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.