeless and spaceless.  He cannot be fully comprehended by our finite minds.  But we must try to make a union between our purposes and the purposes of God.  By trying to merge our minds with the mind of God, a oneness of purpose results."

I've always enjoyed thinking of my Higher Power being outside of time and space.  It helps me have faith to believe that I will never be able to fully comprehend God.  It allows me to grasp the concept loosely.  I'm no physicist but I think the universe is like a gazillion miles across and it's expanding at 42 gazillion miles an hour while we speak.  I can understand that?  Pfffft.  Believing in a power greater than myself is a piece of cake.

When the concept of a Higher Power comes up in the A.A. literature it is frequently capitalized.  
Here's a partial list:

Sunlight of the Spirit

Presence of Infinite Power and Love

Maker

Father

New Found Friend

Creative Intelligence

Father of Light

Principal Director

The Great Fact

Great Reality

Spirit of Nature

Universal Mind

Czar of the Heavens

Creator

That's a pretty generous list for the unbelieving non-believer.

Catapult:  To fire or launch something.

Rocket:  To accelerate swiftly and powerfully.

"I was soon to be catapulted into what I like to call the fourth dimension of existence.  We have found much of heaven and we have been rocketed into a fourth dimension of existence of which we had not even dreamed."  Big Book P. 8 (Bill's Story) and P. 25 (There is a Solution.)

Fourth Dimension:  Something outside the range of ordinary existence.

Principles Before Personalities

Anonymous:  Without any name acknowledged of a person responsible; of unknown name; whose name is withheld.

"The gradual elimination of selfishness in the growth of love for God and your fellow human beings is the goal of life.  Love is the power that transforms your life.  Try to love your family and your friends and then try to love everybody that you possibly can - everybody."

Everybody?  Really?  Even the people who piss me off?

"The spiritual substance of anonymity is sacrifice.  A.A.'s Twelve Traditions repeatedly ask us to give up personal desires for the common good.  We realize that the sacrificial spirit - well symbolized by anonymity - is the foundation of them all."  Twelve and Twelve, P. 184, Tradition 12.

". . . the principle of anonymity has an immense spiritual significance.  It reminds us that we are to place principles before personalities, that we are actually to practice a genuine humility."  Twelve and Twelve, P. 192, Long Form of Tradition 12.

"If my disturbance was seemingly caused by the behavior of others (Ed. Note: I really like the 'seemingly' qualifier here), why do I lack the ability to accept conditions I cannot change  If I am unable to change the present state of affairs, am I willing to take the measures necessary to shape my life to conditions as they are?"  Big Book, P. 52.

I had a long-time sponsor who would often interrupt me: "Principles before personalities, Seaweed, principles before personalities."  Because I was so mortified to admit I had no idea what that meant I didn't have the courage to ask what that meant, exactly.  How I was to apply that famous phrase to my day to day life.  I was often encouraged to read the literature until I found the answer to my question which in this case meant I had to read the entire fucking 12&12 because this particular answer is in Tradition 12.   

So what I found is that magnanimity in action implies that I should be more concerned about others than about myself, that I should sacrifice what I want in service to the greater good, that when I sacrifice my own selfish personal desires then I grasp the spiritual meaning of anonymity, that until I do this I'm going to struggle to achieve any real humility.

THIS is powerful stuff.