That Kooky Buddha

Grasp:  Seize and hold firmly.

"Suffering I teach, and the way out of suffering."  The Buddha

Here suffering does not mean pain but the profound discomfiture which we experience when all our attempts to remedy or evade pain prove futile.  Not that what we have to work with is not the cause of our discomfiture (the pain itself - mental, physical, emotional) but how we experience it (that is, our sense of discomfiture) - not what is afflicting us out there, but what it feels like in here, in the mind.  

"The more you think about it, the more you talk about it, the further from it you go.  Put an end to wordliness and intellection and there is nothing you will not understand.  For what can words tell of that which has no yesterday, tomorrow, or today?"  Ancient Ch'an scripture

There is a lot of thought put into the concept of aging.  As there should be, of course, though me thinks overly much for many people.  However we could easily substitute pain or discomfort in its place, making the problem and the solution more accessible to everyone.  It's all grasping.  Holding on to something, some thing, some person, some idea, our life force, our always diminishing life force, under constant attack from the constant march of time.

The Buddha has taught that everything changes, and many Buddhists repeat that teaching as a patent truism.  But suppose we were to rephrase those words to say: "Everything we love and cherish is going to age, decline, and eventually disappear.  This truism takes on a different coloration and urgency.  It's all going to go, the Buddha is saying, all of it - everything that matters to us.

Sobering.  Sobering, and incredibly freeing.

Small Comprehension

"As we persist, a brand-new kind of confidence is born, and the sense of relief at finally facing ourselves is indescribable.  These are the first fruits of Step Four."  P 50 12&12

The first time I ever really took an honest, unvarnished look at who I was happened as I attempted a moral inventory.  That phrase - "moral inventory" - sounds sinister and inflexible, like I'm sitting on a hard pine pew in a freezing, stark New England church, a severe man with a scowl on his face lecturing me about death and sin and the unquenchable fires of hell.  Maybe we should change the Step that has a gentler tone: "Dude, do you know who you are?  Maybe you could take a closer look?  Dude?"

"But it is from our twisted relations with family, friends, and society at large that many of us have suffered the most.  The primary fact that we fail to recognize is our total inability to form a true partnership with another human being."  P 53 12&12

Occasionally I'm blindsided by one of these "OK, I'm not fucking around here" phrases in our literature.  Most of the time I can tease out some nuance but not is sentences that say: Total Inability."  The jackhammer implication is that I have no interpersonal skills.  Was it any wonder that I was unemployable, undateable, and right off any guest lists?

"We have not once sought (Ed. Note:  The editor notes the word 'once.'  The editor notes this implies 'zero' attempts.  To paraphrase: 'We have never . . .') sought to be one in a family, to be a friend among friends, to be a worker among workers, to be a useful member of society.  Always we tried to struggle to the top of the heap, or to hide underneath it.  This self-centered behavior blocked a partnership relation with any one of those about us.  Of true brotherhood we had small comprehension."  P 53 12&12

SuperSonic Stevie

Urgent Message from the CDC:  Excessive drinking can cause short term memory loss.  Also, it can cause short term memory loss.

Give:  To make a present or gift of.
Take:  To get into one's hands, possession, or control, with or without force.

One of my favorite spiritual topics: Giving versus Taking.  I have always had a rough idea what it meant to be a giving person.  I aspired to being that kind of person and often believed that I was, but deep down inside I was suspicious of my motives.  Probably because my actions were so shitty.  It's like seeing a guy with a gun and bag marked "Loot" or "Swag" outside of a jewelry store that has an alarm clanging.  Whether or not he intended to rob the store is of no important.  The cops are going to judge him on his actions.

There's a passage suggesting that we judged our behavior by our intentions while the world was looking at our actions.

I do know that I learned about giving and service in The Program.  While service is a spiritual concept it was a concept too nuanced for me to perceive at the start.  If someone had tried to explain that spiritual actions lead to a spiritual experience I would have looked over their right ear with a 1000 yard stare.  But if I saw someone with a bunch of time swabbing out a coffee pot after a meeting . . . for free . . . and with no recognition from anyone unless it was an oldtimer complaining because the job was being bungled I thought: "Hmmmm.  MUST be something going on here," especially because the coffee-swabber, taking incoming fire, was happy.  I was drinking coffee someone else made and not cleaning anything and I was miserable.

Like many things in my life that have improved since I entered The Fellowship the concept of service has become clear only after I started trying to be of service.  Telling me that I will feel better if I start doing thing for other people with no expectation of a quid pro quo sounds like bullshit.  Then some particularly cruel sponsors suggest doing these nice things anonymously.   That still sounds like total bullshit.

But . . . there you go.

I have a friend who went to the Air Force Academy and spent his time in the military flying supersonic jet fighter planes before heading off to a major airline where he now flies 747s.  He tells the story of trying to fend off a persistent sponsor who was prodding him to finish his 4th Step: "Let me get this straight: you can fly a jet at 500 MPH 300 feet off the ground, and you're afraid of starting your writing?"

Sort of ended the conversation, I would imagine.  I hope my pilot buddy wasn't flying his plane upside down, too.

Defective Seaweed

Defect:  A shortcoming, imperfection, or lack.

I have some tried and true techniques I use when I'm unhappy about something.

"The chief activator of our defects has been self-centered fear - primarily fear that we would lose something we already possessed or would fail to get something we demanded.  Living upon a basis of unsatisfied demands, we were in a state of continual disturbance and frustration."  12&12 P 76.

I'm impressed at the beauty of that statement.  Essentially, if I got it then I'm afraid I might lose it and if I don't got it then I'm afraid that I'm never going to get it.  THAT is an all-inclusive statement.  THAT gives me the ability to be pissed off about everything.

So I look at the irritant and decide if I'm not doing something I need to be doing or if I've done everything I can so I need to chill out?  I don't like paying income taxes: never have and never will.  The chances of me not paying taxes and getting away with it is not very high, so I've come to peace with the fact that I have to do something that I don't want to do and - magically - the force of the irritant lessens.  I get into the "Eh, whatever" phase more quickly.

Another technique is to set up some extreme boundaries and then work inward toward the middle which is where I'm much more likely to end up.  As an example I could suggest, say, this starting point on the negative end: "I'm going to die alone on the street, in horrible pain, both physical and mental, from a vicious and incurable disease.  The authorities will just toss my ravaged body into the nearest dumpster."  OK, not too plausible.  Compare this with "I'm going to find 100 million dollars and then start driving my Ferrari down to a local airstrip where my private jet will ferry me around the world."  OK, also implausible.   Both options are possible but unlikely.

I play around with the negative side of things with more intent.  I find that I'm less worried about improving my stake in life - which is pretty goddam good - then I am about the horrible, vicious, agonizing possibilities that I'm sure will befall me.  This is human nature.  We're prone to protecting ourselves against dire outcomes.  There are, of course, lions and tigers and bears out there, Oh My!  But eventually I work myself into a more plausible worst-case scenario and toy around with it for a bit, get comfortable with it, until I reach the stage where I can say: "If that's as bad as it gets then I'm going to be fine."

Finally, finally, finally I have to look for the positive in everything.  It's there.  I can assure you it's there.  I can make almost every situation palatable if I find the positive.

The Road Not Taken

Scot Free:  (Ed. Note: "Scot" is a word found in a number of languages and is traced back to the root meaning "tax."  So scot free literally means you don't have to pay for something that you don't want to pay for, anyhow.)

Sometimes we experience big, profound shifts in our lives, transformational events that fundamentally alter our reality.  It's like two continents crashing together.  I remember learning in the grief groups I attended after my parents died that an important step in the grieving process was to come to accept the concept of a "new normal."  Apparently a lot of us - often subconsciously - refuse to release the dead person, hanging on to the impossible belief that everything can go back to the way it was.  Combine this with our tendency to re-imagine our decisions and choices when we're faced with an unpleasant outcome, to try to figure out what we could have done differently to avoid the unpleasantness.  Intellectually, this is bullshit, of course.  As Jim Morrison said: "No one here gets out alive."  But, still, we wonder what might have been if we had gone to the doctor earlier or taken a left turn instead of a right turn.

It doesn't work that way.  It's all god's: your loved ones, your friends, your job and cars and house, your money, you for chrissake.  If god wants it god is going to take it.  A lot of the things that happen were destined to happen no matter how many buttons you pushed and how many levers you pulled.  That's life.  That's how life works.  Do any of us melt with gratitude at the end of the day because we took the highway instead of the byway because the later route would have led to certain death in a fiery crash?  Well, I do, of course, but you can aim higher than my emotional reaction to things.

I ponder this as I'm processing through the societal changes caused by CoVid 19.  I found myself sketching out some scenarios as to when things were going to "get back to normal," whatever the fuck that means.  Like what I do would be considered "normal."   I project 3, 6, and 12 months into the future and try to visualize how life would appear, with the goal, of course, of getting back to the way things were because in my blessed life getting back to the way things were is a pretty sweet place.

Perhaps some things are going to be irrevocably altered.  I'd like to get back to the way some things were when I was 20, too.  It would be nice to put on a jock strap and running shoes and take a nice hour run this morning, too, instead of laboring around the neighborhood on a slowish walk.  My back and knees and hips and ankles might have something to say after a run.  I'm in good enough shape I could pull it off but I might not be able to walk tomorrow.

I'm now imagining certain aspects of my life as having a different tint and hue and tone.  If there are things that I want to do that I will not be able to do as we move on I'll be OK.  I'll even come to accept it even though right now I want to bulldoze through any obstacles that are standing in the way of me getting what I want.

I also like to populate the extreme ends of the spectrum with scenarios.  On one end we quickly find an effective vaccine and develop a robust herd immunity and life begins to look like it did a few months ago.  On the other end the virus proves almost unkillable and mutates so often and so effectively that being in public is going to remain potentially hazardous for an extended period of time.  

So . . . two unlikely scenarios.  But where do we end up and when do we end up there?

Don't Come Back Here

One of the old-timers at our meeting this morning worked as a bartender for a couple of years in sobriety.  Some of her funny stories reminded me of a memorable share I heard early on in my sobriety.  I was in a clubhouse in Lexington, Kentucky.  This was before no smoking bans became ubiquitous and this was right smack dab in the middle of tobacco country so there was a serious cloud of smoke in that room.

A guy who had been sober forever at that point in the 1980s told of taking a phone call from a guy in a bar.  He went over to help out and his first suggestion was that they get down on their knees - right in the bar - and ask god to take away the obsession to drink.  As they were leaving the bartender grabbed the arm of the old-timer - and in my recollection of the story he was polite about it - and said: "Do me a favor - don't ever come back here."

There was also a guy there today who just started to come to meetings recently - after all of the church closures - so he has yet to attend a live meeting.  I think of how hard that must be, how important that face to face fellowship was to me at the start, still is to me today.  Then I think that if you are ready to get sober you can overcome all obstacles.  Reminds me of the paragraph in The Big Book where the founders point out that the alcoholics who left for service in World War Two suffered even fewer relapses than those who were safe at home.

We can do this.

Our Founders' Mentors

I've mentioned this dude named Richard Peabody who published a book called "The Common Sense of Drinking" in the early 1930s.  He was the first guy to propose that there was no cure for alcoholism and he was a big influence on Bill W.  I like the fact that so much of The Program was gleaned from other sources.  Bill was the practical one.  I get the sense that Dr. Bob brought a lot to the table in the spiritual realm - he had a library full of religious and spiritual books that he read voraciously.

I came across these passages in Peabody's book - see if there is any hint of our written inventory, our Fourth Step, in here . . . 

"Keeping a notebook is another helpful way of objectifying the work.  He copies into his notebook those ideas which he has marked in the books that he has read.  Thus he creates a personal reference book which should stimulate him by precept, warning, or inference toward better control  and more mature behavior.  This book he should turn to frequently for the purpose of refreshing his mind with his new system of philosophy and as a means of correcting any negative suggestion which he may have absorbed."

Write.  Write and review what you have written.  Something happens when we write.  We're generally honest - it makes little sense to lie when you're the only person who's going to see the writing - and our pens take odd, surprising detours, leading us to revelations that are unexpected.  We are liberated.

On the potential for relapse which is addressed repeatedly in The Big Book and the 12 & 12.

"In the beginning he is particularly apt to get good results, because, although e is very near to the latest expression of the habit he is endeavoring to conquer, the treatment is colored with novelty and enthusiasm.  When this wears off, as it is bound to do, he may become lazy and uninterested if he has not taken pains to prepare his future mental attitude, though the method that this laziness will take will be a premature conviction that he is already cured.  Experience has shown that relapses come about in this way and not because of the accumulation of an irresistible thirst through a period of abstinence.  As a matter of fact, in no case yet where a relapse has occurred has the patient told me that it resulted from overwhelming temptation in spite of conscientious work.  In each and every instance it was frankly admitted that the carrying out of the therapeutic measures had been allowed to slacken some time before a drink was actually taken."

Keep doing the work.  There is no end point.  There is no Longtimers Club where you get to smoke cigars and act like assholes or, if there is one, I haven't received an invitation.  This is why I always tell people who are celebrating anniversaries that the next year is the hardest.  Each year is usually easier but it can get harder to do the work diligently.

On willpower . . . 
"Willpower is most decidedly necessary, but after the first month or tow it is used chiefly as a force to compel the patient to carry on his work.  If it is blindly directed against the habit itself, however, it can be described as will power fighting with its bare fists.  If it is used in conjunction with writing, it is all the lines of will power armed with an assortment of weapons with which to coerce an errant mind."