Daily Reprieve

“Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.”

Are sanity and truth married to one another?  Is sanity the ability to firmly grasp the truth about oneself and then to share that truth with others?

I feel guilty about everything.  So I cannot trust my own conscience.  What is legitimate guilt, and what is indoctrinated guilt designed to bind me?  I simply do not know how to tell the difference.

At the recommendations of others in the recovery network, I now have a counselor.  I hope to know the truth about myself.  I hate living under an impending sense of doom.

I am up and down.  Some real personal issues.  Tired.  Depression reaching for me.  The assassin ever-present.  It seems I have managed to create the same wonderfully oppressive atmosphere in recovery that I muddled through in church.

A very simple prayer today; Help my sanity, Infinite One.

Help.

“Meanwhile, keep up with your dull mundane exercises.  I know progress is slow, but it’s possible to be slow and still get to where you are going… Remember the tortoise and the hare…speed is not the essence; steady accomplishment is…Just don’t quit trying” Piers Anthony, Letters to Jenny, Page 123.

I am back from my annual training with my Army Reserve unit, and I still have much to process, to consider.  My life has often fallen short of the magic I hunger for, but someone pointed out to me yesterday after a meeting at the Hut, that if you just glance across the surface of the ground, you might miss all the hidden activities and steady processes occurring below the surface. 

The terrain at Fort Hunter-Liggett is threateningly beautiful.  I wish I could have enjoyed it from a private cabin with fireplace for the cold nights and morning coffee to greet the sunrise.  I did have one moment in time where I tried to pull off alone into the wilderness and just observe in stillness;  to surrender to the moment, and to touch the energy of the endless one with no materialistic expectations.   The following is what I was able to glean from that meditation:

Lessons … Heard from the Mountain. 

I can only see the large picture from a distance.  Large is invisible up close.  It does not appear to move.  Its power is in its ability to hold a place in time. 

It contrasts the sky.  It reveals perspective of the sky.  Trees are also still, and cover its surface, pull from its depths.  The Mountain reveals the strength of the ground.  It is carved by water, that ageless agent of change.  It is lit by the Sun’s fire.

Why do birds make noise?  What is the purpose in their soundings?  Does trust of the Infinite One exist without self-awareness?  Does the Mountain trust or care?  It just is.

Trust is given by the movers, the active ones.  And the greater the self-awareness, the greater the need for establishing trust.  The need for connection with the Infinite One.

How do I build beyond the pain?

I let go.  There is nothing in the ideas that need my further analysis to make this decision.  The Assassin’s voice has used them well to relegate me to a life of fear and hyper vigilance.  I want to live fully.  I awoke twice this morning.  My body, then my spirit. 

Any reward I achieved from cherishing these ideas I surrender.  I open myself to a new life, and recognize that so much of my old life will, by necessity, die or be forever altered. 

I also know that I am powerless to change, and that the unmanageability creates a great need for change.  I now understand why the Universe has me leaving my support network, leaving my current resources, going away for three weeks.  I feel a promise of magic today.  But I must step out of the way.  In humility, I gain the power of a god. 

Enough!  It is done, finished! 

My Creator, I am now willing that you should have all of me, with all my concepts of what is good and bad. 

I pray that you now remove from me every single defect of character which stands in the way of my usefulness to you and my fellows, which is the litmus test of its usefulness to me.

Grant me strength, transfer great power to me, as I go out from here, to do your bidding, to cooperate with your process that has been initiated in me.

Amen – SO BE IT. 

Isn’t it interesting that the magic is to begin on Mother’s day?  As my Core expression enters this divine womb? 

I will be on orders for the next three weeks.  I will return on May 27th.

Namaste from John Mansion.

I have taken the counsel of others in the recovery network and have pulled back from this intimate dance with my core.  It is threatening my co-consciousness and I am about to leave for a 3 week annual training for my Army Reserve unit.  I can ill afford to be suffering problems with the demands of unexpected transitions.  I have also received a suggestion from the guide and others to seek a professional to help me through this.  I will probably do that before continuing with this particular 4th step.  Things have calmed down within since I have pulled back.  But if I retreat entirely, then I have to face the return of active alcoholism.  I have much work today when I get back. 

This morning, I had a message left by the Rogue Elf in the Book of Faces.  She had apparently taken the central statement of my co-dependancy and worn it as her own garment, “To love another I must hate myself.”  She had her own issues to apply this to, so she wore this mantra to see how it fits.  She ended up discarding it, and sending me the missive recording her own insight.  I capture it here, because I think it has potency to it, and because it moves me inside.  I don’t want to lose these words in the midst of my personal struggles:

To love another I must love myself and reach deep inside for all the treasures that reside there.

 

To love another takes courage, takes endurance, takes persistence.

 

To love another I must accept my lack of power, my lack of control…my humanity with its beautiful strength and weakness.

 

To love another is being open to experience the full range of human emotion, including fear and pain, but also joy.

 

To love another means to have eyes wide open, versus selective vision.

 

To love another requires trust in a Higher, unseen power and a belief in a plan Grander than a human being can imagine.

 

To love another means accepting not knowing how the story ends, but showing up anyway, knowing that no matter how it all plays out… I am safe, my beloved is safe; and I have given the universe an opportunity to heal souls and to express itself.

 

To love another is to experience and observe my filthiest ugliness and my highest beauty and an opportunity to embrace both!

 

To love another is the highest calling I can respond to and if I can continue to love no matter what it brings out in myself…if I can rise up from my wounds, both externally derived and self-inflicted, then, rather than being diminished as I used to believe, my worth, my value, my joy is increased! 

 

The only reward I can identify in surrendering to the idea that God is a manipulator is a limited dose of freedom, that is freedom defined as escape from social control. 

So is it true?  I must remember that facts are my friends. 

My experience with Christianity left me with great bonds of guilt, ideals of purity and perfection that I could never attain.  This guilt led me to pretend to be something else, something more socially acceptable.  It taught me to hide deep within myself, to take refuge in the shadow of my own image.  It was the image that was loved and accepted, not me.  If I was exposed, I would be rejected. 

Once I began to hold God accountable for his demands upon my life, with inadequate communication, once I pointed out and realized that the best I could hope for from God was to be ignored, I was free to take charge of my own life. 

Is it true that I escaped social control?  Is it true that I escaped repression?  Is it true that holding on to such an idea keeps me free from my program being hijacked by agents of social and behavioral control? 

Or is this idea preventing me from connecting with a power greater than myself, a very real entity that works in conjunction with my own desire for freedom?

I am not willing to give up this freedom to embrace a slavery of my mind.  But I am willing to relinquish for an even greater freedom.  Perspective fading.  Futility fog rolling in.

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I don’ t mean to be argumentative,  just trying to be thorough.  I am willing to dig deep to gain a more durable sobriety.

The first obsessive and unuseful idea I will focus on is that God is a manipulator.  My understanding is that the sixth step causes me to consider, what did I get from this idea, and am I willing to live without those rewards?

God is a manipulator (A co-dependant assertion, a family of origin adaption)

~ God is not interested in me, only in controlling me for his own purposes, to protect his distant control on the human species.

~ God wants to control me for his purposes, wants me to be his sissy whore.  He uses my heart’s desires against me.  He has no desire for my ultimate success, only my advancement to control others.

I really don’t see what I could have gotten from this idea, this way of thinking.  I will consider it as I pray and meditate tonight, and then sleep on it.  It has been a lethal, stormy day in Alabama.  It is a really quiet night after such an unleashing of nature’s fury.  Almost like God had an orgasm and is now sated.  I am truly powerless over this idea.

I talked with the guide about the Tao and my pursuit of growth and enlightenment concerning natural balance and the interplay of masculine and feminine energy.  I told him the books that I am currently reading, and he suggested one other; “The Tao of Leadership,” and I googled it and found such a book written by John Heider. 

The summarization of the ideas I have identified as useless and harmful to my life can be simply listed as:

1.  God is a manipulator (A co-dependant assertion, a family of origin adaption)

2.  In order to love others, you must hate yourself (confusing compassion and empathy with co-dependency)

3.  I lack potency. (Public school peer interaction in conjunction with distrust of outsiders)

4.  I am bound by family icons of devotion, resulting in the two statements on failure.  Outside the family, inevitable and lethal.

An important first lesson that I am to remember is that, CO-DEPENDENCY CAUSES YOU TO FORGET FACTS.  And facts are our friends.

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In the first step, I evaluate whether I am truly powerless over the idea, and if it makes my life unmanageable.  I have done this with these ideas.  They are both.

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The second step requires three things.

– The first is that I believe the idea I possess is insane.

– Next, I cannot or believe that I cannot restore myself to sanity.

– Finally, I can answer affirmatively the following question; “Do I now or am I willing to believe that a Power greater than myself can restore me to sanity with respect to each of these ideas.”

Sanity is defined as the removal of the idea, the obsession being arrested to the point of being undetectable.  Progress is defined as gaining territory and keeping it.  It is not an acceptance of back and forth struggles, and a life of trudging.

I am in agreement on all three points. 

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The third step is a decision to utilize the connection with the Higher Power through the 12 step program with the exclusion of all.  I think the point here was that there needs to be a single-minded devotion to the steps, that it is easy to be distracted. 

There was some discussion about the difference between an Answer and Enlightenment.   An answer is the rendering of a fact to an inquiry.  What is my problem?  The answer is, Alcohol.  But that does not give me a solution.  The solution is found in Enlightenment, which is the answer in context of the process, I think he said. 

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We talked about the fourth and fifth steps as applied to these ideas.  The guide said I should not get bogged down with this, that I am simply trying to confirm that these ideas are fundamental, that they are not being supported by some other idea.  Identifying this will prevent me from cutting at the branch and put the focus on root issues.  If I discover an idea that is more fundamental, then I need to talk to someone about it.  But it shouldn’t take much time.

I think my review of the two ideas on failure are a more clear restatement, and that the ideas are still fundamental.  It appears that I am able to move on.  I will fire of a text to insure such.

TEXT HAS BEEN SENT.

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The guide suggested that I read the section in the 12 & 12 on steps six and seven before doing them.  He said that it is important to know that I am entirely ready to let go of the idea.  I need to ask myself, what do I get out of the idea and can I live without those rewards?  Once I can truly answer yes, then I move on to step seven.

In step seven, I humbly ask once and mean it.  If I find myself having to ask over and over again, it means that I was not ready to let go of the idea.  I must remember that when I ask humbly, the Higher Power answers by initiating a process, not providing a fix.  This is not like going to a candy vending machine. 

The guide also discussed with me the difference between Faith and Belief.  He gave me a visual of a series of islands connected by a network of bridges.  Faith is the bridge that is taking you somewhere.  It has a focus.  The island is the place we wanted to be, it is the Belief.  The process that Faith takes us through earns us experience that confirms Belief. 

IN READING THE 12 & 12 ON STEP SIX, I AM DISCOURAGED.  TALK OF PERFECTION SOUNDS LIKE A SQUASHING OF INDIVIDUALITY.  THE RELIGIOUS OVERTONES CAUSE ME TO HACKLE.  I CANNOT EVEN SEEM TO READ THIS AND I AM CONFRONTED WITH THE IDEA THAT GOD IS A MANIPULATOR.  HOW AM I GOING TO TRUST A HIGHER POWER TO RESTORE ME TO SANITY WHEN I BATTLE WITH TRUSTING THAT HIGHER POWER.  GOMU, PLEASE HELP ME.

THEN I READ THE 12 & 12 ON STEP SEVEN AND I AM CONFRONTED WITH HUMILITY.  I AM CONFRONTED WITH THE ACCUSATIONS, THE BLAMING OF OTHERS THAT ARE APART OF MY OBSESSIVE IDEAS.  THESE IDEAS ARE NO LONGER MY PARENT’S IDEAS, NOR MY PEERS, NOR THE CHURCH’S.  THEY ARE MY IDEAS, MY REACTIONS, MY ARMOR, AND IT IS KILLING ME.  WHATEVER PERFECTION IS, IT IS SOMETHING OTHER THAN THESE IDEAS I HAVE CARRIED AND TRIED TO MAKE WORK. 

MY GRATITUDE TO GOMU.  I AM SURPRISED THAT MY PERSPECTIVE SHIFTED  SO QUICKLY.

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Steps eight and nine are done with guidance. 

In step eight, I would make a list of all the people I have hurt because of a particular idea. 

In step nine, and in discussion with the guide, we may conclude that it would be more harmful to the other people to engage them in a discussion of how an idea hurt them, or it might be more confusing to them.  So we discuss amends that need to be made to people, places, or things where appropriate. 

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There was some discussion about the Lakota belief in the greater potency of a wounded healer.  I don’t remember where this fits in here, but the guide recommended a book called Seven Arrows as a good read.  I think I will head out to Brains & Noodles tomorrow and see if they have it in stock.  My daughter might also be interested.

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Step ten is where I will enter into the “Observe without Judgment” phase.  He said that the Big Book actually gives eleven tasks associated with accomplishing this step.  But he went over three with me.

~ When a particular idea manifests in my previously identified short-comings, I am to pray.  This is my acknowledgement of my power source.

~ Talk to someone in order to regain perspective.

~ Resolutely turn to someone else to help, which puts a check on the momentum of self-centeredness. 

I am to learn to observe without judgement, to become well armed with the facts about how this idea functions in my life, what do I get out of it?  Is this true?  Step one is revisited.  Facts are our friends.  We must develop a factual based perspective. 

A trick of this step is that it dissociates our ego from the performance of the idea.  We become less invested in it.

As we become armed with the facts of how this idea functions, we become better equipped to help others.  But regardless of where we are in the process, we can always offer the truth that we are not alone. 

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In step eleven, the guide said that there is only one prayer, and that is pretty much all he prays now.  I failed to take many notes here, because I got caught up in listening. 

He said this is where the Tao comes in as well, because we learn to be open and listen.  

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In step twelve, the guide gave this warning; NEVER, EVER, EVER,  Go in uninvited.  It is attraction rather than promotion.  As soon as you get it, give it away.  That is a spiritual maxim for truly gaining power.  And it is important to gain true humility, and not to strut around like you have arrived.

“Dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.” ~ From the movie Inception.

I stayed up late last night, considering the two statements on failure that my guide had challenged.  There was something incomplete in them.  Was there a more fundamental idea that was supporting them?  Why did they seem to ring true to me? 

~ My failure is inevitable, and I will disappoint those who become intimate with me.

~ If I fail, my honor demands that I self-terminate.

It seems that if I held these to be true, I would not become so close to my children, or anyone, or that I would even be alive.  I had no explanation for this failure in logic. 

I sought escape, in the games.  A sickening feeling came over me.  I am not going to be able to do this.  There was only one thing that seemed to comfort me.  If this program failed to set me free of these and the other damning ideas, I would take a trip to Seppuku park in Anchorage, Alaska and find some peace feeding the beautiful ravens there.  The wind whispers, “Given, after Give.”  I made a plan to go there, if all else fails me.

With that I was able to lay down, and hide from the rising sun.

I dreamed…

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I had to break off the writing on this entry.  I knew that my mind was going to a bad place, that I was losing perspective as the guide had predicted I would.  He warned me that at that time I would need to reach out to the network to regain perspective.  I went to a meeting, and the topic was on the realities of relapse.  I opened up, let them know that I was hurting.  I was surrounded by people who I believe genuinely cared.  I walked out of the meeting feeling that I am not alone.

Someone told me that those who make it seem to share one thing, the willingness to stay and endure the suffering that comes with this process.  That seems to be true. 

I then decided to call someone who was familiar with this process, who I have seen in the program over the years, who I have learned to trust and appreciate.  The person reminded me of times I had shared in meetings and been of benefit to him.  He asserted that the fact that I am being torn open, and having a process of change invested in me shows a Higher Power willing to help, who will be there to put me together again.  It is funny, but as he spoke it, I felt I could believe it. 

I have decided not to “correct” the entry, but just to carry on with a more hopeful perspective.

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When I went to sleep, I dreamed of my mother.  This has happened a few times, and initially it seemed quite normal that she should be there.  Thus my quote from the movie Inception.  But unlike most dreams, I realized that my Mother had passed away, that her presence was a miracle.  I remember coming to her, and just hugging her, holding on, and weeping.  I told her how much I loved and missed her.  I woke up with my face soaked in tears. 

There are things I will say here that may sound like the traditional blame your parents parade.  That is not what I want to do.  I love both my Mother and Father, and there are things they did right, things they did wrong, and that is the nature of fulfilling the most God-like job in our culture.  We are guaranteed to fail at something.  It is then the young adult’s job to assume responsibility to re-parent themselves with the help of their Higher Power.  So, I move on.

Because my parents consistently covered me and smothered me in protection, I think I developed a self-image of incompetence.  The rules of success in my home of origin were never stable, never really clear, because they evolved around the threat of emotional blackmail from my Mother.  I learned and adapted with the idea that if I desire to be free of this emotional torment I have to accept that no matter what I do, failure is inevitable, and I will disappoint those who become intimate with me.  And the more I accepted it, the more it became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

But I did hunger for freedom, or rather escape, which is the closest thing to freedom I could imagine.  I became willing to risk this inevitable failure.  I focused in on a coping mechanism that my Mother used to brave the demons of being an adult child of an alcoholic.  “I can try this, and if I fail, I can always kill myself.”  As a result of this courage forged out of embracing suicide as an option, she lived a powerful life against some extraordinary odds. 

But my Father said that he would not commit suicide and would rather opt for riding the Red Horse, meaning he would rather find some final glory in a blaze of violence.  We watched sacred, iconic movie presentations together such as the Godfather series, a movie on Lucky Luciano, a book on the Valachi Papers, the movie series Shogun.  My Father, when he was frustrated with my continued procrastinations and PT failures, said that you just have to get out there and do it.  And then he said something along the lines of, “Everything I have ever done has been for my family.”  He later told me that his Mother had said something along those lines.  And then I saw this quote by Tommy Gambino, “Me I never had the chance to say, Well, I’m going to do something I want to do.  I always did if for my family, for my children, for my father, for my mother.”  This is the gist of what I got from Dad that feeds into the development of these ideas. 

I developed the feeling that there was no getting out of the family and its demands.  Not really.  There was always some phantom hitman waiting for those who dared.  I knew that if my failures were exposed, what was left of my honor demanded my death.

Jesus once said that he who lived by the sword must die by it.  I saw in the final movie of the Godfather series that there are far worse ways to die, than by the sword. 

There is so much more I could talk about here.  The profound effect on my own parenting, to attempt to ensure that my children knew they had succeeded in my eyes, that they had intrinsic value that I recognized.  I could also talk about the lurking voice of the Assassin in my inner council.  The voice that terrifies me to my core and remains to enforce that call for self-termination, if I lack the courage to do so.  I could talk about why my creative voice took his day out and went on a Dead Tree quest, or visited Mom’s grave.  I could talk about my hypersensitivity to criticism, or my abhorrence of what I perceive to be agents of social control.  But that is probably all a distraction to my purpose here.

The two ideas on failure would better be expressed as;

~ If I desire to be free of emotional blackmail and manipulation, I must accept that failure is inevitable and I will disappoint those who become intimate, who get close to me.

~ If my failure is exposed, what is left of my honor demands my death.

I believe these ideas are fundamental and lethal.  I live with this suppressed terror every day.  For me it is real.  God, please help me.

“Why did you first start compartmentalizing?…that would be a worthwhile meditation, to understand what first led you to start doing that.” 

This was brought up by the guide.  I have spent time on this and have not been able to find any deep, sinister memory in my past that warrants me opting for this means of coping.  I remember that role-playing as a child was a favorite amusement, that I first began using a role-playing system as a means of having a parallel reality when I entered school.  I was a sensitive child who was taught to distrust outsiders over the years.  My public education was very painful for me.  And the more detached I became, the more painful, the more the system was needed.  

My primary concern with this approach to coping is that, even though I have remained co-conscience for the most part, particularly stressful times will challenge me to remain in contact with the interactive reality.  I have read some material that also talks about the survivor use of the system breaking down as they get older, often time requiring hospitalization and special treatment.  But that was for Dissociative Identity Disorder where co-consciensness is lost. 

I am getting older and I feel the system becoming a cumbersome feature of my life.  The term for treatment I am reading, and prefer, is teamwork, that attempts to get the various alternates to work as a team.  I hate the thought of reintegration.  If the many could become one without the loss of the many, maybe.  I have tried to go through a process of exorcism before, and it does not work for me. 

The team work option is done through counseling and contracts, that ALL members must agree to, or the system will find a loophole around it.  I currently have nine alternates, one of which is the core.  And one alternate, not the core, has predominance.  But an argument has erupted between he and one that is our truly creative voice, because of conflicts in our interaction with women, respect for the lifestyle protocol, and such.  It has now gone beyond the events in question, and has become a back and forth about the vision of the future the two of them hunger for.  It’s a mess.

I have prayed about this, and will attempt to make a contract that is witnessed and officiated by my Father.  All members of the inner council respect him.  Hopefully, it will be something that helps us through the coming years to function as a team. 

The fourth step work that I am to continue with is to take another look at each of the obsessive ideas in question and see if they are fundamental or if there are any undiscovered ideas supporting them.  If so then I need to go on to step five and talk about it with someone.  He challenged the veracity of the two ideas that have to do with failure, because if they were true, would I not keep my children far away from myself?  So I will do that, and then read the section in the 12 & 12 on steps six and seven.

There are two things that the guide said that I would like to remember from this last session.  One was that Facts are our Friends.  When looking over the validity or power of an idea, look at the facts. 

The second is that when we pray, when we send out a petition into the universe, Gomu initiates a process as the answer.  We tend to look at our prayers as trips to a vending machine.  God cannot be milked like a cow.

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I prayed and I have to avoid complexities like a detailed contract.  That sort of thing will bog me down and distract me.  I am really rather dependant on the intuitive guidance and authority of my Higher Power.