Every Act Is A Spiritual Act

I've heard that more than once in the program: Every act is a spiritual act. I think I even wrote on this in my original meditation book, Yesterday's Tomorrow.  The first spiritual act that was pointed out to me in rehab was my attempt to end my own life. That's the basic choice in life: To live or not. All spirituality related to my own recovery from addiction draws from that fundimental decision.

Do I pull this trigger or trust that my nightmare will somehow take a better turn?

Do I admit to myself that every problem I have is either caused by or made worse by active addiction?

Do I stay in this exhausting footrace with an untiring death, or do I get clean---free from the pitiless chains of addiction?

Do I keep doing what I've been doing and keep getting the slams I keep getting, or do I open my mind enough to try a different way?

Do I go to where the kind of help I need is, or do I keep drawing from the dry well of my own thinking?

Do I reach for freedom and life, or do I continue creeping through the muck of shame, guilt, illness, debt, loneliness, and despair toward a certain and demeaning death?

This is Easter Sunday. For a good part of the religious world, it is a time to celebrate a resurrection. For others, it is Spring. The world clock has turned, trees are budding, the perennials planted and tended last year are warming up, some peeking through the soil to see if it's warm enough to come out, moose, deer, bear, rabbit, and fish are preparing for new life, and with all this going on around me, what am I going to do? Pick up?

No. What I'm going to do is what I did yesterday: Don't use, go to meetings, ask for help.

Why?

Why?

The quote from NA's Basic Text appearing in April 8th's Just For Today says, "We come to know happiness, joy and freedom."

I like happiness. It makes me happy.  It feels good. That's why I do what I need to do to stay clean: Meetings, Higher Power, Step work, sponsor, sharing --- it really is much less bother than being borderline suicidal 24 hours a day.

Do what you need to do for today.

 ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣ ♣

THIS NEW DAY

I was asked about the prayers I use. A number of them depend on what's happening, but I have a few regulars.


First thing in the morning, once I'm done with breakfast, complaining about my aches and pains, wondering if I'm ever going to get a motorboat, and make it into the fresh air outside, I say, "God, thank you for last night, thank you for yesterday, and thank you for the gift of this new day."


Life is a gift. A near death experience taught me that. As the years on my ticket get used up and my health problems increase, the treasure that is each new day becomes ever more obvious. "Okay, I have another day; Now, what do I do with it?"


After that, I pray that God watches out and protects me and those I love in our travels and adventures today, and I pray for some folks I know in and out of the program who are having a tough time with addiction and/or other things.  I may throw in a prayer or two for deceased friends of mine who I'm not absolutely certain made it to a better place.


If the committee in my head is really running around, screaming, pulling me this way and that, I say: "God, help me to focus on the present moment and fill my mind with the task at hand."


The Serenity Prayer is frequently employed when I'm feeling up against it.


Try a prayer or two. As a crusty old bastard in the program once told me, "You don't have to believe in any of this shit for it to work for you; All you have to do is do it."


I came.
I came to.
I came to believe.


Make a great day.

BALANCING ACT

"The program isn't my life.  The program gave me back my life." —Bruce Chamberlain

All or nothing: That was how I ran my life and everything else before getting clean in the program. Work, sex, research, writing—I went at it all as though my life depended on it, which included drinking and using prescriptions. When I began writing a story, I would begin writing and wouldn't stop until—sometimes days later—I would finish. Things like moderation and balance were vague and mostly meaningless concepts from Eastern philosophy that had little to do with me, even after my way of doing things gave me a heart attack at the age of thirty-six..

Then I ran headlong into a wall called "addiction," rehab, Narcotics Anonymous, and a person whose name I can no longer remember who told me, "All you need to do to get and stay in recovery is change everything but your hair color—unless changing your hair color helps, then change that, too."

I didn't have to change my hair color, so I did. When my beard started turning gray, I used a product that was supposed to return my beard to its original color—a youthful light brown. The color I got, however was Big Bird yellow! About the same time that my gray beard grew back in, the hair on top decided to thin the crop.  I was falling apart! At a meeting I went to, a young man was sharing about the gray hair that was peppering his sleek locks. "I told my sponsor about it, and he held out his hands and said, "I don't know what to tell you; if you don't use you get older."

The frantic way I went about my recovery mirrored my behavior when I was still using. If I was going to be a recovering addict, I would be the most perfect recovering addict the planet had ever seen. Meeting attendance, service work, sponsors, sponsees, Twelfth Step calls, buried myself in literature, and when it came to Higher Powers, I fell into an endless pile of research on ancient and modern religion.

Slowing down. The first time I actually heard and listened to this concept, I was at an Al-Anon meeting. How much should I slow down was the obvious next question, and the response I got was sobering . . . so to speak. "Take a quarter of what you're doing now and do half of that." I talked to my sponsor about that, and he agreed. “God didn’t put you on this earth to sit in endless meetings and chant steps and traditions like a robot. The program is medicine for the disease of addiction. It’s not a life. Out there somewhere you have a life. Go and find it —but don’t forget to keep taking your medicine.”

Today I'm not running as hard as I can to wind up in the same place. I have a life, people I love and who love me, fun things to do and see, wonderful books and movies to experience, places to go, things to see, causes I like that can use my help, and downhill skiing. I also am still writing and enjoying it much more now that I'm not hovering over myself with a bullwhip, driving myself into another cardiac problem.

Easy does it—but do it!



LIFE'S TOUGH

"Life's tough, kid, and it's tougher if you're stupid."

The above quotation, a variety of which is most often attributed to John Wayne, came from The Friends of Eddie Foyle.  John Wayne is also attributed as having originated the following quotation: "If you've got them by the balls, their hearts and minds will follow."

The value of the second quotation to the problem of staying clean is marginal, since it is the main credo of every addiction of which I know. When alcohol had me by the litchi nuts, my heart and mind definitely followed. When I first got clean, however, my heart and mind were still trying to make up their minds. It frightens me to think about my early and quite naive bargaining and negotiations with Death, not understanding until much later that Death does not negotiate.

The world of recovery is made up out of two groups of persons: Active addicts and recovering addicts. Active addicts use; Recovering addicts don't. Active addicts are playing leapfrog with Death; Recovering addicts have stopped playing games with the disease of addiction. You never want to play leapfrog with a guy who's carrying a scythe.

There are problems in life, and as an old sponsor of mine once put it: "Recovery is one long exercise in applying the Serenity Prayer."

For those not familiar with the abbreviated version of Reinhold Niebuhr's untitled prayer used in Twelve Step programs, it goes like this:

God, grant me Serenity

to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

and Wisdom to know the difference.

I can't change that I'm an addict. I can't change what I need to do to remain in recovery from addiction. If I accept those two things and do what I need to do, I thrive, mostly. If I decide to go to war with the facts of reality, well, I'm back to playing leapfrog with a guy who packs a three foot-long blade and doesn't like to lose.

I know better. Since I know better, the only way I can convince myself that going back out is a good idea is through that self imposed blindness and ignorance we call Stupidity.

"Life's tough, kid, and it's tougher if you're stupid."

Today I'm going to do what I know I need to do for my recovery, let go of outcomes, and have a great day. I hope you have one, too.

A MAN CALLED BRIAN

Under the heading of "Identify, don't compare," I was sent the following by a fellow in Virginia.

A man walked out to the street and immediately catches a taxi in New York City . The cabbie says, "That's perfect timing, sir, you're just like Brian."

Passenger: "Brian who?"

Cabbie: "Brian Sullivan. He's a guy who did everything right all the time. I first heard about him in the program. Like my coming along when you needed a cab, things happen like that to Brian Sullivan all the time. A great man."

Passenger: "Program? Are you a friend of Bill W.'s?"

Cabbie: "Yes sir, I am.  You?"

Passenger: "Yes. Clean and sober the past three years. About this person, Brian, everything couldn't have been perfect for him. There are always a few clouds over everybody."

Cabbie: "Not over Brian Sullivan. He was a terrific athlete who could have won the Grand Slam at tennis or played golf with the pros. He sang like a bird, danced like a star and played the piano . He worked one hell of a program, an amazing guy."

Passenger: "Sounds like he was something really special."

Cabbie: "Oh, there's more. He had a memory like a computer, remembered everybody's birthday and worked Twelve Step calls like a saint. He could fix anything from a toaster to a car. Not like me. I change a fuse, and the whole street blacks out. But Brian Sullivan did everything right."

Passenger: "Wow... Some guy that Brian."

Cabbie: "He always knew the quickest way in traffic, avoided every traffic jam, and never had to search for a parking place. Brian never made a mistake, picked up after himself, and he really knew how to treat a woman and make her feel good. He would never answer her back even if she was wrong; and his clothing was always immaculate, shoes highly polished, too. He was the perfect man! No one, and I mean no one, could ever measure up to Brian Sullivan."

Passenger: "An amazing fellow. Was he your sponsor?"

Cabbie: "No. See, I never actually met Brian. He died."

Passenger: "Then how do you know so much about him?"

Cabbie: I'm married to his goddamned widow."

~ ~ ~

SEEKER IN THE RAIN

There is an annual Narcotics Anonymous convention in Alfred, Maine mid-September every year. It's held at the Notre Dame Spiritual Center and the convention is called "The Miracle." If you're looking for king-sized beds, maid and room service, you are looking in the wrong place. At the Miracle, you make your own bed, clean your own room, and have a chance to open yourself to the worlds of fellowship, recovery, and spirituality. There are snacks, table tennis, and pool, too. Meals are prepared by the Brothers and Sisters and served at the dining hall. The food is good. No one has reported losing weight at a Miracle.

The convention is purposefully small. Several times the organizers and attendees have discussed moving the Miracle to a larger facility, and each time it has been brought up, it has been voted down. You see, at a small gathering, it's tough to hide in your room, becoming one of those invisible attendees who walk in fear of change. Those who come to the Miracle really want to get clean, stay clean, and advance in their recovery.  They may want to hide, but it's hard to do in Alfred.

The first Miracle was in 1983 and it has been going strong ever since. If my addition is correct, this coming September will be Miracle XXX. I have attended all of the Miracles, I owe much of my recovery to the things I've learned there, the friends I've made there, and the fellowship I became a part of there.  There, as well, I came to trust this Higher Power of mine who, up until then, had been a sometime figure of comfort most often lost in a cloud of my own doubts. 

At the first day of the first Miracle, I had a lousy time. The place was full of people I'd never met before, at one of the meetings I made a reference to something I had learned in AA and had been reamed out by a NAliban Nazi, the weather was gray, cold, and wet, and I was ready to get in my car and go home Saturday morning.

I remember sitting at breakfast on Saturday, huddled over my eggs and sausage, silently glowering around at the other addicts, wondering why no one wanted to sit with me. I mentally chewed over some of the things I had heard at the meetings on Friday, particularly a couple of Higher Power believers who kept repeating, if you need something from your Higher Power, all you need to do is ask.

So there I was after breakfast, standing in the rain in front of the tiny cemetery the Brothers have there, trying to decide what to do. What did I need from my Higher Power?  I needed a sign. Okay, I thought, I'll ask for a sign. Fully convinced I was making requests to a nonexistent deaf ear, I mumbled sort of out loud, "Okay, Whoever you are, give me a sign. What do I need to know."

Well, no giant finger came down from Heaven and burned my answer in the flagstones with lightning bolts. I got zip, nada, nothing, which was what I secretly expected. It was dead quiet, except for the patter of the raindrops. Maybe the sign I need is already there, I thought, giving this fictitious power every chance. So, what can I see? I looked and shivered as the icy rain ran down my collar. And I answered, "Well, I can see I'm god damned cold and wet!"

What a bunch of crap. But then I happened to look to my left and saw Denis Hall, the main meeting place and dormitory for the Miracle attendees. I was cold, wet, and all alone standing in the rain. But it was warm and dry back there with all those recovering addicts. It was enough of a sign for me. That was the moment I became a part of the fellowship of NA.

On Sunday, before I left to return home, I walked down the lane to that place near the cemetery and made two deals with my Higher Power: First, that I would try my best to stay clean and work the program, HP taking care of the rest; and, Second, if I was clean that time next year, I would be back. I've returned every year since.

Do I want to move this convention to a big flashy hotel that can serve a convention of thousands rather than the hundred and fifty or so who squeeze into the Spiritual Center every September for the Miracle?  I don't think so. But, even if at some future date, it is decided to make such a move, come mid-September every year I'll be back at the Notre Dame Spiritual Center, standing amid the towering oaks on the lane to the Brothers cemetery. I made a deal with my HP to return every year that I was clean. HP has held up his end of the bargain; The least I can do is hold up mine.

INNER PEACE, INNER PEACE---AND SHUT UP, ALREADY!

One of my favorite movies is the first Kung Fu Panda. I like the story, the animation, the beautiful art direction and score, the message, and the laughs. I identify with Po's eating problem, but most of all I identify with Master Shifu (voice by Dustin Hoffman). In one scene, after being given the  seemingly impossible task of turning a big, fat Panda whose only skills appear to be making food and eating it into the dragon warrior, Shifu is in the temple, attempting to meditate to clear his troubled mind and regain his center and serenity. "Inner peace," he chants, "inner peace, in-in-in . . . inner peace---  Would whoever is making that slapping sound quiet down!"

Step Eleven says, "We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious with God, as we understood him, praying only for knowledge of his will for us and the power to carry that out."

The meditation part of Step Eleven, is every bit as important to our recovery as is prayer. The serene have no excuses, no reasons, to go and use. Inner peace. Inner peace.

Serenity, eh? So what do we do about all the drug substitution, quack rehab, guaranteed addiction cures, and self-appointed do-it-yourself sobriety gurus making money and gaining notoriety at the expense of many active addicts and alcoholics whose first efforts at recovery become misdirected by unprincipled charlatans and the well-meaning but ignorant?

Addicts die. Nothing anyone can do about that. Addicts who honestly want help know where to get it: the halls of NA, AA, other Twelve Step programs, and treatment centers based on the Twelve Steps. Addicts who look for that easier, softer way will often fall prey to the willpower illusionists and to those selling "cures." 

It sounds cold, but the program of recovery isn't for those who need it; it's for those who want it. As recovering addicts, our job isn't to engage in controversy, publicly arguing down those who hold differing views. Our job is to get into recovery, stay there, get on with our lives, and by our example carry the message of recovery to the still suffering addict.

And those commercials promising a guaranteed cure for addiction ("not based on any Twelve Step program"), when they come on the air?  "Inner peace, inner peace, in-in-in . . . inner peace---Would whoever has the remote please change the damned channel?"