God is Life

"Action is about living life fully.  Inaction is the way that we deny life.  Inaction is sitting in front of the television every day for years because you are afraid to be alive and to take the risk of expressing what you are.  Expressing what you are is taking action.  You can have many great ideas in your head, but what makes the difference is the action.  Without action upon an idea, there will be no manifestation, no results, and no reward."

Here's Step Eleven in the 12 & 12: "There's nothing the matter with constructive imagination; all sound achievement rests on it."

Lots of time in my head imagining great things while I spent lots of time sitting on a broken down couch watching television.  No longer, dude.  I'm up and running and off like a shot much of the time.

"God is life.  God is life in action.  The best way to say, 'I love you, God,' is to live your life doing your best.  The best way to say, 'Thank you, God,' is by letting go of the past and living in the present moment, right here and now.  Whatever life takes away from you, let it go."

Past Dreams

If you live in a past dream, you don't enjoy what is happening right now because you will always wish it to be different than it is.  We don't need to know or prove anything.  Just to be, to take risks and enjoy your life, is all that matters."

"We can't always do what pleases us.  There will surely be some necessary work that does not excite us."

Before I go to bed each night I brush my teeth, I floss my teeth, and I use a water pik on my teeth.  I don't enjoy any of it.  I'm important and it's a waste of my important time.  "Can't someone else do this?" is another important Homer Simpson-ism but my dental hygienist reminds me that "the payoff is you get to keep your teeth" which is a pretty good payoff in the panoply of payoffs.

"Constant motion seems more important than waiting.  Much depends on whether our waiting is a pause before going on, or an intertia that puts us in a trance."

The Human Touch

When I was getting sober in Indianapolis I developed some friendships with other people who were also early in their sobriety.  One person who stands out was a young woman about my age who spent all day at home with her two young children and got to some meetings after her husband got home from work.  I remember nothing about our conversations, not one specific anecdote.  It just felt anchoring to talk to someone else trying to sort out the shitstorm of their life at the same time I was.  One evening I must have followed up a conversation from a previous meeting when she burst into tears.  I stood there looking at her like she just stepped out of a flying saucer.  I absolutely froze.  My sponsor was nearby and he hustled over and asked her if she wanted a hug which she definitely did.  After a minute he asked her if she wanted a hug from me as well.  She collapsed against me while I stood there like a shipping pallet, an oak tree.  I had no idea how to handle a pretty unremarkable display of human emotion and one that involved touching another person and touching another person of the opposite sex.

I grew up in a conservative, reserved, religious no-bullshit German family.  I can't remember being hugged or touched.  I definitely can't remember anyone telling me they loved me.  It may have happened, especially the second part, but I don't remember it.  It wasn't common, I'll tell you that.  And I'm not being overly critical here of my family, either.  It was a pretty nice, totally ordinary family, typical of the U.S. in the 50s and 60s, and I was fed and watered and bunked down and educated and given a lot of solid moral instruction, all of which puts me in rarefied air when it comes to upbringing.  Just go to some meetings and listen to people talk about the crap they dealt with growing up to gain some perspective.

I touch people a lot in Alcoholics Anonymous.  I believe people like my touch.  No one has taken a swing at me yet.  I touch people when I'm walking by them - a pat on the arm or tap on the head - and I give out hugs - I demand hugs, always careful with women, always asking first if I don't know them well - and sometimes I even kiss the bald dudes on top of their bald heads or sneak up behind someone and give them a big kiss on the cheek.  Nobody does this to me, come to think of it.  Probably I'm a little too proactive so they know what's coming.  This is my thing.  This is what I do and who I am and it's pretty amazing that I've gotten to this place - and this is a relatively recent development for me - after the lessons I learned as a child.

Here's one of those arresting coincidences that pop up whenever I can pop my head out of my ass and pay attention to the world around me.  It's in the book written by a teacher versed in the spirituality of the Toltec civilization and I'll remind you that this Mesoamerican dynasty started sometime around 600 A.D.  That's fourteen centuries ago for the math-challenged among us which means it's old as hell which means that the spiritual stuff we find so instructive today didn't come about in the last fifty years.  Shit is old.

"You express your own divinity by loving yourself and others  It is an expression of God to say, 'Hey, I love you.' "  I ask my own Higher Power each morning that I be able to express my Higher Power's presence to the world in whatever way my Higher Power chooses.  I like to be much bigger than I am using my own will and wiles and intentions and I need outside help to accomplish that.

I See You

SuperK talks about being seen.  We all know what it's like to be somewhere and feel invisible.  It's not great, this feeling, and it's especially unhelpful, this feeling, if you're starting out in Alcoholics Anonymous, not sure if you should be there or want to be there, even, and then being ignoredor glossed over.  I take great pride in my attention to everyone that shows up at my regular Keep It Complicated meeting.  I make it my business to include everyone in the group.  It's not unusual for an individual to rebuff this attention - no, not rebuff, more brush it off, brush through it - and that's okay by me.  As a general rule nobody is thrilled to show up at their first few meetings and many of us are just looking for a reason, any reason, to justify not coming back.  I stand at the door like a goofy prison guard and make sure everyone at least gets a "how ya doin'?" as they exit the room.  I camp out in the kitchen before the meeting because almost everyone comes in there for some coffee before the meeting.  I have a habit of calling on people who are new or who have identified as visitors even when I'm not . . . you know . . . in any way, shape, or form authorized to do this.  I don't have to be chairing the meeting, either.  Sometimes I'll say "I think Bob has his hand up" or something along those lines, putting some man or woman who definitely does not have their hand up on the hot seat.  Nobody has told me to stop doing it.  I probably wouldn't stop doing it anyhow but at least I'd know I was irritating someone which would probably encourage me to keep doing rather than to cease and desist.

There's a new woman who started attending, arriving late and sitting on the outside of the circle, never talking, may have some mental illness issues.  Very tentative, very diffident in her actions and her demeanor.  Well, you know, she can not escape me.  The other day she came back into the kitchen as a few of us were cleaning up post-meeting and said she knew she needed to get a sponsor and asked me about Jan, a woman I know pretty well, because she raises her hand when the secretary asks that anyone willing to be a sponsor identify.  I hustled out into the room and interrupted a conversation Jan was having with a friend and introduced her to the new woman.  

You know, I see the new woman.  I can imagine after a fashion how she's struggling getting involved.  This was a thing I could do.

Do Your Best

"If you try too hard to do  more than your best, you will spend more energy than is needed and in the end your best will not be enough."

There's a fable I've always liked about doing the best you can and learning to be satisfied with that effort.  A novice tells a master that he meditates for four hours a day and wonders how long he has to do this to become enlightened.  When the master replies "If you do this you should be cool in around ten years" the novice tells the master he's going to meditate for eight hours a day to speed things up.  "Now how long will it take me to become enlightened?"  The master says: "Ummmm . . . about twenty years."  The novice says something along the lines of WTF kind of math is that?  Here's the thing, says the master:  If you meditate that much you'll start to feel bored and irritated and you'll forget that we're supposed to live life, to enjoy life, to find joy in life, not engage in a grim death march of forced meditation.  Do your best and enjoy your life.  

I have an ability to make almost anything into a grim death march.  I can ruin even the most pleasant things by overdoing them and overdoing them perfectly.

Here's Alcoholics Anonymous' take on the issue of spiritual growth found in the 12 & 12: "It has been well said that 'almost the only scoffers at prayer are those who never tried it enough.'  We will be comforted and assured that our own destiny in this realm will be secure for so long as we try, however falteringly, to find and do the will of our own Creator."  Not the Creator - our own Creator.

The Terrible Need

"It is comforting to know every day that we are in contact with people who put such confidence in us that we strive harder to do our best.  Where one person can be challenged, another may need to be told how to rise above emotions and imagined shortcomings.  We all need approval and attention, and when someone cares, it makes an important difference."  

I confirm for the nth time that I do not speak harshly to anyone in recovery.  What do you remember: praise and encouragement?  Or a detailed accounting of where you fell short?  We're our own worst enemies.  Pointing out someone's failures is piling on.

"We work with what we know, with what we have.  To anguish over what we did in the past is foolish.  The Cherokee calls this 'remembering the things that never were.'  How can we know another man's heart or true desire?  We're not even sure about our own.  One who never has a good word or a good thought for anyone reveals his terrible need."

I've had enough with the terrible need.  I lived for too many years in a state of terrible neediness.  It's no good.  It's overrated.

Choice is a Demon

Some more interesting thoughts about thoughts . . . 

People are terrible at predicting outcomes.  The terrible things we imagine happening (think: dentist's office + pain) don't end up being that bad and the enjoyment we expect to get out of fun things (think: football game homecoming - hard benches - shitty hotdogs that cost $10) tend to be more "Meh" than "Wow."  Relax, okay?  It's all going to work out.  Just quit pursuing the pleasure and fleeing the pain.  You're probably getting it wrong. 

If people who are trying to decide whether to see a new movie are given the choice of seeing a short trailer of the film or reading several online reviews written by average viewers most people choose the clip option.  In reality it's much more likely that a bunch of reviews written by non-professionals we don't know is going to predict whether or not we enjoy the show.  We tend to way, way overestimate our abilities.  We are not all that.  We are all pretty average.  Most people view the world in a similar way.  If you like the clip but the average Joe reviews are terrible then you're probably not going to like the movie, either.  Who do you think you are: Gene Siskel?  The average driver rates himself as excellent and everyone else as below average.  Think about it.  The numbers don't work.

Choice is a demon.  Too much choice is a mean demon.

Uncertainty seems like a demon but it's actually not a demon.