Repress-able Joy

I woke up in a happy mood this morning. This has been so for two or three of the last three or four days. I've just been waking up happy, joyous. Briefly.

I have a few theories about why this is happening. First, my wife and I made love last night and it was passionate and intimate. It felt good in all the ways I aspire to feel good about sex in my life in recovery. So, that's a factor in feeling good. But I also think the positive sexual experience grew out of other positive experiences lately.

I've started a new creative endeavor. I'm going back and being creative in the way I used to as a young man. It's very free and goofy and I'm really enjoying it. There are opportunities to control in everything I do, but this time I'm doing it with an intention to let go and to have fun.

Another positive development is that I've been very productive at work. On the suggestion of a friend, I've been doing the thing I think is most difficult in the day first, even when I don't want to. I usually don't want to do the difficult thing, usually don't want to do it at all. But I've just been doing it despite my fear and reservations. I've been taking care of the hard things first, and the rest of work has been taking care of itself. I've been able to accomplish some things that have been on my list for a while, in one case, five months.

Concurrent with all this, I've been taking the time to meditate the full 20 minutes every day. I always meditate some, but if I'm tired or rushed or stressed, I might just do 10 minutes, or even 5. And then I take a nap or something. The last week, I've committed to the whole time. And I think that has helped.

So, all of those positive things, I believe, have contributed to a feeling of well-being. And I've been feeling it throughout the day.

But....

But....

This morning, after I awoke in a good mood, feeling some joy, I realized as I brushed my teeth and prepared to meditate that I actually have a habit of building a barrier around my feelings. I feel like I intentionally distract myself, or create busy-ness to disconnect from feeling.

It was like I was telling my joy to just go away.

That doesn't make a lot of sense, right? While I was meditating, I had an intuition that my habit to do this comes from my tendency to feel bad about myself. Stuffing my feelings is a defensive reaction against both the hostile environment of the world, and more seriously, from the hostile environment of my own mind.

So, I've quite naturally held my feelings at arms' length because my feelings tend to be negative.

They weren't negative this morning. They aren't right now. Yet still, my impulse is to escape them, to minimize them, to distrust or demean my feelings.

That's a hard way to live. It's a little adventurous, maybe even heroic to do this if you are actually living a life of terrible events and emotions. But I'm not right now. Things are going pretty well for me. And so it's just pathetic. How good does it have to get before I can be free?

I don't need my environment to get any better today for me to be better. I need to change my attitude. The greatest gift I've received in my recovery is not my sobriety. The greatest gift is knowing that I can change. I have experienced it, and I can change fundamentally with God's help.

So, today, I am mindful of my negative tendencies. I hold them gently as I examine them. I forgive myself for my shortcomings. And I becoming willing to let them go. God, you may take away my negative self-talk. I don't need it any more.

Three seconds

One of the first tools of recovery I learned in SAA was the Three Second Rule (TSR). The subject recently came up in a meeting, and I've had a chance to think and meditate on it and I'd like to share my thoughts.

Ogling or leering at women was a big issue for me when I first got into recovery. Check-out clerks, waitresses, co-workers, movie characters, stage actors, relatives at a family reunion, there really weren't many situations when I wasn't trying to check people out, to get some small thrill that I could relish in the moment and also take home for later.

I really wasn't all that conscious of it. It was just a part of my life, like breathing air.

Recovery opened my eyes. I learned that my ogling was part of my addiction. It was very painful and shameful to be out of control all the time. I started feeling like a creep and I wanted it to end.

The TSR allows a short look. It doesn't expect you to be perfect. It doesn't expect you not to notice that another person is attractive. Ideally, it encourages you to "notice" and no more. It sets boundaries around my behavior. Ultimately, the TSR is a mindfulness practice.

It does have its drawbacks, or rather I have my drawbacks that make the TSR less than ideal. I can get a pretty deep scoop of objectifying in three seconds. If my attitude is "I get my three seconds", the boundary-testing addict in me will take advantage of that. I was with a struggling member once at a coffee shop who was looking out the window, meticulously taking only three seconds to leer at each woman that walked by. For a full hour. I've never -- by the grace of God -- been as bad as that, but I have to admit I'm in the same ballpark.

So, if my intention, my desire is to get a sexual charge out of looking at people, the TSR is meaningless. It's just a brief shot of insanity. There's no recovery there. I need something more elemental than the TSR.

I have three possible states of mind when I come into contact with an attractive person.

1. Obsess over their attractiveness, stare at body parts, fall into fantasy, etc.
2. Obsess over their attractiveness, don't look at body parts, try to control my thoughts, etc.
3. Accept their attractiveness, let it go, and move on to being in true contact with them.

Whichever state of mind I'm in is completely dependent on my spiritual health at the time. If I am in poor spiritual condition, in denial, I fall into #1. If I want to be a better person, but am not working my program, not attentive to all my needs, I am in mode #2. If I'm spiritually fit, accepting life on life's terms, I can live free in mode #3.

I'm not in control of my state of mind, but I am in control of my spiritual practice.

So, at best, the TSR is a technical stop-gag until my spirituality catches up. The TSR is not an end in itself. It just keeps you safe until you're no longer a danger to others.

Now, in my own experience, I find myself in all three states from time to time. Most of the time, I'm in mode #2, "wanting to be better". I'd like to live more of my life in mode #3, and that is actually how I'm living. To be honest, which is also to be kind, I do have my #1 moments. Or days. These are also the days when I'm not asking God to be a part of my life.

Here are a few suggestions to append a spiritual component to the Three Second Rule:

Daily Prayer. I ask God every morning to remove my desire to look at women's breasts. Every day.

Preemptive Prayer. When I know I'm going to be in a challenging situation, say, going into Target, I say a prayer along the lines of "God, please let me be just a shopper" or "God, please let me let women be people in this store today." That tends to level me out and deflates whatever addictive anticipation I might have built up.

Prayer of Gratitude. When I leave the store, or leave work, I thank God for helping me through a difficult environment. This acts as a bookend to the preemptive prayer.

Pray for the Person. I learned this one from a very spiritual member. He believes that his addictive sexual desire is a perversion of his strong and healthy desire to feel connected to other people. So, he says a prayer for the person he is attracted to, something along the line of "Please, God, help this person towards their true heart's desire." He doesn't say it to the person, it's a personal moment, not an evangelical moment. I think. Praying for the other person puts you in a God-centered mindset, and it also turns a negative into a positive. I have used this, altho I must admit I don't often have the awareness or the willingness to do so.

Any Old Prayer. Any prayer at any moment helps to take me out of my addictive mindset. Prayer makes me right-sized. My standard prayer is "thank you, God, for bringing me to this place." It's a nice, neutral prayer that covers however I feel and whatever is happening.

Now, you might note that all of the suggestions are spiritual, and all of them are prayer. Yep. The practical way to be free of our addictive tendencies is turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God. It works.

Concentric circles

I woke up this morning with a message from my Higher Power: the spiritual life is like the field of a magnet. The energy flows out from one end of the magnet into the air, and then curves around and flows back into the other end. The energy isn't held; it flows through. If the magnetic field comes in contact with another conductive object -- like a refrigerator -- the waves of the magnet flow with and within the other object.

It's a good message for me today. The last few days I've been thinking of life as give and take. I need something, and I go and get it. Or I need something and I have to give something up to get it. It's a dead-end street mindset. It's a zero-sum game. It's greedy and it's needy.

I haven't been feeling good about myself. I've felt cut off and isolated.

I had a wonderful talk last night with my wife. We took the time to open up and to be honest about how we're feeling about one another and how we're relating. It was emotionally challenging, but we stayed with it, gently. After that, I got into a wonderful conversation with my neighbor about creativity and creativity coaching. So, I was set up for a good change of spiritual weather.

So when I woke up with this magnet idea, I realized that everything is not mine and not not mine. There's a sharing, a mingling of my life with everything else. And that's the truth of the matter. That's the reality. My delusion is that I am alone and cut off. It only feels like reality because that's what I've been lead to believe and have accepted.

I'm working on a new belief system. That's the purpose of my recovery. What I'm walking towards is an acceptance of my connectedness to everything: God, the world, and all people, including you.

I attended a meeting this morning, and I kept the image of the circles -- the sharing -- in my mind and I was able to connect to everyone with compassion. There's a deep yearning for connection in me that I've buried. I think my sexual addiction is a damaged attempt to meet that yearning.

Like every day, I've felt challenged this morning and a little needy and disturbed. In that, I've remembered that I am connected, that what I'm having trouble with is not unique and it's not just my problem. Also, I've remembered that what I like is not all mine, and that I have much to give. I've been feeling more open to other people, with more willingness to look at the possibilities of connection, rather than the opportunities for rejection. And today I have a willingness to live in the reality of connection.

It's making for a good day.

Emotional sobriety

The topic of today's meeting was emotional sobriety.

The way I picture my emotional sobriety is that I seem very together on the outside, but on the insides I'm feeling like there are monsters at war with heroes. Sometimes I'm the hero, sometimes I'm the monster. Sometimes I'm the frightened villager cowering beneath their massive feet.

And that seems real. The quiet everyday-ness of life seems like an emotional pretense for the all-too-real emotional warfare happening in my head. And my heart. And the base of my neck.

The other thing that comes to mind with emotional sobriety is boundaries. My boundaries are so poor, I don't know where I end and where someone else begins. If I care about you, your problem becomes my problem. And if you care about me, my problem becomes your problem. And then we live in the muck.

Someone in the meeting said something I found very profound. I only hurt the people I feel I have power over. I don't rage against my boss and I don't rage against strangers. But know me well enough, and I'll tell you what I really feel about you. And some of that will be hurtful.

I remember as a child never closing my bedroom door. I always felt, I guess, that that would be interpreted as hiding something, of holding back. I never looked at my room as a refuge from anyone or anything. I never had my own safe place. I always felt like I needed to be around and available.

People were never barred from my room. But no one ever came into my room either.

And now I suffer under this same open boundary in my primary relationship. I can't seem to ask for my own space. I can't seem to find my own emotional space. I'm always dragged in, and I feel no power to stay within myself. My wife is similarly wired. It's like standing in a pool of gasoline asking each other for a light some of time.

I don't have any answers today. I don't have a clue, really. Search... Search... Nope, nothing.

Perhaps... there's probably an amend to make to myself. An amend to take care of myself, to nurture myself. And an amend to all other people to let them be responsible for their own feelings. That's the best I can do today.

Someone shared that they have every intention -- on entering a difficult conversation -- of staying rational, staying balanced. But for them, before ten minutes are out, they are dragged in and part of the havoc. That's how it feels for me. I can have all the best plans and the best intentions, but when the clock starts, when things actually get going, I revert to my patterns with people.

I like the metaphor of the budding sapling. All great trees start as a little twig. Emotional sobriety is a gentle twig I mow down every day.

I'm not a doctor, but I play one in my life

The subject of today's meeting was Step Two. Two is key for me, because my Step One was very sincere, a very low bottom. I was disgusted by my behavior and I couldn't stop. Desperate. Step Three was fairly easy for me, because I've always been one to jump on the bandwagon. Very willing. Recovery has been a very good thing to commit to.

Step Two is hard, harder for me. I like to entertain the notion that I'm special, especially damned and beyond hope. I'm really not all that hard a case, but I feel incurable. I think this arises from my experience of not being able to fix myself. I can be so hard-headed that I think "If I can't fix it, no one can".

I'm such an expert. I am also an expert on most other people.

Step Two tells me that there is something out there that can make me whole. It also tells me that that power is not me. From this, I understand that the best thing I can do is get out of the way. The doctor (God) wants to work on me, but I need to get out of the way first.

That is really, really hard for me. For some reason, I am always searching, always reaching. I think my mind is completely devoted to being a problem-solver. There is no bigger problem than me. How is that for grandiosity?

Thinking about it more as I drove from the meeting, there is only one Step where I fix anything, and that is Step 9. I fix -- or at least try to fix -- the messes I have made along the way. And even that is a humble task, because I do not really fix the issue, I do my best to mend the issue. I treat the problems of the past, I do not ultimately correct them.

But the other Steps, the other actions of recovery, none of them are about me fixing anything. None. It is just not part of the program. What is a part? Accepting. Accepting. Always, always I want things to be different. I guess I am afraid that if I accept things, things will not change. That is my fear. That is the little "truth" that keeps me in a state of personal meddling.

God, I am afraid of letting go. I am afraid that I am not going to be taken care of. I am afraid that letting go means giving up. I am a fighter. I am a fighter. Man, am I beat up.

So, I have a lot to learn. Luckily, I do not have to go anywhere to, catch anything, hold anything to learn it. I just need to be here now. I need to let go.

Please God, you are welcome to my sorrow, you know how to sooth it.
You are welcome to my pain, you know how to treat it gently,
God, you are welcome to mistakes, you know which step lead me astray,
You are welcome to my plans, you know better than I.

May I accept what is happening now
May I move forward with simplicity
May I look backward with equanimity
May I be grateful for all that happens

A visitor

This blog finally had a visitor who is neither a close recovery friend or someone looking for fake Confucius quotes. I linked to Confucius quotes once, and now I am apparently a top resource for Consucius quotes on the web.

The visitor was a blogger I've been following and apparently she found this blog through her traffic statistics.

This inspires me to write again. The completely lack of attention had discouraged me.

Shoulds

I was driving to work today and I was thinking "I should be thinking this way." The "way" I was hoping to be was some tuned-in Buddhist practice, I suppose. I don't completely remember. What did catch my attention is that I'm constantly thinking that I should be thinking in some other way.

Monitoring, monitoring, monitoring. Judging, judging, judging. Where does it let off?

I don't think it lets off. I think my mind is set up to trap myself again and again in thinking. And the end point of that thinking is that I don't measure up. I'm not a half-empty kind of guy. I'm a completely empty kind of guy. Except when I'm completely full of myself. The more I think about a thing, the more certain I am that I'm not right in some way.

There's a certain attitude in recovery that I recognized long ago, but I keep forgetting and forgetting. So much of the life of recovery is working through pain. If you want to be free of pain, you must become very intimate with it. The problem, of course, is that I am very sensitive to pain and really, really want to avoid it. That is the root, trunk, branch, leaf and fruit of my addiction. Fear of pain keeps me from working through it.

But let's say I take a real honest first step and realize that I can't take it any more, that I am really, truly introduced to my pain in such a way that I want to do something about it. Then I take a really honest third step and agree to do whatever it takes to come into agreement with God's will. In that situation, I am living with pain and it's okay.

I am living with pain and it's okay.

I think that is the ultimate attitude to have in recovery. To deny pain, either the pain of the past or the pain that comes in every day is not serenity. It's a deep denial. Pain is real. That is unavoidable. That pain is unavoidable is a first step issue, I believe.

I believe the piece that I am missing in my recover to day is the acceptance of all that is good in my life. I'm missing the gratitude. I'm afraid my attitude towards life and recovery right now is:

I am living with pain and I need to end that by doing something.

Shoulds. I should do this. It should be this way.

The truth is, things are not too bad for me right now. I am doing as well as I ever have and in many respects better than I have ever done. And yet, am I "happier" now than before? No, I'm just about at happy as I've ever been. Yet my "shoulds" and my attitude of scarcity obscure this goodness at all times.

I think the issue is my attitude. I am just looking at the situation as 1) bad and 2) intractable. The truth is that things are 1) good and 2) solvable. Perhaps I find the various solutions distasteful, but they are real and they work.

So, I'm committed to living today (just today, one day at a time) in gratitude. The attitude of gratitude. I think this attitude can work where the shoulds cannot. This feels right in me right now. Right.

Encasing my suffering ... in ice

I promised to post again about yesterday. I promised to post again last night, but today will have to do.

I didn't stay with my suffering yesterday. About an hour after I wrote the previous post, I opened up my browser and started reading about Iran. I don't live in Iran, I'm not of Iranian descent, I'm not a diplomat, I'm not a politician. But I decided that it was important that I know just what was going on there.

There's something admirable about staying on top of important news stories; staying informed. But that is not what I was doing.

What I was doing was avoiding. I was in turmoil and I reached out for something that would help me forget. I equate it to putting my emotions on ice. Television is my traditional numbing device. In recent years, the Internet has taken that position. What's yours?

So, there were a couple of hours there where I knew a lot about the pain of Iranian disenfranchisement, but not a lot about my pain. And then, of course, I started to "gently" berate myself for being lazy, for wasting time, for not living up to my word, for not taking care of myself. Do you know this trap?

I realized I was in that trap and started taking better care of myself. I called a friend in recovery, actually two. I made and ate lunch. Then I went to a 12-step meeting after work. These things all brought me back to reality.

Recovery is sort of like a jigsaw puzzle. If you work on it, you'll make progress. If you just leave it there on the card table, you won't. So, I actually had an opportunity to process some of the pain that was lying within me, but I took a pass. It wasn't that the pain was too much, it's just that I decided to go another way. I'm conditioned to avoid. That's just how I am.

This is an example of taking the 2d Step without taking the 3d Step.

I have made a decision to live differently, to feeling my feelings straight through. I didn't do that, not completely. I have a little bit of a raw feeling about that, like I let myself down. I did. But I'm also aware that I am learning, slowly, how to take care of myself. I need to both recognize my shortcomings without shame while acknowledging what progress I have made.

And, all things considered, yesterday was a good day. I took one step forward and no steps back.

Embracing my suffering

I woke up this morning really suffering. I was away for the weekend visiting family. It was a good time, but I was really in comparison mode, especially with my younger relatives. They seem so happy, they seem so accomplished. They're on the cusp of doing wonderful things.

And I feel like life has passed me by.

So, much negative self-talk this morning. I meditate each morning, 20 minutes. On days like this my meditation can be a string of negative thoughts. Those thoughts reinforce negative attitudes and lead to negative actions. And I go lower and lower.

So, I am suffering today. And I write that to acknowledge it. I'm not acknowledging it to "move on". "Moving on" from suffering is the way I do business. It's part and parcel of my addiction.

Instead, today, I am grateful to write that I am embracing my suffering. During my meditation and since I have silently thought:

"May this suffering awaken my compassion."

It is an affirmation I have learned from Tara Brach. Accepting the bad feeling and gently examining it helps me to experience it right now. It actually stops me from judging "it" or judging me. I'm merely aware of my sadness, and the way it is manifested in my body.

It is not fun. I am very sad, sad as I type this. I am near tears. But these are the tears that are like a spring rain. I am comforted. I am feeling compassion for myself.

My biggest decision so far today is to take things very, very slowly. I took my time driving to work. I have no anxiety about getting done what needs to be done and being content with that. I am dedicated to not losing myself in businesses and not lashing myself for not getting more done.

I am going to take my time and live in my emotions. I will post again this evening. Can I live like this? Can I truly live otherwise?

Invested in life

I had coffee yesterday with a friend in recovery. He told me that he had a difficult conversation with his partner on Sunday, but that on Monday he felt better and has been feeling good all week. I think that's a parable of recovery.

Recovery involves courage and hard work today. It's not something to put off for tomorrow. Courage is nothing more than doing the thing that your fear tells you not to do. Every Step of recovery is an assault on your fear. And every assault on your fear is a step in recovery, no matter if it involves making amends to your wife or merely thanking God for another day of life.

The upside is that I think my life today is the product of what I did yesterday. My recovery work puts a deposit in my bank that I enjoy tomorrow. Much of the benefit of recovery is seen down the road. When you're in the mindset of tomorrow, you start to listen more to God, because when you're invested, you want to make sure your effort goes towards something of real value.

Unfortunately, I'm not set up to think and act like that. I'm an addict and my addiction is all about feeling good RIGHT NOW. My life in addiction was a string of "live for the moment" days that really didn't add up to much. And each day I'd wake a little less happy with myself and a little more sure that I didn't have what it took to get better.

Whatever good things might come into my life would be quickly consumed. I was always living just on what was available right at that moment. Worse, I "sold off" whatever credit I had in good will with everyone I knew: burning my furniture for heat until I didn't have a chair to sit on.

Things have taken a different turn in recovery.

I woke up this morning feeling okay about being me. I didn't feel that way because I'm suddenly a good person now. I feel that way because I've slowly become a good person.

The theme for this week for me is giving up the obsession with things being "right" right now.

I didn't wake up wanting to be someone else. I didn't have regrets about yesterday, or any yesterday back and back and back. I'm reconciled with life. There was a lot of work to get where I am and there's still work today. The task was and is a lot lighter because of the people in recovery who came before me and those who have directly guided me with their example and words.

My life is precious now, because I'm invested in it. I thank God that I was able to learn how to live through 12-step recovery.

Permiable boundaries

We discussed boundaries at a meeting the other day. It was a good discussion.

Boundaries work both ways: they let things in and they let things out. Boundaries protect, but they also allow. Healthy boundaries keep bad things out and let good things in. And maybe they let good things out and keep bad things in?

One boundary difficulty I have is that I let negative criticism in too easily and fail to let in positive criticism. Say something bad about me, and I believe that. Say something good about me, and I discount it. It's a strange thing; a sad thing. I do believe good things about myself, but maybe I don't believe that other people really believe those things?

There are good reasons to have defensive boundaries, but I tend to maintain defenses long after they are needed. I'm over-insured.

There's a bit of a sphinx about me. I don't share enough of myself with people. That's confusing to people, because they don't know where I stand. And also, I am very likely to let my hostilities show to people and that's off-putting.

Then there are just the normal, human interactions that don't make their way into my heart. How often do I stand perplexed while others laugh? Or cry? Or even get angry? My boundaries make me aloof.

How do I loosen my boundaries? My hard boundaries were all built as a defense, so I think renovating them is a matter of trust:

1. Trust that people like me.
2. Trust that people want the best for me.
3. Trust that the occasional injury is outweighed by the continual benefit of openness.
4. Trust that I won't be destroyed by my vulnerabilities.

I guess it all comes down to a trust in God, in the universe of caring love, support and understanding. It's out there. It's truer than my fears. And it's better too.

Today.





There are valves in our arteries and veins that only allow the blood to flow one way. This seems to be the way

One year

Yesterday was one year of continuous abstinence from my bottom-line behaviors. I've had the date in mind of course all year. But I've not been too attentive to it.

It passed without notice.

I remembered it this morning at the meeting.

I'm ambivalent about it. I suppose it's because I don't feel very good these days. Too often I don't feel good. Too often when I do feel good it seems to be followed by a fall.

I don't have the slightest interest in celebrating.

I take too much for granted. I am very grateful to be sober today, even if I don't feel very good. I wouldn't feel any better if I had only one day right now.

Expectations. Impatience. Trying to force outcomes. Please God, help me to let go.

Gradual or lightning-bolt awakening?

I was discussing progressive versus immediate spiritual awakening with a friend in recovery the other day. Apparently it's also an issue of enlightenment in Buddhism.

Can a person evolve into a different way of being and living? Or does everything happen all at once?

Bill W. is the classic lightning-bolt recipient. He had a light-in-the-sky experience and from that point on was in communion with his Higher Power and was able to build his life around God's will without reservation.

"Without reservation." Actually, I don't know if that is true of Bill W. That's probably my projection of what I would be like if I were to have an inexplicably strong feeling of the presence of God.

I have not had that experience. I feel I am progressing gradually in my relationship with my Higher Power. There's still the need for a lot of faith.

The question is, am I am really building, or am I just spinning my wheels? Is there some cosmic scale being tipped slowly by each spiritual action, so that eventually I will be in communion with God? Should I be waiting? Or should I be working?

Of course, Bill himself -- despite having been a lightning-bolt recipient -- believed in gradual spiritual awakening. The 12 Steps as a metaphor is an inclined plane. It assumes that one step takes you higher than the next and so on. Having worked all twelve steps, however, I can say that my spiritual awakening is still pretty groggy. There is a lot about my day-to-day actions that are not in concert with a Higher Power who is outside of me.

I am on a spiritual quest. I act when I believe I should act. I let go when I believe I should let go. Why am I not feeling better?

The terrible spiritual truth I'm dealing with today is that my expectation of feeling better may be the primary obstacle to my further spiritual growth. "It's a selfish program", I have heard. We get in this to get better. And I have gotten a lot better. But I haven't found peace or serenity or whatever it is I hope to get out of the program, out of a spiritual life.

Perhaps my expectations of serenity are premature. I think there may be a lot more pain I need to pains-take before I feel consistent serenity. Perhaps I will not reach a spiritual serenity until I discard the hope that I will attain serenity. Wouldn't that be just like me?

But back to the subject, I think the difference between progressive or immediate awakening is merely one of perspective. Bill W. didn't know he was close to a dramatic spiritual awakening the day before it happened. It just happened. He did his spiritual work and then it happened.

Think of a bowl on a kitchen table. A child pushes it inch by inch towards the edge. Eventually there is one push that sends it over. I am a blind bowl. I don't know if I'm a millimeter from the edge or a foot. But I can still push. And when enough of me is over the edge, the rest of me will fall off the table.

Unfortunately, I don't know if my pushes are pushing me towards the edge, or away from the edge. Yikes! That's the conundrum of effort. I also don't know if the table is slanted away from the edge. My one-inch push may be immediately followed by a two-inch backslide.

Perhaps I should just wait for the Child.

The border between Me and the Universe

I had a spiritual experience Wednesday morning. I was laying in bed before my alarm, or perhaps between snoozes. My feet hurt and I probably had to go to the bathroom. I was aware of the different sensations of my body. I've been practicing this lately in my meditation: just being aware of my body.

I was aware of sensations all over my body and I realized that these pains, tightnesses, pressures, etc., they were all happening independently of each other and independently of me -- or should I say Me, the self. What I realized is that I was not directing these sensations, I was not controlling these sensations. They didn't radiate out from a central me. I was just observing them. They didn't need me to exist. I -- the self -- was almost outside of them. There were processes in my body that were independent of my controlling self.

I have this tendency to believe that the border between me and the rest of the universe is my skin. Along with this, I believe that I am in control of myself and not in control of what is outside of myself.

The observation of these independent sensations made me realize that the me I think of as Me is really a bundle of sensations that doesn't have a consistent center. The center is something that I, the observer has constructed. A lot of me and my experience of me is outside of my control.

Sorry if I'm boring you. Many of my deepest realizations are pretty elementary. I have a tendency to skip over the obvious.

So if what is going on inside my skin is not all Me, then maybe everything happening outside of my skin is not all not-Me. How do I experience "the rest" of the world? Through my senses. How do I experience my interior physical sensations? Through my senses. Why is one more me than the other?

The world outside my skin seems separate because my mind is always separating things. The main thing it separates is me from the universe. And maybe this separation is not real. Maybe the separation is not only not real, but is a lie I tell myself.

This encourages me to be more intuitive. It gives me a sense of integrity with all other things. This is what I need.

I am vulnerable

I was home alone this morning, just about to leave for work. I had taken some laundry down to the basement and was passing by the television set. I briefly wondered if we still had the DVD of the movie my wife and I had watched a few days ago. It had a brief scene of nudity.

And I thought, "I could look at that again."

Fortunately, I was actually moving, walking across the den carpet, when I had the thought and I just kept moving.

As I walked, I said "No." It was a gentle no, a soft no. I don't like to scold my addictive impulses, but I can't coddle them either.

My second thought was "I am vulnerable." I don't have that many impulses to act out, but when I do, I try to acknowledge them. Denial of my addiction is the strongest part of my addiction. The last time I acted out, I know that I had this suspended sense of reality, where I was actively trying to skirt around the truth of what I was up to.

The other thing I remember about the last time I acted out was that it wasn't the worst day of my life. I wasn't overwhelmed or anything. I was just vulnerable and I was downstairs in my den. A lot like this morning.

So I avoided a wreck. I am grateful for my awareness that helped me through that. I am grateful that I see more hope in the solution than returning to the problem.

And now I've recognized that I'm vulnerable and I need to get some help. I think I'll call my sponsor or another friend in recovery. Right now.

In the meantime, thank you God, for bringing me to this place.

Meditation opens the basement door

I've had an unexpectedly bad experience with meditation lately. When I say unexpected, I mean that I expect meditation to make me feel good, serene, you know? I don't expect it open a door to my pain.

But that is what it has done.

I have a pretty poor record as a meditator. I have a very chatty mind. I'm usually in two modes, I'm either just off in some thought about some something or I'm sitting there critiquing my meditation technique. "If I sat up straighter, my mind would be more clear" or "My mind is too chatty to be able to do meditation."

So I've been stalled. For years. But I've had some recent breakthroughs. There have been several things, but one thing was just to actually devote more time to it. I used to do 10 minutes, then I upped it to 15 and quickly up again to 20. I've been holding steady at 20. It's made a difference. I think the extra time allows me to just settle in.

Another factor is that I've been listening to Tara Brach's weekly podcast. Tara is a Buddhist teacher and a counseling psychologist. She's a very gentle lady and I get a lot out of listening to her podcasts. She also fancies herself a commedian, and I forgive her for that.

The message I'm getting from Tara, and the meditation I'm practicing is simple awareness. I just try to be present to what is going on. This is what is going on in my mind, but also what is going on in my body and emotions. Just being present. My tendency in life is to experience it as an opportunity to judge. I judge everything. Being present is just being there with living.

I practice when I'm meditating, but I also try to practice it the rest of the day. I drive when I'm driving. I fold laundry and just observe the tee shirt. And when I'm feeling something, when there's an emotion, I experience the emotion. My emotions are the most important medium for communication with God right now. These messages are coming in very strongly.

My standard reaction to emotions is to control them. I don't feel my feelings. I don't let them get very far along before I stuff them down. Good or bad, happy or sad, I don't let them play out very long. This is a bit of an overstatement. I've actually become so skilled at stuffing my emotions that they don't often even get to the surface. They come pre-stuffed.

So I've been experiencing my emotions. I've been saying "yes" to them. Acceptance is the lesson I must learn again and again. I'm saying "yes". Not "YEAH!!!". "Yes."

And here's the problem. The reason I've put some much effort, built so many walls against my emotions is that I have some very unpleasant emotions to deal with. I've had them a very, very long time. The big feeling, the big ugly feeling is: I'm not good enough. That is a feeling, a "truth" I believe about myself that is so ugly and so ingrained that I've convinced myself for most of my life that I actually don't feel this way.

I've thought my problem was arrogance. Now I see arrogance as a defense mechanism against my real problem.

Of all my denials, this is the biggest. I've spent most of my life thinking that I did not have issues with self-loathing. But the increased quality of my meditation has opened up this truth to me.

And it has not been pleasant. I wrote about it two weeks ago.

On top of the sadness of getting in touch with my feelings of inferiority, I am also somewhat saddened that I haven't recognized it before. Altho, that thought is along the path of more self-loathing. The healthy thing for me to do is to recognize what I'm learning and be grateful that I am at this point right here when it is safe for me to uncover this truth. To live with it.

Thank you, God, for bringing me to this place.

Confucius quotes

Save yourself some trouble and read these Confucius quotes.

There's a lot of recovery there.

The one quip that jumps out at me is:

By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.

Experience is the first course of recovery, the bitter trudge that gets us in the door. Imitation is beginning recovery: "fake it 'til you make it", the sponsor/sponsee relationship, etc. Reflection comes with Step 11.

So, as is often the case, addicts get it all backwards. But we end up in the right place.

Honesty as antidote

Just got off the phone with a friend in recovery. He's having a hard time with middle circle behaviors, checking out women. At the same time, he shared with me how he is being honest with his partner about this, and that sharing his struggling helps to defang the obsession.

That gave me a lot of hope. In the last week I've been very miserable about my job, my creative life and even my service in the program. I feel powerless, but also very willful. This is a powerful admixture of negativity.

I seem to have three responses to these sorts of events: acting out, living in misery and letting go. I won't do the first. I can't seem to do the third, so I live in the second. The limbo. The dry, unhappy place.

But this morning, Monday morning, with so much to do and so much anxiety and bitterness around it, I decided to surrender. First off, I told my wife about my anxiety about work, about all the things I need to do today that I should have done last week and my keen sense of inferiority about this. I just told her how I felt.

Second, I came to work and admitted I needed help on my current project. That's equally tough for me, because I get a lot of self-satisfaction out of being capable at my job. I had to admit in a little way that I've not got my act together. I admitted it, asked for help and I'm getting help.

And then this friend called. I am getting a triple message of honesty today, and it is making things a lot more manageable.

I still have much to do, and I need to get back to it. But it's not as scary and not as triggering as it was an hour ago.

Why does God need me to do anything?

Most of the time we spend trying to understand the nature of God -- the way that God works -- is wasted time, at least in my opinion. I shouldn't say that. I should say that it is of very little use to me or to God for me to spend time trying to figure out God. It may be entirely valid for other people with greater knowledge and understanding to contemplate the nature of God. It's just not for me.

I have simpler needs and simpler goals.

The substance of my recovery is my decision to follow God's will and the actions that result from that decision. God has something that He wants me to do; some bit of work cut out for me each day. Through prayer, meditation and moment-to-moment mindfulness, I can get a sense of what that work is, and then I can go about doing it.

This is what helps me to grow. This is what keeps me healthy. All of my progress in recovery has come out of doing God's will. I didn't always understand it that way, but that's what it was and is.

Sometimes the assignment is pretty simple: don't act out, go to a meeting, call that person back. I don't have to know how my actions fit in to any grand scheme. I can just do my part. The great debilitating question of my life has always been "what should I do next?" Following God's will -- the simple things -- has meant more to me than all the exquisite reasoning that I've created, mulled over and discarded over the years.

But still there is a nagging question. I've struggled with this question since first working Step Three:

Why does God need me to do anything?

God is all-powerful, right? He can just make it so. Why does God need little old me? Part of my asking the question, I suppose is just my laziness. Maybe I'd rather not work and am griping about God asking me to do things. "Why did you call me over here if you could have done it yourself?" But setting aside my sloth, it's a fair question: why does God need me?

Is doing God's will just a make-work project? Some sort of celestial work-fare program? I hope not. Although my hopes don't amount to much in the grand scheme of things.

Thursday night I had a realization that helps me to answer this big question.

I'm not a theologian, and I apologize to any who might by some unfortunate accident stumble across this post. And again, I intentionally try not to ruminate on the nature of God, Man or myself too much. I do this because I have an aversion to religion, which is very concerned with defining God. I can't afford to dislike my own theology, so I have little.

The realization on Thursday is, "God needs my help because addicts don't listen to God."

The foundation of 12-Step recovery is addicts helping other addicts. Addicts tune out any right-minded person who wants to help them out.
The self-centered, long-suffering addict has been lectured to enough, thank you. But addicts will listen to this story "My life was miserable, completely out of control and then I found help through a program of recovery." That is the foundation story of AA and its subsequent spin-offs.

God is talking to us all the time. The pain in my back is a message from God. So is a symphony, the price of a loaf of bread and the misery of my addiction. The clearest messages, the ones that say I should mend my ways and seek help for my worst deficiencies are many. But I ignored them. I discounted them. I resented them. God was speaking to me, and I ignored Him. I even cursed Him.

And then I started to attend meetings. My meetings weren't filled with wise, well-reasoned men and women, they were filled with addicts, young and old, happy and sad. These people spoke the words of God to me through their stories. I listened and learned and eventually made progress in living a life of recovery rather than misery.

And that's the key. We're all a bunch of knuckleheads. God can't get through to us. God, in His infinite wisdom and mercy, does not force the solution on addicts or any other person. I think that's why religion or faith alone can't help us out of our mess. We need each other and the message of the program.

So, that is why God needs us. Through our spiritual practice and our service work, we carry the message to another addict. If we do not do this, the message will not get through.

This realization calls to me. It urges me to stay sober and help others. There is so much pain out there and I can help. I and others like me who have made that decision to help are the only ones who can. That is inspiring and it makes my life and my work seem valuable, even holy.

"Now matter how far down the scale you have gone, you will see how your experience can benefit others." That's a promise.

Emotional growth or emotional injury?

I was walking my dog through the neighborhood yesterday when I was suddenly overwhelmed by a dark, heavy feeling. It seemed to come out of nowhere. It was a feeling of heaviness, like great grief in my chest and stomach and it felt like there was a weight upon my shoulders. The air seemed close and quiet.

I can't say I've ever felt like that before.

As far as I know, it didn't start from some though, it was just a spontaneous sadness. The feeling came so suddenly, I couldn't do anything but just stand there on the sidewalk.

"What is this?"

Life has been a little different for me since the first of the year. I've been practicing less control really, which means that I feel like I've been open to things. Part of this is just taking the time -- a pause -- to feel my feelings. So I paused, even in the face of this dark wave.

What I experienced in that pause was unsettling. I'd never really felt that bad about just being before. The only equivalent feeling was when I learned my grandmother was dead when I was an adolescent. This was completely out-of-the-blue. Because I couldn't peg it on something made it more unsettling, I think.

So I stayed with it. The mystery of it helped me to stay with it, because my mind had nothing to latch onto. The first thought that came to my head was "I've never felt this bad before." And truly, I haven't. The second thought was, "Is this reality now?" There have been some unique moments of serenity and its opposite in these last few months. And I was wondering: "Is this what I have to put up with when I feel my feelings?"

It's an odd question for me, a deep question. My native inclination is to strenuously avoid negative feelings, to stuff them. Lately I've had a looser grip on my emotions; letting things play out. But really, do I really have to face that level of discomfort? Is that how it's going to be? And furthermore, is that normal? There's always been a fear that if I really let my guard down, if I really jumped into life and let it wash over me that I would be drowned. If I've been afraid of my feelings, I think this experience was just what I was trying to avoid.

Is yesterday the new normal for me? And if so, will I learn to adjust to it? Or will I eventually get well enough adjusted to living my emotions that I don't have those large waves? You know? When you damn yourself up, you can expect a few floods, right?

Or did I crack?

Did one of the supports that holds this whole wild carnival of me together just crack and give out and give way? And is that a good thing, or a bad thing? If my life were destroyed, broken and irreparable, would I cease to be? Or would a new me emerge from the wreckage, like a snake sloughing its skin? Or was it just a touch of the blues on Wednesday afternoon?

So much of my life in recovery is walking into the dark.

The next thought was, "Is this depression? Is this what depressed people feel like?" The blanket of sorrow would be pretty much what I would imagine depression to be. I certainly wouldn't want to work or do anything if that's how I actually felt all the time. I was very worried yesterday, early, that I might feel like that all the time.

I'm pretty proud of my response to it. First, I just stayed with it. I didn't reject the feeling and I didn't reject myself. I didn't panic and try to direct my mind to something -- anything else to forget the feeling. I stayed with it. I walked home, my dog as happy as ever, and let myself in. While I didn't have any thought of acting out (for which I'm grateful), I immediately called my sponsor. He was there and we talked. During the talk I recalled some news I got earlier in the day that may have contributed to the event.

I described it as a "panic attack" to my sponsor. He shared his experience with things like that. It was good to talk with him because I trust him and I know he cares about me. My wife came home at about the same time and we talked too. It was good to open up to her. I have a tendency when I'm sick to get very childish, demanding and pathetic. I didn't do that. I didn't resent her for not dropping everything and making poor me the center of her universe. The aspiration to be present has a lot of unintended positive outcomes.

So, am I going insane or am I maturing emotionally? Both? I guess I'll find out.

In the mean time, I'm feeling better today, definitely better, although I still don't feel very good. I lived. I feel like a shipwreck survivor today: groggy, on edge but very relieved. How many more of those will I experience? I don't know. But I guess I know that I can be okay during and after. That much I've learned.

And that's okay for now.

Your higher power is who you think is in charge

Being a practical addict is sometimes an uphill battle. I want things to make sense. When things don't make sense, I want to reject them. One big obstacle is the concept of a higher power. I've developed a working relationship with my higher power in a practical way that works for me.

It's a slow process and it comes down to this: what am I willing to believe today? I have not had a great thunder-strike realization about God. I'm trying not to stand in the way of that happening, but I'm also not waiting around for it. I can't afford to wait around for me to completely accept a concept of a higher power. I could die before then, or at least live miserably before then. I don't think that's my higher power's will for me. So I need to find a concept of a higher power that I'm willing to believe in today.

I've made a lot of progress in accepting the reality of a higher power in my life. I'm not going to get into the particulars on this post, or maybe any post. I realized last night in a meeting that I keep my concept of a higher power pretty sketchy. I think that's practical for me, because I have a tendency to tear down the things I construct. Negative skepticism. My experience so far and my expected experience for the rest of my life is that God will be revealed to me only partially. I need to keep my attention on the fraction of my imagination that has faith rather than the fraction that lacks faith. It's hazy now and will forever be a little hazy. So, I need to be at peace with the haze, with the doubt.

But back to the point at hand, my first toehold into having any faith in a higher power is this: my higher power is whoever or whatever I believe is really in charge. It's a simple question: What is the ultimate authority in my life?

The practical aspect of this for me is that I can start my faith in a higher power without having to believe in anything supernatural. Even a complete atheist -- which I'm not -- has a concept of the ultimate authority. No one believes there are no rules. You can deny Noah's flood, but you can't deny gravity or death or the sweetness of a lollipop.

When I reflect deeply on what or who is really in charge, it exposes the fact that I have been living my life under the control of some false gods. The primary false god is me. I have found anxious refuge many times in the belief that I am the ultimate authority. I say anxious, because being my own higher power is a miserable experience. I am a jealous god and my subjects are very uncooperative.

The other ultimate authority has been my parents, or more broadly "other people." I seem to have this chorus of clucking Presbyterians continually holding judgment over my thoughts and actions. This higher power, while moral, consistent and fairly accessible, has not been particularly humane, at least not towards my native inclination to fail to take faith at face value.

My relationship to a higher power has developed through reviewing my preconceived notions of ultimate authority. I take up the idea, reflect on it and accept what I can believe and discard what I can't. This initially doesn't leave me with a lot to believe in. But for me -- and this is very important -- I don't get a lot of spiritual traction by giving lip service to something I don't believe in. So, rather, I have pared down my faith to just that little bit I can believe in.

From that little beginning I can build a faith that is appropriate to me. I don't have to fit myself to another's faith, no matter how exquisite. That didn't work for me as a child and it doesn't work for me now.

So, it's about making faith work for me. I'm a very imperfect vessel, and today I humbly admit that I have an imperfect solution. It's a slow process, but it grows and builds within me and without me in a natural way.

Personal inertia works for recovery as well as addiction

My outlook, my habits, my way of life developed over many years. This did not happen over night. In the case of my addiction, years of selfish and destructive behavior. That is the way I lived. And living like that, that's how I expected to live. The habits became ingrained.

Habitual behavior establishes personal inertia. The definition of inertia is the tendency of a body to maintain its state of rest or uniform motion unless acted upon by an external force. We usually understand inertia as staying still, but in physics, it means that something in motion will stay in motion. This is true in space more than here on earth, so it takes a thought experiment to understand it. If you were driving your car in space (where there's no gravity or friction) and you took your hands off the wheel and foot off the accelerator, you would continue to go in the same direction forever at the same speed. You'd travel on and on because of inertia until some other force intervened.

So, as an addict, I built up a personal inertia to keep doing addictive things. There was a momentum that continually suggested options that would reinforce my addictive behaviors. The cycle. There were other forces working against the addiction, of course: my wife's feelings, my basic need to make money, my shrinking self-respect, etc. But these forces were weaker than the personal inertia of my addiction.

So then I hit bottom, right? Unfortunately, everything didn't stop for me when I hit bottom. My personal inertia kept me going, and keeps a lot of addicts going. Maybe we don't feel the same way about our addictive behaviors, but we keep doing them. We've taken our foot off the accelerator, as it were, but the car keeps moving.

So, how do we get moving in the right direction? The first way is to take our foot off the accelerator. Gratefully, there is a lot of anti-addict friction in our universe. But the brakes will only stop us, they won't get us going in the right direction.

What can get us going in the right direction is recovery work, of course. Recovery work can turn us around.

The problem is, you start your recovery work while you still have a lot of addiction momentum. And it takes a long, long time to turn it around. It takes an enormous amount of effort to reverse our trajectory. One dilemma is we tend not to notice how much our little effort is working against our large inertia. It does not seem to make much of a difference. I'm personally sure, though, that it does make a difference. Every little bit helps, so it's important to do recovery work every day. It adds up.

Amazingly, it's also been my experience that when I do my small part, my higher power will do the rest. There is a multiplier effect to working in the direction of God's will for me. I am truly powerless over my addiction, the inertia is too great, but with God's help I can get better. God's will for me, as best as I can understand it, is for me to be healthy, happy and free for my own sake and so that I can be of service to God.

Thankfully, recovery work started working for me long before I recognized the connection to God's will. The same can be true for anyone, no matter their belief or lack thereof.

The upside of this is if you get going in the right direction -- building momentum towards living in harmony with God's will --you will have positive personal inertia that will make it easier and easier to make the right choices and live free, happy and healthy. What a blessing it is to know this after years of despair. What a blessing it is to share this.

Slowing down is working my program and vice versa

I've been slowing down lately. Walking slower. I've been driving the speed limit. Part of it has been deliberate and part of it stems from a reduction in the desire to get there and a satisfaction with being "here."

The practice reinforces the principle and the principle supports the practice.

My native inclination is to lean forward, to have my attention always on the next thing. There's a certain hopefulness in that, I guess, but when I'm really honest with myself, it stems from a dissatisfaction with the way things are and the way I am. I think that by getting to the next thing or merely getting away from right "here", that I will find more satisfaction in that other place.

I haven't found that satisfaction in the "other place" because, probably, when I get to the "other place" it has suddenly became "this place." Dang! And so I must press on; an eternally hurried pilgrim who never gets to the destination.

Maybe the destination is here. Here.

That's scary and challenging for me, because "here" -- the reality of who I am -- my imperfections, my emotions, my past -- is an unhappy place. I have worked the Steps and I am freed from the shackles of my addiction, but my release has been into a reality that stills seems dangerous and bleak.

I've wished it weren't so, but my wishing hasn't made it better. Nor has my striving brought me closer. All my effort cannot make it so.

If the destination is here, I must make a home of it. I recall as a young man that I would never decorate my room no matter where I lived. My restlessness never let me settle in. But here I am and despite my best efforts I am still me. "No matter where you go, there you are" as they say in Buckaroo Bonzai. I must admit, I'm think I'm settling in more from a feeling of weariness than a feeling that this is the right place. But it is working all the same.

Being here has a physical sensation: I can feel my feet on the ground. I feel a connection to the earth, even if the surface below my feet is blacktop as I walk from my car to my workplace. I am moving, I am heading someplace, but I am not pushing and I'm not being pulled. I'm just making my way. There is an easiness and relaxation to this walking, a fullness. Fullness.

It affects my mind as well. I'm much more likely to stop thinking and look around, and to see familiar things in a new way. I'm feeling my feelings more and staying with them. And sometimes even my mind is quiet. Quiet.

The practice reinforces the principle and the principle supports the practice.

There's an okay-ness to being here, being present. When this moment is enough, I don't need the future -- the next -- so desperately. I feel like I can live like this. What a tremendous relief. Relief.

Relief.

My Daily Practice

I'd like to share my daily practice and some thoughts about each practice.

Morning Practice

Eight Pieces of Silk. This is a set of simple Chinese exercises I learned as a young man. The instructor said I would live a healthy life if I did these twice a day. In typical fashion, I do them once a day. Here is a description I found in this PDF from a Google search. The instructions are very similar to the eight I was taught.

Greeting the Sun. Another Chinese exercise, a basic yoga move, I believe. I breathe in while raising my hands together up the center of my body. When my hands get to my face and my lungs are full, I exhale and push up and out with my hands in a big circle. When my hands come down to my sides and my lungs are empty, I start another inhale and bring my hands slowly up again. I do this eight times to clear my mind and get my breathing right.

Mindfulness Meditation. I sit in a half lotus for 20 minutes. On my best days I spend the first couple of minutes putting my attention on relaxing each part of my body from head to toe. Then, I try to concentrate on my breath, the breathing in and breathing out. It's best for me to concentrate on the air as is comes in and out of my mouth. Other people concentrate on the belly expanding and contracting. When a thought comes into my mind, I try to let it go. If a feeling comes into my body, I try to stay with the emotion, to just live it without judging it. If my cat passes by and rubs against my leg, I will pet her a while. On many days I sit there and worry about my life. I'm not very good at meditation, but I'm willing to be bad at it for as long as it takes. An interesting note: for a few years I did only 10 minutes and did not see a lot of benefit in meditation. Recently I upped it to 20 minutes and I've noticed a big difference. The spiritual lesson is that half measures really do avail us nothing.

Then I get on my knees and say my prayers:

"God I'm an addict and I need help." This is my first prayer of the day. It's pretty basic. This is my first affirmation of the day and it's all about humility.

"God, I can't do this on my own." There's a distinction between needing help and thinking I need someone else's help. It's also an invitation for God to join me today. God is very hands-off if you haven't noticed. God doesn't show up unless you ask him.

The Serenity Prayer. Of course.

The Third Step Prayer. It's from the Big Book, but it's written in King James English! I think Bill and Bob were getting a little grandiose there. I recite it, "God, I offer myself to you..."

The Seventh Step Prayer. This prayer says a lot about the purpose of the Seventh Step that is not in the actual text of the Seventh Step.

List of character defects to be removed. "God please remove from me my grandiosity, my arrogance, my patronizing and my hostility. Please remove my hostility, anger and resentment towards my wife, whom I love." Funny how I've never really had to update that list.

Prayers and affirmations specifically for my addiction. "Dear God, please remove my breast fetish. I don't need to control women to be okay. Dear God, please remove my desire to look at pictures of women's breasts. Sex is a part of my life, it's not my whole life." These are remarkably effective for me.

Any other prayer that comes to mind. I should probably look forward to what is coming up in the day, but I don't.

Daytime Practice

Spot Check. If anything is upsetting me, I do a 10th Step spot check. I ask myself, "What is my part in this?" I ask myself if there's any amends that need to be made. And then I do them. Promptly admitting my wrongs is very effective.

Spot Prayers. The Serenity Prayer is a good one to throw in at any time. A favorite daytime prayer for me is "Thank you, God, for bringing me to this place." This works for whatever situation I find myself it, "good" or "bad". A prayer I use just before doing something that I'm worried about is "God, I don't know how to do this." It's a great prayer especially when I think I know damn well what to do. Finally, "Thanks" is just a great, quick prayer.

Calling an addict. I try to get a call in to my sponsor or another addict every day. It grounds me.

Bedtime Practice

Gratitude list. I fill out a little list of things I'm grateful for. I actually just started this about a month ago after eight years of thinking it was "not for me". It's been a great month. This one you should try especially if you think it's a stupid idea.

Tenth Step inventory. I have an actual form I've created, a scoresheet. It's good for me to quantify things. I list positive behaviors and negative behaviors and tally which ones I've done during the day. I'll write a whole post on this some other time.

Recovery Reading. I read a little from a recovery book every night. My commitment is to merely open the book and close it. Occassionally that's all I do. Usually I read about a page. The book I'm opening right now is Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions.

Spiritual Reading. This is the Bible or some other spiritual, non-recovery text. Right now I'm reading Tara Brach's Radical Acceptance.

There are other things, of course, I do throughout the day (attending meetings, step work, etc.), but these are the things I do every day.

Restoration of Sanity in the Second Step

There are three tests of faith in the 2d Step: faith in a higher power, faith in a process of coming to believe and faith that we can be restored to sanity. The last one is also remarkable in that it says sanity will be restored.

I don't know if I've ever been sane. I certainly know that I was innocent, but I don't really count that. The simplicity of childhood was just simplicity for me. There was a truck and I played with it. There was a Popsicle and I ate it. Once I really started to have to make decisions about my life, I can't say I've been very sane.

But there it is in Step Two, "restore us to sanity". I think there are three stages of sanity in recovery. The first is the insanity of my addiction. The second is the time when my addiction is in remission and now I have to deal with the fact that I still have a lot of problems. The third stage is recovered sanity, where I'm okay and I understand the word serenity and so forth; the promise of The Promises.

I'm squarely in the Second Stage of sanity. There is a book called Stage II Recovery by Earnie Larson and I read it after I passed one year's sobriety the first time. It was a gift from my sponsor. I'm grateful for the care and attention of my sponsor. I may be liberally quoting the contents of that book. If I am, my apologies to Mr. Larsen. Consider it a review.

The belief that there is a basic sanity, a core integrity to me is pretty novel. The religion I grew up in believes in original sin; a basic flaw to humanity. There's really a lot of spiritual opportunity in believing that there is an imperfection, an incompleteness to us, and I'm open-minded enough not to sell it short. I've heard that God enters through our flaws. But the shaming part of me takes the idea of a fundamental flaw and conflates it to: I'm all bad. I can be dissatisfied when the cup is 3% empty. My addiction was the treatment for the fundamental belief that I am flawed. Gradually and progressively, I came to equate my addictive self as the incarnation of that flaw.

Round and round and round. How I had convinced myself that my misery was just the fulfillment of my destiny. I don't think that way anymore and I don't live that way anymore.

The 2d Step is an early one, but what a grand promise. Restoration to sanity. If I have ever been sane, I'm either forgetting that I was sane or I was just to young to have actually noted it. Maybe, maybe the promise of the 2d Step is that there is a basic sanity to me that I have not ever experienced, that perhaps exists, spiritually, and the Steps can help me towards that. That seems reasonable, even hopeful.

But then I get caught up in the cycle of self-improvement, the march toward perfection. And there I am always falling short. Perfection is definitely the wrong road for me to take. It is more humane and more effective, actually, for me to accept who I am right now and move from there.

Perhaps I'm confused about sanity. I'm so far from it, really, that I think it's perfection. As an aside, it is almost humorous when people who are having difficulty with getting a few days' sobriety say they don't think they can be perfect. It's funny because I know damn well that sobriety is not anything like perfection. Perfection resides always beyond our reach.

Sanity might just be taking life for what it is. I definitely did that as an infant and probably a toddler, too. And then I grew up. Paradise Lost. So, is maturity, is adulthood insanity? I don't think that's it. There are people who aren't insane and who also are not in recovery. I think for me, perhaps I had difficulty being an adult and being sane. The freedom to make decisions for myself was definitely overwhelming. I didn't know what was good for me, didn't know how to nurture myself. And so I gravitated to insanity: erecting a uniquely skewed concept of what life is that no one else could understand or share. That's actually kind of a hard one to swallow. But there seems to be some spiritual traction there. I'm feeling some compassion for my young self right now. And compassion for my current self too. I was unprepared for the rigors of living.

I have so much to learn about being gentle with myself.

I'm finding reality difficult this week. I guess I've always found it difficult. But I'm not experiencing it as impossible these days. I've come to believe I can find a way to live sanely with God's help. That open-mindedness, the opening to the possibility of restoration is my experience of the 2d Step today. Dear God, it's slow, but like water wearing down a rock in the river, it is working.

Why the Blog?

I've never blogged before on any subject. I guess I did create one blog and one blog post and then I stopped. A big creative block for me is that I am afraid to reveal myself.

I don't know if that block is because I'm a sex addict or whether that block contributed to my sex addiction. For instance, I was originally exposed to recovery because of excessive drinking and drug use in my late teens and early twenties. I got both individual and group treatment and was able to stop. I've wondered since I got into recovery for sex, why am I also not an alcoholic and drug addict?

I think the reason is that those addictions are readily apparent: you can detect when someone is drunk and you can actually observe them using. People generally understand substance problems and know what people with drug and alcohol problems need: help. I didn't want to feel that way, and I didn't want people to feel that way about me. I stopped and I didn't start using again. Some people may think I'm a dry drunk, and maybe I am. Perhaps my drinking (I do drink alcohol, "like a gentleman") and my lack of drugging (completely clean over 10 years) will lead to pitiful and incomprehensible demoralization. At that point, I'll join my friends in AA and NA. Until then, I'll attend to my current problem.

Most importantly, out of control drinking was readily apparent to me. I couldn't be in complete denial about it. Sex addiction, at least how I practiced it, was a compulsive behavior that I could lie about to myself. It used porn, but I wasn't hanging out in "adult" bookstores. I looked at free porn on the internet, but I never bought it, never became a member of a site. I objectified every woman I ran across, store clerks, tellers, co-workers, but I didn't go to strip clubs. I cruised for one-night stands, made a "career" out of it, but I didn't go to prostitutes. I could lie to myself with my sex addiction. I couldn't do that as easily with actual mood-altering substances.

So I hide out. Part of this blog is still hiding. I'm writing under the name Cecil G. That's not my legal name and I'm not known by that name for anything but this blog. Part of it is that I want to be completely anonymous, even and especially with members of my home group. I don't want to be "the guy who blogs" in my meetings. Why not? First, I have a lot of grandiosity and I don't want the special attention. I also think it would change the tenor of my small meetings if people thought that what they said would end up in my blog.

Incidentally, I don't intend to blog my meetings. I might say "the subject of a meeting the other day was Step 6" or something, but I'll not be providing transcripts, let along quoting anyone. It's a violation of trust to do so. Meetings are sacred places and I honor and appreciate that sanctity.

Another reason to blog anonymously is that I'm not out about my sex addiction with my creative collaborators or my professional colleagues. I just don't think I'd be given the same opportunities if I was out about my addiction with the general public. My closest friends know, my wife and family knows. That's enough for now.

All in all, this blog is an outside issue entirely. I don't intend to use it as a forum for assessing the effectiveness of SAA or SA or SLAA or SCA or S-(fill in the blank). I will say, I wish there were unity, but I am not the person to bring these together, and this blog is not a forum for that action.

I'm also completely disinterested in sex addiction articles, scientific studies on sex addiction or the public's perception of sex addiction. I'm not interested in the sex problems of any celebrity or public figure. Those are all outside issues for me. I don't need the world to get better, I need to get better.

The purpose of the blog is to allow me to honestly express my experience of recovery.

So am I hiding? If I am, I am hiding so I will feel safe enough to share. I hope to be as honest in my writing as I am in my sharing at meetings. Maybe I can be more honest, because at meetings I feel compelled to offer hope to the newcomer. I'm just going to be honest here.

Quote for the day: the truth only hurts if you're living a lie.

The Practical Addict's First Step

I'm Cecil and I'm a sex addict. In the summer of 2001, my wife confronted me when I came home from work.

"Have you been looking at porn on the internet?"

There was a long silence as I considered whether to lie again.

I said, "Yes."

That was the beginning of a horrible four-hour conversation, filled with screaming, rage, tears, bitter silence. The lid was off and the meticulous lie that was my life was known by one other person.

A few weeks before, I had started to understand who and what I was. I couldn't stop my sexually compulsive behavior, which is also called acting out. I understood, sadly, that the biggest source of my problems, both in my life and in my relationship with my wife was my acting out. Before that I thought my sexual behavior was okay, and that I needed to do it no matter the consequences. It lead me to lie to her, filled me with shame, sapped my desire to do anything but selfishly please myself. My addiction was the center of my life.

And what a sorry life.

I had no job and didn't want one. I had been gradually drifting away from any ambition in my life. I had started my own business the year before, an independent consultancy, and had complete failed at it. We were buying everything, our groceries, car payments, everything on the credit card.

I had abandoned all my friends or they had abandoned me. I didn't talk to anyone about my problems.

My wife and I were constantly at odds with each other. The happiness, hope and generosity of our first years had complete boiled away. Were left with only our commitment to each other and a ton of resentment that played out in small and large ways every day. Sometimes we fought over they way we treated each other. Sometimes we fought over a plate of eggs. It was the wound that could not heal.

She traveled quite a lot for her job at that time, out for a few hours then back again at unexpected times. As soon as she left the house, I would pull down the shades and start looking for the perfect image on the web; the image that would set me off just right. How many images did I have to look at? As the years went on the pictures had to be more and more perverse so that the porn I thought was stupid or silly at the beginning was just what I needed at the end. In the same vein, what had first excited me became stale. My addiction progressed downward to more and more outrageous images.

I also was taking enormous risks. I would masturbate while I was driving. I would leave the house and masturbate in a parking lot if my wife were home.

And always I was keeping track of her. If I masturbated in the afternoon, I could not be sexual at night, so when I did masturbate in the afternoon, I would hope she would not want to be intimate at night. Sometimes I would start fights on those nights to avoid having sex. I frequently masturbated in the morning after we had had sex, because the sex was not enough. Whatever I "got" it was not enough. Always needing more.

Years before, I had had a good job. The deadlines piled up because of my lack of focus and procrastination which would "require" that I work evenings. But once alone in the office, I would set myself up to masturbate to internet porn. And then, satiated, I would try to do my work. Around midnight, I would hail a cab that would be reimbursed by my company. So I was robbing my company twice: once by wasting their time and twice by making them pay to get me home. Once home, my wife would curse my company for making me work so late. She would feel sorry for me and tell me that I should get another job, a job where I could be happy. I never told her the truth at that time, keeping everything bottled up.

All this came out that first evening. It all came out because I had been lying to her for six years about my addiction.

Before we were married, she knew I liked porn and was looking at it on the Internet. She asked me then to stop, telling me it made her uncomfortable. I liked her and I didn't want her to leave me, so I agreed. I agreed to stop looking at it. I probably did, for a month or two. But sometime soon after I started again and decided I didn't need to tell her that I started up again. What would be the point, I thought? It would only make her unhappy. It would only cause trouble in our relationship and I didn't want trouble. So lied about it and continued to lie about it.

I became an expert in covering my tracks. I have quite a lot of expertise in areas of my addiction that are of no use to me or anyone else. When I was a kid, my favorite game was hide and seek. I would always hide in a closet, but I'd leave the door ajar. Most kids shut the door tight when they hide in a closet. And most kids, when searching, don't check a closet that has the door open.

That's how I lived my life in addiction. I was playing hide and seek. Except that no one else knew I was playing.

A few weeks before I was discovered, I realized that I needed to make a change. I slowly came to recognize that my addiction, my compulsive behavior was the biggest problem in my life and that it made all the others worse. I had a friend in college who had gone to AA meetings and it had done him a lot of good. So I looked in the phone book and found the local number for Sex Addicts Anonymous, SAA.

I didn't call the number. I didn't want to. I knew I had a problem, but I wasn't willing to go sit in a room with a bunch of people who were either like me or, God-forbid, worse. So I closed the phone book, making sure not to crease the corner of the page. No evidence.

I decided to try and deal with my problem myself. I tried to stop. And I quickly found out that I couldn't stop. I had never really tried before and it was a big shock to me that I couldn't stop. I made promises to myself and I broke them. How could I be beat when I was a big shot? It didn't matter that I didn't have a job, my marriage was ruined, I didn't have any real friends any more and I was completely alienated from my family. I was a diamond in the rough and something would happen one day to make it all seem all right.

But in the meantime I was out of control. And I knew it.

I had never experienced despair like that before. That feeling, that ache in my chest was overwhelming. I came to a complete halt on everything. Everything but my addiction.

I made a new deal with myself. I was really hard up for money, so I decided that I would tear up a ten dollar bill every time I masturbated to internet porn. I don't think I made it two days. I got the ten dollar bill out of my wallet, set it by the computer screen and acted out. Then I tore it up. I went out to the garage and stuffed of the shreds deep into the previous day's trash bag so my wife wouldn't find it, of course. It was agonizing and demoralizing from start to finish. It was insane and I felt insane.

I thought tearing up the bill would be cathartic. I thought it would snap me out of it, that I would respond rationally to the event. Not at all. It was just demoralizing. It just simply reminded me that I was completely out of control.

A few weeks later, my wife confronted me. She said she wanted out of the relationship, that she couldn't take it any more and that this was the last straw. She said I needed help.

I volunteered to go to SAA. I believe she said that she thought that would be good for me, but that I shouldn't expect her to stick around.

So I called the SAA number. It was a Tuesday in June, 2001. I got an answering machine that told me when the meetings were in my city. I went to the next one, which was a Thursday night.

The meeting was in the basement of a church. I hadn't been in a church basement in a long time. Church basements are very square with their old hymnals and felt-covered bulletin boards. I was late for the meeting, so I missed the readings; the reading of the Twelve Steps. I'm sort of grateful I did, because if I'd heard the Twelve Steps and all the mentions of God, I might have got up and left.

I came in late and they recognized me as a newcomer and had a first step. They told me their stories. And I listened. The clearest recollection of that night was that they were telling my story to me. What they had gone through, what they were going through was a lot like what I was happening in my life right then. I had stepped into a room with people I understood and who could understand me.

I shared at my first meeting. I shared like a man with his hair on fire, because I was in deep trouble and in deep pain. I was honest for the first time in many years, maybe the first time ever. I told them the truth about me and they listened and they did not stop me and they did not reject me. I told the truth and I didn't hurt anyone. I'll never forget that. That's how my recovery began.

I left early, because I had another appointment that night. Again, I'm grateful that I didn't hear the Promises and didn't have to join hands and say the serenity prayer at the end. I was in no mood for togetherness or empathy. I'm not saying it would have never come back, I'm just saying it might have. Maybe it's superstition, but I'm so grateful for where I've come out in all this that I don't question the manner in which things fell out.

So I kept going to meetings. I went to every single meeting held in my town for the next three weeks. In the third week I couldn't attend one, so I made a point to apologize to the members of the next group I attended. I genuinely thought people would think that I wasn't sincere in my recovery if I missed a meeting. Nobody had told me to go to all of them. I just thought I should. I had a crazy notion that did me some good at that time: I thought that there were a set number of meetings that I had to go to until I felt okay, and that the more meetings I went to, the quicker I got to that number.

I can honestly say that that number for me was about eight-five. I wasn't cured at eighty-five, but I was okay. I'm somewhere south of one thousand on my count towards complete spiritual enlightenment. I partway believe there is an actual number for that and that meetings count towards it.

That was the biggest crisis of my life. For the first couple of weeks, my wife and I talked every single night from the time we got home until we were too tired to talk anymore. We went over everything. The biggest point of pain was the lying. She thought I was the most honest person that she knew. She thought I was scrupulously honest with her. Part of it was that I was a terrible liar. I have a heavy conscience and I can't hold a lie if I'm challenged. But I can withhold. I can just not say anything; the lie of omission. That's what I had done.

I had put my wife through an insane experience. She thought her life was one thing and it was another. She thought our sex problems were one thing and they were another. The facade has slipped off and the pain, the years of pain was all that either of us could see any more. One night, about two weeks in she packed a bag, a small bag, and headed for the door. I literally begged her to stay with my hand on the knob. I begged her to stay, I promised her that I would get better and that if she gave me a chance and I didn't improve that she could go with out resistance from me.

I'm grateful that she gave me that chance. I'm grateful that I was able to restore her trust in me. I'm grateful we're still together.

Early on, my hope for recovery was that I'd get just well enough that my wife would leave me for some other reason than my addiction. Maybe my dismissiveness or my judgmentalism or just being a bore. I really wasn't in it for myself because I thought I was personally hopeless.

The second step was and is the most important step for me of the first three steps. Once I was aware of my sex addiction, once the bubble of denial was broken, I accepted my powerlessness over my sexual compulsiveness and my sexually compulsive thoughts.

The idea that I could get better, that there was more for me than suffering was truly original. I had lost hope in myself. After I left my parent's house, I tried a lot of different things to get myself feeling right: drugs, drinking, various churches, various philosophies. I even took some classes with an organization that many consider a cult. I started each of these with high hopes and enthusiasm, but none of them made me feel better or made me feel better for very long. Exhausted and demoralized, I came to the conclusion that I was damaged beyond repair. I was just a defective person. And, in truth, I didn't think that most other people were much better off than I was.

I thought that there was no way that I could ever be happy, so the best I could do was try to scratch out whatever pleasure or peace I could from my addiction. This started a cycle of acting out and shame and more acting out. I couldn't be happy. And I couldn't bear to admit my unhappiness. It went on and on.

Step Two held out hope for another way: I could be restored to sanity. And more than that, there was a power greater than me that wanted that to happen for me, too. And...AND... that power would help me get there.

I have a tendency to feel sorry for myself, and that manifests itself in thinking that no one has ever really been there for me and no one ever would. Some of my deepest beliefs are that I'm all alone. The idea that where I'm at right now is not where I always have to be, that there is hope and that the universe is waiting to support me really dissipates those negative beliefs. It helps me understand that part of my problem is I have annointed myself the soul authority on who I can be and how healthy I can be. I don't actually have that authority and I limit myself when I think I do.

The 2d Step, of course, is a God step. I didn't have a good relationship with God when I came into recovery, but I didn't have a bad one either. I was a true agnostic. I've since been practicing open-mindedness. I defined my higher power as the path that I can take to bring me into harmony with the universe. That has served me well. The good news is that it has worked. I'm actually in better harmony today. And that comes from walking further down the path.

The painful past was that part of the path. Today is this part.

Step Three was pretty easy for me once I figured out that I didn't have to make a permanent commitment to it and that I could agree to turn my will over each day and moment to moment. I haven't met a lot of people who took Step Three once and are now completely on God's team 24/7. God bless those people, but they're not like me.

I progressed through the first eight steps in the first year. I got hung up on the 9th step. That one took me about 9 months. Some reasons I got hung up was:

1. A lot of people I needed to make amends to were former lovers. I doubted my virtuous intention in wanting to reinitiate contact with those people. And not trusting myself, I was afraid of what my wife would think of the process. I worked through each person with my sponsor's help.

2. Most of the people I needed to make amends to lived at least 500 miles from where I was living at the time. I wasn't going to just run into anyone. I had to contact them directly and then explain the reason. I only had the courage for a little at a time.

3. I was really afraid that if I didn't experience the promises during the 9th Step that I wouldn't "get" the program.

To explain point #3, the 12th Step begins, "Having had a spiritual awakening...." I was really afraid that I would be the exception, that I would go through all the steps and be the one who didn't have a spiritual awakening. Of course, I would be the exception.

I did have a spiritual awakening. I've got about one eye pried open for the dawn, but I am awake. That's tremendous progress for me.

As far as the other details, I have not been abstinent since my first day in recovery. I've found it challenging to define sobriety in sexual recovery. I have twice relapsed since starting, the first after a year and a half when I admitted a new behavior was actually acting out and decided to reset my clock. The second relapse was a one-hour slip during a very trying emotional time for me in the Spring of 2008. That last one erased five years of continuous sobriety from my bottom-line behaviors. I regret the decision to act out, but I am grateful for the progress I've made since then.

Recovery is a spiritual evolution. It comes in fits and starts. Lately I have been experiencing a lot of positive changes in my outlook. I've been more willing to accept my limitations, I've been able to experience more equanimity in my reaction to day-to-day stressors, I've been more accepting of my wife's shortcomings and more delighted in her strengths, and I've been experiencing more gratitude for all the gifts I receive.

The bottom line is that I have been free from the behaviors that brought me into recovery, and free from the mental obsession that underlies those behaviors. That's the miracle of my life.

I've come by these all honestly, working my program as best I can and letting go of the outcome.

I hope my story has been useful to you and that you find what you're looking for.