Daily Reprieve

There is going to come a time, if you live long enough, when you are going to see a father grieving for his broken or mutilated daughter on a Monday after that family spent the day in church, paying tithes, caring for the poor, and praising their God. 

At that time, you will KNOW that God is a mean, ugly, Monster.  At that point, if you are truthful and refuse to close your eyes in a religious stupor, then you will either self-destruct because life’s terms ARE unacceptable,  or you will decide to become a better person than the God we know in this reality.

The cruelty that we play out with one another is often what we have learned from that all-powerful, all-knowing, Meglomaniac. 

Today, I am able to accept my relationship and dependance on the great What-ever, because I value myself.  The fact that I choose to love or be loved by such a Being speaks more for me than for the Higher Power. 

Can you love the great Cruel Bastard, and know that somehow, accepting the fact that God has issues, gives you the freedom to rise above it all. 

Maybe in some other context all this will make sense.  But right now, accepting life on life’s terms includes embracing a Higher Power that will do or allow (omnipotent allowances are the same as doing) horrible things in my life.

Spirituality takes a little bit of masochism to be successful. 

So my attempts to rise above god and religion, to find a truly spiritual path, will be defined by the following five words:

SIMPLE

POSITIVE

CERTAIN

FREE

FUN

We’ll see how this works.

I am truly grateful to have nine months again.  It is magical.  The colors of the elements are purple and green, AA & CA combined.  And I have decided that I am going to appreciate the fact that I get to be with fellow soldiers this weekend, and quit putting on armour today to face the shadow dragons of tomorrow.  If I make a habit out of hating myself and my life, I cannot help but to hurt those who draw close to me.  If I fear and prepare for evil with each waking breath, that is all I will draw to myself.  I don’t want to live that way.  Great Power, help me to be Simple, Positive, Fun, Free; but most of all, help me to be Certain of my own value.

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.

My journey away from alcoholism has become my journey toward spiritual fulfillment.

If you are interested in following my spiritual journey then go to another weblog I have started:

http://wooaman.wordpress.com/

 December 9, 2009 at 8:08 am – comment on 249
 
I still can’t accept what I see in the mirror. Will I ever be able to? It remains to be seen. Pun intended.
———

December 9, 2009 at 8:00 am – comment of 246
 
Religion is made by man. Do not miss the forest for the trees.
———–

Instead, we looked at the human defects of these people, and sometimes used their shortcomings as a basis of wholesale condemnation.  We talked of intolerance, while we were intolerant ourselves.  We missed the reality and the beauty of the forest because we were diverted by the ugliness of some of its trees.  We never gave the spiritual side of life a fair hearing. 
Page 50 of the Big Book
———–

There is no heresy or no philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.
James Joyce

So, the Higher Power must be more than a concept.  There has to be a very real interaction with a very real entity of some form that is connected to and at least influences all power and knowledge, and that has an obsession for me that would pass for love.  Without those characteristics, the Higher Power becomes irrelevant.  If I must pick and chose when the Higher Power can be trusted and where I have to step in and make up for His inadequacies, then the Higher Power becomes merely a concept that I give lip service to.  And something my disease will fashion to accomodate a relapse.  He truly is everything or nothing.

If this is too much for you to swallow, as it often is for me, it is quite workable to go at this piecemeal, to test the waters and accumulate your own undeniable experiences.  I have a few that I have to remind myself of.

As far as this blog goes, I will converse with anyone who comments.  But unless I am just overwhelmed with an epiphany, I will not continue writing here.  I will not initiate it.  You the reader, or Gomu Himself will motivate any further contributions on my part. 

Thank-you for the opportunity to share.

After I first came into recovery there was an overshadowing thought that haunted me my 2nd year clean…Will there be enough time to do what I want to do? There is so much left unsaid and undone, how will I accomplish it?
The answer came simply from a friend who reminded me that at some point I will not get a full 24 hours. I will be 42 in July and felt as if time was “running out”. It’s odd, before I got to recovery life seemed to take forever to arrive at that point and now it’s as if time has been speeded up.
I came to the understanding that 12 Step Programs prepare me to face the inevitable with dignity and a sense of self-worth. That the miserable existence I called life before really wasn’t living at all. That I have the full opportunity to live my life they way I was intended to from the very start, with the ability to be a human being.
My approach to a Higher Power is a bit more simplistic. I find it would be arrogant on my part to believe that I am one of 6 billion people living on a rock hurtling through space at 90,000 mph and this is it.
I believe the power we seek comes from both within and from others. I have witnessed far too many things both while in active addiction and while in recovery to believe in coincidences and luck.
I feel that my life has a sense of purpose and I may never know all of the answers to the questions I want to ask, but I have a faith today that what I need to know versus what I want to know is revealed when the time is right.
Take Care….Bob D.

———————————————-

1.  The nature of self-expression: 

After I first came into recovery there was an overshadowing thought that haunted me my 2nd year clean…Will there be enough time to do what I want to do? There is so much left unsaid and undone, how will I accomplish it?
The answer came simply from a friend who reminded me that at some point I will not get a full 24 hours. I will be 42 in July and felt as if time was “running out”. It’s odd, before I got to recovery life seemed to take forever to arrive at that point and now it’s as if time has been speeded up.
I came to the understanding that 12 Step Programs prepare me to face the inevitable with dignity and a sense of self-worth. That the miserable existence I called life before really wasn’t living at all. That I have the full opportunity to live my life they way I was intended to from the very start, with the ability to be a human being.

2.  The nature of spiritual empowerment:

My approach to a Higher Power is a bit more simplistic. I find it would be arrogant on my part to believe that I am one of 6 billion people living on a rock hurtling through space at 90,000 mph and this is it.
I believe the power we seek comes from both within and from others. I have witnessed far too many things both while in active addiction and while in recovery to believe in coincidences and luck.
I feel that my life has a sense of purpose and I may never know all of the answers to the questions I want to ask, but I have a faith today that what I need to know versus what I want to know is revealed when the time is right.

Bob D, thank-you for your response.  I am going to try some active listening to restate what I think you are saying here.  Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.

1.  In your 2nd year clean, you were haunted by the reality of the limited time of your mortality coupled with the realization that you had much left that was unsaid and undone.  Within you, there was something that identified the unsaid and undone of your life now that you had significant time clean and sober.  The spectre of it not being accomplished was a source of fear for you.   A reality that haunted you.

But you found an answer through a friend, one that resonated with you, provided you with comfort.  The friend pointed to one reality – that at some point, you will not get a full 24 hours.  In the context of recovery, we recognize that all we have is the 24 hours before us.  But this friend said that there will come a time when we will not even be given that in full measure.  There are elements of our life that are beyond our ability to plan.  We cannot even rely on a 24 hour plan to accomplish things.   He was inviting you to an acceptance of things you cannot control, specifically, time.

You continue by restating the reality of the limited time of your mortality inspired by the quickly approaching 42nd birthday in July.  But you put the phrase RUNNING OUT in quotations.  It seems you are saying that the feeling of running out of time was not a real concept.  You point to the oddity that before recovery, time appeared to move unbearably slow to arrive at some unknown destination (I do not know how to translate –at that point, for I do not know what point you are referring to- and it may be inconsequential to your primary exploration), but now it has speeded up.  Since we assume that time is a constant, that our coming into recovery did not actually accelerate time around us, this must be an illusion stemming from within you.  I think you are suggesting that this illusion is manufactured by the peculiar mental twist of our disease.  That the tendency of this disease to use our minds to manufacture misery in order to accomodate the return to an alcoholic or drug induced state of oblivion is the actual author of the feeling of running out of time.

You walked through a process that brought you to a certain comfort or reliance on the 12 step program.  The first thing this process did for you is to help you realize that no matter when the inevitable day of your death arrives, you would be able to face it with dignity and a sense of self-worth because of your devotion to this program of recovery. Then you looked back at what you had been able to achieve under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and realized that you could not even say that you were living life at all during that time.  You realized that when you did what was natural for you, you could not live at all, and that without the intervention of the program misery was a way of life for you.  With death faced, and the old way of living discarded, you looked at what you had under the direction of the 12 step program in a new light.   Your discomfort came not from the limits of time and resource, but the reality that for the first time you have the opportunity to live your life the way it was intended from the very start.   The ability to just BE who you were supposed to be was suddenly a possibility and the newness of this reality was what you are adjusting to. 

2.  Your approach to the Higher Power is more simplistic than…?   You value the simplicity of your approach to the Higher Power.  Because when you said that the answer came from your friend, you said it came simply.  If I am correct, you believe that simplicity is an indication of inspiration from the Higher Power. 

The phrase “on my part” identifies this as a personal assertion.  If you were to believe the following, it would be the voice of your arrogance:  I am one of 6 billion people living on a rock hurtling through space at 90,000 mph and this is it.  You are one of 6 billion people makes you small, maybe insignificant.  You are living on a rock, not a planet, hurtling through space,  not in a life-sustaining orbit,  at 90,000 mph.  Since both of those things are facts, but are expressed in a way that strips it of wonder, they could be considered an attempt to diminish yourself and your place in the universe.   It is the assertion that you and your environ are insignificant that is the foundation of this arrogance.  Now merge that expression with the opinion that “this is it,” and the statement of arrogance is complete.  I find this paradoxical because arrogance is defined as the offensive display of superiority or self-importance; overbearing pride.  If I am correct, the resolution of this paradox comes when you observe the universe and claim the ability and right to diminish its workings, and declare yourself and those around you as ultimately insignificant. 

You believe that the spiritual empowerment we all seek is available within us, and through our connections with other people.  You have witnessed things that had nothing to do with you being in recovery or being in addiction that you cannot dismiss as luck or coincidence.  These were events outside of you.  You see them as evidence of the existence of a Higher Power.  

What you have gained from your connection with the Higher Power is a sense of purpose.  This is something that you truly feel. 

What you give in the relationship is a trusting acceptance, a faith, a knowing, that those questions that are left unanswered don’t need to be answered until the time is right. 

*****************

Bob, thank-you again.  I would like to ask you a few questions if life is not keeping you too busy.

1.  When you talked of having things unsaid and undone in the beginning of your missive, could you give some examples?  Have you found a new expression for them or have they been discarded as being of no value in your current life?  Are they apart of what gives you a sense of dignity and self-worth?  If not, what is it that feeds those qualities in you?

2.  You spoke of being able to live your life the way you were intended to from the very start.  Do you specifically know how your were intended to live it?  How did you gain this insight?  Intended by your Higher Power, or by you?

3.  You alluded to events that you do not count as luck or coincidence, and serve as evidence for your spiritual life.  Would you mind sharing some of them?  I will treat them with care, and not attack that which you view as sacred.  I truly am interested. 

4.  What feeds this sense of purpose that you speak of?