Daily Reprieve

“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.

“Did you do your taxes?”

My apartment is dark, and my Father sits in his central place on the couch.  It took everything for me to get up out of my sacred Den where I go to seek spiritual contact.  Today, it was a protective womb, a private cell to hide my inner collapse.  The only place where the lights are on is in my daughter’s room.  She is happy.  Visiting with a friend.  Thank God.  I sent up a pitiful plea to just get up and be.  My submissive sends a text reaching out, sending love to her extended family.  I use the stark intrusion of my cell phone’s ring to move.  I asses my environment.  I join my Father on the couch in hopes of a real conversation.  The question he asks is simple, but filled with implications of my own personal impotence, the ultimate disappoint he must feel in seeing me flounder about.  No, of course I have not done the taxes.  Of course, I am late, even though I have had all the time in the world. 

So I leave the couch to come here, to write.  Writing seems to be the only thing in my life that gives me a safe place, a solid hold on a shifting world, a world that moves like a boa to suffocate me.  If I sit still too long it will find me.  It will take me.

Cannot…stay…in…this…place.

My Father made some surface comment about the prospect of my daughter getting a job.  We are unable to connect.  He is trying to be polite.  He has been sleeping a lot today.  He is probably depressed himself.  I get up from my place beside him.  And come to you, oh blank screen.  And I feel him walk past me, return to his room, and to the solace of his bed. 

My daughter and her friend want food.  I have been a dud for them today.  And they are oblivious to my unfolding death.  A saving grace.

I had a conversation with my guide today.  It was good and seemed productive.  I have work to do.  I have learned that “Facts are my Friend.”  I have learned that co-dendency will keep me from seeing the truth.  He challenged whether I was actually invested in the useless ideas concerning Failure, since I keep drawing my children close to me.  Why would I do that if I was certain of my failure?  He has zeroed in on the fact that being a parent is the one thing I feel I have done right.  He uses that fact to keep me commented to this world.  And to this process.  I am trying.  I will try.

I have hungry girls depending on me.  Deep breath.  Get up Trinity, just get up.

Am I being foolish?  I am sober, must count for something.  Will I ever feel sane?

There is something going on.  Stripped of my usual self-expression, I am like a shy little child inside.  I feel that the eye of God is moving over me.  I went to two meetings today, and it was suggested that I also attend a business meeting, get involved.  I took the suggestion.  I ended up on an exploratory team to find profitable events for fund-raising for the CA convention this August. I was also able to talk with someone who was smarting from a recent relapse which helped me to feel useful, and I was able to meet with the one currently sponsoring me through the steps.  He said that it is inevitable that I will lose perspective, and that is why I contact others in the network who will help me bring my perspective back in tune with reality. 

In the course of these activities, I received texts from three different people indicating that I was giving them blank checks in communication, that they were being somewhat hurt by my silence.  But I am truly at a loss.  My core is just out there in the open. 

I had a momentary thought of drinking.  I couldn’t believe it.  I prayed, and intuitively heard that drinking was an option, and I pretty much knew how that would go.  Another option was just to continue to trust and draw from God in spite of my co-dependant relationship with the Higher Power.  I chose the latter, and the obsession vanished. 

I find myself looking at all my relationships, and I wonder if my co-dependency produced such a delusive power that its absence is going to require me to rebuild on a new basis?  I fear that if I retreat to the familiar ways, I will lose access to the new world that might be opening up.  I have no clue how or when I am going to be out of this limbo.  So I am trying to move carefully and not just slide back into well-worn ruts.

I am fearfully hopeful.

From Endigar 277;

~ My failure is inevitable.  Thus I will disappoint all those who are close to me, eventually.  I respond to this idea with a strong need to withdraw and hide.  I procrastinate.  I fall into incapacitating depression.  There is a possible new idea that Gomu (God of my understanding) may be replacing this one with; Success is inevitable when I grab hold of those things that are apart of my purpose, my path.  Failure is inevitable when I refuse to let go of those things that are not apart of my destiny.

~ If I fail, I deserve to die.  What remains of my honor demands it.  Is there no hope for escape?  The fear this idea engenders creates a last-minute panic on the tasks I have accumulated through procrastination.

~ You must hate yourself to love another.  The depth of effective love is measured in the level of self-hatred you can embody.  This causes me to resist the natural growth of relationships, or If I desire for the relationship to grow, I prepare myself for absolute martyrdom.  It has a corrosive effect on trust.  Freedom becomes escape from commitments in love.  In discussion with the Moon Shadow guide, we discovered that I don’t believe that empathy is weakness, but, my empathy and compassion makes me weak and vulnerable.  Another idea revealed in the Moonlight;  There may be only one answer to this dilemma and that is to become a predator.  The Moon Shadow guide also said that he believed I was mistaking co-dependency for compassion. 

These three ideas seem to be related to one another.  The last one speaks to the warped thinking that comes from a well indoctrinated co-dependency, and the top two where developed to support the demands of assuming god-like responsibilities for lives of others in my intimate environment.  There is no doubt in my mind that this gets to the root of my useless ideas.  There is no doubt in my mind that I am powerless to extinguish, modify, or minimize it.  And I am very certain that it makes my life a chaotic hell. 

And if I believe that the only way to love others is to hate me, imagine the effect that has on my relationship with God.  If loving God means that I am to become a martyr, imagine what service work will feel like.  No wonder I get depressed after speaking, or doing anything remotely selfless and spiritual.  I am supposed to hate myself.  And if I feel that I have failed and disappointed God and everyone close to me, no wonder I walk around with a feeling that I am not supposed to be here.  I should be dead.  I am not and therefore I am wrong.  So the following ideas about God probably find their root in the deep-seated co-dependency revealed above.

~ God is not interested in me, only in controlling me for his own purposes, to protect his distant control on the human species.   This idea is not useful to recovery or spiritual development.  The band-aid solution I created for it is that I am willing to be apart of God’s conspiracy because of my own philosophy of the benefits of manifested personal mythology.  I enlist in his cause to empower humans, not just control them.  I do not surrender if I become aware the elements of “loving” are the elements of ultimate suppression.  For the most part, my current understanding of the God conspiracy passes for what we human’s perceive as loving, that is personal empowerment.  But this is tentative and not useful to long-term sobriety.

~ 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.  When this idea rises, I feel that I am in such a predicament that I cannot trust my mind, my perception, my environment.  Nothing is real, because it is temporary.  This idea causes me to fear going crazy, and fuels a desire to lash out at God and his agents, his men in black, his mafia. 

~ If I get out of line, God has a kill switch to amplify my lusts and natural desires to consume me, or, if I am able to overcome that, God can use my disconnected strength to turn me into a predator. This line of thinking cause me to see the parable of the talents in a different light.  I see the demonization of masculine energy.  Atheism is used to push me into life as a predator.  Agnosticism could be a self-protective delusion. 

So, at Oak Mountain, I turned the care and direction of my co-dependent life over to Gomu.  (God of my understanding).  I have done my individual work and now I continue on with the steps, and that means I will need to establish a 4th / 5th step discussion with the guide He has designated for me.

From Endigar 277;

~ The concepts and thoughts that I value will be overshadowed by a stronger presence.  The products of my mind and heart will be dismissed as insignificant in a crowd, and assaulted in the presence of a strong presentation.  This idea moves me into withdrawal seasoned with a continuous, simmering, judgment or open and probably unwarranted aggression.  People are usually surprised by the latter.  Another idea that came out that seems related is that I would become nobody if not cloaked in some special ability. 

~ Uncontrolled and spiritually undeveloped people will attack or hurt me.  This leads me to create protective alliances by pretending weakness, vulnerability, or hurt.  I call this the belly up manipulation.  It is such an ingrained practice that I don’t realize when I am doing it. 

Is this a root idea, or is it a resulting fear of something else?  Is it related to the discussion of the idea in Endigar 281?  A couple of other ideas that seem to be close relatives to these are:

~ Personal assertions that are not wrapped in a mantle of pain, depression, and anguish will not be taken seriously.  Assertions expressed with happiness will be seen as frivolous and thus, discarded.   I realized I felt this at a Hoot Owl meeting this weekend when the topic was on laughter and not being a glum lot.  It appears that this might create the deliberate manufacture of misery, a habit of morbid self-reflection, and the need to condemn simplicity.

~ Honesty is a social control mechanism and has very little to do with the discovery of truth.  When I hear someone say, “I just want you to be honest with me,” I translate that to mean, “I just want you to give me enough personal information to ensnare you.”  When I got my first Big Book, I attempted to go through and mark out and replace every mention of the word HONESTY with the word TRUTH.  I gave up, because it was all over the place in my book. 

The true powerlessness here belongs to the actual root idea, and I am just not sure what that is.  I need to get with my guide and talk some more on this.

From post Endigar 277;

“~ My ideas concerning masculine and feminine energy are rather medieval, primitive.  That is what the Moon Shadow guide observed during our conversation and we began a discussion of Tao philosophy.”

I am not at all convinced that I am powerless over this idea, that it is useless, or that the problems I have in my own relationships are even related to this perspective.  But I am open to learning, and I am willing to consider his observations.  A friend loaned me her copy of the Tao of Pooh, which I have read, and her copy of the Te of Piglet, which I will start reading very soon.

I really like the Tao and I can see the truth of it in nature and the flow of the universe.  Yet there is another oriental writing that I find interesting, and that is “The Art of War” by Sun Tzu.  And this leads me to the idea that I have about masculine energy that might be related.  “The ability and willingness to kill can accelerate the power to steward others.”

There is another idea that I have heard females express or imply in relation to their post-rape perspective that I have a hard time accepting, and seems to be related to my understanding of male – female energy.   The female seems to focus on the personal feelings of being dismissed, discarded, devalued.  The observing male seems to focus on the line crossed that must be reasserted, lest a precedent of predatory behavior be unleashed like wolves on the sheep.  I do not have a hard time with the personal pain that those who are raped suffer.  That is, I do not have a problem with the apparent focus of their pain as I have observed.  What gets me is the tendency for the crime to go unpunished because punishing the rapist violates what appears to be the self-delusions of those raped in response to that pain.  To consider what has happened, report it to law enforcement or those willing to seek retribution in their behalf, makes them vulnerable to internal attacks on their self-esteem.

DISCLAIMER:  I am working on personal issues, and I have not personally experienced rape.  I am trying to remain transparent in the process so others may see both the struggle and solution working in my own life.  If you have experienced the trauma of rape, it is not my intention for my words here to be taken as a statement of what I believe should become policy, or even worse, a judgment of those who have suffered.

I would like to discuss this one more.  I think what the guide is picking up on is my resentments against the apparent disequilibrium caused in society by the abdication of males in the face of the assertion of masculine energy in women.  And my resentments of the demonization of males who embrace masculine energy.

Is it possible that the problems with male dominance comes from a confusion in mentorship, not knowing the appropriate way to express ourselves?  And left with frustrated testosterone, men lash out.  And then they have to be beaten back by others who command masculine energy, usually other frustrated males.

Anyway, I am reading others ideas in this arena as they are being presented.  I feel that the current approach of my social environment is quite haphazard, with damning results.

I am not sure that the difficult parts of this idea reflects a root issue.

I heard this read in meeting over the weekend, and it is some good stuff, off of page 386 of the Big Book;

…I looked up an A.A. meeting and went there – alone.

Here I found an ingredient that had been lacking in any other effort I had made to save myself.  Here was – power!  Here was power to live to the end of any given day, power to have the courage to face the next day, power to have friends, power to help people, power to be sane, power to stay sober.  That was seven years ago – and many A.A. meetings ago – and I haven’t had a drink during those seven years.  Moreover, I am deeply convinced that so long as I continue to strive, in my bumbling way, toward the principles I first encountered in the earlier chapters of this book, this remarkable power will continue to flow through me.  What is this power?  With my A.A. friends, all I can say is that it’s a Power greater than myself.  If pressed, all I can do is follow the psalmist who said it long before me:  ‘Be still, and know that I am God.’

The person who shared this at the meeting talked about the 11th step’s direction to pray for the power to carry out God’s will for us, and then turned to the part in the book where it says that God desires for us to be happy, joyous and free.  It was really helpful to hear this.

Some relief today, a different understanding.   Perspective.  I am grateful for yesterday’s surroundings.  I am grateful for today’s slow journey.  I am grateful for the possibility of love in hot pursuit of my tomorrow.  That’s enough.