Daily Reprieve

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

For most normal folks, drinking means conviviality, companionship and colorful imagination. It means release from care, boredom and worry. It is joyous intimacy with friends and a feeling that life is good.   (Alcoholics Anonymous, page 151)

The longer I chased these elusive feelings with alcohol, the more out of reach they were. However, by applying this passage to my sobriety, I found that it described the magnificent new life made available to me by the A.A. program. “It” truly does “get better” one day at a time. The warmth, the love and the joy so simply expressed in these words grow in breadth and depth each time I read it. Sobriety is a gift that grows with time.

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The lightening bolt effect of drinking used to rocket me to the forced dimension of happiness.  In the beginning the alcohol acted as an oracle, revealing to me the things I would like to have from life.  It silenced my anxieties, enabled me to interact with others confidently, and made me boldly adventurous.  It was a very temporary vision and a carrot on the stick pursuit. When I tried to turn the oracle into a ruler and protector,  a tyrant rose in its place.

The oak tree effect of recovery was a lifestyle change that has begun to turn the vision of old into substance with the experience of serenity, confidence in my interaction with others, and adventures in living.  It takes longer, but it has deep roots.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

If we ask, God will certainly forgive our derelictions. But in no case does He render us white as snow and keep us that way without our cooperation.   (Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions, page 65)

When I prayed, I used to omit a lot of things for which I needed to be forgiven. I thought that if I didn’t mention these things to God, He would never know about them. I did not know that if I had just forgiven myself for some of my past deeds, God would forgive me also. I was always taught to prepare for the journey through life, never realizing until I came to A.A. – when I honestly became willing to be taught forgiveness and forgiving – that life itself is the journey. The journey of life is a very happy one, as long as I am willing to accept change and responsibility.

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Before I entered the 12 Step recovery process, I lived a life of appeasement to God and others.  The prospect of fulfilling the ever changing and increasing expectations that had me surrounded was an act of perpetual futility.  I had to learn to find loopholes and rebuttals to delay the inevitable condemnation should my true self be exposed.  I learned to grovel before God begging for forgiveness.  I resented the humiliation of the process and yet feared being caught with anything not pardoned.

Gomu (God of my understanding) introduced me to my true self and, embracing that reality, set me on a process of becoming useful.  God’s forgiveness is designed to help remove obstacles to my maximum usefulness and the highest manifestation of myself.   I submit and surrender to God’s will so that my finite existence can be infused with Infinite empowerment and direction.  The ultimate goal is a growing  intimacy between myself and my Higher Power.

I have something desirable to bring to the table when appearing before the Infinite One, and that is the manifestation of myself in every opportunity of usefulness I can find.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

We are only operating a spiritual kindergarten in which people are enabled to get over drinking and find the grace to go on living to better effect.  (As Bill Sees It, page 95)

When I came to A.A., I was run down by the bottle and wanted to lose the obsession to drink, but I didn’t really know how to do that. I decided to stick around long enough to find out from the ones who went before me. All of a sudden I was thinking about God! I was told to get a Higher Power and I had no idea what one looked like. I found out there are many Higher Powers. I was told to find God, as I understand Him, that there was no doctrine of the Godhead in A.A. I found what worked for me and then asked that Power to restore me to sanity. The obsession to drink was removed and – one day at a time – my life went on, and I learned how to live sober.

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This made me think of the author, Robert Fulghum, and his book entitled, “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.”  Here are his words;

These are the things I learned (in Kindergarten):

1. Share everything.
2. Play fair.
3. Don’t hit people.
4. Put thngs back where you found them.
5. CLEAN UP YOUR OWN MESS.
6. Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
7. Say you’re SORRY when you HURT somebody.
8. Wash your hands before you eat.
9. Flush.
10. Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
11. Live a balanced life – learn some and drink some and draw some and paint some and sing and dance and play and work everyday some.
12. Take a nap every afternoon.
13. When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together.
14. Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Stryrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
15. Goldfish and hamster and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
16. And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first workd you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.

In AA, my spirituality was stripped down to survival gear.  Then I discovered that to be the most powerful spirituality I have known.  Here is something else from that author I really love;

“I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death.”

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

But does trust require that we be blind to other people’s motives or, indeed, to our own? Not at all; this would be folly. Most certainly, we should assess the capacity for harm as well as the capability for good in every person that we would trust. Such a private inventory can reveal the degree of confidence we should extend in any given situation.  (As Bill Sees It, page 144)

I am not a victim of others, but rather a victim of my expectations, choices and dishonesty. When I expect others to be what I want them to be and not who they are, when they fail to meet my expectations, I am hurt. When my choices are based on self-centeredness, I find I am lonely and distrustful. I gain confidence in myself, however, when I practice honesty in all my affairs. When I search my motives and am honest and trusting, I am aware of the capacity for harm in situations and can avoid those that are harmful.

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The idea of today’s reflections work well for me when I can pause the flow of life.  Considering the motives of others, or even my own, is the work of private meditation or intimate deliberation with a few trusted mirrors.  I have a habit of responding in extremes when I am involved in spontaneous interaction.  I am either too open or too fearful.  The ability to free others from my unrealistic expectations is a process, and not an automatic response.

In general, if I find that I must retreat from others and live in the protective shadows of my fantasy world, then I am having problems with the principle of honesty applied to my interactive reality.  When I no longer fear the sunlight of social contact, my honesty is moving from internal struggle to natural reflex.

I suppose this is another ongoing process.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

This brought me to the good healthy realization that there were plenty of situations left in the world over which I had no personal power – that if I was so ready to admit that to be the case with alcohol, so I must make the same admission with respect to much else. I would have to be still and know that He, not I, was God.  (As Bill Sees It, page 114)

I am learning to practice acceptance in all circumstances of my life, so that I may enjoy peace of mind. At one time life was a constant battle because I felt I had to go through each day fighting myself, and everyone else. Eventually, this became a losing battle. I ended up getting drunk and crying over my misery. When I began to let go and let God take over my life I began to have peace of mind. Today, I am free. I do not have to fight anybody or anything anymore.

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I am not good with acceptance.  Over and over I have discovered this.  It is almost a running joke that I have acceptance issues.

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change…”

I used to believe that you could be anything you wanted to be, if you set your mind to it.  The flip side of that is that if I did not achieve ‘whatever,’ then I had a weak mind and cowardly heart.  This helped lay the groundwork for seeing myself either as the potential savior of all or a waste of human flesh.

I know that there are some things I have chosen to pursue that are a waste of time and life energy.  I need to be able to let go and accept the path that the Spirit of the Universe reveals to me.

Someone whose voice I hear deeply challenged my understanding and usage of the word MYTHOLOGY.  In her mind,  it is akin to a fairy tale, a contrived fiction, or a cultural fantasy.  Its denotation does not allow it to be presented as reality or have any real relationship to fact.

The dictionary seems to be in full agreement with her.   Yet when I explore quotes about mythology, there are connotations of something far more significant.  Oliver Taplin, in comparing Freud and Jung, said the following;

Freud was, in effect, trying to take the mystery out of myth. Once it was decoded as a history of the unconscious, all was explain ed. As Anthony Storr put it: “he was only happy when he was reducing things to the lowest common factor; and he did regard the unconscious as primarily the repository of bits of oneself that one couldn’t accept.” A very different way of looking at the psychology of myth was developed by Freud’s one-time friend and colleague Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961). The fundamental difference between the two is immediately apparent in Jung’s dictum that modern man is faced with “the necessity of rediscovering the life of the spirit.” Jung, who was very interested in archaeology and thought of himself as excavating the mind, took myths to represent the inmost thoughts and feelings of the human race, patterns which are the product of inherited brain patterns

It is important to me that I am as clear as possible in my communication, and so I wish for those who read to understand what I am saying.

For me, when I use the word mythology, I am incorporating the following ideas;

1.  Creative Story Writing to capture elusive or paradoxical concepts and express them with the simplest clarity possible.

2.  Spiritual Hypothesis Testing to explore incoming evidence and ongoing experience with life beyond the organic veil.

3.  Establishes a Peace Treaty with the swirling chaos and mystery of our environment.

4.  Pragmatic Inspiration for the living of our individual mortal lives.

Gomu is a God of my understanding.  For me, my working mythology as I have defined it here supports my connection with Gomu.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

The achievement of freedom from fear is a lifetime undertaking, one that can never be wholly completed. When under heavy attack, acute illness, or in other conditions of serious insecurity, we shall all react to this emotion — well or badly, as the case may be. Only the self-deceived will claim perfect freedom from fear.   (As Bill Sees It, page 263)

Fear has caused suffering when I could have had more faith. There are times when fear suddenly tears me apart, just when I’m experiencing feelings of joy, happiness and a lightness of heart. Faith — and a feeling of self-worth toward a Higher Power — helps me endure tragedy and ecstasy. When I choose to give all of my fears over to my Higher Power, I will be free.

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I think it is a mistake to apply an emotional litmus test to the quality of my life.  The fear flag in my gut could be accurately warning me of imminent danger.  It makes no sense to attempt to eliminate a primal emotion that has aided in the survival of my species.  The silencing of emotion to gain control and power in my life is a typical strategy of my psyche when my alcoholism is active.

I seek freedom from fear as a dominating force in my life.  As a servant it has value, but as a master it will ruin me.  I must learn how to process my fears without becoming enslaved by them.

Fear that appears to have no true source or that exaggerates a threat or points to an imaginary one are the most useful to me as a recovering alcoholic.  I believe these fears point out times and issues that separate me from the realm of the Spirit.  When I realized that being separated from my Higher Power is a legitimate threat, then my fear list from the moral inventory becomes a practical guide to ways I can improve my conscious contact with Gomu (God of my understanding).

For me, faith is an intuitive knowing that accumulates evidence after or while performing action.   My goal is not to master my fears as much as it is to feed my faith at the expense of my fears.  In this way fear becomes a great servant leading me to the power of faith.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

The problem of resolving fear has two aspects. We shall have to try for all the freedom from fear that is possible for us to attain. Then we shall need to find both the courage and grace to deal constructively with whatever fears remain.  (As Bill Sees It, page 61)

Most of my decisions were based on fear. Alcohol made life easier to face, but the time came when alcohol was no longer an alternative to fear. One of the greatest gifts in A.A. for me has been the courage to take action, which I can do with God’s help. After five years of sobriety I had to deal with a heavy dose of fear. God put the people in my life to help me do that and, through my working the Twelve Steps, I am becoming the whole person I wish to be and, for that, I am deeply grateful.

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I believe we humans are hybrid entities much like lichen, which is two separate species intertwined into one life form.  The organic human animal is intertwined with the energy based human spirit.  The human animal primarily feels two emotions in all their various manifestations; Fear and Lust.  The human spirit knows only Love.  It is the interplay between the primal and the spirit that gives us the complexities of our emotional spectrum and awareness of reality.

Fear is strongly linked to the survival of our animal selves and the ultimate solution needed to silence it is death.  So it is necessary for me to learn how to process my fears if I am going to remain alive in my hybrid state, which I count as a gift of the energy-spirit collective and my Gomu (God of my understanding).

Alcohol was a death potion that helped me to silence the animal fear and allowed my spirit to assert a disconnected self reliance.  This is how it made things easier for me.

In A.A., I learned to make human connections both with my fellow animals, and from the cloud of spirit energy source of which Gomu is the Infinite One.  A.A.’s principles and its design for living have helped me in developing my courage.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

Such is the paradox of A.A. regeneration: strength arising out of complete defeat and weakness, the loss of one’s old life as a condition for finding a new one.   (A.A. Comes of Age, page 46)

A thousand beatings by John Barleycorn did not encourage me to admit defeat. I believed it was my moral obligation to conquer my “enemy-friend.” At my first A.A. meeting I was blessed with a feeling that it was all right to admit defeat to a disease which had nothing to do with my “moral fiber.” I knew instinctively that I was in the presence of a great love when I entered the doors of A.A. With no effort on my part, I became aware that to love myself was good and right, as God had intended. My feelings set me free, where my thoughts had held me in bondage. I am grateful.

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I can not even begin to describe the sense of futility and the ever present misery of my life when I sought to be free from sin.  This reality existed before my alcoholism was ignited.  It was in this dehumanizing pursuit of purity that my separation from society was enhanced.  I worked to protect myself from the corruption within and without.  I isolated myself to appease a God that seemed to remain aloof.

That was one of my old self-destructive ways that I had to let go of if I was going to survive.

I was given, instead, the realization that my alcoholism is a disease.  After a certain point in the disease’s development, my brain will not override the primal tap of that alcoholic sensation.  My will and intent are eroded and finally collapse in on my infected mind.

Sin justifies death.  Disease embraces a cure.  That is the simple formula for me.  This new paradigm allows me to look into healing mirrors rather than prison reflections to evaluate the worth of my life.  I needed help, not divine jurisprudence.  My fellow humans are not contaminants; they are life saving connections.

My old step program:

1.  I admitted that I am powerless over sin – my life has become pathetically worthless.

2. Came to believe that a pure and holy God could transform me to his perfection.

3. Made a decision to enact self-death rituals to be mystically possessed and replaced by the spirit of His martyred Son.

4.  Rinse and repeat until perfectly holy.

I am no longer stuck in that infinite loop because of the saving heresy of the disease concept.  I am grateful to the God of my understanding and to the 12 step program of AA.  That God desires an intimate connection with me as we walk out progress and discard perfection.

From Today’s Daily Reflections;

. . . if only men were granted absolute liberty, and were compelled to obey no one, they would then voluntarily associate themselves in the common interest.  (As Bill Sees It, page 50)

When I no longer live under the dictates of another or of alcohol, I live in a new freedom. When I release the past and all the excess baggage I have carried for so very long, I come to know freedom. I have been introduced into a life and a fellowship of freedom. The Steps are a “recommended” way of finding a new life, there are no commands or dictates in A.A. I am free to serve from desire rather than decree. There is the understanding that I will benefit from the growth of other members and I take what I learn and bring it back to the group. The “common welfare” finds room to grow in the society of personal freedom.

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The ideals of a benign anarchy have been achieved in A.A. because of the threat of an alcoholic tyranny ready to recapture its former citizens.  There may be no dictates or commands in A.A., but there are plenty of life and death scenarios that keep our wagons circled.  The recommendations are not just good ideas, they are tips for survival.  The paradox of keeping only what I am able to give away is the initial shove to help others.  We are not naturally altruistic.

The magic comes when this community of anarchist refugees connect to a Power greater than themselves and we are transformed.  Individual freedom becomes a channel for connection and personal empowerment.  I then begin to reach out to others because its what I want to do.  My life can then be apart of bringing the Benign to whatever governing structure I find myself in; anarchy, democracy, or tyranny.

The goal is not improved government, but transformation that makes government obsolete.