Mr. SponsorPants

To all the addicts in the house

 

To all the addicts in the house

  

 Hey there, and Congratulations!

If you are reading this you are still alive!

That is no small thing for someone with a terminal illness

which is actively trying to kill you.

 

You wake up and there's a bomb in your head, and every day you

do the sober deal you

move the timer back from boom

for another 24 hours.

 

Tricky part is,

this bomb doesn't tick.

It whispers.

 

Be careful what you think about what you think.

It's no tragedy or surprise that you have an alcoholic thought.

My God, you're an alcoholic!  Of course you're going to have alcoholic thoughts!

The tragedy is thinking about the thought and deciding that

it might

be right.

 

The only true ward I've found to guard against the sick whisper in my head

(the fuck it or the you deserve or the why keep on or the it's your turn or the I'll show them)

is

talking about what I'm thinking,

sharing about how I'm feeling and

praying about what I'm doing.

 

Congratulations!  You're still alive.

Now make it count for something

and go help.

Things I learned (or was reminded of) this week. An ongoing series.

 

 

 

Not to get too "fortune cookie" on you, but sometimes the Big Change is... not to change.  To stay rooted, and deepen your practice of where you are and what you're doing.  "Grow where you're planted" is what my dead sponsor (he who's wise counsel I miss every single day) once told me.

 

Sometimes, in an AA meeting, the speaker shows up for the meeting... and sometimes, the meeting shows up for the speaker.  (Again with the fortune cookie sounding stuff!  Sorry!  But it's true.)

 

Drop the rock.  Lighten up.  If you're sober today YOU WIN.  The rest is all gravy, so stop wringing your hands and worrying about what will happen next and how to avoid screwing it all up.  Sometimes you're going to screw it all up!  It's okay.  You learn from it (or you learn from it a couple more screw ups down the road) and you don't pick up the first drink one day at a time.  After all, for me a great freedom was to realize that the Big Book states that working the 12 Steps (and the principles of AA) will "...allow us to meet calamity with serenity..."   It does not say that working the Steps and practicing the principles will allow us to avoid calamity altogether.  Hard times easy times hard times easy times again; and sometimes (often?) I am the author of much of my own hard times.  Roll with it.  We have a "design for living" which gives us the ability to find the gratitude in (almost) any scenario (if we're open and willing to see things differently), and the tools to right things when we make a mess.  Drop the rock and dance around the living room for a little while. Go on.  You'll feel better.

 

Cheers!

5 Quotes on Meditation

 

 

Feelings come and go like clouds in a windy sky. Conscious breathing is my anchor.

-- Thich Nhat Hanh, "Stepping into Freedom: Rules of Monastic Practice for Novices"

 

Work is not always required. There is such a thing as sacred idleness.

-- George MacDonald

 

To understand the immeasurable, the mind must be extraordinarily quiet, still.

-- Jiddu Krishnamurti

 

It is never too late to turn on the light. Your ability to break an unhealthy habit or turn off an old tape doesn't depend on how long it has been running; a shift in perspective doesn't depend on how long you've held on to the old view.

When you flip the switch in that attic, it doesn't matter whether its been dark for ten minutes, ten years or ten decades.

The light still illuminates the room and banishes the murkiness, letting you see the things you couldn't see before.

Its never too late to take a moment to look.

-- Sharon Salzberg, "Real Happiness: The Power of Meditation"

Meditation is not a way of making your mind quiet.
It is a way of entering into the quiet that is already there -
buried under the 50,000 thoughts
the average person thinks every day

-- Deepack Chopra

Things I learned (or was reminded of) this week. An ongoing series.

 

 

 

 

 

AA does not suggest I am kind to the unkind, or honest to people who lie to me, or any variation of "practicing these principles in all our affairs" so that I am a good person, or for any inherently moral reason.  AA makes that suggestion because when I am not soaking my brain in consciousness numbing chemicals I cannot live comfortably in my skin when I indulge in sick or fear-based behaviors.  To put it more simply, my head gets really noisy when I lie and act like an ass to people, even when they (seem to) deserve it.  And then putting energy into not having a noisy head by saying to myself "I don't care" when in fact, I do (and if I didn't I wouldn't have to spend energy convincing myself that I don't) -- is stupid and exhausting and ultimately is harder to live with than just working at being kind and honest to begin with.

 

There is simply no substitute for the "unshakable foundation" that writing, prayer and meditation provide.

 

 

Time sober is not a tool for remaining sober.  The best analogy for that is the realization that I can't build muscle today on last month's weight lifting.  Working out diligently over time will change your body, yes.  But if you stop working out then the results of all you did in the past will likely, eventually fade.  The same is true of the spiritual transformation engendered by maintaining physical sobriety and working the 12 Steps.  The quality of my recovery today is based on what I do today.  Not on what I did last month or twenty years ago.

 

 

For many of us, we instantly believe whatever negative thing anyone says about us is true.

And for many of us, no one says anything half as mean or negative to us as we do to ourselves.

 

 

I cannot think or feel my way into healthy actions.  It is by taking healthy actions that I change for the better how I think and feel.  And so it follows, to develop self esteem one must do self esteeming things.  Ironically, most alcoholics at first believe this means we need to be nicer to ourselves.  The great cosmic punch line is that what it actually means is that we need to be nicer to others.

 

 

It is perfectly okay

 

 

 

 In fact I think we can file doing so under "Relapse Prevention."

 

home again home again jiggity-jig

 

 

Wow!

A wonderful weekend of AA and Alanon speakers, meetings and workshops at the Convention (or Roundup, depending on what part of the country you're in) I was lucky enough to go to this weekend.

Much like a gust of wind to a becalmed sailboat, the Roundup was a true boost to my somewhat flagging spirits.  If you've never been to one I urge you to go.  The speakers generally have a great message, and the workshops provide special focus to things every person in recovery should be mindful of.  This convention was especially warm and charming and full of energy, sobriety and affection, and I am deeply grateful I had the opportunity to attend and participate.

 

Something I thought about on the plane home (and I didn't get patted down by TSA at either end of my journey -- is it wrong to feel slightly rejected by that?):

So often, even in sobriety, it can be negative energy which prompts us to action.  The fear, the resentment, push/pulling us out of our complacency and into forward motion.  It's not for nothing the expression is: "Pain is the touchstone of our spiritual growth."

But sitting on the plane (I can still buckle an airplane seatbelt without doing severe injury to internal organs, so there's that, too!), looking out the little window at the clouds and turning the Convention over in my mind -- savoring the various recollections of a weekend spent with a community of sober alcoholics, addicts and alanons coming together in love and service --  I felt reinvigorated and it really struck me that if we remember to open ourselves to it, the positive energy can be as motivating, as much a call to action as the negative.

So if you'll forgive the brush with grandiosity it is for me to amend a classic quotation (just a brush, Mr. SponsorPants?  My, you are doing better!):

 

Pain is the touchstone of our spiritual growth.  Yes.  But not pain alone.

Love too can call our spirits to rise and flourish and move forward with real purpose on our path;

in short, Love is an equal touchstone to our spiritual growth in recovery.

 

 

And if that sounds like pap, like treacle, to you... well, maybe it is.

Or maybe you're just afraid to believe in good things because it's safer to stay in the comfortable, stagnant, boring land of sarcasm and faux sophistication and hide behind the mask of cooler-than-you.  "Cooler-than-you" is at heart a child's evasion.  You might want to look at that.  There is courage in being willing to embrace a message of positivity and hope.  There is courage in being willing to be mocked or minimized for that -- even if the mocking and minimizing is mostly in your own head. (And could that be your alcoholism talking? Using a pitch-perfect impersonation of the voice-in-your-head which will most intimidate you, to keep you from raising your eyes to the next great place of healing for you to achieve?)

Be brave, and keep the faith in good things.

more than you think

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

don't withhold.

when you do,

that's you,

keeping yourself

small.

 

may have taken the first step to heart, but...

 

 

 

 

 

For my friends new to AA

who may have taken the first step to heart

but still struggle mightily with both self esteem and ego,

remember:

 

 

Just because there is

something wrong with you

doesn't mean that there is

everything wrong with you.

 

 

We are not bad people getting good,

we are sick people getting better.

And better.

And better.

 

 

change your world

 

 

 

 

 We talk about it in various ways, both in meetings and AA literature:  Alcoholism is a disease of perception, the problem for the alcoholic centers in the mind, etc., etc.

The 12 Steps are a process which literally allows us -- via the creation of a "psychic change" or, more commonly, a spiritual experience -- to alter that null-sum equation and re-wire how we think, thus transforming our entire life.  Yes, we become free from alcohol -- but eventually sobriety becomes so much more.  Lived with willingness and depth, a life of sobriety via AA is like a release from prison, or walking away from a wheelchair, or finally breathing free.

 

But to get there, I had to admit (Step alert!) and address the problem.

As is so often the case with me, what I believe the problem to be is not the problem at all.  Ironically, ultimately, the problem was not my drinking.

The problem was my thinking.

And to believe I could solve that problem on my own is believing that I could solve the problem with the problem.

That's... not a good plan.

 

a negative mind