The Toltecs On A Sunday

"You are sure to encounter many situation that have the potential to hook your attention and knock you off-balance."

 

"When you  are faced with an important decision and you are unsure of which course of action to take, one thing that can help you is to focus on how you feel about the options presented instead of being consumed with the stories your narrators are spouting.  This is called 'listening with your heart instead of your head.' "

Yeah, I've never heard this before.  I can't always trust my head because my head is trying to play defense, to drive me to get more! more! more! but my heart is a gentle and kind soul.  It does not lead me astray very often.

"Anytime you feel a burst of anger, frustration, guilt, shame, or any number of other negative emotions, that's your cue to look within and see what is happening.  Whether your tendency is to be consumed with anger and rage or to sulk silently in the corner, the underlying cause of all of these emotional reactions is always fear . . . "

Isn't this right out of the Big Book?  It's fear.  It's always fear.  I can turn my fear outward in anger or I can turn my fear inward in depression but it still always comes back to fear.

"You are stuck, unable to move forward, until you look more deeply at whatever the emotion is trying to tell you."

I see in new people - and remember, after the fact, regrettably - how difficult it can be to dislodge the thought patterns that are lodged so deeply in our subconscious.  I spent years and years feeding and nuturing these thought patterns that, even when I began to see they were injurious, it was hard to rid myself of them.  Even though I was becoming aware that my reactions were not helpful, I still would respond in anger or depression anytime something set off one of these hidden and deeply entrenched characteristics.

"But there will always be those moments when you can't walk away, when you just have to deal with the person or situation at hand right then.  You can stay balanced much more easily if you find out why this person has the ability to provoke a reaction in you.  This is a very special gift they are offering you, and freedom awaits as soon as you can find out why that is.  The reason this person bothers you is based on a past experience rather than the current situation."

Balance:  Mental and emotional steadiness; habit of calm behavior, judgement, etc.; composure.

I've looked up the definition of balance so many times and I still can't always get my mind around the concept.  To be in the middle of.  To stay away from the ends of things where I so often tend to go.  Not too hot.  Not too cold.  Just right.  Not too hard.  Not too soft.  Just right.  I've pondered deeply the lesson that a great lesson is to ponder deeply why things that upset me upset me.  I find much of the time that I am not reacting to the person or the situation but to some facet of my personality that was installed in me long ago and which I have nurtured and fertilized for so long that it just doesn't want to come out.  I know that when SuperK is mad at me it's often because I'm exhibiting a behavior from someone vexatious in her past - often from the family relationships - that devalued and humiliated her.  If I can keep my  fucking mouth shut and say to myself: "Aha!  That was exactly something her alcoholic father said to her when she was a young girl."  And isn't the reminder that when I find a person vexatious I need to remember that I'm being given the opportunity to grow, to learn a lesson?  So annoying these opportunities to grow.  AFGO - Another Fucking Growth Opportunity.

My Hidden Engine

From the story entitled "Growing Up All Over Again" in the Big Book . . . 

"No one could live such an irresponsible, immature life as I had without consequences."  

I had to learn that actions have consequences.  It was an irritating lesson.  I make it a point to share the part of my story that details how my life continued to get worse for a while after I quit drinking.  I had spent many years planting explosives in hidden areas of my life and the fact that - sans alcohol - that I wasn't planting any new explosives was no help when I triggered an old explosive.  I had to become a sapper and clean out the old bombs before my life began an upward trajectory.

"Admitting that I am wrong or that I do not know is difficult for me."

SuperK often points out that I never admit that I'm wrong.  I often defend myself by saying that if I ever find myself in a situation where I am - in fact - wrong - I'll be the first to admit it.  This goes over about as well as you can imagine.  For most normal people this would be a clue to stop saying what I'm saying but my abnormality is well-established at this point.

When I was selling process control instrumentation to process control engineers - people who had four year college degrees in process control engineering - I tried to hide the fact that I've never seen the engine in my car and I am not making this up.  It's in the middle of the car.  I know it's there because the car goes places after I turn it on and it makes a lot of noise when I accelerate but it's under a cowling of some kind that I'm afraid to remove because there's nothing in there that I need to see, really, and one of my fundamental rules of life is Don't Take Something Apart that You Might Not Know How to Put Back Together, a rule that has served me well.  I'm afraid to walk into Lowe's or Home Depot because I think a security guard would corner me and say something like: "I'm sorry, sir, but we're going to have to ask you to leave the premises."  It's clear to everyone that I have no idea what most of the stuff in there is used for.  What?  Do I look like I'm shopping for a router?  I look like a potential lawsuit.  "Clueless man hurt trying to turn off the router he mistakenly turned on."

Where was I . . . . ? My tendency when I was newly sober was to try to hide my ignorance if I was asked a question that I could not answer.  I avoided lying as much as possible but I noticed I would remain silent or direct the conversation elsewhere.  Then I discovered this simple but magical line: "I don't know but I can find out for you."  The response to this statement was almost always magical as well.  People were very happy to be talking to someone who admitted that he didn't know the answer to something.  A few times there was some manifest frustration but I would just say: "If you have a minute I can call our engineering department and get the answer for you right now."  That usually shut them the fuck up.  Seriously, though, nobody knows everything and everybody loathes those of us who pretend that we do and then proceed to make some situation worse.  It is important to note that when I learned something new I tried to . . . you know . . . remember it so that as my career progressed I was stumped with less regularity.  That, at least, accrues to my credit.

Transient Seaweed

Transient:  Lasting only for a short time; impermanent.

During my recent trip back to the Midwest where I saw old high school friends and old friends from my time in Alcoholics Anonymous one of the more profound realizations/reminders that I saw was that life really is transitory.  So much has changed in the ten short years since I've been back.  And as I grow older I can see that there is an endpoint to all of this nonsense.  And I say this cheerfully.  That nothing is forever, that it all comes and goes, that I'm here right now but not forever.  This has not been depressing at all.  It has been . . .  calming in a way, reassuring, grounding.  So some guy doesn't use his turn signal in front of me and I'm going to lose my shit?  Really?  Seriously?  I'm going to be dead sooner rather than later and I'm going to seethe over some perceived slight which is probably just a mistake?

Shallow and Fairly Obvious Advice

I'm still interacting with this new guy, the one who asked me to be his sponsor.  Always suspicious of new guys so my technique is to immediately assign a writing task which very people do and he proved no exception.  I say this in a bemused fashion, not meaning to be critical.  I did not understand the concept of "work" when I was getting sober; as in, "work The Steps."  I wanted results that were clearly going to require work without actually doing any work.  As you may recall I consider myself a taker and not a giver.  Anyway, I am in contact with this guy in a way that he seems to feel is helpful and I seem to feel is low-intensity bullshit but . . . hey . . . help is what someone wants and not what I want to give.

As I have been passing along my shallow and fairly obvious wisdom I continue to be struck by the realization that sometimes we just have to make a decision even if that fucking intuitive thought doesn't present itself.  Sometimes I have to just walk into the dark and trust that everything is going to be okay.

Those Goddam Toltecs Again

Some things I've found interesting in my perusal of the ins and outs of the spirituality practiced by the Toltecs . . . 

The word "resentment" is French in origin and it literally means "to feel again."  There are so many great analogies tossed around in meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous but one I really like is that a resentment is like taking poison and hoping that your enemy?  opponent?  average person who is pissing you off for the most trivial and stupid reasons? dies.

And the Toltec aphorism in slightly different words: "This is what resentment is: self-inflicted suffering with emotional poison we wish for another."  I think about the many low-level discussions I've had in my mind with Hot Tub Guy who - and I can guarantee the accuracy of the following statement - has never once, not ever, thought about me for one minute.  I'm taking the poison.  I'm the idiot taking the poison even though he's the real idiot.

"You also need to forgive yourself - you were doing the best you could at the time; there is no need to beat yourself up."  I like to apply this principle to people who have had a significant effect on my life.  I take great comfort in migrating from the idea that my parents didn't give me what I needed to the one that they were doing the best they could with the tools that they had and while - I may add - dealing with a nightmare of a difficult, depressed, defiant teenager.  In that light they did a pretty good goddam job.

"Don't subjugate yourself with 'I have to.' "  Man, the time I spend criticizing what I have left undone would fill up the Panama Canal.  It's never enough with me.  Never.  Enough.

"Nothing anyone does is because of you.  It's never personal, even if someone intends it to be so, as you are simply standing in the target zone."  Or in A.A. speak: No one is thinking about me.  I spend all day thinking about myself and not one goddam minute thinking about you yet I continue to live in the fantasy that everyone else is always thinking about me.  Goddam I'm an idiot.

"If you have clouded your Personal Dream with resentment, the first step to changing this is to become aware of it."  How much of my life was spent pre-recovery seething at all the slights and sins and arrows and darts shot my way while protesting that nothing was bothering me.  

EVERYTHING was bothering me!  You're bothering me right now!  Stop what you're doing IMMEDIATELY and quit bothering me!

The Nature of Existence

I've been talking to a new guy who is making his way through a whole pile of whoop-ass chaos.  It is unnecessary to say that much of it is of his own doing.  Some of it is acute and can be traced directly to an action he has taken or to one that was left undone.  And some of it is the result of the slow, diseased, malignant creep of a life geared totally to self-interest.  When I'm doing what I want and thinking about myself constantly the result is a slow drip, drip, drip that degrades my relationships and whittles away at my soul.

The decision that was immediate required him to choose between staying in SoCal or leaving for a while? for good? to return to the Midwest and care for his elderly parents.  I, of course, have no idea what he should do and I made this clear to him.  What I can say is that much of the time when I sit quietly with a decision, talk to some people, do some reading and writing, then the answer slowly materializes out of the miasma and murk that constitutes my thinking.  But sometimes not.  Sometimes the choice is not, in fact, clear.  I told my friend that this may be one of those cases where he is just going to have to make a decision and then wait for events to play out before he knows if it was helpful to himself and to others.  Because he has done all of the necessary legwork to prepare for the decision then he is going to make the "right" one.  It may not be helpful.  It may be painful.  It may backfire and blow up in his fucking face.  We don't get to perceive the future with perfect clarity.

I really love the concept of the Nature of Existence.  It helps me to relax when I grapple with the fact of pain and suffering and the unknown.  This is how things are.  This is how the universe operates.  Why?  Beats the hell outta me.

What I Say and What You Hear

So I have to ask myself all the time if my love and acceptance of the person in front of me is somehow contingent upon them agreeing with me or doing what I want them to do.  I have a tendency to subujate others so that I can establish my vision of peace and harmony.  I have a tendency to think that my way is the right way so why would you do it any differently?  This is absurd.  I cannot expect anyone else to do something that is against their will?

"What really matters is my intention.  When I come from a place of unconditional love, I can have the confidence that whatever action I take is the right one, and the outcome of any situation is beyond my control.  I do the best I can and I release my attachment to the outcome. and that's all the space I control.  Your opinion of me is none of my business.

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

Toltec Proverb

Each morning I pray that I be shown how I can be of service to someone else.  I pray that I seek to love rather than be loved; comfort rather than be comforted; and understand rather than be understood.

"What really matters is my intention.  When I come from a place of unconditional love, I can have the confidence that whatever action I take is the right one, and the outcome of any situation is beyond my control.  I do the best I can and I release my attachment to the outcome."

Michael Ruiz