Rest on our laurels

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.

Detachment

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!

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.

Some perspective

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

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.

Spiritual Materialism

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.

Are these extravagant promises? (part of a series)

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.

God's joy, music, and foreclosures

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.

Another side of One Day at a Time

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

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

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.

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

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:

Getting out of the groove

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

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.