The Three Legged Stool

The Worst Sin

2012-02-21T11:47:00.001-05:00

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity. -- G.B. Shaw

I agree with this. Human beings are not complete in isolation; we are herd animals. We need each other in a very profound way and indifference toward others, silencing or isolating others are ways of denying them their humanity.

Needless to say, this is a sin of which I am guilty. As much as I hate being invisible, I often fail to see others. As with so many of my shortcomings, I just have to work on that.

Masks

2012-02-13T08:21:00.001-05:00

Alienation begins when culture divides me against myself, puts a mask on me, gives me a role I may or may not want to play. Alienation is complete when I become completely identified with my mask, totally satisfied with my role, and convince myself that any other identity or role is inconceivable...

The man who sweats under his mask, whose role makes him itch with discomfort, who hates the division in himself, is already beginning to be free.

The Literary Essays of Thomas Merton: 381

I think alcoholics are especially able to appreciate Merton's comments. While active we live under the mask of sobriety ("Hey, I just had one glass of wine. I'm fine.") and recovery begins with the removal of that mask. Full recovery, of course, doesn't stop there. We have to live in the truth, however hard that may be and however far out of sync with the society around us that puts us.

Saw this on the web today

2012-02-07T13:53:00.000-05:00

People were created to be loved.
Things were created to be used.
The reason why the world is in chaos is because
things are being loved and people are being used.

Been a long time

2012-02-06T08:42:00.001-05:00

It's been a ridiculously long time since I posted to this blog. It makes me think of something Frederick Brooks said in The Mythical Man Month, a classic work on software development: "How does a project get to be a year late? One day at a time."

I always think of the 'one day' slogan as applying to progress. Well, I have to remind myself that it applies to degeneration as well.

So, here I am, still sober and resolved to get back here. Posting to this blog forces me to think of my values and that's about as important as it gets.

Land Mines

2011-11-30T08:20:00.001-05:00

When I was drinking, every time I got close to something I really wanted I would put land mines in my own path. I do that a lot less now, but more importantly the program gives me tools to detect and disarm those mines.

Now I just have to learn to use those tools more often.

The present moment.

2011-11-26T08:40:00.001-05:00

I just ran across a quote from Philo of Alexandria ancient Jewish Philosopher.

"Today means boundless and inexhaustible eternity. Months and years and all periods of time are concepts of men, who gauge everything by number; but the the true name of eternity is Today."

I constantly search for peace and eternity somewhere else, managing always to forget that they are here now.

Our minds are like crows.

2011-11-08T08:43:00.001-05:00

"Our minds are like crows. They pick up everything that glitters, no matter how uncomfortable our nests get with all that metal in them." --Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation, 104

Mine certainly is. I've recently found myself mentally chattering a great deal more than usual. I know what I'm supposed to be focusing on but I keep hopping from shiny thing to shiny thing all the while chattering and screeching away like a monkey on crystal meth. It's downright unpleasant.

Gee, could it be related to the fact that I've been cutting back on my daily mediation? As I've said before in this blog, meetings are tremendously helpful, but I need the 11th step. Right now I'm paying the consequences for neglecting it.

Smiles

2011-11-07T14:20:00.001-05:00

This morning I rode the subway in to my regular 7:30 AM meeting. The crowd on the subway was, as usual, quiet and seemed somewhere between resigned and stoic about the fact that they were heading in to work. I walked from the subway in to my regular 7:30 AM meeting and was struck by how pretty much everyone was smiling and/or chatting. The atmosphere was light and joyful. I was blown away by the contrast with the mood on the subway and more than a little disturbed about the fact that I don't notice this every day.

Then I went in to my work, a rats maze of cubicles surrounded by small offices. Again, the difference was striking. Here you could probably find most flavors of unhappiness and smiles were scarce. Unfortunately, this is something I do notice most days.

Why do I so easily see the darkness and take the light for granted? It's something I need to do some thinking about. I also need to think about just how effective a smile can be and I need to do more of that at work. At the very least I should have some fun making people wonder what's wrong with me.

Let's stay scared

2011-10-27T04:45:00.001-04:00

One of the meetings I attend just emailed members an article about the coroner's report on Amy Winehouse. It is a very unpleasant reminder that we must work our program and continue to grow spiritually. We either grow or face very unpleasant consequences.

Coroner: Amy Winheouse drank herself to death

LONDON —Soul diva Amy Winehouse died with empty vodka bottles in her room and lethal amounts of alcohol in her blood — more than five times the British drunk driving limit, a British coroner ruled today.
Coroner Suzanne Greenaway gave a verdict of "death by misadventure," saying the singer died of accidental alcohol poisoning when she resumed drinking after weeks of abstinence.
"The unintended consequence of such potentially fatal levels (of alcohol) was her sudden and unexpected death," Greenaway said.
The singer, who had fought a very public battle with drug and alcohol problems for years, was found dead in bed at her London home on July 23 at age 27. An initial autopsy proved inconclusive, although it found no traces of illegal drugs in her system or signs of injury.
Pathologist Suhail Baithun told the inquest into the singer’s death that blood and urine samples indicated that Winehouse had consumed a "very large quantity of alcohol" prior to her death. The level of alcohol in her blood was 416 milligrams per 100 milliliters, he said — a blood alcohol level of 0.4 percent.
The British and U.S. legal drunk-driving limit is 0.08 percent.
Such levels of alcohol intake could have stopped her breathing and sent her into a coma, Baithun added.
Police Detective Inspector Les Newman, who was called after a security guard found Winehouse, said three empty vodka bottles — two large and one small — were found in her bedroom.
Winehouse’s doctor, Dr. Christina Romete, said the singer had resumed drinking in the days before her death. Prior to that, Winehouse had stayed away from drink for most of July, she said, although she had been swerving between abstinence and heavy alcohol use for a long time.

Live humbly, love recklessly

2011-10-25T07:40:00.001-04:00

Live humbly, love recklessly

I saw this slogan on a subway poster this morning. Checking the url on the poster it turns out its for a church, which doesn't particularly thrill me, but the slogan is definitely a keeper.

Glad Gethsemane - how soon I forget

2011-10-19T12:00:00.001-04:00

This morning a friend asked me about my understanding of Fr. Ed Dowling's concept of Glad Gesthmane. To put it briefly, this is viewing painful events as opportunities to give to others. Everything we do sends out ripples, either positive or negative. I think Mircea Eliade said that when we speak we either bless or curse. (Boy, is that one I remember far too seldom!)

My favorite examples of Glad Gesthemane come from extreme situations. People like Dietrich Bonhoeffer spent their time in German concentration camps helping and supporting other prisoners. An AA I knew too briefly came to our meeting in his last weeks, saying his only wish was to die sober. He gave us the tremendous gift of his courage.

The concept, however, applies to the small, everyday things that bother and irritate us. These are the spiritually dangerous times. As a friend likes to say, it's not the elephants that kill us, it's the mosquitoes. I find daily irritations a wonderful opportunity to complain and spread the negativity. I should be viewing them as opportunities to, at the very least, share perspective (humility) and make clear just how small the small things are.

Some thoughts on the passing of Steve Jobs

2011-10-14T09:05:00.000-04:00

Since Steve Jobs died on October 5 we have all heard a great many opinions about him and what he meant. Clearly he was an economic and cultural force for the last several decades. Virtually all the obituaries and commentaries I have seen have been flat out hagiography. They look to his immense creativity and his business skills and generally stop there.
There is another side, however. An essential part of Jobs' marketing genius was his exploiting one of the spiritually damaging aspects of a consumer society: the tendency of people to define themselves to themselves and others through their possessions. I use a Mac (which I do) so I am cool. I have an iPod, cool. An iPhone, cool. An iPad, very hip and cool. You get the idea.
In my opinion this is one of the most spiritually damaging forms of materialism. To put it in terms of the 7 deadly sins, the quest for pleasure and fulfillment through the aquisition of wealth is gluttony; the quest for self definition through material goods is avarice. Few people would admit to being small minded enough to define themselves through their iPods, but in point of fact many do to a greater or lesser degree.
Our recovery is based on humility and love. Neither of those is compatible with avarice. To be clear, I am not trying to take anything away from the immense positive side of Jobs legacy. His advocacy of good design and ease of use helped change technology for the better. Let's not lose sight, however, of the fact that he did expose (and exploit) one of the dark aspects of our time, our culture, ourselves.

This bowl is broken

2011-10-14T07:56:00.001-04:00

A friend of mine recently mentioned that a Buddhist teacher once, while holding his favorite (intact) bowl, said "this bowl is broken." That is to say, look at it as already past, lost, broken and you won't be attached to it.

I need that kind of reminder a lot. I remember when I first heard the AA bumper sticker "an expectation is a premeditated resentment." What, aren't we supposed to have any expectations. I twisted with that one for years before realizing that the answer was a simple 'yes.' We can look to the future and plan, but to expect is to attach yourself to an anticipated outcome and attaching yourself is a dangerous thing.

Knowledge may or may not be power, but is sure can be an attempt at control

2011-09-07T09:53:00.000-04:00

The doubt and fear that often overtake me come from a desire to know more than I can know. To control more than it is my purview to control and to control it by know it, intellectually mastering it, neatly delineating it into questions I ask and answers I have. I take on the universe, and try to make it human-sized, one person-sized, self-sized. I persist in the notion that I can hold it all in my two hands, grip it tightly, make it mine.
Marya Hornbacher, Waiting: A Nonbeliever's Higher Power (highly recommended!)

I've written before in this blog about how I've come to see worry as a form of control. Hornbacher's comment prompts me to think about how much I have used knowledge as a form of control. My academic background is in Philosophy, so it's no surprise that I have sought answers to the 'big questions' all my life. There was a valid spiritual quest buried in there but there was also a hiding from reality behind pride. If you really think you can answer the question "Why is there something rather than nothing" you are assuming a pretty high -- let's face it, godlike -- status. (Note for believers: the question includes within it the question "Why is there a god?").

The 'big questions', at least as I posed them, always set me apart from the reality I was trying to understand. I was a separate being trying to understand reality rather than a simple part of reality trying to live it. Living it, treating life as a mystery to be lived rather than a problem to be solved, is humility.

So, I am working on a spirituality that is lived rather than merely thought. I see what I'm aiming at as somehow related to Taoism, the spirituality of the Cloud of Unknowing ( a 14th century Christian text, one of the inspirations for Centering Prayer), and Dudeism, the path inspired by the movie "The Big Lebowski". (That last is a good application of Rule 62*. After all, if you can't laugh, you're not in recovery.)

The goal is wisdom, living a fuller, more loving life, not knowledge

*"Don't take yourself too damn seriously." see Twelve and Twelve, page 149

The Second Step and Our Limits

2011-09-02T12:04:00.001-04:00

I have written before about my misunderstanding the Second Step when I first got into the program. Like a lot of people, I focused on the Power, demanding to know exactly what it was before moving on. It took years for me to realize that the Step is fundamentally saying that there is a way out. The only thing it says about that way our is that it is through a 'power greater than ourselves.' So far, so good. I had gotten beyond demanding a theological treatise, but I was still very much focused on that now fuzzy, ill-defined Power.

Over the last couple of days I've looked at the Step a bit differently. I think it is valuable to see Step Two as a direct extension of Step One. In Step One we said we were powerless over alcohol and that our lives were unmanageable. We began to recognize our limits. In Step Two we continue to recognize those limits and say "OK, there may be a way out, but it sure as Hell isn't me."

For years as an active alcoholic I insisted that I was the way out. I would use my tools -- reading, meditation, discipline -- and I would conquer this addiction and I would be happy.* There is a saying in the medical community that the doctor who treats himself has a fool for a patient. Well, by that standard (and many others) I was a total idiot during my active alcoholism.

Moving from Step One to Step Two is a process of 'coming to believe' that I am not the only resource I can call on, that there are forces greater than me and that I can use their help in my recovery. It is a gradual process and one that requires practice in every sense of the word. Luckily, the First Step has relieved us of the burden of doing it all ourselves, since we just plain can't, and frees us to focus on our lives, our behavior and the people and things we encounter. Gradually, through letting those powers in and doing the work we do come to believe.

And, unbelievably enough, the addiction comes under control and I do end up happy. Even better, I end up quietly content.

*I now find the statement "I am happy' a bit creepy, since happiness and contentment are not solitary activities. But that's a subject for another posting.

Steps 3 through 12 are how we get from step 1 to step 2

2011-09-01T14:58:00.001-04:00

"Steps three through twelve are how we get from step one to step two." I heard someone say that at a meeting a while back and I think it's an interesting and, for me at least, fresh way of viewing steps.

I've long said that step one without step two is a good description of Hell. "Oh, so I'm powerless over alcohol and my life is unmanageable. How nice." Personally I knew that damn well for at least 10 years before I got sober and it just made me drink more. My salvation was when a small glow of hope that there was a way out appeared. Typically, I've always viewed that as an intellectual event. I received the information that AA could help me and that gave me the hope I needed.

Of course, that's not really the way it really happened. My bottom came with heart failure induced by my attempt to go cold turkey off alcohol completely on my own. Laying in an ICU bed I actually decided it would be better if I died, especially for my wife. I was certain she'd be happier with a new husband. I don't know what my doctors would say but I was and am convinced that if I had let go at that point that I would have died. However, the thought crossed my mind that if I worked at it I could be that second husband and that would be a way to try to make up for the years of pain I had put my wife through. A couple of days later a guy came into my hospital room and 12th stepped me. That didn't go very well, but I did get a meeting book out of it. I decided to try a meeting. That's the point. I didn't really have hope at that point. I had a desperate need for hope and a path of action that might provide that hope.

That, I think, is what the speaker meant when she said that "Steps three through twelve are how we get from step one to step two." It is by our actions and their results that we grow in optimism and faith in AA.

As the old AA slogan says, it's easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than to think your way into a new way of acting.

A life second to none

2011-08-14T13:06:00.000-04:00

I have often thought about this phrase that we hear so often at meetings. For years I've thought about it in terms of equality: all lives are equally sacred and equally capable of joy. Come right down to it, that's a pretty abstract concept.

At a recent meeting I heard another take on the phrase. I have a life second to none, meaning I don't want yours. That, to me is concrete and a challenge.

Another benefit of addiction

2011-08-10T08:07:00.001-04:00

There are two themes that consistently pop up at AA meeting that recently came together for me. The first is how much time we used to spend drinking and how surprising it is to find that time freed up. The second theme is how drinking was essentially a means of hiding from the pain of life, a way of anaesthetizing ourselves rather than dealing with the problems and joys of being human.

It was only a couple of days ago that I realized that it wasn't just drinking, the actual consumption of that gloriously deadening liquid, that allowed us to hide from life. It was the whole package: the time spent planning our drinking, figuring out which store we could buy from today so we weren't repeating too much and tipping the clerk off to our problem, the time spent figuring out how to dispose of the bottles, even the time spent hung over ("I'm in no shape to deal with financial planning now!"). All of these thoughts and actions, all of this time, is part of the addictive behaviour of the active alcoholic. It is all part of crawling into our holes and hiding.

Which brings up a scary thought. What rituals, what time-wasters am I using now to hide? We talk about time spent 'pencil-sharpening' to avoid decisions and tasks for which we can be evaluated at work. How about the rest of life?

"May you live all the days of your life." - Jonathan Swift

We should be experts at "one day at a time" when we come into the program

2011-08-04T14:03:00.001-04:00

Newcomers often balk at the idea of "one day at a time." After all, it's a trick -- we all know we're really talking about the rest of our lives, right? But, as a speaker at this morning's meeting said, we all drank one day at a time. I know for me it was always "well, OK, I've had a rough day (or it's hot, or I'm thirsty) so I'll have one tonight and tomorrow I'll stop - or at least cut down." I never thought 'Yippee, I'm going to get polluted every night for the rest of my life!!"

It went beyond just the drink itself, too. I knew I was screwing up my life and my future, but it was always 'this is what I'll do today; I'll deal with tomorrow when it comes. I should have come into the program as one of the world's formost experts at living in the day and, yet, it's still a struggle. As a former sponsor liked to say, I have a strong tendency to live in the wreckage of the future, sacrificing today's joy to my fear of tomorrow.

The need for approval destroys our capacity for happiness.

2011-08-03T08:45:00.001-04:00

In Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander Thomas Merton points out that we are given all we need to be happy and yet "we are ashamed to do so. For we need one more thing than happiness: we need approval. And the need for approval destroys our capacity for happiness."

I think this is profoundly true. I know that I daily damage my capacity for happiness by looking to the approval of others rather than to the values I actually value. I find it especially distressing when I seek the approval of people whose values I despise and I allow the quest for that approval to make me ashamed of -- or at least embarrassed by -- the things that can make me happy.

If I were to list my addictions in order of preference, I think 'addiction to approval' would probably come in last.

An unexpected problem

2011-07-10T18:59:00.000-04:00

Recently I got a call from a close friend, a sponsee in fact, who indicated he was in real distress. We spoke for a while, I expressed sympathy and we discussed how his difficulties relate to the program. I then more or less let it go. After all, this guy has 13 years of exceptionally solid sobriety, he's sponsored a bunch of people... Sure he has problems but he can handle it.

In short, my reaction was awful. Just because he's sober double digit years and is very solid, I actually undervalued his pain. We later made it right -- well, less bad -- but the incident made me think again about how many people with 10 - 15 years relapse. Perhaps we as a fellowship tend to make the mistake I made. Just because someone has been around a long time doesn't mean he can't hurt. I forgot that and from what I've seen I don't think I'm alone.

I got better before I got well

2011-05-30T09:44:00.003-04:00

I heard this at a meeting the other day. The speaker was explaining his recurrent relapses over a period of 24 years. Every time he stopped drinking things got better. He felt better. He was able to get a job. He acquired material goods. He developed relationships with women. In other words, his sobriety was exactly what I imagined mine would be before I entered AA: his prior life and values minus the booze. The result, of course, was unhappiness and relapse.

AA is not about not drinking. It is about living in such a way and following such values that you don't have any reason to anesthetize yourself with booze. AA is about getting well. I'm tempted to say that when you get well you can handle things getting better and in a way that's true. The kicker is that the definition of 'better' changes. You may get your job back or even get a better job. You may end up in a nicer house with a nice car, etc. But when you've gotten well, those things matter a LOT less. Your goals and values change fundamentally. To cite my favorite Flannery O'Connor quote: You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.

Why do we get sober?

2011-05-11T11:23:00.000-04:00

For the last little while I've been thinking about the AA slogan "You can't get sober for someone else - you have to do it for yourself" and, well, I'm not sure it's all that simple.

My bottom came when I collapsed with alcohol induced heart failure and was expected not to make it. I certainly felt that if I let go I would die and, in fact, I thought that was a pretty good idea. Primarily I thought my wife would be better off with a second husband. The thought then occurred to me that I could become that second husband and if I did I could make a lot up to her, so I decided to fight to recover. The next day my wife and I agreed to launch a project we still call "Brian 2.0". So, I can certainly say (as I usually do when I tell my story) that I started my recovery for someone else. For myself I was pretty content with the thought of dying. If I had decided on the basis of living for myself I would have just let go.

Now I know a lot of people who started for themselves, usually saying they just wanted the pain to stop. "Sick and tired of being sick and tired." Yet as they grow in recovery they talk about living for others.

I think we learn that to live for ourselves we have to live for others and in order to live for others we have to learn to care for and about ourselves, sort of to do unto ourselves as we would do unto others. If we're going to love people, the cosmos, God.... we have to love all people, the entire cosmos, all of God and his/her universe and I guess, uncomfortable as saying it makes me, that means we have to love ourselves. However, the crucial point is that self-love is not the goal, it is just a small but essential part of our spirituality.

So, the reason we decide to get sober, to enter recovery, is generally not the reason we continue on the spiritual path. We may start for ourselves and grow to live for something greater, we may start for one person and grow to live for all. Whatever direction it takes, it is a process of growth.

Anonymity

2011-05-10T13:06:00.000-04:00

Last Sunday the New York Times published an article ‘Challenging the Second A in AA’ (http://xrl.us/bkhnum (Link to www.nytimes.com). I have the impression that we get this kind of attack on Anonymity about once a year. However amusing it may be to find it in the Fashion and Style section, the article still bothered me. If focuses almost exclusively on anonymity as a protection for the individual alcoholic from social abuse. Now, I personally think the author is nuts for claiming that there is no longer any stigma attached to drug addiction or alcoholism, but that (like most of the article) is beside the point. First, the author never touches on anonymity as a protection for the fellowship against the potentially damaging publicity from a famous self-proclaimed member going out.
Far more importantly, it is only at the very end that the author mentions the connection between anonymity and humility, yet this connection is the central point. It is critical that when people come into AA meetings they leave as much of their reputations behind as possible. I got sober in Cambridge MA and one of the local mottos there is “when you walk into a meeting you leave your degrees at the door.” It is very important that we enter AA as equals in our illness. We are there because we are sick and flawed, not because any accomplishments or disgraces on the outside. As sick and flawed people we want to heal and grow spiritually. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions and that fact is not changed by the social status of any particular alcoholic. The point is not protection from gossip or backstabbing; the point is maintaining an important spiritual tool.

Questioning the norm

2011-04-30T09:17:00.003-04:00

What happens when AA meetings begin to lose their luster?

When a member begins to question the "norm" in AA?

Not so much the process itself (the step work, prayer, meditation, carrying the message), but the series of rituals that have become our meetings?

What happens when this process begins to set in and the member finds more and more reasons to avoid the actual meetings, but tries hard to stay current on the other things (see above)?

What happens when slogans become platitudes, and ritual becomes dogma?

Does the member require help? Do we smirk at their folly? Distance ourselves and treat them as lepers? Is there a way to help them?

I would love to hear some suggestions or comments

Return Good For Evil

2011-04-28T11:11:00.002-04:00

For a bowl of water give a goodly meal:
For a kindly greeting bow thou down with zeal:
For a simple penny pay thou back with gold:
If thy life be rescued, life do not withhold.

Thus the words and actions of the wise regard;
Every little service tenfold they reward.
But the truly noble know all men as one,
and return with gladness good for evil done.

Today I turn 60

2011-04-28T08:51:00.001-04:00

Today I turn 60 years old. A good time for feeling old, a failure -- after all, I did drink myself out of a good career and any possibility of material success.

But 4005 days ago I collapsed from alcohol induced heart failure and was pretty much expected to die. That was my bottom after 25 - 30 years of daily blackout drinking and the beginning of my new, sober life. So, at the very least I should celebrate the fact that I'm still here, 4005 days past my sell-by date. Beyond that, recovery and the life it has given me make me actually happy that I'm still here. I am a happier, nicer, even wiser person than I was when I was drinking. As I heard someone say, I was young once and I wasn't very good at it. I'm pretty good at being post-young and when I decide I'm actually old my bet is that I'll be good at that, too

So, today is a day of celebration.

Got a job and some lessons in humility

2011-04-20T11:25:00.001-04:00

I have been absent from this blog for a couple of weeks because after a year of unemployment I have finally found work. It feels wonderful, but does come with some challenges.

The big issue is that old problem:humility. I am on staff "term of project" (i.e. a temp) and therefore pretty much ignored. It's good training but it takes some real getting used to. Bottom line: I have some real work to do

Worry is a form of control

2011-03-20T09:14:00.004-04:00

Someone made this comment at my home group the other day and I think it's an interesting insight. When I think of control I tend to think of the types of control that (sort of) work: nagging, micromanagement, manipulation, bullying, etc. I rarely think of the little bits of witchcraft I use to try to influence events, like making endless to-do lists when I'm overwhelmed with tasks or buying a new tool when I'm not sure I'll be able to handle a task.

Worrying just might be my favorite form of witchcraft. I have a problem, there is absolutely nothing I can do about it right now, so I obsessively worry about it. That way I keep hold of the problem so it can't do anything while I'm not looking. Now, that's productive, isn't it?

Recognizing these little magic spells for what they are is the first step toward my letting go of them and living a more peaceful life.

Carrying the message

2011-03-16T08:08:00.004-04:00

Recently an old friend of mine reached out for help, he was trying to stop drinking and wanted to attend an AA meeting. This brings the count of people that I grew up and drank with who have at least attempted sobriety, into the double digits.

There was a point in time where I was very concerned that my friends would look upon me as weak-willed for joining AA and getting sober. I tried very hard to keep my anonymity protected for fear of judgment. However, rumors being what they are, word got out there pretty quickly anyway. The list of friends who were willing to talk to me dropped off precipitously during my first year of sobriety. At the time I was so scared of drinking I just dealt with it by doing step work and complaining to my sponsor, but I stayed the path of sobriety.

After a year or two the feelings of shame and loneliness began to lift and I was more open with my friends about what I had done. Some seemed genuinely happy for me, some were still cool to the idea. I never pushed my beliefs on anyone, and said thing like "I have nothing against drinking, I just can't do it anymore."

Then came the day when I started getting requests for help from the very people who had distanced themselves from me. It seemed I had been living a life that showed them that AA worked, and that I had changed. There was a life after alcohol.

As far as I am concerned, this form of "carrying the message" was something I never planned, or even knew I was doing. It has also been the most fulfilling. To be of service to old friends like this can not be measured in words. I am truly blessed to be of service.

Of course, it also says that I hung out with a lot of drunks... but there you have it.

Life doesn't have to be justified

2011-03-11T08:31:00.004-05:00

Life doesn't have to be justified. It is the justification.
I was up for a job a couple of weeks ago that required knowledge of HTML, the language used to lay out information on web sites. Since my knowledge of HTML could only optimistically be called rusty, I started giving myself a crash course in it and was surprised at just how much fun I was having. Shortly after I started playing with HTML I was told that I would not get the job.

Now, HTML is a useful thing to know and I was really enjoying working with it, so I kept going. Oddly enough, though, I found that I felt just a bit uncomfortable spending my time on it. After all, there was no immediate prospect of using it on a job, so didn't that make it a wast of time? Never mind that I had no other job prospects that required other skills I lack, I somehow felt I should (always a dangerous word) be doing something of direct material benefit. That invisible jury that is always sitting out there, judging my every thought and action, would otherwise not approve.

I had completely lost sight of the fact that I was having a blast and that having fun is a good thing. I had fallen into yet another form of spiritual materialism, this time demanding that all learning should have a direct, tangible, "real world" benefit -- sort of a cash value theory of learning. Now that is twisted. I was (and am) learning, growing, and having fun. That is the benefit. I am astounded at how easily I lose sight of that and bow to what I think "the world" wants me to do. As if the world gives a hoot what I do.

Believe it!

2011-03-11T06:52:00.004-05:00

We are incredible beings.
We live in incredible times.
That is not the issue.
The issue is whether or not we actually believe it.
-Hugh Macleod

In my last post I spoke of "the realization that while individual things might really stink and bad things can and will happen, the world remains a beautiful place" and I attributed that realization to Faith. Then I ran across this quote from cartoonist Hugh Macleod and I began once again to think about Humility. I don't want to get into a chicken-and-egg thing here, but it seems to me that the most important virtues, Faith, Hope, Love and Humility, are deeply intertwined. I know that the usual lineup is Faith, Hope and Love, but I wonder if any of them is possible without Humility.

I think one of the most important AA sayings is "the only thing you need to know about God is that you are not one" and I wonder if Faith, Hope, or Love is attainable before you have recognized that you are not a god. As long as I believe that I must have complete control of my life I will not be able to take that first step without knowing everything there is to know about the entire staircase. So much for Faith. As long as my life depends completely on me and the little strength I have, I would have to be completely nuts to have Hope. As for Love, the narcissism of being the center of the universe screws that up pretty thoroughly.

So, I wonder if just as Pride is traditionally viewed as the foundation of the vices, Humility might be the basis of the virtues. I know very well that my ability to genuinely believe that we are incredible beings living in incredible times, that reality is in fact beautiful, is dependent on my recognition of my true place in things.

Faith is taking the first step...

2011-03-10T11:38:00.003-05:00

Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase.
-- Martin Luther King

I saw this quote on a poster in a bus I was riding to a job interview yesterday. Very nice.

Faith was a difficult concept for me for a very long time. I was stuck with the concept I had been taught by the nuns in my grade school: faith meant believing what they told you no matter how silly it sounded. Adolescent rebellion took care of that one pretty fast and unfortunately left nothing in its place. Cynicism was a sign of intelligence. The smiling guy was probably pretty dumb. Reality was grim. And all this was before I read Sartre. I was stuck in a 'realism' that recognized only the worst aspects of reality.

It was only with sobriety that I came to a concept of Faith that is beautifully expressed in the above quote from Martin Luther King. It is an acceptance of reality coupled with an openness to the future, whatever it may bring. You act to affect future events, not control them. And with that attitude comes the realization that while individual things might really stink and bad things can and will happen, the world remains a beautiful place.

As I said in an earlier post, my job hunt has been a bit wild this week and here I was yesterday, sitting on a bus, preparing to get back onto that roller coaster when I saw that poster. Very nice.

The Miracle

2011-03-08T08:05:00.010-05:00

"Don't leave before the miracle happens!" It's a saying we tell newcomers, but what do we mean by it? And for that matter, do we all mean the same thing when we say it?

For those of you who know me, or have read any of my previous posts, know that I am not a huge fan of platitudes, slogans and sayings. It's not because they aren't useful or meaningful for people, it's just that, in my experience I have seen too many many members use them as a short-cuts to working through an issue, or in order to provide an answers to something they are unsure about.

I know early on when I heard people say "Don't leave before the miracle happens!" I had no idea what the miracle was, but I assumed it was some magic point where all of this stuff would make sense and I would know how to 'not drink' anymore. The thing was that as time went on no one ever described to me what the miracle was! And, like most newcomers, I was too shy to ask because I didn't want to look like an idiot.

As time passed I did what I usually do with things I don't really understand, I ignored it. Then one day while reading the Big Book I came across the following lines in Step 10:

p.84-85 - "We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it."

So the miracle they were talking about here was that I was going to be returned to sanity in my attitude toward liquor! The book was telling me that after I did the preceding Steps I would experience a profound alteration in my reaction to life, and that this change would be sufficient enough to bring about recovery from alcoholism. And that this change would come from a Power greater than myself because science has not been able to help me... which is why they defined it as a miracle!

Of course this saying means many things to many people and none of them are wrong, but for me it took reading this passage to finally get a definition that would work for me and my exacting nature, and one that I could reconcile with our literature.

Die Trying

2011-03-07T19:34:00.003-05:00

I generally hate the word "try". To me it smacks of an attitude of 'well, I'll give it a shot, but I'm not likely to make it.' I guess part of the problem is that most of the time when I say "I'll try" rather than "I'll do it" I'm giving myself a way out. "Well, I only said I'd try!"

However, today I was told that I will not get a job I've been working on landing for the last 6 months. The blow was made worse by the very positive tone of my conversation last Thursday with the hiring manager. Frankly, I feel awful. Hope isn't exactly spontaneously bubbling up. I mean, let's face it, you don't see a lot of want ads recruiting alcoholic, arthritic 59 year-olds with a heart condition who have been unemployed for over a year.

Tonight I feel differently about the word "try". I guess I'm seeing it more the way (I think) others do - not as a hedging of my intentions but rather as a simple recognition that the possibility of failure is always lurking out there. And yet, despite the threat or even the reality of failure, I have to push forward. Somehow "I'll try" sounds like a cop out to me while "I'll die trying" sounds like a expression of hope and tenacity. So, I guess I'm resolving to die trying.

Good thought

2011-03-05T13:57:00.002-05:00

Aim at heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you get neither.
C.S. Lewis

Rest on our laurels

2011-02-28T11:10:00.017-05:00

p.85 - It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do, for alcohol is a subtle foe. We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities. "How can I best serve Thee - Thy will (not mine) be done." These are thoughts which must go with us constantly.

So the phrase "rest on our laurels" comes from the original Olympic games where the winners of an event were honored by being crowned with a wreath of laurels (bay leaves) that they wore on their heads (picture those iconic images of Caesar and you'll get the idea). Of course the implication for AA members is that once we have acheived our goal (a spiritual experience sufficient to bring about recovery from alcoholism), that we should not rest and assume that this experience is everlasting.

In fact our founders discovered that the experience was fleeting. They found that many of the early members came in and did the steps, had a spiritual experience, stopped drinking, but then went back to their daily lives and did not stay active in what they called "The Work", but then ended up drunk again. Why was this happening to them but not to others? They tried to explain this phenomenon.

p.35 - He made a beginning. His family was re-assembled, and he began to work as a salesman for the business he had lost through drinking. All went well for a time, but he failed to enlarge his spiritual life. To his consternation, he found himself drunk half a dozen times in rapid succession.

So it looks like this guy may have done some or all of the Steps (made a good beginning) but stopped there and eventually drank. So do the phrases "resting on our laurels" and "failing to enlarge our spiritual lives" mean the same thing? And if so, what exactly do they mean?

Well I know that when the book says that we should not rest on our laurels it follows it up by telling us that we have a daily reprieve that depends on our spiritual condition and that we must remember and act this way all the time.

p.85 - We are not cured of alcoholism. What we really have is a daily reprieve contingent on the maintenance of our spiritual condition. Every day is a day when we must carry the vision of God's will into all of our activities. "How can I best serve Thee - Thy will (not mine) be done." These are thoughts which must go with us constantly.

What about "failing to enlarge our spiritual lives"? How do we enlarge it and how is this the same thing? In Bill's Story he makes the following point:

p.14/15 - For if an alcoholic failed to perfect and enlarge his spiritual life through work and self-sacrifice for others, he could not survive the certain trials and low spots ahead. If he did not work, he would surely drink again, and if he drank, he would surely die.

So Bill felt that one important way an alcoholic should enlarge his spiritual life is through "The Work" and self-sacrifice for others. Failing to do this seems to me to be very much like doing the Steps and then not giving back (i.e. resting on our laurels).

"The Work" of course, is carrying the message to other alcoholics. The self-sacrifice for others is the second part of the 12th Step, practicing these principles in all our affairs. Every day, all day, with alcoholics or not, we should be of service to those around us and practicing our basics principles at all times. Only when we are doing these things can we then hope to have some spiritual protection that will intercede on the insanity of that first drink and place us in that safe and protected position of neutrality that is promised us in the 10th Step.

Detachment

2011-02-27T16:48:00.002-05:00

I recently ran across this comment by Thomas Merton:

Detachment from things does not mean setting up a contradiction between "things" and "God" as if God were another "thing" and as if His creatures were His rivals. We do not detach ourselves from things in order to attach ourselves to God, but rather we become detached from ourselves in order to see and use all things in and for God. This is an entirely new perspective which many sincerely moral and ascetic minds fail utterly to see.
-New Seeds of Contemplation. (New York: New Directions Books), p 21

Detachment does not mean abandonment of the world in search of a spirituality that is separate from the world. It means perspective, and with perspective, humility. As one of my favorite AA slogans says, if it's not practical, it's not spiritual.

I have spoken in this blog about the 'get sane quick schemes' I engaged in when I was drinking. The various things I tried, such as meditation and yoga, were good in themselves but they became 'get sane quick schemes' for me because I was using them in pursuit of a disembodied spirituality. I thought there was some healthy pink cloud I could enter that would make me feel good about the world and (especially) myself without changing anything in the world or in myself. I was seeing 'spiritual' detachment precisely as a separation from reality, rather than a principled, spiritual engagement with it, contributing to changing it and myself. Unless I'm seriously misreading Merton, that is what he means when he talks about seeing and using things in and for God.

The Third Tradition - WE THINK NOT!

2011-02-24T09:57:00.023-05:00

Among my friends I have been known as the guy who can't stand hearing The Promises read at meetings, which anyone who has read my previous post Those Pesky Promises can plainly see. But hopefully what is also apparent is that it's not that I don't like, or disagree with The Promises, in fact just the opposite... I love them. What I don't like is some of the rituals and pomp that surrounds them.

A recent issue of the Grapevine had a Your Turn section on some practices in AA meetings that sometimes make us look like a cult (I realize opinions run to the extremes on this topic so bear with me here.) It's my opinion that one of those those practices is the habit some meetings have of collectively shouting out "WE THINK NOT!" after the rhetorical question "Are these extravagant promises?" is posed at the end of The Promises.

I can tell you that when I first heard that in a meeting I almost jumped out of my chair and ran. I have always had a rebellious streak, and anytime that something has been expected of me (such as group participation or conformity in any way) it has always raised my hackles and sent me in the other direction.

Now I can hear the voices that say that it's reactions like this I need to change in sobriety. But I also know that this is exactly one of those things that makes us look cult-like to anyone who does not "know the drill". Anytime someone walks in to a room full of people who seem to be spontaneously doing the same thing it tends to have a feeling of exclusivity to it. To many people that is off-putting.

Sure, it can be said that some things seem pretty minor to overcome when a newcomer comes in beat by alcohol and is willing to do just about anything to stop. One of those things is the talk of a "Higher Power". Many people worry we will scare newcomers off by talking about God. But as a Higher Power is a base part of our core principles (i.e The Steps), it's likely there will be many discussions about it in AA.

But I am not sure that a newcomer having to decide if he is supposed to shout "WE THINK NOT!" at meetings is the same as thing as him having to decide if there is something more powerful than him, and that It can help him stop drinking.

Since our public relations policies are based on attraction rather than promotion, my question is "Does this make us more or less attractive to someone who is trying to stop drinking and needs our help, but was told to avoid AA because it's a cult?"

So let's assume the new guy is desperate and comes to AA regardless of these warnings. He walks in, sits down and watches us very closely as he tries to figure out what to do. He sees someone up front reading something and suddenly the whole rooms erupts in to "WE THINK NOT!". What conclusion is he likely to draw?

The next question is "How important is it to our future that we continue to reply 'We Think Not' compared with being able to help as many alcoholics as possible?" Mind you, there are a great many things that I think that we should never compromise on because they are integral parts of our principles. I just don't see how this one is. In fact I think it goes against some of them.

Our founders knew a few things about alcoholics. One of them was that we all like to dance to the beat of our own drummer. So much so, Bill felt it was important enough to guarantee this freedom in the 3rd Tradition when he said "Nor ought A.A. membership ever depend upon money or conformity."

And so, of course, I take that to heart and don't always conform. When someone ask "Are these extravagant promises?" I do not reply. I don't have to. And when the topic comes up I take it as an opportunity to discuss the Third Tradition and conformity. Knowing that I can not afford to be angry about it, nor do I need to make it in to a divisive issue. But I also don't have to conform to be a member.

Some perspective

2011-02-24T09:40:00.001-05:00

Nothing that is worth doing can be achieved in our lifetime; therefore, we must be saved by hope. ... Nothing we do, however virtuous, can be accomplished alone; therefore, we are saved by love. No virtuous act is quite as virtuous from the standpoint of our friend or foe as it is from our standpoint. Therefore, we must be saved by the final form of love, which is forgiveness

- Reinhold Neibuhr

Those pesky Promises

2011-02-20T15:51:00.010-05:00

Anybody who knows me in AA knows how I feel about what has become known in AA circles as "The Promises". Those often quoted lines on pages 83 and 84 that are such a staple and a favorite of so many people in the fellowship. They know... I hate 'em.

Okay, maybe I don't hate them. As a matter of fact, I love many thing about them. What I hate is what they have come to represent and how they are misunderstood.

First let's start off about the fact that they are called "The Promises" as if they are the only promises in the Big Book. There are so many actual promises in the Big Book that it would be hard to count them all. Gems such as:

"We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it."

Or...

"Our fears fall from us. We begin to feel the nearness of our Creator. We may have had certain spiritual beliefs, but now we begin to have a spiritual experience. The feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will often come strongly. We feel we are on the Broad Highway, walking hand in hand with the Spirit of the Universe."

These promises, also seemingly extravagant, get little or no mention in AA meetings, let alone constant reciting. Why is that?

Well, one reason may be that those "Promises" happen to number a total of 12. An attractive, and seemingly significant number to many AA members. I mean we have 12 Steps, 12 Traditions, 12 Concepts, so why not 12 Promises!? So I think somewhere along the line someone noticed the numerical significance of the promises in this paragraph which has helped launch these particular promises toward legendary status (these days a status known as viral). And unintentionally relegating the rest of the Book's promises to a forgettable status, especially for those members who never bother to read the Book.

If asked early on which of the following two promise I would have rather had come true:

1. "No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others."

2. "The feeling that the drink problem has disappeared will often come strongly."

I can tell you I would have picked the second promise hands-down. When I first got here I needed to stop drinking and really didn't care about a hell of a lot else. That second promise, for those who don't know, is mentioned during the 5th Step. "Not drinking" is really all I cared about. It still is at some times, and to some extend, paramount in my sobriety.

The Big Book promises us so many things, many of them proportionate to our development at a particular time. From "freedom from selfishness" in Step 3, to "our lives taking on new meaning" in Step 12, we are promised so many wonderful awakenings that it's unfortunate that we have collectively allowed many of them to pass into obscurity.

Thank God so many of them come true whether we are aware that they were promised to us or not.

Spiritual Materialism

2011-02-20T14:52:00.003-05:00

In my last post I called using the AA program as a way to feel good a form of 'spiritual materialism' (also known as 'spiritual narcissim'). As I understand it, spiritual materialism (a term coined by the Buddhist teacher Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche) involves ego inflation rather than the AA goal of 'ego deflation in depth'. We inflate our egos when we use our program as a source of temporary pleasure, as a tool for feeling good, rather than as a tool for changing ourselves in a fundamental way, surrendering to our higher power and facing reality.
.We can fall into spiritual materialism in a lot of ways. A classic is turning your sober time into a badge of honor or authority. This is the guy who says "Listen, kid, I have 23 years, so I know what I'm talking about", thereby proving he doesn't know jack. A humble reference to your experience is ego deflating; a claim of superiority isn't. The classic formula for becoming an old timer is "Don't drink and don't die." Yes, that will get you sober and old, but if that's all you do that's all you'll get.

Another form of AA as spiritual materialism is viewing the service you have performed as a source of merit badges. "Yes, sonny, I've made coffee, been a GSR, a DCM, served on more commitees than I can count..." I find this manifestation of spiritual materialism to be particularly sad. At Area Assemblies I have encountered people who have done years of very valuable service only to fall into the trap of thinking that work below the group level is the core of AA rather than just working on the plumbing that makes the groups function more easily. From there to the proud collection of merit badges is a tiny step.

By far the most common form of spiritual materialsim in my AA experience is viewing the program as emotional therapy, a feel good program. The problem here is thinking that the AA program is about how we feel, not about how we are and what we do. A 'feel good' program is clearly ego inflation; actually it is a form of narcissism, claiming the most important thing in the world is how I feel. Our goal is to change how we are, the changes in how we feel that do come are a side effect, not the goal.

Are these extravagant promises? (part of a series)

2011-02-19T13:42:00.007-05:00

The following is part of a series Dave and I are doing on the Promises. (See Contingent Promises, Learning to Play, and Love for an earlier post.)

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and selfpity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises?

Well, as I often hear them interpreted in meetings, yeah, they are extravagant.

Let's take 'fear of ... economic insecurity will leave us.' Speaking from my experience, I am far, far less materialistic than I was when I was drinking. Back then the thought of my current economic situation would have reduced me to shear panic and I would have treated that panic with alcohol. The panic isn't there, I am less interested in scoring my life at all, let alone by the number of toys I have. But that doesn't mean that I don't get a knot in my stomach when I get my heating bill and wonder how to juggle paying that with paying the rent. That knot is fear. Yet I often hear people talking about the promises imply - or baldly state - that such fears should leave us completely and that having such fears indicates that I have a 'bad program.' They say that all fear is a sign of a lack of faith, that if I work my program properly I will have no fear and I will realize that everything will be OK. That is just plain not true. Bad things do happen and fear is a natural human reaction to anticipated pain. Haven't these people ever heard of the Garden of Gesthemane?

The AA program is not designed to make us feel good all the time. That is a form of spiritual materialism that totally misses the point. The program is designed to change the way we live, to open us up to our better selves and our higher powers. Changing ourselves, the way we live, does make us feel better in most circumstances, but it does not erase our susceptibility to human emotions. Certainly something happens and our emotional reactions do change. As I said earlier, in the past I reacted with panic to the mere thought of things that I now experience with relative calm. But moments of real fear are still there. I sometimes get the impression, especially when the promises are discussed, that we are aiming at some kind of unrealistic 'AA sainthood'. We forget that our goal is progress, not perfection.

In one of my recent posts I mentioned people in my home group whose homes have been foreclosed. What are we saying to these people if we tell them that their economic insecurity should not scare them and that if it does scare them then not only are they homeless but on top of that they have a shitty program? They don't know where they are going to live. That is scary. What I think we should be telling them is that the program will help them put their troubles in perspective, help them see that their troubles can be dealt with and really do matter less than they may think at the moment. We should tell them that the idea is to deal with the situation better, that the situation does suck but their way of handling it doesn't have to. That they can make progress and shouldn't worry about perfection.

God's joy, music, and foreclosures

2011-02-17T10:42:00.003-05:00

I am a string in the concert of God's joy.
- Jacob Boehme
I love this quote. I cannot define what I am refering to when I use the term "God". For me it is shorthand for the ultimate flowing core energy of being, something that contains all of reality including me, but that's a pretty vague statement. Whatever it is, I think its defining characteristics are love and joy, and both of those characteristics involve relationship, interaction between all the elements of reality.

Boehme's image of a divine concert captures that interaction. No single musician or instrument, let alone a single string, makes sense outside of the entire orchestra, and the orchestra makes no sense unless it is making music. But the musicians, their instruments (and the instruments' strings) are not passive servants of the music; they are not some sort of big player piano. In fact the music is the orchestra in the act of playing.

OK, this is all sounding pretty head-in-the-clouds, but I thought about all this after listening to a few AAs share about their homes being foreclosed. What struck me was that as much pain and loss as they felt, they felt more guilt. We, as a society, are taught that we are pure (or 'rugged') individuals and ultimately whatever we experience is our fault. I lost my house, so that means I was an irresponsible borrower and therefore I deserved what happened. While there probably is an element of truth in that statement, it ignores the role of the banks, the state of the economy, the materialistic values of our society, etc., etc. Reality is not a tune plucked on a single banjo string. Pretending it is constitutes pride, putting yourself at the center of the universe. Worse, that pride has you pretending you rule the universe. And, ironically, that pride generates passivity, because when it places all responsibility on the individual it saps any anger at injustice that might contribute to social change.

I think this is one of the places where AA swims against the tide of our times. We strive for true humility, for seeing ourselves in context. As the old AA saying goes, the only thing I need to know about God is that I am not one. While I have to accept my true level of responsibility for my condition in life, I have to see myself in the context in which I live. I'm just one string, trying like mad to stay in tune.

Another side of One Day at a Time

2011-02-15T13:29:00.000-05:00

How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. ~ Annie Dillard

Your mind tricks you into believing tomorrow is a reality, thereby giving you permission to waste today.

I spent yesterday reading a light novel -- nothing great, just an enjoyable read. Now, there was nothing wrong with that. In fact, I was more comfortably 'in the moment' than I had been for several days. Relaxation is good, but, being an alcoholic, I nonetheless felt a bit guilty. That got me thinking about relaxation vs. wasting time (aka sloth). I don't really know any rules for telling the difference, but like the classic rule on pornography, I know it when I see it. The fact is that, while yesterday was a very good day, I do waste - kill - too much time and that is something I have to pay attention to.

This is a side of living 'one day at a time' that I too often forget. I am responsible for how I live every day and killing time is a felony.

Don't Keep Score

2011-02-12T06:33:00.001-05:00

What I am saying is this: the score is not what matters. Life does not have to be regarded as a game in which scores are kept and somebody wins. If you are too intent on winning, you will never enjoy playing. If you are too obsessed with success, you will forget to live. If you have learned only how to be a success, your life has probably been wasted.

Thomas Merton. Love and Living. (New York: Harcourt) p. 12

Go with Your Strengths but Balance Them

2011-02-11T12:13:00.008-05:00

The other night a few people from my homegroup went on a commitment. When it was my turn to speak I found myself talking about how I worked my program immediately after I got sober. For years I had pursued a number of 'get-sane-quick' schemes centering around things like meditation and spiritual reading. Now, there's nothing wrong with meditation or spiritual reading; what made them get-sane-quick schemes was the way I was trying to use them to feel better about my life without really changing anything -- like stopping drinking, for example. When you have a glass of vodka before every meditation session just to make sure you're nice and mellow you have a strong clue that there's a problem somewhere.

However, when I got sober I found that these easier, softer ways I had tried gave me a set of tools I could use in sobriety. While I still had a lot of trouble with the 'god thing', the 'spiritual angle' (without religion) was candy to me. (By the way, I easily settled my problems with the G-word by just shrugging my shoulders and saying it's a nice shorthand for whatever you believe in. Not deep theology, but it works for me.) I read and re-read the Big Book, the 12 and 12, AA Comes of Age, Language of the Heart, etc., etc. and got a lot out of them. But I also read books like The Spirituality of Imperfection and a whole bunch of the classics of western spirituality. And I meditated - a lot. I was very enthusiastic about the idea that recovery would not mean my previous life minus alcohol but would mean dying into a new life. I was launched on a project my wife and I still call "Brian 2.0" -- a major upgrade.

This time the meditation and spiritual reading were different. Instead of treating them as ways of feeling better while avoiding changing anything I was using them as tools to change everything. I was using the strengths I had developed back when I was busy avoiding getting sober. Of course, I also followed the advice of more experienced AAers, especially about doing service in the group, but the 'spiritual angle' was the driving force for me.

This emphasis on spirituality has remained the bedrock of my recovery. I tremendously enjoy reading people like Thomas Merton, Bernard of Clairvaux, Buddhist texts or Plato and applying their insights to my program. Daily meditation is very important to me. However, I've done one other thing that has been very important. Whenever I have had to choose a sponsor (and I've had to do it several times due to people moving, etc.) I have chosen someone with the opposite strength. I have chosen people who will say things like "Fine, mulling over the difference between acceptance and surrender is very nice, but what are you going to do today?" and "which Step applies to this situation and what specific action does that demand"?

After this week's commitment I was talking with a friend about people who treat the program as a rigid set of instructions, one size fits all. This approach would have been a huge problem for me. My first sponsor did walk me through the Big Book page by page if not line by line, and that was a great experience. However, I have to say that it would not have worked for me if I had not also read a lot about the early history of AA and the circumstances under which the Big Book was written. It also would not have worked if my sponsor had succeeded in discouraging me from following up on connections I saw between the Big Book and classic philosophical and spiritual literature. I studied Philosophy for 10 years. It's a big part of my mental makeup and ignoring that would have been very dangerous.

I think it is very important to chart your own path, using your strengths and compensating for your weaknesses. Even your character defects (like tending to theorize about life rather than live it) can be used in recovery, as long as they are recognized and balanced. Go with what you've got. The program, including the Steps, are more like a compass you use to explore than a set of calisthenics you do in a precise way according to some fixed schedule.

How to Dismantle Your Program, or The Yellow Brick Road to Hell

2011-02-07T08:41:00.004-05:00

In my last post I talked about a friend who was sober for 12 years, systematically dismantled her program, went out for 11 years and has been back for 2+ years. (The lady in question will please note the corrected numbers.) I described how she stopped coming to meetings: First missing a meeting was unavoidable, then it was acceptable, then it seemed like a good idea.

She has since reminded me of the other steps in the process, so, if you're interested in wrecking your life, here's a good how-to:

Stop going to meetings, as described above
Don't have a sponsor
Don't sponsor anyone
Don't have a homegroup
Don't do service
Pray ONLY to have god keep you away from a drink and a drug (FYI-that is not praying)
Above all, do not work the Steps

If you follow these simple instructions carefully, you will be ready when that insane moment comes and you decide to celebrate your anniversary with a martini.

As my friend likes to point out, we get sick in reverse:
First we get spiritually sick - cut off from god.
Then we become mentally sick-where drinking seems like a good idea/solution.
Then we pick up.

Getting out of the groove

2011-02-04T07:57:00.001-05:00

A series of accidents has led me to miss a lot of my home group 6 AM meetings over the last few weeks. Weather, car trouble, getting blocked in by neighbors -- just a whole series of frustrating little things that have added up to an average of only 2 meetings a week for the last 3 weeks rather than my usual 6 per week. Now, in the last 2 days, I have overslept once and misread my clock once, missing 2 meetings I could easily have made. I've kept up with other aspects of my program, especially emphasizing the 11th Step, but I can feel the unraveling.

This leads me to think about just how frighteningly easy it is to get out of the groove. One of the members of my home group went out after 12 years and in the 3 years she's been back has given a lot of thought to how it happened. She likes to describe how she systematically dismantled her program, beginning with meetings. First missing a meeting was unavoidable, then it was acceptable, then it seemed like a good idea. Then she drank and was out for 7 years.

Now that is scary. I have got to make a phone call or 2 today and get to tomorrow's meeting. And, if I see that woman, thank her again for scaring me.

It takes a long time

2011-02-01T08:37:00.002-05:00

It takes a long time to become young. - Picasso
That is a good summary of my experience in AA. As I mentioned in my reply to Maggie Lamond Simone, while it is possible to use AA as a sort of post-detox, a way to learn how to 'just don't drink', if a person limits their AA practice to that they are cheating themselves. Basically, that makes being a dry drunk the goal and, while that's better than being a wet drunk, it still sucks.

The AA program offers us the opportunity to come out of hiding and experience life. It offers us the joy of humility. Bernard of Clarvaux, the founder of what is now the Trappist order, distinguishes four degrees of love, which I find apply to the AA path:

At first, a person loves himself for his own sake. The universe revolves completely around him. This is the life of the active alcoholic and the dry drunk. Been there, done that.
Next, he perceives that he cannot exist by himself and grows to see how he needs others and the whole of reality in order to have a shot at happiness. This was where I was on entering AA.
After working the steps for a while he begins to see the beauty of others and the world around him and grows to love them for their own sakes. This is where working Steps 11 and 12 help us move beyond the 'spiritual kindergarten'.
Finally, a person experiences the joy of true humility and learns to love himself because he is a part of this glorious whole of humanity and the universe as a whole. That is when we really become young.

I'm not really young yet, but I'm a lot less old than I used to be.

Anonymity and shame

2011-01-28T08:41:00.003-05:00

Maggie Lamond Simone recently published a column on the Huffington Post suggesting that AA drop the 12th Tradition, anonymity, and rename ourselves something like Alcoholics In Recovery.
Her argument is based on shame. She says she doesn't talk about her drinking years, first of all because they were boring.

However, there's been another reason, I think, for this egregious lack of conversation about those earlier years. On some level -- well, actually, on a very conscious level -- I am ashamed of them. And I think that the concept of anonymity helps to perpetuate that shame.
Now, before you start getting all hatey on me, listen up: I support AA. It helped me get sober, and it helped me stay sober. Any group that offers support for someone trying to get healthier is a good group. But I think it's time for a name change. The "anonymous" part is maintaining the shame.

Simone maintains that there is no reason for alcoholics to be ashamed, " Knowing what we now know about alcoholism". Well, it may not be rational for alcoholism to be viewed as a shameful moral failing but in my experience it is viewed that way by most people. For that very basic practical reason just about all of us feel we have to be careful about telling people we are alcoholics.
But there is another reason behind the 12th Tradition that Simone ignores - it is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions. Its long form reads

And finally, we of Alcoholics Anonymous believe that the principle of Anonymity has an immense spiritual significance. It reminds us that we are to place principles before personalities; that we are actually to practice a genuine humility. This to the end that our great blessings may never spoil us; that we shall forever live in thankful contemplation of Him who presides over us all.

It is important that when we enter the rooms we leave our titles, degrees, addresses, etc. behind. This is an essential part of making an AA meeting a safe place to discuss our lives, our alcoholism and our recovery. We talk about things in the rooms that we would not discuss with our closest non-alcoholic friends and we feel safe and supported. Such discussion topics are not limited to our drunkalogues; they include all the consequences of our spiritual, psychological, and physical disease. I remember being amused when I went to a meeting in another city and the chair's introduction included the warning not to discuss any unprosecuted felonies in detail.

Beyond the safety factor, anonymity is essential to our AA schooling in humility. I really think that in the last analysis the first 11 Steps are about developing humility and the 12th is about what to do with it.

Finally, in reading Simone's column I was struck by how she kept referring to AA in the past tense. I can't help but get the impression that she's 'graduated'. I think AA can be legitimately used as a way to overcome addiction to alcohol and develop habits that make reactivating that addiction unlikely. However, if someone limits their AA experience to that they are missing the point. AA is a spiritual path that allows us to strike at the reasons we wanted to anesthetize ourselves and hide in the first place. Using it exclusively as a mere post-detox is cheating yourself of a wonderful opportunity for growth.

Contingent Promises, Learning to Play and Love

2011-01-27T09:48:00.004-05:00

We are all familiar with 'the Promises' of AA from pages 83 - 84 of the Big Book:

If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.

Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us—sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.

Dave, the other principal author of this blog, absolutely hates it when this is read at the beginning of meetings. He points out that it is always taken out of context.

The passage comes at the end of the Big Book's treatment of Step 9, the 'amends' step that terrifies just about all newcomers when they first read it. The simple fact is that the promises can become realities only if we do the work. Dave's concern (if I understand him properly) is that just reading the Promises at the beginning of meetings can be taken to imply that they will happen by some magical process if you just come to meetings. If you take them that way they are very extravagant promises indeed.

Recently I have been seeing that, like most things in the spiritual journey, the realization of the promises is even more complicated than it first appears. Experiencing the Promises is only possible if we truly surrender and a big part of surrendering is learning to play. Thomas Merton viewed play as doing the ordinary while being absorbed in it, intensely and utterly. I like that. I personally much prefer 'play' to 'be here now' or the monastic 'agi quod agis' (do what you are doing). To me they sound like rather serious, unsmiling efforts that oblige you to frown and focus. Playing is fun. It requires a lot of effort but it isn't hard labor.

Now, in the last week or so it has been driven home to me that I have a lot to learn about play. My wife works about 100 miles from our home which, of course, means that she is away for at least 5 days of every week. For the last 10 days she has been at home on vacation and the change that has made in me has been remarkable. With my playmate around I have slipped into a playful attitude toward life without even noticing it. I naturally live in the moment and the Promises are very real. This is not just because she is here - after all, this is the same woman I was married to throughout my active alcoholism and there wasn't much play in that. It is that she triggers something that allows all the work I have done in recovery to flower. I'm a bit of a Dante fan and in my recovery I have been inspired by how Dante's admiration of Beatrice opened him to love, first to love of her and ultimately to "the Love which moves the sun and the other stars." And there you have it.

So, I do think that experiencing the Promises is only possible if we truly surrender and a big part of surrender is learning to play. But I am coming to realize (and not just think) that learning to play is a part of learning to love.

I now have to expand my playground and try to make all people my playmates. Again, I'll take some inspiration from Dante. As a recovering alkie I've certainly been through Hell and have been working away in Purgatory for 10 years. Now let's see if I can make it to Paradise. At that point the Promises should always be there instead of brightening and fading like the phases of the moon as they do now.

Not a bad idea

2011-01-24T18:31:00.000-05:00

At the beginning of meetings we always ask "is there anyone here new or coming back?"

I've heard it suggested that we add "Is there anyone here old and going out?"

Heard at meetings and random thoughts

2011-01-23T09:19:00.001-05:00

Don’t assume evil motives for what stupidity can explain.

The greatest mistake you can make is to be continually fearing you will make one.

When making amends, a subtle shift occurs in our thinking. We go from thinking we were a mistake to acknowledging we made a mistake.

Surrender and the Glad Gesthemane

2011-01-16T11:34:00.005-05:00

We all know that the first three Steps are about surrender, culminating in our decisions to turn our wills and our lives over to our Higher Powers. I, for one, frequently forget the progression in surrender represented by those first three Steps. Initially we let go of our faith in alcohol. For a long time we've known that our dear friend alcohol was turning our lives into pain filled shells but we saw no other way of living so we stuck by the booze. In the First Step we jump off into the unknown. In a terrifying leap we abandon alcohol and see what else, if anything, there is out there. In the Second Step we go further. We acknowledge that there is something greater than ourselves that can save us. We give up our self reliance and in our culture that is one huge surrender. Then, in the Third Step we go beyond just asking for help in restoring us to sanity; we actually resolve to surrender our wills and our lives to a Higher Power (in other words, acknowledge that we aren't in control of our entire lives, not just alcohol). Now we are the ones helping in the effort. The heavy lifting is being done by the Higher Power we are surrendering to.

For me it has taken years to begin to see just how huge a leap this surrender has to be. This is not the 'surrender' of beginning a weight-loss regimen or giving up chocolate for Lent. This is a dying to myself in order to be reborn as something new, something that is a descendant of what I was but is fundamentally different. This is not the 'surrender' of moving to a new city or a new job; this is the surrender of a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.

It is in making this surrender that I see my alcoholism as a tremendous gift. 'Normies', 'earthlings', or whatever else you want to call non-alcoholics have to break through the illusion that the ego and its satisfactions can bring happiness. They can live in that grey area between outright misery and true fulfillment, resigning themselves to the 'fact' that this is as good as it gets. As an active alcoholic my life was already shattered and many of my illusions about schemes for happiness were shattered with it. Being spiritually and physically near death, the prospect of letting go and being reborn was much less frightening than it otherwise would have been. I could at least entertain the notion of surrendering my small self and seeing the greater whole of which it is a component.

Surrendering the 'joys' of the ego and seeing myself in context makes the Glad Gethsemane possible. This is humility, seeing myself as I really am, a part of a whole and not the freestanding 'rugged' individual of my ego's dreams. And this allows me to embrace what sufferings I endure because in doing so I can contribute some beauty to those around me and to humanity and the spiritual as a whole.

Cynthia Bourgeualt cites the following prayer, which was left by the body of a dead child at the Ravensbriick concentration camp. Personally, I find it at once beautiful, heartbreaking, and immensely challenging.

O Lord, Remember not only the men and women
Of good will, but also those of ill will.
But do not remember all the suffering they inflicted on us;
Remember the fruits we have bought, thanks to
This suffering - our comradeship,
Our loyalty, our humility, our courage,
Our generosity, the greatness of heart
Which has grown out of all this, and when
They come to judgment let all the fruits
Which we have borne be their forgiveness.

Stop runnin', varmint!

2011-01-13T15:57:00.001-05:00

For years I have said that as active alcoholics we anesthetized ourselves, cutting ourselves off from the joy and pain of life. I'm beginning to think that it might be better to say that as active alcoholics we were running and hiding from ourselves, and that the deep meaning of surrender is a willingness to stop, turn around, and face ourselves. I say "a willingness to..." because we don't surrender once and have done with it; surrender is an attitude that has to be acted upon every day, all day.

This is where the 11th Step shows some of its power. I tend to spontaneously think of meditation as a way of silencing the chatter in my head and releasing tension. It is that, especially in the beginning. But as I meditate more I realize that it is even more about recognizing that what I have been running from all my life is me and learning to embrace myself as a full reality, both as an individual with virtues and defects and as a part of a greater whole. I will never be fulfilled by satisfying my desires for security, approval, or control. I have to both embrace those drives as part of me and at the same time let go of them, seeing them as dead ends that lock me into my ego, isolating me from from that greater whole.

Steps 4 through 9 help us deal with our 'character defects' or 'shortcomings'. I think most of us would agree that these terms are more than a little vague. Are my shortcomings limited to the seven deadly sins or do they also include the minor infractions that make me such a daily pain in the ass? How about those drives for security, approval and control? Those drives certainly don't put us on a path to serenity, but is it realistic to include them on a list of 'shortcomings' to be 'removed'? I think we're more on the mark if we say we are aiming to 'remove' the manifestations of these drives in our daily lives, the behavior they normally give rise to while acknowledging that the drives themselves are part of our egos, our 'false' or 'descriptive' selves and as such are something we can at best dance or perhaps laugh with. Learning to do that is a job for Step 11.

As for that greater whole that I am a part of, I freely acknowledge that my participation in that reality is my 'true' or 'transcendental' self, but I don't really know much about it. I'm just trying to experience and learn about that greater whole. I know that it involves my abandoning myself and joining the dance of the universe that I have always been part of but have been afraid to recognize.

I also know that I'm not going to get anywhere unless I stop running. And I can't stop running without Step 11.

What we get to do

2011-01-12T10:47:00.001-05:00

A friend of mine likes to remind people who complain about all the things they have to do that those are, in fact, the things they get to do. That is a wonderful reminder that our sober lives are gifts. We are lucky to be alive, sober and recovering and we should be grateful for all the things we get to do as a result.

Connected

2011-01-09T11:44:00.003-05:00

Recently I've been going through one of my bouts of feeling pretty ineffective - basically useless. Unemployment can do that to you, especially when you don't have your spiritual ducks in row.
Now, I know the standard response to such a feeling is "get off the pity pot" or "get your ass to a meeting" or something like that. That advice can be useful, but it also helps (me, at least) to try to look objectively at the situation and see just how much of the problem is purely in my head. (I almost wrote "is real as opposed to in my head" but, as any alkie knows, a problem in your head can be a very, very real problem.) After looking over the situation I may come up with a way to work on it or I may decide it isn't that much of a problem after all.

Now, my feeling ineffective turns out to be a mixed bag. I am unemployed, so one of my primary ways of contributing to the world is cut off. However, on looking over the situation, I see that I undervalue some of my other ways of making a contribution to humanity (like this blog, for example).

Last month I attended an eye-opening lecture by Nicholas Christakis who, along with James H. Fowler, has written Connected, The Surprising Power of Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives --How Your Friends' Friends Affect Everything You Feel, Think, and Do. Christakis and Fowler have shown how we are shaped by our social networks (of all kinds, including the online ones that get so much attention). We tend to put on weight if our friends put on weight or even if our friends' friends, whom we may have never met, put on weight. The same goes for smoking or, of course, for getting sober. Our social network is much more effective at changing our moods or attitudes than material circumstances. An increase of $10,000 of income per year yields only a 2% increased chance for happiness, while having a happy friend gives a 15% chance and a happy person you may have never met, but to whom you are indirectly tied gives a 6-10% chance of greater happiness.

You can see where I am going here. This relates directly to my interpretation of Fr. Ed Dowling's concept of a Glad Gethsemane. It also relates to how we are doing 12th Step work just by attending meetings. And it has a lot to do with why I do this blog.

This all reminds me of my favorite quote from Robert F. Kennedy:

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope... and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Thought for the New Year

2011-01-03T15:04:00.004-05:00

If you're not enjoying life

you're not recovering.

Heard at meetings and random thoughts

2010-12-31T08:17:00.001-05:00

If you don't stand for something you will fall for anything.

Today's mighty oak is just yesterday's nut that held its ground.

The only person you can ever be better than is the the person you were yesterday.

Happy New Year!

Listening and empathy

2010-12-29T09:13:00.002-05:00

According to an article recently published in Scientific American (http://goo.gl/QgUn5) "Analysis of some 14,000 college student surveys over the last three decades finds that self-reported levels of empathy for others have decreased." Fully 75% of college students scored themselves lower in empathy than students of 30 years ago.
According to the article, "one possible explanation is social isolation—we tend to do more things on our own and engage in fewer group activities than we used to. Another possible cause is a decrease in reading fiction for pleasure. Studies have found that the number of stories preschoolers read correlates with their ability to understand other people’s emotional states."
Which brings me to one of the great benefits of meetings - especially speaker meetings. Hearing other alcoholics stories and following the rule of 'identify, don't compare' helps us learn to feel how others feel. This opens us up to ending our alcoholic isolation and learning to love. It is yet another example of AA swimming against some of the negative currents in today's world.
Very nice.

Glad Gesthemene redux

2010-12-23T09:51:00.002-05:00

I am reposting this note from earlier this year because I needed to reread it this morning and because I thought it might be a useful reminder to someone else in this season of joy and frustration. It may be especially useful during those family gatherings. As a member of my home group likes to say, all family reunions start out as Norman Rockwell and end up as Norman Bates.

____________________________________
I have been reading Robert Fitzgerald's The Soul of Sponsorship, The Friendship of Fr. Ed Dowling, S.J., and Bill Wilson in Letters. In discussing Bill W.'s depression Fitzgerald makes reference to Dowling's concept of a 'Glad Gethsemane', a joyful embracing of pain. The volume includes Dowling's magazine article How to Enjoy Being Miserable, which expounds on the idea.
Dowling says we have 3 possible attitudes toward the large and (especially) small miseries we encounter:
1. We can "be crushed by them and jump into the river or a movie or into a debauch of self-pity, profanity or resentment."
2. We can stoically accept them, cowboy up and carry on (presumably with a self satisfied nobility).
3. We can enjoy them. Not masochistically, certainly not in glorious theatrical martyrdom, but in a spirit of love and giving.
According to Dowling, this spirit of Glad Gethsemane, involves "the psychological trick of changing from resigned willing acceptance of suffering [option 2] to grateful wanting to take up and enjoy suffering". Citing the example of a parent giving her blanket to a cold child, Dowling emphasizes that the trick "consists in finding someone we love who will be helped by our sufferings."
Now there's the rub -- finding someone we love who will be helped by our sufferings.
I can accept Dowling's three possible reactions to suffering. I, for one, am deeply experienced and highly skilled at Option 1. I also have some experience with Option 2. In fact, I find that the Path of Spartan Nobility is especially seductive, since the feeling of being the Man of Moral Steel whom no long traffic light can disturb is quite pleasing. For me, at least, it inevitably leads to spiritual constipation. I strut about with a moral stick up my ass. Not a pretty sight.
Option 3 is a little hard for me to wrap my head around. How, when faced with one of life's hardships, big (illness, death) or little (the ill-timed telemarketer), do we go about finding someone we love who will be helped by our sufferings? For Dowling the answer is to unite our suffering with Christ's passion and thereby contribute to salvation. For me personally that marches into areas of Christian theology that I cannot accept. However, there may be a more secular version that I can handle.
If I think of the consequences of each of the three possible reactions to pain I get a clue. Options 1 and 2 cause more pain, both to ourselves and to those around us. In contemplating Option 3 I get some help if I think about consequences. I guess it was three or four years ago that a man (I think his name was Charlie) started coming to my home group, a small men's meeting. He was dying and simply said that the only goal he had left in life was to die a sober member of AA. A few months later he did. There were no histrionics, just an honest desire to do what was right because it was right. His pain gave hope and joy, both to himself and to those around them. He found the "someone we love who will be helped by our sufferings" in everyone he came into contact with. To be precise, we were not helped by his sufferings themselves but by the way he dealt with them.
It seems ridiculous to put a long traffic light or a telemarketer on that plane, but I spend most of my life in ridiculously small, rather silly situations. If I can, in my small way, in my small circumstances, emulate Charlie and willingly accept pain and loss as part of life and embrace them with joy simply because it is the the best option, the right thing to do, the thing that is most likely to help me and those I come into contact with, I may also generate some hope and joy and lessen the sum total of human suffering by just a little bit.

Wishing and Willing

2010-12-14T12:43:00.005-05:00

In Step 3 we decide to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand him. Most of us devote a lot of attention to the precise meanings of the word "God" in that sentence, point out the importance of the word "decide" and pretty much assume the words "will" and "lives" are understood. This might be a serious oversight.

Beatrice Bruteau points out that there is an important distinction between wishing and willing. Wishing is passive, it says that we cannot change reality, that we have to ask or wait for someone else to change it. Wishing puts us in the role of Aladdin, waiting for a genie to act. Ultimately, it leaves us pretty hopeless. To take a very mundane example, it is the state of the job seeker who would love to have work but makes no calls, fantasizing that some employer will descend from heaven to rescue him.

Willing, on the other hand, acknowledges that while we cannot control reality we can influence it. Willing involves action. With willing we move toward the good we want in the world and in moving toward it we feel peace. To go back to that mundane example, it is the state of the job seeker who is actively taking steps to get a job. Willing must be open. The results of our actions may not come in the time or in the way we desire. To insist on that brings us back to wishing.

When I was drinking I wished I could stop, but I was not willing to do anything about it. I was more or less waiting for the Recovery Fairy to sprinkle Sobriety Dust on me and solve my problem. It didn't work. Only when I willed to be sober, when I did something about it, did anything change.

When I turn my will over to my Higher Powers I am aligning my actions with the values that Higher Power represents. It has nothing to do with passive dreaming; it has to do with my actions, my life.

Heard at a meeting and random thoughts

2010-12-10T09:26:00.000-05:00

We do not see things as they are. We see things as we are.

If loving is like creating a child, forgiving is like raising someone from the dead.

Alcoholics don't need chaos in their lives; they demand it.

Meetings and meditation reinforce each other

2010-12-09T14:55:00.002-05:00

The entire AA program is about personal transformation. Soon after we enter the fellowship we realize that stopping drinking will never be enough; we have to become new people. Going through the Steps gives us the solid framework for the transformation, but the transformation, the rewiring of our persons, only comes when it is hammered in through the repetition of meetings and the 10th, 11th, and 12th Steps. Our trips through the Steps with our sponsors, at retreats, or in AWOLs tell us how we should view the world and behave, but that only becomes an ingrained part of us through repetition. Spirituality has to become a habit and then grow into just how we are.

I think there is a special synergy between meetings and the 11th Step. In meetings people have a safe place filled with loving companions in suffering where they can talk about their pain, openly examine their past and present behavior and how they can do better. Meetings are places of healing but the healing takes time and repetition. Ideally AAs adjust their meeting schedules to match their pain, salving the wounds as often as they need it.

The 11th Step is similar. In meditation we experience our fears, anger, love, hatred, faith and lack of faith, all in a safe environment where we are seeking union with a loving, accepting, embracing and comforting Higher Power, whether we see it as a personal God, as the Universe, as Tao, whatever. We know we are warm and safe and that gives us the openness to leave our rutted old roads and change direction into gentler, more loving ways. But again, it only works with repetition. In the case of the 11th Step I don't think we should be adjusting our pace to match our current or anticipated pain. I think meditation requires a constant, preferably at least daily repetition. Our goal is once again to go beyond new habits to a new way of being.

So I think the repetition of meetings and meditation reinforce each other. We bring the changes and discoveries we find in meetings to our meditation and the changes and discoveries we find in meditation to our meetings. Meetings and meditation work together to help us unite with our Higher Powers and grow spiritually.

Unemployment lessons

2010-12-06T08:04:00.001-05:00

I am unemployed and I hate it. I knew I disliked it a lot, but I recently missed getting a job I could do very well and my reaction showed me that I hate being unemployed. In fact, I think I hate it a little too much or at least in the wrong way. When I finally realized the potential employer was not going to call I felt like a desert wanderer who had been offered a compass and seen it snatched away. I felt completely lost, unable to make any contribution to the world, of no use to anyone. Obviously, I was trapped in the delusion that I am my work, that my work is my job and my worth is determined by that job and how other people value it. Now that is a spiritual train wreck.

One of my key character defects is confusing my job and my work and my work with my self. As a result, when I failed to get that job I experienced a true crisis because I felt I had no work and therefore no value. Baaad mistake. Once I define my work as limited to my job , the way I pay the bills, I'm sliding headlong into putting material values on top and that, as I well know, leads to a dry, unsatisfying life. "Work" should have a much broader, sacred sense. It is how I as a person contribute, materially and spiritually,to the world I am a part of. Work involves discovering that world and giving my heart to it. It is paying attention to what matters most. This sacred work is not identical with my job, though ideally the job will help make it possible for me to do my work - or at the very least not stand in its way.

The confusion goes farther. When, being without a job, I start projects to make good use of my time my ego manages to equate those projects with a job and thus my work. So in my mind, doing this little digital animation will somehow become my job, contribute to meeting my financial needs and according to my ego that means that it will be my work, my contribution to the building of our world. A small project thus becomes massively important to my ego and as a result scares the hell out of me so I constantly find reasons to avoid it. I am failing to see things in context. This particular project may be only a small part of my work, it may or may not lead to or influence a job, but the fact that it is small and unpaid does not mean it isn't worth doing.

The whole question of what I see as my work relates directly to the question of whether I will persist in trying to twist reality to build myself in my image, with my view of what I should be doing, or in God's image. My ego is certain it knows exactly what I should be and pressures me to follow its path, closing myself off to all other possibilities. When I succumb to this toxic self-reliance, which I so often do, I create my own narrow world and blind myself to a wealth of beautiful possibilities. The point is that I am not my ego, my false self. There is another, fundamental part of me: my true self, the self that seeks to unite in love with all that is. If I can learn to focus on the goals of my true self rather than my ego I will be all right and unemployment will be just that: lack of a job and a financial problem, not a spiritual one.

Heard at a meeting and random thoughts (quotes edition)

2010-12-03T07:44:00.001-05:00

Silence is the language of God -- all else is poor translation. - Thomas Merton
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. - Gandhi
The most important question we must ask ourselves is, ‘Are we being good ancestors?’ - Jonas Salk

AA is the anchor

2010-11-29T09:10:00.003-05:00

The discussion of The Dark Night of the 12 Year Itch this past weekend has gotten me to thinking about the role of AA in my spiritual development. During discussions like this I find myself referring a lot to people like Thomas Keating, St. John of the Cross and Bernard of Clairvaux (and brace yourself for coming references to Beatrice Bruteau). So where does AA and its literature fit in my spiritual path? Do I think I've somehow graduated from the Big Book and the Steps and moved on to 'higher things'?

The answer is that AA is the foundation of my entire spiritual path. While I was drinking I tried a lot of 'get-sane-quick schemes', including various forms of Philosophy (which is my academic background) and spirituality. In my last drinking years I enthusiastically studied Buddhism, although my progress may have been inhibited a bit by the fact that I was pretty much always drunk when I meditated. Now, I think all of these spiritual adventures ended up being of value, in some cases, like Buddhism, of very great value to me. However, at the time they were not grounded in an effort to embrace reality. In fact, I think I viewed each of these efforts as a possible way of stopping drinking and straightening out my life because I was actually trying to use them as substitutes for drinking, as less toxic ways of avoiding reality. That is what made them get-sane-quick schemes and not valid spiritual paths.

All that changed with sobriety and AA. AA is all about facing your demons directly and wrestling with them, not trying to pretend you can somehow sail above them the way I pretended when I was drinking. The 12 Steps guide me in a reality based spirituality and meetings offer me a fellowship of spiritual pilgrims. And yet I find myself reading the great spiritual classics, especially those of the Christian traditions, more than ever before. These traditions not only help me better understand what I am doing in the Steps but they also guide me in building a rich 11th and 12th Step practice.

AA did not spring fully armored from the head of Bill W. It is a fruit of humanity's spiritual quest, a quest that has given rise to the great spiritual traditions. AA is itself a tradition that is constantly growing, developing, becoming richer. I find it useful, even necessary, to view AA in this context. Reading John of the Cross on the Dark Night of the Soul has helped me understand the 12 Year Itch in ways I just wouldn't have had access to without him.

Similarly, while Bill's suggestions for the 11th Step in the Big Book and the 12 + 12 are good starts, it is undeniable that there are very rich traditions in prayer and meditation that we should make use of (as Bill says on page 87 of the Big Book). Right now I am getting a lot out of Thomas Keating's teachings on Centering Prayer.

My approach to spiritual reading has changed fundamentally with AA. While drinking I was obsessed with gaining a systematic understanding of each of these spiritual traditions, rigorously demanding the logic behind them. I think this might be one of the signs that I was looking for an alternate reality and not for tools to embrace my life. Now, while I am still very interested in logic and consistency, I am more interested in what works. One of my favorite AA slogans is "if it's not practical, it's not spiritual". AA has given me that practical, rigorously honest approach and that is why it is at the core of my spirituality.

The Dark Night of the 12 Year Itch

2010-11-27T08:21:00.002-05:00

I have written before about the '12 Year Itch', that dry spot people tend to hit when they reach double digit sobriety, often leading to a relapse. I firmly believe that this is a sign that we are reaching a new stage in our spiritual growth, in facing ourselves and seeing what and who we are.

My observation (admittedly of the limited sample of AAs I know) is that this itch can take two forms, depending on the AA's program. (I'm generalizing here. There are, of course, exceptions to this pattern.) For those who have spent 10 or so years 'just going to meetings and not drinking' it is a spiritual depression that almost always leads to a relapse, usually lasting years. For those who have been seriously working the steps it leads to a deeply felt spiritual crisis that often includes a short but nonetheless extremely painful relapse, sometimes lasting as little as a few days. This crisis is characterized by a feeling of confusion and loss and the experience that the program just isn't working. The AA is resolved to renew their spiritual journey but is usually at a loss as to how. (Hint: You're REALLY ready for very hard, temporarily unsatisfying Step 11 work and a Step 12 that organically grows out of 11.)

As I have said before, this type of crisis is a known stage in the spiritual path, one that has been written about in popular literature (for example, Willam Styron's Darkness Visible) as well as in all of the great spiritual traditions. In the Christian mystical traditions is often referred to as the Dark Night of the Sense and of the Soul.

St. John of the Cross talks about these two Dark Nights. The first one we encounter on our spiritual journey is the Night of the Sense. St. John says that the pain of this Night is caused by the our weakness and vacillation when faced with the possibility of a transformative union with the Divine.

St. John of the Cross says there are three signs that indicate that we are entering into the night of sense. The first sign is that we find both prayer and daily life begin to lose their general appeal. Prayer dries up and becomes uninteresting and difficult. The initial consolations that began with our newfound love for God seem to disappear. It is no longer easy to pray and takes a real effort even to give time to prayer. The second sign is that we feel we may have done something wrong or committed some personal sin that has offended God. Since there is no consolation at this time either, this seems to confirm our thinking that we have offended God in some way. This can cause great suffering to the soul. The third sign of the night of sense is that we are no longer able to use discursive meditation. Discursive meditation now becomes virtually impossible. St. John says that if all three of these signs are present, then we are probably beginning the night of sense.....
The purpose behind each of these three trials is to help us see that at the heart of our various emotional programs for happiness lies selfishness. --Murdach O Madigain, Centering Prayer and the Healing of the Unconscious

The Dark Night of the Sense is a purification. We are stripped of the pleasures and satisfactions that have accompanied our spiritual practices - prayer, meditation, 12th Step work. This is when we can move beyond the values of our false selves, constructed through our confusing happiness with the gratification of the instincts of the child for security, power/control, affection/esteem and move to a new spiritual level. The false self promises happiness but leads us to a necessarily unfulfilled life. However unsatisfying the false self is, though, when we begin to break through it we are entering the unknown and that is scary.

No AA relapses for the fun of it. The victims of the 12 Year Itch go out because they feel their spiritual program has stopped working. Prayer and meditation are dry, meetings become uninteresting or even annoying and in response the alcoholic usually dismantles their program piece by piece or occasionally throws everything out the window in one alcoholically dramatic swoop. This is a major stage in the spiritual journey and one that our literature doesn't really deal with. How could it? The Big Book was written by a bunch of guys who were still on pink clouds. The 12 + 12 was written by Bill when he was in the middle of a 10 year depression. As a result very few of us -- generally those with really great sponsors -- are prepared for this crisis. To deal with this we have to rely on our collective experience and on the great spiritual traditions.

Heard at a meeting and random thoughts

2010-11-26T07:23:00.000-05:00

I am most dangerous when I am right.

It's hard to be here now when you're spending all your energy pretending you weren't there then.

"Call it by whatever name you like, that which gives one the greatest solace in the midst of the severest fire is God". - Mahatma Gandhi

Oh, that needy ego

2010-11-21T10:03:00.000-05:00

In my last post I wrote about Thomas Keating's teachings on the false self, that bundle of high roads to happiness consisting of gratifying the instincts ingrained in us as children for security, power/control, affection/esteem, and approval. I am not a psychologist, so I can take no position on the scientific accuracy of this description of the ego, but I am an alcoholic and I can certainly assert that, for me at least, it is very useful.

One of the things I find most useful about this description of the false self is how every time I look at it it deepens. When I look, for example, at my need for security I think of money. Now, that makes some sense, since I am unemployed and have none, but I was shocked recently to read the following:

For example, the need for security can be expressed materialistically in an overwhelming focus on possessions, emotionally in over-attachment to people, intellectually in the need always to be right, socially in the desire for status, religiously in a legalistic attitude, and even spiritually in an attachment to spiritual consolation. This is all to the detriment of true human freedom. (David Frenette, Three Contemplative Waves)

Whoof! Here I had been struggling to avoid all the little obsessions and projects my false self was building around money and possessions and I was ignoring all those other forms of Avarice that my ego had been offering as sure-fire get-happy-quick schemes.

As always, there is a lot of work to do, a lot of grace to acknowledge.

I am not my ego but my ego thinks it's me

2010-11-21T09:44:00.006-05:00

One of the gifts of the 11th Step is a gradual (at least for me) realization that I am not my thoughts, emotions, character defects, character assets, in short, all those things that constitutes what I normally refer to as my self.

This bundle of naughty and nice makes up what Thomas Keating calls the 'false self', constructed through our confusing happiness with the gratification of the instincts of the child: security, power/control, affection/esteem, and approval. The false self promises happiness but leads us to a necessarily unfulfilled life, in my case one where I was constantly slightly pissed off at the world and every bit as fun to be around as that implies. But meditation shows me, in a very real, direct way, that while I have these characteristics they are not what I am.

Seeing and feeling that is an essential step toward dealing with those aspects of my character. In some cases I would like to eliminate them, just surgically cut them out of myself and throw them away. However, I'm not sure that is really possible. My false self is there, it is a part of me just as my true self, the self that seeks to unite in love with all that is, is also a part of me. I don't think I can or should even try to kill my false self. I think the best I can do is refuse to engage in the various projects my false self builds for me. I like to think of this as laughing at my false self, which is a fun notion since my false self does not want me to laugh, and dancing with my false self, which is also fun because my false self definitely does not want me to dance.

Dealing with the false self in this way moves me from the 11th Step into to 12th. I cannot laugh at or dance with my false self in theory, in my head. The spiritual life is not a theory, we have to live it. And in living it, in recognizing yet refusing to engage in my false self's projects, I am carrying the message and I am contributing to the world. Keating makes the point that societies which are made up of a bunch of false selves are not going to do too well. So, he suggests, the most radical gift we can give to society is to be intentional about not contributing to the messiness of the world by adding our own false-self projects to it. And, he says, if enough people do this then society will be transformed.

I can't really think in terms of transforming society. That is very much one of my false self's projects. However, I can try to laugh, dance, limit the damage I do and perhaps spread a little joy. That would be nice.

Heard at a meeting and random thoughts

2010-11-19T07:26:00.001-05:00

The difference between feeling grateful and being grateful is action.

What you are afraid to do is a good indicator of what you should do next.

A closed mouth gathers no feet.

Spiritual is not the same as non-material

2010-11-17T07:16:00.002-05:00

I think that a lot of the time when we talk about spirituality we are going off in a dangerous direction. When we think or speak about the spiritual we tend to think in terms of the mind: reason, imagination, art, ideas. We picture the ideal 'spiritual' person as someone absorbed in meditation, prayer, and 'spiritual' reading. The more 'spiritual' a person is, the less concerned they are with the tawdry material world. Spirit and body are split apart. One is pure, the other at least a bit sordid.

This dualism, splitting spirit and body into separate, mutually exclusive realms, is misguided and, in fact, counter to a true, living spirituality. Any 'spirituality' that separates body from spirit, that seeks to lead humanity away from 'worldly interests' moves us away from charity, and charity, love, is what fundamentally defines spirit. We talk a lot about how a life devoted to purely material ends is empty and leads to misery. We don't talk so much about the fact that a disembodied 'spirituality', just sitting around in the clouds thinking about deep, spiritual things, is sterile, narcissistic and also leads to misery. To be real love must be embodied in our mundane day to day activities. Love is expressed and made real much less in gloppy gazes and sweet murmerings than it is in doing the dishes for your lover. A meal shared with friends can and should be a true spiritual experience.

Spirit and matter are not separate worlds that somehow manage to coexist. They are the organic, intertwined whole that constitutes reality. The meaning of acts comes from the spirit embodied in them; the effectiveness of the spirit comes from its incarnation in acts. In order to live a 'spiritual life', one that is 'not a theory', we have to learn to see the spiritual embodied in the things and acts around us.

True spirituality sees the sacred in the profane, the everyday. Certainly an AA meeting is a sacred event. What could be more sacred than wounded people coming together to tolerate each other, grow to love each other, share their experience, strength and hope to heal each other and reach out to help others? How often do we really see it that way?

Evagrius, one of the Desert Fathers, said that virtue is ultimately a single whole in which the beauty and variety of all the 'virtues' are encompassed. When we locate the spiritual life completely in the mind we inevitably fracture our spirituality. It is no longer a living organism, an essential aspect of the person. The virtues become separate tasks to be ticked off on a checklist. Today I'll master fortitude, tomorrow temperance, Friday I think I'll become charitable. The unity of virtue as a quality of the whole person has been shredded and spiritual growth gets knocked off balance and can go off in strange directions. Maybe this is how a banker can sign mortgages he knows will create misery and still consider himself a good, moral person. True spirituality, incarnated in the person, does not allow for compartmentalization.

A disembodied spirituality, one that treats the spiritual life as an intellectual activity, can lead a person to think that adhering to certain doctrines, following certain precise practices makes one spiritual. 'Spirituality' becomes conformity to rules. Sound familiar? There are several trends in AA that, in attempting to struggle against a loosey-goosey 'just go to meetings and complain' strain in AA have turned the Big Book into a cookbook. Do the steps in this precise way with these people and your spirituality will flourish. A 'Spirituality' that boils down to an arid adherence to a fixed methodology is ultimately barren and joyless.

All of life should be a prayer, a meditation. A Shaker elder once said that "there is as much worship in good workmanship, done in the right spirit, as in any other act; the spirit of the thing done and not the act itself is the key to tell whether any thing done be worship or not." The other side of that coin is the (too seldom heard) AA saying that 'if it's not practical, it's not spiritual.'

Which image?

2010-11-15T07:51:00.000-05:00

I recently had a conversation with a friend about her search for a new sponsor. She specified the type of person she is looking for and we started to run through the women at our home group looking for a good candidate. After a while I noticed that all the women we were talking about had programs that were strong in the same areas as my friend's program: very intellectual, a very open approach to the literature, a sensitivity to the historical circumstances in which the program originated, etc. After a while I suggested we look in the opposite direction, at women who were strong where my friend was weak: those with a very strong background in the Big Book, those with a relatively strict approach to the Steps, and so on.

I think the 'look to your weaknesses' approach has some real value. If we build on our strengths and on our view of where we should go and what we should be we are making ourselves in our image, not God's. It makes me think of the story of the Tower of Babel. If we single-mindedly build our way to heaven it is bound to end badly.

Heard at a meeting and random thoughts

2010-11-12T08:18:00.000-05:00

Resentment is about not getting my way in the past.
Anger is about not getting my way today.
Fear is about not getting my way tomorrow.

Meetings are good; the 11th Step is essential

2010-11-11T15:54:00.001-05:00

Last night an AA I recently met told me that he tried to stop drinking for 23 years. All that time he came to AA meetings and followed the advice he kept getting: "Just don't drink and come to meetings." He kept pointing out to people that this wasn't exactly working for him and the reply was pretty much always "keep coming back." Finally someone suggested that he try working the Steps. For 23 years the only tool he was offered was meetings. Using the Steps he has now been sober for 5 years.

This story is extreme but I find it perfectly believable. We tend to be hooked on meetings. Try this experiment: what would you say to someone who asked you to describe AA? Odds are you would talk about meetings. I know 9 times out of 10 I would.
Now, don't get me wrong. Meetings are great. I attend 6 - 8 a week and they are a tremendous help but they are not the backbone of my recovery. The Steps are. At this point in my recovery that means 10, 11, and 12 on a daily basis and 11 is the key. It is the love I access through the 11th Step that changes the meaning of what I do in my life, making true 12th Step work possible. Without Step 11, what 12th Step work I do would be about me, my desire to gain admiration and to feel good about myself. As St. Paul said, "Though I should give away to the poor all that I possess, and even give up my body to be burned -- if I am without love, it will do me no good whatever" (I Cor 13:3). If my 12th Step work -- and all of my actions in the world should ultimately be 12th Step work -- is to be effective it must be shaped by the perspective and energy I receive through contact with my Higher Power in Step 11.
'Just don't drink and go to meetings' doesn't cut it. As the saying goes, AA is not for those who need it; it is not even for those who want it; AA is for those who DO it. And 'doing it' means first and foremost the Steps.

Feelings are not facts (or even character defects)

2010-11-08T16:27:00.001-05:00

As I have mentioned so many times, I am unemployed and it gets to me in varying degrees at various times. I frequently let the feeling of depression overwhelm me and actually cripple me, keeping me from doing anything serious about the problem. The fact is that I always focus on the unemployment itself or maybe the feeling of depression, but I have a lot of trouble looking at the real source: my ingrained belief that the path to happiness goes through economic security, respect or admiration from others, and power to run my own life.
All of these are illusions. As for economic security, over the last few years we've all seen what a mirage that is. Yet I want a steady job, as opposed to some kind of temp or contract work, because I know I would relish the illusion of security a job gives. Admiration from others? Well, the most perverse part of that is that I desire admiration whether I respect the people or not. Of what benefit is getting admiration from someone whose values you despise? But I want it. And any AA knows what an illusion power is.
Once again the 11th Step is at the center of things. I firmly believe that it is through the 11th Step that I have made what progress I have in breaking free from these false paths to happiness and that it is persisting in 11th Step work that I will finally truly realize that turning my will and my life over to my Higher Power is what I need to do (and not just decide to do). It just doesn't feel that way right now.

The dangers of sponsorship

2010-11-08T11:40:00.003-05:00

Over the last 6 months or so a friend and I have grown into a 'co-sponsorship' relationship. He had decided to go through the Steps again and wanted a fresh perspective on them and I need someone to slap me around a little when I let unemployment get me depressed. It's funny, because we both have sponsors, but this sort of arrangement on these particular issues just seems to work.
This morning I sent my friend some comments on his working of the 3rd Step and it got me thinking about just how careful we have to be when sponsoring.
It goes without saying that the sponsor can only guide or comment based on his understanding of the program and his spiritual state. The obvious risk is imposing the sponsor's spiritual path on the sponsee. I don't think it's enough to say 'just strictly follow the guidelines in the Big Book and 12 and 12'. First of all, the Big Book leaves a lot of room for interpretation. A quick look at the differences between the various 12 Step guidebooks or listening to a sampling of AA recordings will convince one of that. Nevertheless, attempting to follow the BB as strictly as possible is appropriate for a first time through the Steps and is often the correct approach for a 'refresher course.' However, as one advances on his or her spiritual path, 'customization' can become appropriate, precisely because it is his or her spiritual path and not some generic highway. Concretely, in my comments on my friend's 3rd Step I suggested focusing on applying the results of his 3rd when doing his 4th. In defining his Higher Power(s) he has determined values he wants to turn his intentions (will) and actions (life) over to. Following the comments on page 68 of the BB I'm asking if he wants to evaluate his resentments, fears, etc in light of those values, focusing on evaluating how well or poorly he has allowed himself to be guided by his Higher Power. This is not something I would try on a newcomer, but something I think could be appropriate for this long-sober guy.
Now, of course, this suggestion is based on my understanding of the Steps and on my experiences on the spiritual path of AA. That's what scares the crap out of me. It reinforces my conviction that sponsor and sponsee must view themselves more as fellow pilgrims on the path rather than as master and apprentice. The sponsor must carefully listen to the sponsee and the sponsee must push back and test the sponsor's mettle.

Welcome Prayer

2010-11-05T08:30:00.004-04:00

I ran across this prayer this week. I've been having a rough week and finding this is a gift I would like to share.

Welcome, welcome, welcome.
I welcome everything that comes to me in this moment
because I know it is for my healing.
I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions,
persons, situations and conditions.
I let go of my desire for security.
I let go of my desire for approval.
I let go of my desire for control.
I let go of my desire to change any situation, condition, person, or myself.
I open to the love and presence of God
and the healing action and grace within.
––– Mary Mrozowski

Music and The Spiritual Experience

2010-10-30T09:27:00.001-04:00

Once upon a time I was a Grateful Dead fan. OK, scratch that… I was, and still am, a huge Deadhead. For most of my life I was following this group around the country, going from place to place, seeing America… if America were limited to a concert arena because that's all I really saw back then.

So the other day I was driving in to work and listening to the Dead and cranking the volume. I was cruising and singing at the top of my lungs, having a fantastic morning. Suddenly it it hit me, as epiphanies are wanton to do, that the way I have felt about the Grateful Dead's music and specifically what it does to me, is a spiritual experience. Moreover I experience their music spiritually and it has been instrumental in helping me overcome drinking…. just like Appendix 2 says it should.

Right now I can hear people screaming "BLASPHEMY!" Relax, because what I am about to explain is no more blasphemous than telling people that they can have their own conception of God.

We are encouraged to seek a relationship with a Power Greater Than Ourselves through prayer and meditation, right? We are even open to the many different types of meditation. We encourage members to seek God, to try different things on and see if they fit. We tell people to take walks in the woods to commune with nature. We suggest they check out different churches. We tell them about different books to read. We quote song lyrics. And of course we listen to music.

There are many types of spiritual music. Music that has been dubbed by the establishment as spiritual can be found in the spiritual section of your local CD store. There are hymns and compositions played in and out of churches around the world. Then there is our every day music. Composed by everyday people, about everyday experiences. Why is this any less spiritual?

An artist writes music out of need to write and out of their daily experience. To watch an artist play at times, you can see the pure ecstasy on their face. And watch a true virtuoso, head back, eyes closed, fingers moving on their own accord… is to watch someone being lead by spirit.

What about the listener? Is their experience any less transcendent? Ask anyone what their favorite song is, and why. Then watch their face light up as their tell you about it. Ask anyone sitting in their driveway, listening to the end of a song why they don't just shut it off before they go in the house and you will find a litany of reasons, all of which relate to them not wanting to break a connection it had made with their spirit.

For years I listened to the Dead, and for years I drank. And for years the two went hand in hand. Then one day (many years before I got sober) I decided that going to the concerts drunk was not worth it. I lost something when I was drunk. I couldn't remember the show the next day, I went pee a lot.

But here was the big reason: For years I drank and used drugs at concerts to get "out there". I wanted to have the big psychedelic experience, and drugs were supposed to help me there. But the thing is, somewhere along the line I was able to let the music take me there, and the drugs started to get in the way. Then one day, I realized I wanted to go "there" more than I wanted to be high or drunk. In fact I needed to go "there" in order to feel whole again. I stopped drinking at concerts originally so I could experience the spiritual. Am I alone in this?

Pete Townsend of The Who once said "When I am onstage, I feel this incredible, almost spiritual experience. Those great rock 'n roll experiences are getting harder and harder to come by, because they have to transcend a lot of drug-induced stupor. But when they occur, they are sacred."

The Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia said: "When we get onstage, we really want to be transformed from ordinary players to extraordinary ones, like forces of a larger consciousness. So maybe it's that seat-of-the-pants shamanism that keeps the audience coming back and that keeps it fascinating for us too."

And so, on the way to work the other day I realized that when I am in a bad space, having a bad day, or I am depressed angry or confused, the Big Book tells me I need to have "a profound alteration in my reaction to life; and that such a change could hardly have been brought about by myself alone." And it tells me this in the Second Appendix, the Appendix on The Spiritual Experience. I realized can turn to the music that already has a direct connection of my soul. I can use this as yet another form of meditation to help make the connection to a spiritual life that I need to change how I am reacting to the world. It's the soundtrack to the design for living that works in the rough going.

The 12 Year Itch and the Dark Night of the Soul

2010-10-28T13:54:00.002-04:00

Last Monday I gave a friend his 1 Year medallion. He had been 2 months short of 10 years when he drank for 2 weeks. In the months leading up to his relapse he did everything he could think of: he attended meetings daily, he spoke with his sponsor and warned of his increasingly dangerous condition, he prayed more and more desperately -- yet he relapsed.

As he described his feelings and behavior in those last few months before his relapse I was intrigued by the fact that what he was saying sounded exactly like classic descriptions of The Dark Night of the Soul, that stage in the spiritual path when one feels alone, abandoned, hopeless, with nothing working as it once did.

This is very close to the Darkness Visible that William Styron describes in his memoir of deep depression and that is how it is usually diagnosed and treated today. I am not denying that depression is real, has a chemical basis, and that drugs can help. I've been there myself. But for someone on a spiritual path such as the 12 Steps, there is often more at play. The Dark Night is a known stage of the spiritual path that has been described repeatedly across centuries and across cultures.

Yet we in the Fellowship seldom discuss it. I have come to call it the 12 Year Itch, since I've repeatedly seen it hit somewhere around 10 - 12 years of sobriety. The fact that we don't discuss it is not so surprising when we look at our 2 'canonical' texts: The Big Book, written when Bill, the main author and the most senior member of the Fellowship, had only 4 - 5 years, and the 12 + 12, written exclusively by Bill when he was in the depths of what would be a 12 year depression. In neither case was there anyone directly involved in the writing who had been through this very difficult part of the path. Bill's spiritual advisor, Ed Dowling, was certainly aware of the issue but as I remember their correspondence he didn't push it very hard. The result is that when someone with double-digit sobriety talks about a spiritual crisis the answer in all the meetings I've attended is along the lines of 'keep coming', 'pray', 'turn it over', and the ever helpful 'just don't drink.'

Here is where I hit an interesting quandary. Our basis in the Big Book and, to a slightly lesser degree the 12 + 12, is the foundation of our unity. Yet there is a wealth of wisdom literature from many traditions over thousands of years that address issues in spirituality that our literature touches just as little as that wisdom literature touches alcoholism. How do we bring the benefits of these wisdom traditions into our discussions in a way that will not threaten our unity? As far as I can tell these are not really 'outside issues' in the sense of the 10th Tradition - in fact they are central to our spirituality - but the various ways they are addressed in different religions and traditions are potentially divisive nonetheless. As so often happens, I'm confused.

11th Step thoughts

2010-10-25T16:54:00.003-04:00

Dave's posting on the Third Step and the Noble Eight Fold path has gotten me to thinking about the role of the 11th Step in the spiritual path of AA. The connection is simple: when I think of Buddhism I think of meditation.
My home group meets at 6 AM and about 5 or 6 months ago we started holding a short meditation session in a separate room 20 minutes before the main meeting. Now, admittedly 5:40 is a bit early, but it is striking that of the 50 - 70 people we get at the 6 AM meeting only 3 - 5 usually show up for the meditation. I don't think we've ever had more than 7. That strikes me as a pretty low figure.

Bill W. was in a depression for 12 years that only broke when he realized his excessive dependence on the approval of other people. It seems to me that dependence on others' approval is precisely the kind of false quest for happiness that the Steps, and especially the 11 Step, are meant to expose and hand over to our Higher Power. Yet when I hear people talk about the 11th Step it is generally in reference to prayer. My impression is that relatively few of us are meditating on a regular basis and I wonder about the effect this has on our programs.

Another indication: I'm pretty sure I have never heard of a meeting or a sponsor giving the kind of detailed attention to the 11th Step that is virtually always given to the 4th (and yes, I am including discussions of the chapter in the 12 + 12 on the 11th Step).

In Divine Therapy and Addiction Thomas Keating refers to "a merely external working of the Twelve Steps" possibly leaving us looking for happiness in the wrong places - like approval, security, and power. Perhaps more attention to the 11th Step, on its own and in relation to Steps 6, 7, and 10, is called for as a means of avoiding skimming through the Steps.

The Third Step and the Noble Eightfold Path

2010-10-23T20:26:00.005-04:00

Tonight I went to church with my family to attend a mass being said for my wife's grandmother. While there I found myself meditating on the Third Step, partially to give my mind a spiritual purpose while in church, and partially because Brian and I have been working on this Step together and it's where I am at right now.

Breaking down this Step, I found myself taking each term and reflecting on what it means to me.
First and foremost was that this Step was simply a decision, nothing more, nothing less. That's not to say it's not a formidable decision, because it is. It scares the crap out of a lot of new AA's. But in the end, it is only a decision. A decision that only really carries the weight of the actions that accompany it in the following Steps.

Next is that it asks of us to turn over our "will". I sat in the pew and reflected on what this word means to me, and one word simply presented itself to me: "intention". I am to try to turn my "intentions" over. As I thought about this it suddenly struck me that this Step is clearly defined along the Noble Eightfold Path, with Right Intention.

With that in mind my thoughts naturally flowed in to the fact that this Step also asks us to turn over our "life". To me turning over my life to the care of something is another way of saying that I am really supposed to try to live in the moment. I am to allow Right Intention to guide me in to have Right Speech and Right Action in all of my daily activities, at home and work. This is what will lead me to Right Livelihood, not my own selfish plans. In other words, I am responsible for the footwork, the results are up to something else.

Finally, I see that this Step also tells me I am turning these things over "to the care of". In other words, I am only to trust whatever it is I turning these things over to. I am not actually turning anything over, just asking for these things to be cared for. It is all about trust. If I don't trust whatever this Power is to restore me to sanity, how could I possibly be willing to trust it with these deeper of facets my life? No, I think that it would be pretty hard to conceive this part of Step 3 without having cleared up this matter in Step 2.

For me a major part of my concept of a higher power is The Steps themselves. I have no doubt that doing these Steps will help me live a better life. Partially because I have been doing them in various forms for years now, but also because I know countless other people who have done them and gone on to live a better life, without drinking.

Now I see I have to trust that the remaining Steps will help lead me in to live with Right View, Right Intention, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort, Right Mindfulness, Right Concentration. Call it what you want, but these things are powerful, and they are greater than me.

Do the next right thing?

2010-10-21T13:40:00.002-04:00

In the last couple of days I've had three conversations with AAers about the slogan "Do the next right thing". I can take a hint - it looks like I should post something about it.

This slogan is, if I understand it correctly, aimed at making sure that we act rather than just passively await events and that we think about what we do. Fine. However, I do have two quibbles.

First, I think the slogan is unrealistic. We don't do the next right thing; we do the next thing that looks right to us at the time. That sounds like a small distinction, but I don't think it is. We have to allow for the fact that no matter how carefully we think things through, no matter how many people we talk with, we will always get it partially right and partially wrong. We then try to build on what's right and correct what's wrong by - you guessed it - doing the next thing that looks right to us at the time. We have no straight path to perfection. We have a zig zag path to doing better.

Second, at least for me trying to do the next right thing is a formula for paralysis. I can easily freeze myself into complete immobility by endlessly pondering what the absolutely right thing is. For me, at least, a better slogan would be "Do what looks good and then build on progress and fix the damage."

Some thoughts on religion and spirituality

2010-10-15T12:41:00.001-04:00

From my very first days in the program I have been aware that there is a difference between religion and spirituality. I accepted the slogan that says that "religion is for those who are afraid of going to hell; spirituality is for those who have been there." I pretty much thought of religion as organized and ritualized spirituality. I certainly saw it as essentially dogmatic and restrictive. This was certainly colored by my having been raised Catholic in the time when Catholic kids were supposed to go to Catholic schools and never associate with Protestants, doubtless for fear of some form of contamination. While I never actually thought of it in these terms, I think I viewed spirituality as dancing about like a kid at Woodstock and religion as that kid in a straight jacket and tied to a chair. Hey, I never said it was a rational or fair view of things, just that it was mine.

However, my morning spiritual reading today included Thomas Keating's Divine Therapy and Addiction, Centering Prayer and the Twelve Steps. I have long been a fan of Keating's, a Trappist monk who is one of the founders of Centering Prayer, a program for teaching the Christian contemplative practice found in texts like the 14th century The Cloud of Unknowing.
Keating presents religion as one of many paths to spirituality. He begins with a very useful distinction between faith and belief systems:

A distinction might be helpful at this point between faith and belief systems. Faith is a surrender to the Higher
Power before it is broken down into particular belief systems. People with belief systems also have faith, but it is expressed through the particular tenets or cultural backgrounds from which these people interpret their experience of God. Basically, faith is an experience of God that calls for a response of trust and self-surrender. It is not an image or concept of God in whatever form that might take in one's particular religion. Faith is prior to any belief system.

He goes on later to say:
God is present in everything that is happening and draws people not only through religion, but through nature, art, spiritual friendship, generous service of others, science and the search for the unknown, especially in such disciplines as physics, astronomy, and biology. Some people have been so turned off by religion that they will never go to God through ritual. That does not mean they are excluded from a healthy dependence on the Higher Power that leads to freedom, since God may be drawing them through another attraction or path.
I love this concept of religion as one path to spirituality. It seems to clarify a lot for me and it certainly makes me more tolerant of organized religion.

Some thoughts on the concept of a Higher Power

2010-10-14T16:21:00.002-04:00

The following are some 'thoughts in progress' on the question of a Higher Power. They are not fully developed by any means. In fact, they are not even completely consistent. But they represent a direction my thoughts are going these days and as such I would love to hear people's reactions.

A friend and I have been sponsoring each other for a while and right now we are working on his Third Step. After going through the Second Step with him and preparing for the Third, I started thinking about the question of Higher Power in general. We all know that Bill, Bob, and the rest of the early members of AA came out of a culture that really only knew one type of spirituality: the theistic tradition of the Abrahamic religions. In these religions, which of course include the Christian spirituality AA grew out of, the answer to the questions "What is the foundation of and force guiding reality?" and "How do I learn what to do?" are the same: God. Reading We Agnostics, I think it is clear that the Big Book follows this tradition and merges a metaphysical question about the origin and guiding power of reality with an ethical question about how we should lead our lives. I get a very strong feeling from the Big Book and the 12 + 12 that the alternative Higher Powers mentioned, like the AA group, are viewed as temporary stopping places on the way to Abrahamic theism, which is considered synonymous with a fully developed spirituality.

However, if I get it right, in some non-Abrahamic spiritual paths, such as Buddhism, the metaphysical and the ethical questions are relatively independent, which is why the Dalai Lama can say that Buddhism is non-theistic in the sense that the question of God is irrelevant. What matters is the ethical question of how we should live. Buddhists make statements about reality (the 4 Noble Truths and the law of karma, for example) but I think the Western obsession with the question of why there is something rather than nothing is viewed as a bit silly. There is something, now let's deal with it.

I know I was stuck for years in the idea that my Higher Power should be a personal God and if it was not going to be a personality it had to be a force of some kind. No matter what, it had to be a Supreme Being and I struggled with finding one I could sincerely acknowledge. But why does it have to be a Supreme Being? Why not make the 12 Steps, my spiritual path, my Higher Power? I try to guide my will (my intentions) and my life (my actions) by the Steps. They are what I turn to in crisis. Prayer in this context is a statement of my aspirations, my commitment, my hope... Taking the Steps as my Higher Power meets what I consider the ultimate test: when, at 3 o'clock some morning I awaken to the reality that a serious illness, a financial disaster, or some other catastrophe has occurred, this is something I can turn to. I should mention that when I hear people tell newcomers that they can take a doorknob or a lightbulb as their Higher Power, I cringe because it would take one heck of a doorknob to pass that ultimate test.

Taking the Steps as my Higher Power does not exclude a sense of the sacred, or even the use of the word "God". In fact, I think the path of the 12 Steps clearly demands a sense of the sacred. Personally, when I use the word "God" I am pretty much with Stuart Kauffman who in Reinventing the Sacred says "One view of God is that God is our chosen name for the ceaseless creativity in the natural universe, biosphere, and human cultures."

I hope I will be writing more about this as I think it through.

The Opposites of Joy and Sorrow

2010-09-30T09:25:00.000-04:00

We can experience both joy and sorrow, even at the same time, for joy and sorrow are not opposites. It is not joy and sorrow, but their opposites, that cause damage. The opposite of joy is cynicism and the opposite of sorrow is callousness.

Cynicism is rooted in the assumption that everyone is always in control and therefore everything bad that happens is the result of ill will or incompetence while everything good that happens is the result of someone's self interest.

Callousness is the inability to feel that follows from the fear of losing control.

(I found this today among some notes I've made on Joy. I think it is a variation on a passage from Thomas Merton, but I'm not sure. In any event, I thought it was worth sharing.)

Some 10th Step Questions on Gratitude

2010-09-24T08:43:00.004-04:00

As I mentioned in a recent post, I have some problems with gratitude. Simply put, I take most of the world and my life for granted and I don't spontaneously see the enormous gifts I receive. Now, recognizing the problem and finding a way to address it are two very different things. I looked around for a while and finally found a suggestion that I ask myself three questions at the end of the day as part of my 10th Step daily review:

What have I received today?

What have I given today?

What difficulties have I caused?

Each of these questions is to be answered in detail. So, I went to my home group this morning - clearly a gift. But I have to also be grateful to each member for taking the trouble to come to a 6 AM meeting, to the church for making the space available, to the people who built the church annex we meet in, to the trees that gave the wood for the building, to everyone who contributed to making electricity available so we can see.... It comes to a pretty long list. Of course at a certain point I arbitrarily cut it off, but (I hope) not before I've gotten the point: I've received a lot from a lot of sources.

Then it's on to what I have given. Compared to the first list this one is always shockingly short.

As for what difficulties I have caused, again I have to look at the stuff I spontaneously just ignore. Not signalling before a turn, blocking a supermarket aisle, forgetting a home group member's name, being a few minutes late for an appointment....

The net result of this brief exercise is a daily realization of just how little I give in comparison to what I receive. This leads to two action items: I should try to be conscious of the gifts as they are received rather than only during my evening 10th step review and I should get off my butt and give more.

Try it. It really is an interesting and productive exercise.

Daily Suggestions

2010-09-15T19:34:00.002-04:00

Did you ever wonder why, when faced with our many daily problems, that we don't just take some of the very practical, very easy to use, suggestion that the Big Book makes...

Page 87 - 88: "As we go through the day we pause, when agitated or doubtful, and ask for the right thought or action. We constantly remind ourselves we are no longer running the show, humbly saying to ourselves many times each day "Thy will be done."

The Steps in Later Sobriety

2010-09-12T12:52:00.003-04:00

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, I am troubled by my lack of Gratitude. The simple fact is that all life is a gift and I just have trouble seeing it that way. Having a spiritual problem, I turned to the 12 Steps for help and looking at them with a problem like this in mind got me to thinking. It strikes me that the Steps as outlined in the Big Book are fantastic tools identifying the presence of defects of character but they are less helpful in identifying the lack of character assets. So I can assemble a pretty good list of my resentments, but not of my gratitudes.

This blog was started with a posting by Dave about how sponsorship changes in later sobriety. I'm wondering if a discussion of how the steps might change in later sobriety would be useful.
Clearly, as we recover we continuously go through the steps again and again. We may not be repeating them in order all that often (although retreats and AWOLs are wonderful opportunities to do just that) but we keep going back to various steps, usually as a result of the 10th. But when we return to a Step do we continue to do it the same way again and again? In looking back, I know that I have approached each Step a little differently every time. However, I've always followed the same format and I'm wondering if I should.

Perhaps it sounds a little silly, but after a few times around should we try a 4th Step that begins with an inventory of gratitudes or of people we love? In general, should we look at assets underused rather than defects indulged in? Do I always have to look at how much I resent Mr. Brown for ogling my wife or should I consider how grateful I am to my Home Group and how I can focus more on seeing the gifts they bestow on me? Must I only look at being selfish, dishonest or inconsiderate in my sex life or should I also look at how better to make my wife feel how deeply I love her?

I'm certainly not suggesting that we tell newcomers to 'accent the positive' or something like that. We alkies are very good at seeing how wonderful we are, especially when we are freshly sober. I do think, however, that a change in emphasis might be justified as we recover. I don't think the Steps are meant to be a merry-go-round, endlessly repeated in the same way. I think they are meant to be an upward spiral.

I would very much like to hear opinions on this, since I feel I am clog dancing on sacred ground.

Slothin' around

2010-09-11T07:46:00.002-04:00

As I have mentioned here before, I was laid off at the beginning of this year and, given my age and specialization, that pretty much means the end of my career in textbook publishing. After I got sober 10 years ago I was actually in a similar situation and ended up starting my own business selling fine art photography at art fairs. In 2008 I made some bad business decisions in an unforgiving climate (it's hard to sell people things to put on their walls when they're not sure they're going to have walls). As a result I ended up back in publishing for a few years, ending in this layoff.

Now, the obvious strategies to pursue are either to apply my skills in another industry or start up another business. I've been trying the first but I am in an field (educational technology) that, like all technical fields, is rampant with ageism. That's not a gripe, just a fact I have to deal with. So, why haven't I started some new variation on my previous business, a business that is tremendous fun, uses many of my skills, and actually adds a little beauty to people's lives? My theory has been that I am frozen in my tracks by fear of failure. I still think that is true as far as it goes.

This morning, though, I read a description of the traditional Christian view of the deadly sin of Sloth.
Now, I have always taken Sloth to be pretty self-explanatory. It means being just plain lazy for the joy of laziness. It seems that for classic Christian writers like Aquinas and Cassian, Sloth is not just the desire to kick back and watch something dumb on TV rather than clean the bathroom. For them, the reason we become lazy is a lack of Gratitude, a refusal to recognize and accept the gifts poured on us. When we don't recognize the gifts we have been granted we feel worthless and useless. We are convinced nothing we can do will be of any use anyway, so why bother? In Sloth we are like spoiled kids at Christmas, not satisfied with our presents, refusing play with them, and sitting around sulking and bored.

This description of Sloth brought a shock of recognition. What lies behind fear of failure but a lack of faith and a lack of acknowledgement of the talents and resources I have been given? In other words, my Sloth is an expression of my lack of Gratitude. Boredom, Sloth's favorite playmate, is, in the words of Joseph Tetlow, "the weight of unused abilities." Again, lack of recognition of and Gratitude for what I have been given.
Even workaholism, a malady I have suffered from many times in my career, finds its roots in Sloth. When I am ungrateful for God's gifts and feel worthless I have to somehow prove to myself that I have some value. In our culture the best way to do that is to work your butt off. Ironically, that is Sloth.

It's pretty mind-bending, but I think that the main impediment to my starting a new business is lack of Gratitude. Go figure.

More thoughts on Anonymity

2010-09-11T07:40:00.003-04:00

Anonymity is a funny thing. On the surface it seems like and old fashioned, unnecessary thing; a throwback to a time when there was a stigma on alcoholism (of course now thanks to People magazine and other entertainment-based media outlets, being an alcoholic is not only accepted but encouraged!). But seriously folks...

I personally think anonymity is the most well-known and yet the most consistently misunderstood Tradition we have. Partially because of the climate of secrecy that has been built up in AA as a result of people not understanding it in its full context.

"Steve spoke at the meeting last night."
"Which Steve?"
"Big Book Steve."
"Oh..."

Sure anonymity protects the newcomers when they come in, allowing them to feel safe that their identity as an alcoholic and will be kept confidential. And, as Brian noted, it protects AA as a whole from a possible black eye when someone has a very public relapse in the media and pictures of them passed out cold behind the wheel get plastered across the internet. But anonymity goes much deeper...

How many people's last names do you know in your home group? Dr. Bob himself pointed out that we are not a secret society. We were never meant to be secret from each other. He once said in a public talk that if he were to only introduced himself as Bob S., we would have made it difficult for people who needed his help to contact him, and would have therefore broken the Tradition of Anonymity by being so anonymous that another AA member could not get a hold of him when they needed to.

The Tradition tell us exactly at what level to maintain anonymity: Press, Radio and Film (and electronic media). By not giving our full names, first and last, to another AA member we break this Tradition just as much as the member who gives his full name as an AA member in the media. One person has broken the Tradition above the level of press, radio and film; the other has broken it below that level - Yet the Tradition clearly states we should only maintain anonymity only at the level of press, radio and film, and at no other level.

As a matter of fact the pamphlet Understanding Anonymity (pgs. 10 & 11) states that: "Experience suggests that AA members use last names within the Fellowship, especially for election of group officers and other service jobs." Yes, it actually suggests AA members use their last names within the Fellowship!

I would argue that you would find the exact opposite being intended and taught at most AA meeting these days. The use of last names within the Fellowship is very much the exception, not the rule. I would also argue that by discouraging members to use their last names with each other it adds to the feelings of isolation many members feel, new and old. It also makes the navigation of recovery that much more difficult for newcomers by discouraging them from learning how to develop a needed intimacy with another human being, an essential part of recovery and becoming a whole person again.

Yes, each member should be allowed to choose how much personal information they give out, that's not what I am saying. But it should be clear that it is their personal choice to do so, and not because they aren't allowed to because that's not something you do in AA.

I believe that understanding our Tradition of Anonymity is so core to personal recovery and the future health of AA that I make sure to discuss it with the men I sponsor and my friends in the program. We may have loads of literature, but ideals like Anonymity as passed down person to person by word of mouth and like everything else in AA, by our actions.

Some thoughts on Anonymity

2010-09-09T15:06:00.005-04:00

A recent discussion and some reading in Kevin Griffin's A Burning Desire: Dharma God and the Path of Recovery got me to thinking about Anonymity.

Anonymity is not just about concealment and protection, either of the group or the individual. Protection from exposure of the individual as an alcoholic and protection from opening the fellowship up to negative publicity are certainly important. Few newcomers would feel comfortable coming into the fellowship if they thought it meant publicly declaring they were alcoholics. Admittedly, this worry about exposure very often diminishes or even goes away completely over time. Similarly, protecting AA from the negative publicity of an openly declared member relapsing is also important.

I think the real core of Anonymity as the spiritual foundation of our traditions lies in its link to Humility. When I walk into an AA meeting I am Brian M, with no family name, no profession, no title, no social status, no political or religious affiliation. I have let go of all the 'identifiers' our society puts on us and I have come to a place where I can safely open up (and discover) who I really am, my real place in the world. This search for who and what I am should not end with the 'right sizing' we so often hear about in meetings. I have to admit that I find that phrase pretty troubling. I can't help but hear an implicit comparison in the phrase 'right sized'. It sounds to me like we are looking for our proper size in relation to others, and that is not true humility, although it may be a step toward humility.
Humility is about seeing yourself as you really are, and that is not a function of any comparison. My experience has not been that I am greater or less than what I think I am, but quite simply that I am not really what I think I am.

Humility at its deepest level does not involve properly placing yourself on some scale, it means letting go of any eternally fixed identity, which is the way I spontaneously see myself. The principle of Anonymity includes our learning to see ourselves as continuous works in progress, as a process and not a thing. Spontaneously, I look for a 'real, essential' Brian, a stable, even fundamentally static being I can always count on finding and 'right sizing' on some scale or pecking order. I seek that real, stable personality in all the most toxic places: my job, my possessions and, above all, what I think others think of me -- all measuring rods on which I can peg myself in relation to others. I experience my 'real Brian M' as a stable entity defined by my social (friend, husband, brother, son), political (American, leftist, voter, pro- or anti- whatever), or economic (income, class, job, consumer) roles and labels.

This stable, eternal, externally defined persona is, in fact, what makes pride and vainglory possible. Pride is only possible when you can feel separate from and superior to others, which requires a fixed place on some scale or pecking order. Vainglory, the search for praise and affirmation from others, is only possible when there is something stable to praise. This grasping after a fixed self is clearly trouble. In my case, I have recently seen just how much I identified myself as the job/career that ended with my layoff in January. I was no longer Brian M the Educational Media Professional. I had no job, no socially recognized role, which in our society pretty much means no status, so I ended up feeling I had no identity. It turns out that it isn't removing my character defects that makes me feel like the hole in the doughnut; it's losing my invalid, static identifiers that makes me feel like the hole in the doughnut.

Now, that lack of a stable identity is in fact a good thing. It is the beginning of real Humility, of seeing myself as a continually changing process within the continually changing world. I just managed to experience it as pain because, once again, I was looking in the wrong place for what really counts.

Now, when I label myself as a 'recovering alcoholic', that is helpful, because 'recovering alcoholic' is not a state, it is a process, a direction. But that will have to be the subject of another posting.

Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof

2010-09-06T09:03:00.013-04:00

"Bloom where you are planted"
"Just deal with what's in front of you"
"One day at a time"

Early in sobriety when I heard these sayings I interpreted them as "Live like there is no tomorrow!" which is what I had been doing a along while drinking, so it didn't seem I needed to worry about this one, right?

"Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." If living one day at a time was so simple then why was it important enough to mention it a couple of thousand years ago as one of the base requirements for developing a spiritual life?

I didn't need to worry about it until the first day in early sobriety when the cravings wouldn't stop and I had to hold on to those saying for dear life because I knew if I could just make it to bedtime I would stay sober for another day.
So I finally understood, those sayings meant "If you can go one day without a drink, you'll be ok". It was comforting in its own little way. And yet if being able to stay sober for the rest of my life did it mean sobriety was going to be a daily barrage of "Tough shit, don't drink" battles? Then what the hell did I need AA for? There had to be something more.

There was more of course, there was the Steps. In my first year I went through the Steps to the point that by my one year anniversary I was making my amends list, doing daily meditation, and starting to work with others. The obsession to drink was beginning to leave me. And as my one year anniversary approached I did what my sponsor suggested, I booked myself to speak at a number of meetings to celebrate one year of sobriety.

I spoke at at least three meetings and received a medallion at each one. My friends in the program and out called me and congratulated me on my anniversary. It was an incredible feeling of accomplishment that lasted for as long as it took me to drive home. I was emotionally unstable leading up to the one year mark, and even for a few weeks after. It took a while before I felt like things were back to normal again. I was told it was all completely normal, there was even a name for what I was experiencing; "PMS" or "Pre (or Post) Medallion Syndrome". I was, as they said, "right where I was supposed to be." Right where I was supposed to be, maybe, but as far as I was concerned that kind of upheaval, even if to celebrate my sobriety, kind of sucked if you asked me.

When I approached year two it was even worse. Not only because of the "PMS" and my larger base of friends in recovery to receive accolades from, but also because I had had to get through the previous year without collecting a monthly token to mark my progress with. By the time I had passed the two year mark I was starting to think that maybe I would just avoid celebrating my anniversary from then on. It was clear I did not handle it well. By year three I had a new sponsor and when I told him about my plans to avoid celebrating my anniversary he told me that he understood, but that I was celebrating not myself and my accomplishments but Alcoholics Anonymous. He also reminded me that I was getting a medallion to show others that it could work. When I celebrated with these things in mind I was able to get through the process with less turmoil and a better sense of peace. I still didn't like it, but I could live with it.

After a few years even this seemed wrong to me. I just couldn't reconcile myself with the fact that we spend all year helping the newcomer learn how to live a day at a time, helping them realize that they are powerless over their own drinking and how to surrender and trust their life to care of a higher power. We talk to them about humility and reliance upon God, and then after a year we congratulate them as if they did it all themselves. We make mini speeches about how inspiring they are to us, call then "powers of example" and present them with big shiny tokens to mark a year's efforts... What the hell happened to "keeping it in the day"? It all seemed utterly insane to me. Barbaric and contradictory, and clearly something I still needed to work through.

Then it dawned on me… I never could do it myself. I was never able to stop drinking without AA and I have no doubt that I wouldn't be able to remain sober without it. I never liked being congratulated on staying sober because what I really needed to do was thank everyone who helped me stay sober. My anniversary is the perfect time to reflect on who helped me get where I was and thank them for helping me get there. Somewhere around eight or nine years I did just that. I woke up on my anniversary and started making phone calls. I called everyone I could think of in my circle of recovery friends who had helped me that past year and thanked them I also thanked the God of my understanding. It was tough and it was humbling calling all those people. Each time I dialed a number I felt like it was just unnecessary and foolish, like I was just bothering everyone for no reason or going to extremes for no reason. After all, they knew what they meant to me, right?

It's amazing how the ego works. I could find a bunch of reasons why I didn't need to call and thank people, but it was easier to let someone stand up at a meeting and say nice things about me. Some of the most difficult, but most fulfilling phone calls, were to new guys. The ones I had been working with who kept slipping and drinking. Those were really the ones who had been keeping me sober, that's why I worked with others, right? When I thanked them I felt something inside I had rarely felt before, real gratitude and humility (And a little humor. There is something funny about the dead silence on the other end of the phone followed by "Ummm.. you're welcome I guess?!" that goes beyond funny.)

When I started doing this on my anniversary I suddenly was able to connect with the real weight of what it takes to keep this alcoholic sober. The people I call when my ass is on fire; The new guys I sponsor and help who slip and try to hide in their shame; The unwavering members I can count on to be at my home group no matter what; The God I can turn to day or night that didn't exist when I first came to AA. But the best thing to come out of this was the true feeling that this was was finally "just another day", only different in that it is a day that helps me reflect on how much work it is for someone like me to live in the present when it goes against my nature. I had finally managed to learn how "live in the day" and to treat a year like a day. When I did that I began to move away from turmoil and in to peace, which is what I had been looking for all along. And for me it took for more action. Someone said it more easily, long before me: "Faith without works is dead."

Happiness and Joy

2010-08-30T08:14:00.002-04:00

We talk a lot in meetings about both happiness and joy, but we often fail to distinguish the two. I hear a lot of people telling their stories saying things like "I could never be happy but now, in AA, I am." I can understand not being able to experience much, if any happiness while drinking, especially in the later stages of alcoholism. But being happy, while certainly not a bad thing, is not the point. Happiness is bestowed by the world and like other things bestowed by the world (power, wealth, popularity...) it is transitory. Circumstances can give it and circumstances can take it away.

Joy is different. Joy is not a momentary rush, like happiness, but is an underlying bass line to your life. Joy is a gift of the spirit and a measure of spiritual growth. It is the product of humility leading to love. It is the experience, the knowledge (not just the transitory feeling) that we are a part of something much greater. As long as we maintain our spiritual health it is with us. Like any other gift, we can squander it -- and damage our spiritual health -- but once attained it is ours to throw away. The world can't touch it.
We often say the feelings are not facts, and that is certainly true. Happiness is a feeling; joy is a fact.

Acceptance and Love

2010-08-29T09:29:00.002-04:00

I'm reading Kevin Griffin's A Burning Desire: Dharma God and the Path of Recovery. He refers to acceptance as nonresistance to truth, and as such an aspect of love.
Now, let's get clear from the start: acceptance is not approval.
Acceptance is simply the recognition and openness to reality as it is. I guess ultimately it's being here now. One has to accept, recognize, acknowledge reality before one can act on it. I accept that there is racism, poverty, exploitation, cruelty, injustice -- I don't approve of any of them but I can't do even my tiny bit to combat them if I don't accept that they are there.
OK, acceptance is not approval, but is it love? This is one of those concepts I can only wrap my head around by thinking of the opposite. The opposites of love include anger, hatred, indifference, pride, envy - all that good stuff. It's not hard to see how all of them block my openness to reality as it is. When I succumb to vainglory or pride (two of my favorite character defects) I cut myself off from the world and especially the people in it by living in a dream world where I am very, very important. That blocks me from love.
I'm not sure I am quite ready to say that I see acceptance as part of love, but I can see acceptance, like humility, as being a necessary step on the path to love. And that is very important.
Thanks for the thought, Kevin.

Neither Angel nor Beast

2010-08-28T18:01:00.003-04:00

We who so often demand the truth from others, and call them on their hypocrisy have built layers of distortions (lies) of our true nature – the nature of an active alcoholic. It is in these lies of who we think we are, this mangled self image that our insanity dwells. Simultaneously we are the dictator of our world, victim of every conceivable circumstance, the most worthy of all praise, and the most unworthy of the smallest compliment. Let us not forget our coping skill to deal with this: ‘more’. We come to AA in this state, and it is in this state our “isms” lay; this systemic part of our psyche that demands extremes and cannot cope with the concept of balance. The truth is we come to AA not to get sober but to cope with sobriety and cope with ourselves in a most unnatural state of being sober. For many, if not all of us, were to be without AA, a dry drunk would be around the corner, and I can easily be persuaded that a dry drunk is as bad as a wet one (and sometimes worse). It is in our ‘isms’ that we find this perverse craving for chaos and misery. Our isms demand comfort at the expense of stability and happiness.

Our isms are the fear doubt and insecurity we begin to recognize when we enter AA. Our isms can keep us from entering AA, can keep us from returning to AA, and can provide the next drink. Even the most successfully recovering alcoholic still has their isms waiting in the dark corners of their mind; waiting for an opportunity, any opportunity. They are with us for the rest of our lives, and that is why they call alcoholism chronic.

Our only way out, our only solution is to come to grips with who we are and taking measures that would help deal with the impact of our condition. Our only way out is to break out of our comfort in discomfort and be with people, because this cannot be done alone. The only way out of our insanity is to be with others that are like us who understand. The only way out is to let someone in.

Simple? By definitional yes, but to go from imbalance to balance? Well, simple isn’t the same as easy.

Fellowship

2010-08-24T10:53:00.003-04:00

This morning at my home group we had a discussion about the Fellowship. It was good to be reminded of what a special thing an AA group is. People who have never felt a part of anything feel accepted. People who are afraid of just about everything in life feel safe. People feel comfortable talking about things they would virtually never discuss elsewhere. People know they have somewhere to go for help, that every person in that room wants what is best for them. It's amazing how you can bump into a fellow AA, someone you've maybe had a few chats with, sit down for a cup of coffee and very quickly begin talking about what is really happening in your lives, what you are happy about, what you are afraid of, and all at a level of reality you almost never reach with non-alcoholics.

It is just plain nice.

Why all this 'practical polytheism', gods/Higher Powers vs idols/Lower Powers stuff?

2010-08-24T10:53:00.002-04:00

If you have read any of my recent postings, you've seen that I have been making a lot of use of the idea that people are 'practical polytheists', worshiping multiple gods or Higher Powers and idols or Lower Powers. Among the Higher Powers people worship are God, community, justice, love... and among the Lower Powers/idols one could find money, power, praise, possessions.... Why do I find this approach useful, rather than just sticking with virtues and vices or character assets and character defects?

Let's take Pride as an example. In the classic definition, Pride involves viewing the self as the highest good, all other people as instruments to be used or prey to be exploited, and any God or Higher Power as either irrelevant or nonexistent. The self lives in the center of an imaginary universe. Humility, in contrast, involves viewing oneself as one flawed individual among many, as playing a small role in a universe within which one can act but over which one has no power, and as serving goods much greater than oneself.

So Pride is obviously a vice and Humility is obviously a virtue, right? This is where the gods vs. idols perspective comes in, because it depends on what you worship and what you renounce. Virtues and vices are determined by values. That which brings you closer to what you value is, for you, a virtue; that which moves you away from what you value is, for you, a vice. If we simply accept the Seven Deadly Sins and the Seven Virtues (three theological virtues, Faith, Hope, and Love and four cardinal virtues, Fortitude, Prudence, Temperance, and Justice) as givens, without thinking about why we want to accept them and where we want them to bring us we will fall into a dogmatic and ultimately weak spirituality and recovery.

So, is Pride a vice? Talk to a few Wall Street Bond Traders. Worshipers of Power and Money, two of their greatest gods, they view Pride as one of the highest virtues and Humility as a vice, a fatal weakness. On the other hand, talk to some Trappist monks, for whom money and power are idols. For them Pride is the fundamental vice and Humility one of the greatest virtues.

The goal, that which we worship, separates the virtues from the vices. We must worship and work toward our Higher Powers and renounce our idols.