Mr. SponsorPants

Zen Habits - Meditation for Beginners

 

 

 

 

 

 

In my online adventures I've come across the excellent blog, "Zen Habits." Among their recent posts was this meditation guide for beginners. I'm including a link since in its first tips it suggests starting for two minutes a day and doing it first thing in the morning. The philosophies of change through action, and of taking time at the beginning of the day, line up quite well with the Big Book's suggestions for Steps 10 and 11.

 

I highly recommend clicking over and giving it a read. Even if you get only one or two things you can use in your daily routine (though I bet you get more) it's well worth your time.

 

 

Meditation for Beginners: 20 Practical Tips for Understanding the Mind

 

 

 

 

 

will and grace

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"I thought Will was to Grace like Laverne was to Shirley..."

Nope. Wrong will. Wrong grace.

 

I've heard any number of people in meetings share their confusion in sorting out will... usually it's about something like "their will" vs. "God's will." 

Over the years I've certainly gone a few rounds on this question myself.

But the Big Book -- my north star, my road map for living sober -- makes it simple and clear for me:

"...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. We can exercise our will power along this line all we wish. It is the proper use of the will..." (Big Book, Chapter Six, 'Into Action,' pg. 85)

Grace is the unearned gift of relief from my alcoholism -- and ultimately my self obsession -- via a power greater than myself. The proper use of my will, when applied to God's grace, is to harness it -- all of it: my intuition, my thoughts, my experience, my emotion -- and use the gift of my sobriety and this way of life to be of service to others.

Not just in meetings. In every area of my life.

To bring to the world not the sick, spoiled child I can still sometimes be (oh God), nor the drunk (thank God), nor the dry drunk (please God)...  but to bring to the world the sober man -- sobriety for me today being about so much more than physical sobriety.

(Certainly, it all starts there. All else is pointless without physical sobriety. But I aspire to live these principles beyond just putting down the drink -- the irony of course being that living these principles is what helps me not pick up the drink. It may look like a lofty aspiration -- and in one regard, maybe it is -- but it is also how a drunk maintains equilibrium and creates ballast against the pull of self-obsessive thinking -- which is so often at the root of how we justify drinking again.) 

Elsewhere it says, in reference to the 12 Steps, "...what an order! I can't go through with it!" 

Trying to live these principles fully in my life I remember what the Big Book says right after that: "...Do not be discouraged. No one among us has been able to maintain anything like perfect adherence to these principles. We are not saints. The point is, that we are willing to grow along spiritual lines. The principles we have set down are guides to progress. We claim spiritual progress rather than spiritual perfection." (Big Book, Chapter Five, 'How It Works,' pg. 60)

Which translates for me into: 'Willing to grow along spiritual lines' means I will try to do things differently. I will try to do things the way AA suggests, instead of the old, fear-based ways in which I used to behave. Not "I will try to think differently." No. As has been said in many meetings -- and which blew my mind when I first heard it: I can't think my way into different (right) actions, I have to act my way into different (right) thinking.

When I do, I'm a lot less tortured.

In many ways the transformation I experience via divine grace (whatever that phrase means to you) gives me a new will. One through which I experience the real joy of being useful to others.

And as I have said before -- perhaps many times now -- and will likely say again:

This transformation is available for free, to anyone who wants it -- anyone willing -- via the 12 Steps.

 

Perhaps it's not the only way, but it is certainly the way that worked for me. 

 

 

5 Quotes by Jon Kabat-Zinn

 

 

 

 

 

You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf.

 

 

From the perspective of meditation, every state is a special state, every moment a special moment.

 

 

We must be willing to encounter darkness and despair when they come up and face them, over and over again if need be, without running away or numbing ourselves in the thousands of ways we conjure up to avoid the unavoidable.

 

 

Perhaps ultimately, "spiritual" simply means experiencing wholeness and interconnectedness directly, a seeing that individuality and the totality are interwoven, that nothing is separate or extraneous. If you see in this way, then everything becomes spiritual in its deepest sense. 

 

 

Look at other people and ask yourself if you are really seeing them or just your thoughts about them.

 

 

Special Bonus Quote:

TRY: During the day, see if you can detect the bloom of the present moment in every moment, the ordinary ones, the “in-between” ones, even the hard ones. Work at allowing more things to unfold in your life without forcing them to happen and without rejecting the ones that don’t fit your idea of what “should” be happening. See if you can sense the “spaces” through which you might move with no effort in the spirit of Chuang Tzu’s cook. Notice how if you can make some time early in the day for being, with no agenda, it can change the quality of the rest of your day. By affirming first what is primary in your own being, see if you don’t get a mindful jump on the whole day and wind up more capable of sensing, appreciating, and responding to the bloom of each moment.

 

 

 

 

Thomas reminds

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

the difference between identifying and comparing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

at some point

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

iO9's outstanding piece on "How to Meditate"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

iO9 is a compendium blog of science, science fiction, pop culture commentary, and many things either silly, social or serious.

Recently they published a comprehensive, well written piece by George Dvorsky on the what's, why's and how's of mindfulness meditation. It includes several helpful embedded videos (only several minutes each. you have time to view at least one of them) and links.

If you're full of excuses when it comes to meditation I have only this to say:

The 11th Step says "...prayer and meditation..." not "...prayer OR meditation...". If you're giving yourself a pass on meditation you are shortchanging your experience of the 12 Steps -- and thus, of the process which gives us a spiritual awakening -- that which is critical to our ongoing sobriety as time passes.

 

iO9's "How To Meditate (and Get the Most Benefit Out of It)"

 

 

 

WHOOSH

 

 

I said a long prayer last night.

I said "I surrender."

 

I said "I surrender again."

I said, lying in my bed,

in the dark,

to the dark,

because that's what prayer feels like sometimes,

it feels like you're just

talking out loud in the dark

to the dark.

(The first impediment to authentic faith: Mocking the process. I always get my back foot caught trying to clear that hurdle.)

 

I said

"I surrender again. Really. I can't. Here. Take it."

And I began reading from The List In My Head.

 

The List contains all the things that I want

to surrender but

I am afraid to.

The List is like a collection of fears and doubts about

all the stuff

I can't live without

or think I have to have,

that I have to figure out

how to keep or get

"if I only manage well."

 

It doesn't help

or it doesn't matter

that the list is reasonable:

health shelter sustenance the ability to

make my way in the world yet again.

"I surrender. Again."

I want to use The List's very reasonableness as a bargaining chip,

something like,

"Come on, it's not like I'm asking for THIS, I'm just asking for this,

and thus

You should accommodate me."

Apparently that's not how it works because

if it did I would have been

well accommodated

long ago.

 

And also

apparently,

performance art surrender,

the surrender which contains the tiny hidden tumor of

manipulation,

The "Okay, okay, NOW I surrender.

So... since I did... now I get what I'm asking for, yes?"

that doesn't work, either,

apparently.

Because if it did, well,

see above.

 

So I lay there in the dark, and I closed my eyes,

and I paused in my List to let all the

weird purple swirls behind my eyelids

fade away

and then I pictured an altar with a fire.

A pyre.

And I went down the List, and with each item I said

"Take it. Take it." and I fed it to the fire.

 

"I'm afraid I'll lose the apartment, and I'll have to move, or worse, but... Your will be done. Take it. Take it."

and WHOOSH I fed it into the fire.

"The job interview. Even just... the job... Your will be done. Take it. Take it."

WHOOSH I fed it to the fire.

"My bum foot... my health... Your will take it take it."

WHOOSH fed to the fire.

"My relationship. Your will. Take it."

WHOOSH Fire.

The long list of petty and grand fears and hopes and expectations and then

more fears.

"Your will. Your will."

"Okay."

WHOOSH

"Take it."

WHOOSH

WHOOSH

WHOOSH.

 

My spirituality can slide pretty easily into superstition, which is just the frightened part of me trying to find the recipe for how to get God to do what I want. Along with that is the fear that if I surrender something -- truly surrender it -- then the worst possible outcome -- the outcome I fear most -- has now been given cosmic "permission" to manifest.

Which is not just trying to manipulate God, it's trying to play God too.

 

It would be so great to be able to write here,

to share with you,

that after this burning prayer I felt that "great clean wind of a mountain top blowing through and through."

An impact sudden and profound.

But my List is long, (I can be very frightened, sometimes)

and I fell asleep as I offered it,

WHOOSH WHOOSH hush

hush

and dreamed of clean flames and great love and things I won't share here.

 

It was the first good night's sleep in a while.

And I felt a lot better in the morning.

Make of it what you will.

I know what I believe.

 

 

 _________________________________________________________________

 

 There are more writings like this in "Mr. SponsorPants: Adventures in Sobriety and The 12 Steps for AA's and Others."  Available as an eBook via Amazon.

 

drop the rock

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I remember I heard this in my very first year of coming to Alcoholics Anonymous, and a surprised laugh burst out of me when I did.

I felt that giddy combination of unexpected enlightenment and embarrassing identification so common in the beginning of my AA journey. (And in the middle of my journey. And recently, too. I guess it's kind of bullshit to position that experience as something which happens to "new" people and that I've somehow outgrown it. It might not happen a half dozen times a meeting any more, but a half dozen times a month? Absolutely.)

So I identified, and realized that my attitude of entitlement and performance-art-level, self-created drama was at work, and that I did indeed need to "drop the rock."

How?

By realizing that pretty much everything I thought was a burden was actually a blessing.

By substituting the words "get to" for the words "have to" whenever I start dressing up whatever I have to be grateful for in the false widow's weeds of obligation or affliction.

It goes like this:

I have to go to 90 meetings in 90 days.

No, Mr. SponsorPants, you get to go to 90 meetings in 90 days.

I have to go to work today.

No, Mr. SponsorPants, you get to go to work today.

I have to go to the dentist.

No, Mr. SponsorPants, you get to go to the dentist.

 

It's astonishing and a little disgusting how easily -- even today -- I can complain about my privileges.

 

getting my ass kicked