Your life, dancing in the sunlight. Dust.

 

Life is a snake dance, shedding feathers of urge and keen scales of loss, shedding and, once free, free as it once was, as a baby snake is, free of old skin born anew, reborn, renewed, a new thing resembling everything, like you.

 


When I say you — you could be anybody, and you are. Your amazing eyes take 
in the shape of these letters, each symbol, the sound, how 
they connect to others, grasps even (oh, the miracle of
it all) how they unite into words which stand for things, connect together, form
 thoughts, and you think you’re just reading, with all this going on behind 
it all, making it happen, and you don’t stop to consider this miracle.
 Stop. Think about these things. The heart keeps beating, (until it 
doesn’t) and you don’t tell it to. It knows that you are meant to live, 
maybe even more than you do. Tirelessly all of these miracles keep being
 miraculous and you don’t stop to think, and it is never mad that you don’t 
notice, it doesn’t need you to; its joy is inside itself, the joy that you 
sometimes remember.  If only you knew, all the time, you are a beautiful 
thing. You, baby that you are, shedding skin that forms around the fruit of 
your life, scales of time and heartbreak shattered and dancing in the 
sunlight with crushed spider legs and dust.  

 

…your life, dancing in the
sunlight. Dust.

 



Could anything ever be more perfect than this?
 
This now, this you. A gift you are constantly unwrapping. Do I know you?
 You, who are reading this now, are you a friend of mine? An 
ex or future lover?  A stranger who breathes the same air as me, the 
same as Edgar Allen Poe or Geronimo or Rumi, inhaling and exhaling 
the fabric of this world you and I can never understand? Who are you? A 
child of God is who, living in the miracle of now, even if you don’t see 
it. It sees you, and it knows you. I know you. We are cut from the same 
cloth, warp and weft, stars in the same sky. How could I not love you?
 Whoever you are, I do.


 


The ocean caresses the sand into a tiny wholeness; it knows each grain to 
be a loving thing with the fierceness of a mother. The light, as it filters 
through the wings of your hair, is full of information that your eye will 
know and your heart will trust but your mind will turn away. In the house of 
the mind a hoarder lives, a dark collector that keeps every little thing.
There is nothing that is simply what it is. All things have a history 
attached. All things have names. If you let go you maybe won’t be you, 
dreamer of dreams, for God’s sake keep everything you think you know you are, who 
would you be if you let it go all go let go, I’d like to know and anyway I
 do, it’s written all over your face, this beautiful baby that loves things,
mercilessly, mirthfully, and does not see anything that it is not, is 
everything it sees and everything it doesn’t.

 



You are a symbol, a letter in an ancient alphabet, a secret code embedded 
in a moment of waking. The Mystery is in the corner of your mouth, a tiny 
acorn when you smile, a thing that everyone wants: the smile, the mystery, 
the promise of a great oak. Everyone knows you are the bright star flashing 
across the sky, and they make a wish as you pass. They know.


 


They know that even now, all time is pressed into one thing which bears the
 shape of a child’s laugh, the happy snake eating its own self, the gold 
ring never beginning, never ending. Here it is, where it always has been,
 and it’s yours. Don’t turn away. Don’t run after false things. Wake up from 
this dream; you are not alone. Alone is not real, only the opposite of 
alone is real. Wake up. Don’t fall in love with dreams.

 Sometimes someone dreams of losing things, something is gone that was there 
and without it someone is not someone anymore but a diminished thing, 
reduced by sadness, distorted by longing. In this dream, the shadows run
 alongside the sun and sing sadly, sad that the sun won’t touch them, 
lurking at the edge of the kiss that can’t reach them- the promise of the 
acorn, the mystery of you- the shadow is not you, the dream is not you. Do 
you know that? The shadow is not you. You are the sun.

 



I know the sun. I am the kiss I crave. This brings me joy in just that same 
way beauty makes me want to throw myself off a cliff, every time. It’s the
 pain of knowing it’s all God, and I am that — how can I tell you? What 
symbolsletterswordsthoughts could ever contain what that ecstasy is, the
 unbearable spasm of self remembering? How can I show the horse that the 
water is good to drink? But even more so, how will the horse know that it 
is the water?

 



It is good to beaten into submission, to be thrashed into a tiny grain of 
fiercely loving wholeness, to caress the edge of the sun where the shade
 sings. I submit to the ocean and its constant remembering.  I am a word, 
one word, the first letter, the point at which the pen meets the paper. I 
am not the pen. I am not the paper. I have not been written down.


 


I could keep writing and writing, except I couldn’t. Each word becomes as 
meaningless as a snake with no skin, as one tiny drop in the ever-loving ocean. It
 could be any word, any one word; they all mean the same thing, finally.
 Just as you could be anyone, you could be you or someone else, but there is 
only one Truth, and it’s always you. Wake up.

 


Could anything ever be more perfect than this?
….your life, dancing in the 
sunlight. Dust. 

I Have No Neutral Thoughts. Huh? Read on…

 

This morning I read my lesson for the day in Course In Miracles, which I highly suggest to anyone who is interested in taking their sobriety to another level. Today’s lesson was “I have no neutral thoughts.” I read it, was not impressed, and took a picture of the page so I could remember what it said later in the day, when my Ego conveniently allowed me to forget. I constantly have to outsmart my Ego, which was the mechanism of not being impressed upon reading of it. And there, right there, is the lesson, fully articulated- my not being impressed IS NOT a neutral thought. Inside of that blase impression of it was already a little bit of a judgment. There are some lessons I will read and think- “Oh, this is a GOOD one!” Even when I think that, it isn’t neutral.  NO matter what I think, inside, inhabiting that thought, is an already established foot hold of judgment- it is already either good or bad. It is never neutral.

So, you might say, what's the big deal? Well, I can’t claim to know, truly. The point of the lesson is to discover and to have a direct experience of it. What I am finding though is that the judgments that are already behind every thought are really more indicative of how my mind works than my actual thoughts are. I watch my thoughts all day long, like watching a train going by. Sometimes I jump on the train and am carried away, and sometimes I just watch in amazement. But even if I don’t jump on the train, there is the judgment, which is like the conductor, fueling the train with coal to make it go. My judgments are the coal, the fuel, without which the thoughts are obviously not going to get very far.

I’ve been very aware of the crazy train of my thoughts and that I have a choice about being swept away or not- its my choice, and that is a powerful thing and a huge part of my recovery. But only just now, today, did I really understand that it is my judgments that fuel the crazy train. I don’t know how to stop judging, yet. That is what the Course In Miracles is for- to teach us to understand ourselves and look at things we assume are automatic. It gives us the ability to master ourselves. I couldn’t really address the constant judging if I couldn’t see it because it was hiding behind my thoughts that I was busy not attaching myself to. But now that I know they are there, sneaky, hiding, I can now do something about them.

This morning, when I wasn’t impressed with today’s lesson, my intellect could have told you that whenever I am underwhelmed with something, that is sure to be the thing that will create a profound shift  for me. I was too tired to have this thought this morning, being before coffee, so my intellect wasn’t empowered to speak up and the Ego was louder. Whenever I cringe or refuse something or say no to something or decide that I absolutely do not like something- these are the very things that will track me down. I will literally be hunted by these things until I am able to see that I was wrong. My Ego is that knee jerk reaction telling me to avoid that thing of value, or to refuse to see it as valuable, to reject it as hum drum or blase’. Like this morning- “Oh, hmm, boring lesson today.” Ha! Take that, Ego! Foiled again!!!

Here is the other piece that I still need to figure out. Even GOOD judgments are judgments. By declaring something as good, better than other things, then I immediately judge all those other things as ‘less than’ the good thing. I don’t know how to work with this information yet, but I do know that in the realm of working on judgmental-ness, its counterintuitive to say -there is good judgmental-ness, and there is bad judgmental-ness. Somehow the goal is true neutrality, but I suspect the kind of neutrality where one really is in a state of choice about things, rather than programmed to hold things in a positive or negative light, automatically and without hesitation. It doesn’t mean being flat, it means being aware, it means allowing things to be just as they are, not forcing them to be good or bad as we may be programmed to behold it.

In many of my blogs here, I have stated that my goal is to not be a robot, to not live as I and society and my upbringing have programmed me to be. I want to be free, and organic and authentic. This is a process! But its the only thing worth doing, it really is NEXT LEVEL SOBRIETY. I believe there is abstinence from drugs and alcohol and living by principles, which is the recipe for a great life, and never ever to be knocked. But then there is the Next Level of sobriety, and that is what interests me most. This blog is me on my training wheels.  I am learning as I go, and I am happy to be in good company.

The Universe Is A Minimalist

 

One of the biggest themes of my addiction, towards the end, was profound isolation. Even in a room full of people, I could feel incredibly alone. I read recently that loneliness comes from feeling that you have nothing in common with anyone, so often that feeling is worse in groups, in public. I think that is part of what drove me to isolate- at least I had something in common with myself.

What it was like..

I recall waking up and reaching over for pills- I couldn’t leave the bed without them. The person who provided me with the pills would not put them there if he was angry with me, and on those days I would writhe in agony. He didn’t do that a lot, though, and I would take my pills (vicodin, narco, soma, xanax) and then look at the bleak day ahead of me. The best thing I could think to do was to find a movie on television; sometimes I would bid on stuff on ebay. At some point I had to get to the store for vodka- towards the end I didn’t eat much, and would drink when I felt hungry. Not to mention, I had kids to get to school and when they came home, they would run off and play with friends as I lay comatose on the couch. I had checked out of life completely, and would soon formulate a plan to check out entirely, although I clearly didn’t follow through, and that is another story. I was a zombie in the most literal sense of the word, and I felt like the only zombie in the world, no other fellow zombies to talk to. All the party buddies all end up in a room shaking by themselves. That party doesn’t last forever and never ends well for ones like me.
I recount this because I love to look at how it was, and what its like now.

What Its Like Now
Yesterday, at 15 days shy of my 5 year sober anniversary, I was killing time in South Pasadena while my daughter visited some friends. I had spent about an hour looking at old photographs and old issues of Mad Magazine in a vintage store, and then perusing books in a used bookstore- the kind that you don’t see much of anymore- scanning through volumes of poetry, and psychology books. It was a really peaceful way to spend an afternoon. I decided to buy a volume of Rumi, and a copy of Women Who Run With Wolves, which I always buy when I see it to give it away to friends. At the checkout counter (Which was really an old school desk where a girl hand writes the name of each volume and the price) I overheard an older woman talking about Kabbalah and the 23 volume Zohar, which I have. I saw the books she was reading, all of which were books I either had or wanted. I jumped into the conversation, I had to know this woman. I offered to help her carry the many books to her car and she asked me if I wanted to get tea. So we went to a lovely coffee shop situated by the metro tracks as the sun went down, and I got to hear her incredible story.

Apparently someone had gotten mad at her over a business transaction and had sent a letter about how she had hundreds of old European paintings and that she had bragged about being the grand-daughter of a Nazi warlord, and he suspected that her art collection was Nazi loot. This went to trial, almost to the Supreme Court, one of the first landmark cases of internet libel. To clear her name, she went looking into her genealogical background, and discovered that she was actually Jewish. Her family had come to the Free World and chose to pretend to be Christian Germans, to avoid prosecution and trouble. She had never known of this, and she continued her search, curious about what else might be revealed. She found that she came from a long line of rabbis, in fact. And going through those rabbis, she even came to discover that one of her ancestors was supposedly there when Moses came down with the Ten Commandments.

Being a spiritual person, she came to see this situation as incredibly significant. The libel trial caused much strife for all involved- people were fired from jobs, she had to sell her home and move back to the west coast. But what she was given in return was a connection to her ancestors, her family, her blood lineage. She looked at me as a metro train whisked by, as I drank my chai tea, as the sun was setting,  and said, “Moreover, I get to make amends for my family, for the fact that they hid their religion and faith to survive, I get to bring the truth to light and release them all. They can not have a portal in me without my knowing they are there, that they existed, that they are part of who I am.  And so I learned Hebrew, and I read the 23 volumes of the Zohar in its original form, in their honor.” She said, “The universe is a minimalist. It burns everything but what is essential away.”

This whole afternoon is obviously a far cry from five years ago. I was hardly able to leave my house, much less make a new friend. To me, that afternoon was a little adventure, full of old photographs from other people’s lives and memories, and wise words from Rumi, and the story of my new friend, the sunset, the clanging bells that alert that a train is coming…all of these took effect on me in such a subtle way, and yet profoundly so. Five years ago nothing subtle would have penetrated, would have ever registered with me. Things either had to have a numbing, zombifying  effect or be a wild roller-coaster-rock and roll-Hunter S Thompson freak out. But a gentle afternoon like this? Never would have happened.  Yet I wouldn’t trade this scenario for 50 nights of drunken debauchery.  And I get to walk away from that with such an elegant, eloquent phrase that will stay with me forever. “The Universe is a Minimalist, burning all but what is essential away.” If its here, its meant to be here, and if it goes, it was supposed to go. That phrase was a great gift, yet another gift that my sobriety has allowed me to be blessed with.

MY NAME IS LEGION (or, how does free will fit into recovery?)

What is free will?

This is an age old question, and one I am not equipped to answer. But I am prepared to establish a good inquiry, because I think about it a lot. And I have some ideas, but they are by no means conclusions. Its more of an ongoing dialogue, and one that interests me quite a bit.

In AA there is a lot of talk about God’s Will. My understanding has always sort of been that God’s Will was the basic unfolding of life, without me trying to force my schemes and plans and such onto it. This seems pretty clear, right? But what if I exercised none of my own will, and operated only by God’s Will. Would God’s Will get me out of bed? Would God’s Will get my kids to school? Please understand me here, I am not IN ANY WAY questioning the beauty and grace of God’s Will. I am just wondering how it works with Free Will, with my Will. How they work together, and how they don’t.

When I really give it some thought, it takes MY free will to do God’s Will. I have to freely succumb to the way life is unfolding, and it is my will that gives me the commitment to take on the next indicated action, my will that allows me to choose to pause when agitated, to recognize when my personality is trying to trump my principles. I read recently that, in steps 6 and 7, becoming entirely ready to have God remove our defects of character and to humbly remove our shortcomings, the point is that we have to ask. We become ready to have them removed because we finally understand, after a thorough inventory, what slaves we have been to the damn things. It has to be our free will that willingly asks for them to be removed. We have to want it. It was suggested that God can only work with our free will in that department- for our shortcomings to be lifted without our first asking would be sort of like a cosmic cheat. We have to be willing to let them go. WILLING. Without our willingness, none of it can happen. And WILLingness is our own Free Will in action, choosing the light over the darkness.

Free Will In Action

And at times our free will doesn’t choose the light. We all know this, it’s the basis of all religions and spiritual journeys. It’s the fundamental sticking point. It is what makes choosing the light such an diabolical  challenge, and also the single most relevant victory- because the dark can be so incredibly seductive and compelling. It knows our weak spots, maybe better than we do. My character defects are tools for the darkness- I get a feeling that my fears, my insecurities, my judgmental-ness or desire to be liked, my hanging on to old hurts and behaving from that wounded, entitled, place of long suffering victimhood will ultimately be my undoing, if left unchecked. Its all Ego, or Disease, or however you like to call it. And it only wants one thing- to dismantle me until I am a walking black hole, or six feet under-whichever comes first.

I don’t know with any certainty about any of it, I only know that I wonder about it. I can’t possibly know the mind of God. And I can only try to know my own mind, and to try to overcome my own errant and self serving belief systems enough to see the truth. Its not a pretty thing, to do the work of getting to know how our minds operate. In my experience of step 7, asking God to humbly remove my shortcomings was not an instantaneous thing- I didn’t just ask, and then they were plucked out of my being like stray hairs. For me, I am constantly given situations that bring my character defects into  the light, and if I do not examine them right then and there as they present themselves, then more of those situations will come until I understand the lesson, observe myself acting in the grip of said character defect, recognize it, and do something different. You have to be able to identify the broken part, to look at the damage, (Step 4 and 5) and then, at least for me, I have to see how they ‘work’ (or don’t) for me in my life-  broken parts create broken results.

And like a game of Whack a Mole, they keep popping up, as there are a multitude of them, trying to run the show. Like the chapter of St Mark in the bible, when there is a man who is known to be filled with unclean spirits, who no man could tame, no chains could bind, who spent all the time crying and cutting himself with stones- is that not like so many of us, in the depth of our despair? And he came to Christ, and Jesus asked of the man “What is your name?” And he said, “My name is Legion, for we are  many.” And so it is like that, we are possessed  with so many defects and agendas and belief systems and fears and desires and addictions that when we are able to master the addictions to some extent, there is still the Legion, and only the light of truth is able to bring us back to a whole and holy state.

Here is another challenge, and its extremely tricky- we are very, very attached to the Legion.  They have been ingrained in us, and we think they are intrinsic to who we are. What they do is rob us of the precious gift of Free Will. If we are behaving as puppets, reacting to external stimulus without thinking, just being ‘who we are’, then we are not in a state of choice. We are not practicing free will. We are just doing what we are programmed to do, like a microwave or a blender. We love our suffering and our chaos. We can’t live without our loneliness, our boredom, our dissatisfaction. We do things to create more suffering, more dissatisfaction- on autopilot, nonetheless. Autopilot! We don’t even know it. We just call it life. But there is so much more to it.

Steps 6 and 7 begin to really restore our free will to us. We get the opportunity to observe our actions and reactions, see what does not work, and choose something different. In that choosing, we are liberated from the slavery of our personal history, our robotic programming, our autopilot mode, our self sabotage. We have free will, and FREE is not an accidental designation; there IS freedom in it, there IS liberation in it. And that free will is free to choose to align itself with God’s Will. If it looks at all that is being offered, all the entire banquet of life with all its myriad choices, and chooses to act by principles in spite of the comforts the personality demands, then it has placed you squarely outside the prison walls, liberating you from the bondage of self. In that place, you can learn to trust that it is all unfolding just as it should and that there are no mistakes in God’s World. We pray for knowledge of God’s Will for us- that we will be guided and directed on our journey- And the power to carry that out- Our free will, used rightly, is that power. That is the ultimate freedom, more precious than any treasure. When you can walk in that truth is when you remember who you really are- “You are a child of the Universe, no less than the trees and the stars. You have a right to be here.”
You are a miracle.  You are a gift. Believe it.

Not Drowning, Surfing

 

I love how it happens when I am reading various spiritual books and I come across the same truths that we learn in AA. For instance, the concept of contrary action. This seems to be axiomatic in many schools of thought. Recently, in my Fourth Way group, we were all told to sit for 5 minutes every morning, upon waking. Not in a normal meditation kind of way, but upright, on a chair, back straight, feet on floor, hands one inside the other. Easy, right? Think again.

Of course its easy- its not like they asked me to bend spoons with my mind. In fact, the idea of its easiness is exactly what helps illustrate how unwilling most people are to do even the easiest of things.  I am using myself as an example. I know all about contrary action- I write about it a lot, and I practice it often. It is a lynchpin of my personal philosophy. However, when confronted with doing this simple thing, I have had the hardest time adhering to it. Now- here are my reasons, and they are, seemingly, valid- I’m a tired single mom, I work a lot, I don’t get enough sleep, I roll out of bed and hit the ground running, I have two teenagers to wake up and get moving, etc. etc. These are not just reasons, these are excuses. EXCUSES. Reasons are just excuses that make sense on some level. I am able to totally justify my not doing this one little thing. And yet, by the simple act of putting all reasons, excuses, and resistance aside and simply doing the damn thing, I may experience a new level of consciousness.

Am I a Robot? Errr…apparently.

How is 5 minutes a day going to give me a new level of consciousness? Could it really be that easy? Well, the new level comes not just from the sitting, but by the whole process of watching all the automatic resistance that comes up for me. In all spiritual traditions, the concept of ‘waking up’ is very relevant. In Fourth Way, part of the waking up process is called Self Remembering. To remember my true self, I have to understand my false self, the one that is a robot. I have to see how programmed I am to do certain things certain ways all the time, consistently. I have to observe how I play small and make excuses. I justify my limiting behavior. I procrastinate. I look for an easier way. I’m on automatic pilot more often than I realize. It wasn’t easy to see before this 5 minute morning exercise, because it isn’t easy to really see ourselves at all. I can see only what I know- but it is finding out what I don’t know that liberates me from the bondage of self.
For the past few weeks I would drive to work and puzzle over why I didn’t do my sitting exercise, or why I kept having such a problem with it. At first, I really didn’t know. I said to myself- “I can’t do this, my life is too busy.” But for crying out loud, its FIVE MINUTES! FIVE! So then I really started to observe myself, and watch myself NOT sit. I watched myself do everything BUT sit. And I learned a lot that I didn’t know.

The more I understand how I work, what makes me tick (Know Thyself! Of course!) the more I will learn to master what is a robotic function and become more of what I was before I became programmed by life. There is an essential, true, core self in all of us, that is trying to break through. In recovery, we have taken the first step in this adventure, when we surrender a way of life and a way of being, the only way we know, and commit to a life of abstinence from drugs and alcohol. This is a great launching place for the rest of the spiritual journey. The more we reveal our true natures, the more authentic we can show up in the world. We remove the barriers that keep us from experiencing the ebb and flow of life- when we fight it, we are like a drowning person, flailing at the injustice of it all. But when we are living in our truth, we surf. And if you know any surfers, they will tell you, surfing is when they feel closest to God.

ADVENTURES IN SOBRIETY

A couple of days ago, I had driven my daughter to an appointment in an area of LA that isn’t the greatest- not the kind of neighborhood you want to be in at night. Her appointment was fro m6:30 to 7:30 pm, so it was almost night time. It seems that I fell asleep in my car with it running- I had left it on for the heat, and was reading while I waited for her. I was awakened by my car making a strange sound, and then dying.


My first thought is that I had run down the little gas I had- I was planning on filling up the tank right after her appointment. I tried to text her to tell her that I was leaving the car and walking to the gas station, but she didn’t answer and the door to the building was locked. So I went as fast as I could, with only 15 minutes before she walked out of her appointment into the parking lot, at which point the door would lock behind her and she would be alone in the lot, not knowing what had happened to her mom. That was all I could think about as I walked as fast as I could to the gas station. SO, I bought the $15 gas container, and two gallons of gas ($4.70 here in Los Angeles, for those elsewhere). As I was filling the gas can, a man pulled up and asked if I needed a ride. Normally I would say no, but I had to get back to my daughter, who I had been worried about the whole time. As we were driving, he told me he had stayed twice at the half way house up the street, both times he got out of the penitentiary. Wow! Yeah, that isn’t the kind of thing you want to hear when you jump into a stranger’s car. But he then went on to tell me how he spoke to his son for the first time ever just the day before, and he told me his son’s name and that he found him on facebook. He then dropped me off and was on his way.


I put the gas in my car. Annnnnnd…it didn’t work. The only place that was around in the area, sharing the parking lot with doctor’s office that was open was a mental hospital. Yes, this is a true story. So I went there and tried to find someone with jumper cables. I found two ambulance attendants, who were very helpful and came and put the cables on my car. 15 minutes later- nothing. The battery was completely dead. And then, so was my phone. My daughter and I got in the back of the ambulance and they dropped us off at an Autozone, about 8 blocks away. I didn’t know if I was going to try to learn how to install a battery, alone with my 13 year in a dark parking lot, if I was going to carry that heavy thing up the 8 block long hill- I had no idea. As we stood in line, in a state of awe at the weirdness of the situation, I felt a nudge. An invisible nudge. It nudged- almost pushed- me towards a Hispanic man who was standing at the register.  I asked him if he knew how to install a battery. He said yes. I asked him if he could help us, and he said yes. His name was Daniel. He had to repair his own car, in the parking lot, so we sat on the curb for about an hour, my daughter and I wrapped in his sweatshirt that he gave us because we were cold, watching the people doing various street businesses on the corner.


Finally, he was done with his car. He didn’t speak English well enough to understand how to get to my car, so he told me to drive. His van seemed like his home- meaning, I think he lived in it. So I drove his van to the parking lot by the mental hospital, and he was able to install the new battery, our new friend Daniel.

PERCEPTION IS EVERYTHING

half empty? half full?

What was truly amazing about this adventure, and the point of this blog, is that every single time I needed someone, they showed up, like clockwork. It took 4 people to help- ambulance drivers, an ex con, and a homeless man who barely spoke English. But they were there, and I couldn’t question for one second the force that put everyone where they should be. Because really, that battery would have died eventually, and it could have been a lot worse.


there was a time when this adventure would have been a terrible chain of events- I wouldn’t have seen anything good about it at all. My daughter was inclined to get negative about it- I had said to her, “This could have been so much worse!” And she rolled her pre-teen eyes at me and said, “It could have been so much better, too.” To which I replied, “Maybe, but the way I am looking at it keeps me grateful and positive. The way you are looking at it will always make you a victim, and unhappy.” She smiled, and said, “Mom, you’re weird.” Later, though, she did concede that it was pretty wild how there were people right there, giving rides and helping install batteries and jump cars. I was glad she was there to experience it- stranded by a mental hospital in a bad part of town with the phone dead- it was like the setting for a slasher movie. And saved by 4 not-so-random angels. I love these awesome adventures in sobriety.

The moral of the story? It depends on how you look at it. Perception is everything. EVERYTHING. We learn this in recovery; its a pivotal lesson for us. The world adjusts to our personal frame of reference. It shows up exactly as we call it,  based on what we choose to see. Because I perceive this to be  good world, where I am divinely guided and protected, then it is. It is a good world. I am divinely guided and protected. And so are you.

Shedding the Veil of Illusion in Sobriety

 

As anyone who has been reading these blogs knows, my main area of interest is the spiritual journey, and how to remain as open and awake and aware as possible at all times. That alone will keep anyone busy, as the Ego is a worthy opponent that is constantly trying to undermine any efforts at living in truth and grace. The Ego is like a crafty old wolf, always lurking around trying to find a moment of weakness, telling lies and playing games. Addiction is one of the greatest tools of the Opponent, for the goal of the Ego is to block our contact with truth, with the Divine, with our selves- and our addiction covers all the bases quite nicely. When we are active in our disease, we are in a trance of complete delusion, we are puppets with blinders on. As there are many, many types of addiction ( from the obvious drugs and alcohol, to the not so obvious drama addicts and rage-aholics, who create strife in their lives and the lives of others in order to obtain the rush it provides for them) there are many, many other people incarcerated inside of themselves, cut off and isolated, sleepwalking through life, who are not even aware of their condition. As alcoholics and drug addicts, we are gifted with an alarm clock that others are not. We have a chance at redemption others don’t always get to discover.

When we wake up from the dream of addiction, we are confronted with a new reality- new for us, anyway- its the same reality many people have been living for a long time. How to navigate without the puppet strings, the blinders on? How do we deal? Its like the scene in the movie The Matrix.  When Neo is given the choice of the red pill or the blue, he chooses the pill of truth, and in so doing the illusions are stripped away and he is plunged into reality- not one which is as packaged or as attractive as The Matrix, which is a lie, a shared dream- in the real world the clothes are tattered, the food is goop, there is no sunlight, no real creature comfort in sight- but when they look each other in the eye, its a real eye looking back, and to a seeker of truth, that one fact is more valuable than the entire world of illusion. Connection. Unity. Love. Service. Compassion. The entire Matrix is a trifle compared to the infinite value of these things, even in the smallest doses.

In Eastern thought, the veils of illusion that are used to bewitch us are called Maya, and the continuous but random drift of passions, desires, emotions, and experiences inside the land of illusion is called Samsara. The Matrix is a great metaphor because the Matrix is Maya, and the people in the Matrix are simply dreaming life- Samsara. Once we surrender drugs and alcohol, we are still left with the rest of the illusory world and all its other temptations with which to replace the substance. Putting away the substance is hard enough, but then there is everything else!  If we are lucky, we get to quickly get to the heart of the matter, and discover how false and hollow these things are-  promiscuity, ambition, cheap thrills, gossip, gambling, emotional hostage taking, material possessions, power, victimhood, people pleasing, rage, and financial gain, just to name a few. We exploit them and find that they work, at first. But then they stop working so well, and pretty soon they don’t work at all. Hopefully we discover a new value system at this point, one that doesn’t tolerate the False Idols. Sometimes we lament at the loss of these  cheap thrills, but then we gain humility and maturity, we grow up, we stop wanting more and start wanting the Next Level. We begin to seek real experiences that nourish our souls, support intimacy in our relationships and sustain our recovery. We begin to love life just the way it is, and stop complaining about the way it isn’t. We look to neutralize conflict or avoid it when possible (and healthy). And hopefully we learn that when we are stripped down to our most undiluted essence, life also disrobes in a spiritual striptease that leaves only the naked truth, with nothing in between you and Supreme Beingness, the Source, God, whatever you choose to call it. Once you’ve experienced that, you will be loathe to ever let anything stand in between you and the Source ever again.

If you haven’t seen The Matrix in a while, I suggest you do. My favorite part is near the end, when Neo stops running from the Opponent (Agent Smith, who is as devious, cunning, insidious, and shape shifting as our Ego, our Disease), turns around, and dives right into that thing he has been afraid of. His faith became absolute- faith where there is no room for fear or doubt, only absolute certainty. That sort of faith changes lives, when we turn and face what we fear most, when we stop running. This is Contrary Action to the extreme, and its the basis of nearly every spiritual practice and certainly an important tenet in recovery.

There are lots of things we are running from when we are actively drinking or using. Its one thing to put down the drink or drug, but entirely another to see what was lurking behind the drink that you were hiding from- from trauma, or responsibility, from our deep sense of self loathing, feelings of inadequacy, fear of failure or success, rejection, or fear of nearly everything. When we put down the substance, there is all of that waiting for us, and the Opponent knows it. It will play mind games with you, compel you into absurd situations that will place you in the line of fire in order to find that weak spot, and manipulate with you with your own fear. Why not beat it to the punch and get really real with all that you are running from?

A Course in Miracles (one of my favorite books) says anything that is not love is not real. ANYTHING THAT IS NOT LOVE IS NOT REAL. So I made a list of everything I had been running from, all the fears and false idols, and next to each I wrote- “Is this Love?  No. Anything that is not love is not real. This is not love. It isn’t real.” Wouldn’t it be amazing if you came to know that you made it all up, and that you can  co-create your own reality with the faith that you are safe, loved, that miracles are on their way and you need to be preparing for an awesome life instead of hiding from an unpleasant one? I think so. If your life isn’t looking like this then you might not be ready to let go of the suffering your mind is telling you is real, and thats okay, too. Most of us are addicted to suffering, and if not addicted, then very, very attached to it. But you are free to choose, and its important that you know this.  We all have the freedom to choose to stay imprisoned by our hallucinations. You’ll choose to be empowered over disempowered when you are ready.

When we walk into the safe haven of recovery and choose a life of abstinence from mind altering substances, we sign up for the greatest adventure of all time. We wake up from one dream right into another, and we continue to wake up as we go. We shed the false and come to cherish intimacy, relationships, principles, work, spiritual practice. We perceive the world lovingly, with tolerance and compassion. But first things first; if you are new in recovery, rest assured that the terrors will pass. The cravings will pass. You are literally in the worst part of hell, and the Opponent, the Ego, the Trickster, the Disease, some even call him, appropriately, the Devil- is riding your coat tails. That is why you need a community to get you through that first year, you need a full surrender, to be teachable and hopefully desperate. After that, the next part of the journey begins. And the journey, as they say, is the destination. Your entire life has lead you to this exact place. Which pill will you choose?