Daily Reprieve

How would an individual cell in my body concieve of me?  If that individual cell did concieve of me, how would it make contact with me?  How would I hear it?  Could my self-awareness ever expand to recognized the pleading voices of those microscopic universes that swirl daily within my being? Would my day be a thousand years to them?

When we humans interact, when we come to agreement, comune and connect, does our group conscieness constitute another living being?  Is this why military tradition recognizes the American Flag as a living being, and military personnel are willing to sacrifice their lives to protect it?  Is this why, those who come into recovery and cannot connect with a “God of their understanding,”  can find something more powerful than themselves through the group?  Something that goes far beyond “herd instinct?”

Is the concept of God our intuitive recognition that the infinite universe has a self-awareness of its own?  Is it communicating with the swirling galaxies within its Being?  And have we muddled up the pursuit to connect with this Being by the need to control one another?  Have we clothed the infinite one in finite human institutions such as monarchy, submission to a master, human systems of justice…so on and so on, so that we turn human beings into cogs in a machine? 

When I become sick, I take it as a signal from the universe to slow down and look around.  Listen.  Attempt to connect.  Be aware of yourself.  It is about time for me to step back into my interactive reality, now that the fever has passed.  But before I do, I am going to head out to Oak Mountain, and hear the trees and water.  They are powerful messangers to those who slow down enough to listen.  I am going to crawl through this day, listening.

I found this gem in the Magic City Moments and sought permission from the author to publish it here.  I have not been able to get in touch with her, so I went ahead published it since she already has it out there in the public domain.  Ami, wherever you are, I sincerely hope the very best for you:

Hi, I’m Ami
by Ami H.

Hi, I’m Ami.
The smile you see, it really isn’t me.
It’s all a facade – a mask to hide 32 years of misery.
It’s the way I was raised – a way of life
‘Baby girl, hold that head up high.’
Don’t let them know your business and
Never, never let them see you cry.
I learned to run that game way too well
No one ever knowing of my inner hell
Addiction is in my family tree
And boy, do we have a history!
As a child, never staying in one place for very long,
Never having a house we called home.
Having to sleep on strangers’ floors
I wonder what happened to the drug dealer that kicked in the door.
I’m now 16 and I over achieve
Always wanting people to notice and be proud of me.
I have a job and make straight A’s
A couple of colleges already have my name.
No one could believe teenage pregnancy
Leaving high school behind because now I have to work full-time.
I have a little girl all my own and a cute little place to finally call home.
At 21 no time for fun!
I’m going through a divorce and working 80 hours a week.
Taking college classes
Never missing Haylie’s gymnastics and cheerleading practice
Some days forgetting to eat and what is sleep!
My little girl has things that I only dreamed…
…stability and a ‘happy’ mommy
Staying too busy to frown even when my world was crashing down.
It’s the way I was raised – a way of life
‘Baby girl, hold that head up high’
Don’t let them know your business
And never, never let them see you cry
I didn’t show any fear and no tears were shed
When my little brother was on a coke high and put a gun to my head
Or when they found my favorite cousin in a hotel bathtub dead
Not even the night, the other put a shotgun in his mouth and pulled the trigger in his bed
Always being told that it’s just the way our family cards were dealt
No one ever knowing how I truly felt
I’m 26 and have met the man of my dreams…Prince Charming
I didn’t realize he was sick,
Now I am getting my ass kicked
Closing my eyes and praying for death
Because I felt I had nothing left
It is the way I was raised – a way of life
Baby girl, hold that head up high
Don’t let them know your business and
Never, never let them see you cry
I’m 29 – four PIs, three DUIs – all within two years time
Every mug shot I had bruises and black eyes
I still didn’t know I was unhealthy
Always saying ‘I’m nothing like my family’
Convincing myself I wasn’t an addict because alcohol is my D.O.C.
It was only a matter of time before that history caught up with me
Almost three years in treatment and I have kicked and screamed and resisted
But somewhere I picked up that it is okay to feel and I am here for a reason
I realized that I’m tired of running…fighting…hiding.
Despite the way I was raised – I am learning a new way of life
Making amends – paying for past sins
Learning forgiveness and letting go of resentments
Some days I feel the tears will never end,
But I know it’s okay because it is time to heal
It is part of filling my empty soul and mending my broken heart
Now I can hold my head up high
And look at you without guilt or shame in my eyes
I had to tear down the walls – built so strong and tall
I let people in and actually have a couple of true friends
Learning a new way of life is scary
But not nearly as terrifying as dying without living
Today, the smile you see – it’s me
It’s really, really me
Hi, I’m Ami

I put password protection on Endigar 254, because it redirects to another blog that I thought was going to be the next step in My journey.  But it is not turning out that way.  If you want to know the password, just enter the number of the rule that states; “Don’t take yourself so damn seriously.”  It was given to me after I completed my 5th step last year.

Oh, and I got my license back this week!  What a relief.

Source: c.1939, AAWS, Alcoholics Anonymous, “Bill’s Story”, p. 3

“God is either everything, or He is nothing.”

-Bill Wilson

My paraphrase of Bill’s words; The concept of God is either useful in all of my life’s circumstances, or he is useful in none of them.  That concept is either worthy of my absolute trust, or my absolute disregard.  It has the power to positively interact with me, and intuitively guide me, and responds in a way that I would see as love OR God is a persistent delusion socially re-inforced by some form of mortal fear (death, aging, limits in time, space, and resource).

The concept of Zero and the concept of God have much in common.  The usefulness of zero was debated, but finally acknowledged.  A symbol for absolute nothingness, a vacuum of existence, was useful in holding a place in defining the process of counting.  What if God is the symbol humans came up with to acknowledge universal infinity, the complete union of all things, the connection of all conscience, thus a place holder for super-conscienence.

Zero is the human symbol recognizing the significance of the existence of nothing.  Is there a place where absolutely nothing exists?  This could open all kinds of debates and arguments. But the usefulness of accepting zero is undeniable.

The cells in my body are individual living organisms, connected with one another through interdependence.  What concept does one of the individual cells in my body have of me.  I can see it as a separate and whole being.  But I don’t think it can recognize me in the same way.  As individuals join together, and respond to a need for interdependent connection, is another level of conscienceness created?  If my level of consciousness is ground zero, then the cell’s level of consciences is level -1.  And the human group associations I live in is consciousness level 1.

My recovery groups use the power of conscieness level one to overcome a problem I am powerless over in ground zero.  My alcoholism.  But like all journeys, there is the time I leave a place, and then there is a time for arriving at a destination.  As it says in the 9th step promises, before we are halfway through, we are going to know a new . . . destination.

So the steps of recovery point to levels that exceed that level one, and present the possibility of an infinite being that encompasses all levels of conscieness.  How would I ever conceive of such a being?   Step 11 is the continuation of a process begun in Step 3.  I trust that there is something there, that it seems to give a damn about me, and that my attempts to make conscience contact further expand and empower me.

Albert Einstein once said that we can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.