The Last Chance Texaco

Posts Tagged ‘11th Step’

“Absolute unmixed attention is prayer.” -Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

I realized a long time ago that I can trace the decline of my spiritual health, and a decline in the quality and quantity of my writing, to the date I got a television.  For a good year and a half, writing was a form of prayer to me.   In writing I set aside time to examine myself and my experience closely and to open myself up to learn.

Television kind of shuts that down for me.  It is much like a drug in that way.  Television makes me a little bit numb.

I think it’s time to turn the TV off; time to read more and time to write more.

“Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.”
-Alcoholics Anonymous, page 58

Some of us have tried to hold on to them without even knowing that is what we’re doing, until it bites us.

I was thinking about my conversation with Chris Lawford a couple of years ago.  The last question he asked was, “What does God look like?”  He asked all of us the same set of questions and you can discern that from a close reading of the chapters in “Moments of Clarity”, and he has included the answers to that question from a few of the people he interviewed.  I remember Susan Cheever’s being particularly moving, though at the moment I can’t remember what it was.  Mine was not included, which killed me because I thought I had been so clever.

In the first place, I thought the question was kind of obtuse.  How, really, can one know what God looks like?  We can’t even agree on a definition of God, let alone agree on God’s existence, so how would I know what God looks like.  And that is what I said.  I said, “I don’t know, but when it is my time to go I hope He holds me in his arms and whispers something funny.”

It is a good thing it was not included, actually, because it is  not even an original line.  I stole it from William Finn; a line from the song “You’ve Got to Die Sometime” from Falsettoland. (None of my material is original.  Go ahead and check.  That’s not entirely true.  I did coin the term Googlyize, meaning to glue googly eyes on to something, but I digress.)

The thing is, at that time and though I wasn’t even conscious of it, I was still in the grips of an old idea about what God is, and though intellectually I professed something more abstract, my spiritual experience in the early parts of my recovery had never been inconsistent with the ideas of God which I had been given as a child.  I was taught to believe in God at approximately the same time I was taught about Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, and he was given a personality and a face, the same way those other fairy tales had.  (When my parents told me the truth about the Easter Bunny I proudly walked into class the following Monday and announced to everyone that, “My daddy is the Easter Bunny!”)

I guess this incredibly painful four month experience in letting go of that old idea, and the amazing relief I have at the moment having come through that and feeling again a spiritual wholeness, has me curious about what other old ideas I may be hanging on to that are standing in the way of my growth.

I suspect they will make themselves known when the time is right.

In the late 80s and early 90s they were not an uncommon site along the freeways leaving downtown Los Angeles; huge condo projects festooned with banners that read “If you lived here you’d be home now.” When the topic was brought up at a meeting, what are you doing today for your recovery, it’s what I immediately thought of. In the rooms we usually hear the same sentiment described as, “I live in the rooms and visit the world.”

I’m an egomaniac. I like my way better. Read the rest of this entry »

“School and work are fine – and that is what we do between meetings”
Karl M., Covina, CA

“Why do we have to listen to the same people tell the same stories at every meeting?”  Norman leaned over and asked me that at a meeting last night.  He’s right, of course.  We hear the same people share the same stories day after day after day.  Particularly in a small city like mine where the fixtures at the meeting don’t really change.  It is actually one of the things I like best about blogging.  It gives me the opportunity to take a look at today and apply the lens of the solution offered in 12 step programs.  It helps me see the present more clearly.  It gives me new stories; new experience, new strength and new hope.  It gives me a constant source of new stuff to share at meetings; stuff that is already developed and grounded in the solution.  Sometimes, but not very often, it works the other way around; I find information about what I’m living by listening in meetings.

The collective experience, strength and hope shared by sober members of 12 step recovery is much bigger than I can avail myself of in local meetings, though, and my own answer to the problem at the root of Norman’s question has led me not only to the blogs my colleagues write, but to podcasts of AA speaker tapes.  (You’ll find a link on the sidebar, or you can search for “AA speaker tapes” in the search field of iTunes.”  I load my iPod up with these.  At some point every day I’m listening to the experience, strength and hope of other people on this path; other people that I am unlikely to ever meet or hear otherwise.

The problem and the solution are the same, of course, so I’m probably simply hearing new information because the voice is different, and that is a great thing.  Everything that I can add to my recovery is a great thing, and I’m grateful today to have been shown an answer to a couple of my questions about my recovery by Karl M. of Covina, CA in a speech he gave at the Denali Workshop.  I’ve listened to that podcast three times in succession now.

I’ve decided I am absolutely returning to school and that I’m returning to learn a trade, rather than a profession.  I just don’t think I have it in me at the moment to remain in a job that takes up all the psychic and emotional energy I have that I would rather commit to recovery.  I need to double my income fast and I need it to leave my mind and spirit free to give to AA.  Karl talks about how grateful he was that he visited AA before he visited the counselor at the school he was going to attend.  “School and work are fine, but we live in Alcoholics Anonymous and we visit the world.  We don’t live in the world and visit AA.”  I felt that.  I suspected that.  But I didn’t have an adequate way of stating that so clearly and I didn’t have any validation of that in the recovery community around me, at least not so that I could understand.

The other thing I gleaned form this particular tape was the answer to a question that I didn’t even know I had.  How do you know that you’ve given your will and your life over to the care of God.  I’m not going to repeat the explanation Karl gave.  You can learn that well enough on your own, and I would encourage you to, but the answer is absolutely yes.  I have definitely turned my will and my life over to the care of God.  That answer struck me to my core and validated everything that I am doing today for my recovery.  Like finding a landmark on a seldom traveled path at the point you’re sure you’re lost, this bit of information, delivered clearly and specifically and in a way that I could understand, has given me a much needed dose of faith and hope.

It’s fantastic to be sober.  It’s fantastic to have been given a life and a purpose, and it’s fantastic to be able to share it.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel.
The light is not an illusion.
The tunnel is.
-unknown

I noticed this sign above the door of a meeting I occasionally go to and it just struck me. It seemed profound enough, but it wasn’t till I woke up this morning and read Sweet Pea’s post where she said, “secrets. they thrive in the darkest recesses of my mind and heart,” that I began to see the truth in the idea that the tunnel is an illusion.

I don’t know very many people, even the most spiritual or religious people, who come into the rooms of recovery, that have something resembling a useful and healthy relationship with a power greater than themselves that they understand to be infinite love. That was definitely true for me. I came in with a pretty traditional Judeo-Christian understanding of the Celestial Father, the one I hear some people call the ‘bearded, bean counting, lightning bolt throwing bastard in the sky’. Sure, He was loving and merciful to those who groveled for his forgiveness, but there were things he wouldn’t forgive and I was pretty sure it was me – radical faggot political activist drug addicted rebel that I am. In the difference I perceived between me and everything else I perceived darkness and isolation.

Though it was never said in so many words, I was under the impression that God didn’t like little boys who wanted to grow up to be Mahalia Jackson and to bury their face in Parker Stevenson’s arm pit, which is a shame, really. People like me especially need God. In a world where getting love and acceptance from the closest members of your family is problematic, God can mean the difference between life and death. As a youngster I didn’t understand that my church turning it’s back on me was not the same as God turning His back on me and I responded in kind. I turned my back on God and began to move farther into the illusion of separateness from All that Is.

I realize now that experiencing this separation is part of the human condition; that “our stories align at the core, if not in the sorry details.” The book talks about alcoholics and addicts being extreme examples of living according to this illusion. It talks about self-will run riot, of problems being of our own making and arising in our selves, of a spiritual malady that centers in our minds. It also suggests that people like me reaching out for help need to choose between God being everything or nothing; at a certain point we have to accept spiritual help if we are to recover.

Many forms of spiritual instruction and many forms of religion inform my journey, one of them recently being A Course in Miracles. I am attracted to the course largely because at it’s core it talks about what we talk about in AA and in similar, almost identical, terms. It talks about God being everything. It says that what blocks us from God is a barrier created out of our own mind. It says “a cloud does not put out the sun.”

The tunnel is an illusion.

The light is not.

The tunnel is made out of me. “Above everything, we alcoholics must be rid of this selfishness. We must, or it kill us!”

I found God in AA. I found God when I was finally “beaten into a state of reasonableness”; when I finally got still enough to listen. And that is where I continue to find Him; in the quiet space in between the demands of living a “productive” life in the material world. Demands on my time have increased and finding, or setting aside, enough time to get still has been challenging recently. I experience it as anxiety, frustration, sadness. I experience it as separation; as the tunnel. I wonder what people want from me and I wonder how my needs will be met. I forget that the real question is “what does God expect from me?”

As you already know, I am not particularly Christian. The God I have come to know through AA is described to me most perfectly in Hindu tradition as “the unchanging, infinite, immanent, and transcendent reality which is the Divine Ground of all matter, energy, time, space, being, and everything beyond in this Universe.” But the symbolism of Easter is not lost on me. It really is the sacrifice of self that leads to eternal life, freedom from bondage, salvation and enlightenment.

Happy Easter, friends.

“[K]nowledge of truth alone does not suffice; on the contrary this knowledge must continually be renewed by ceaseless effort, if it is not to be lost.”
-Albert Einstein

They say the road gets narrower, and do you know what? The flippin’ road gets narrower. Aside from the legal issue, there have been things going on in my world that have occupied my attention in the last weeks; things that we learn how to handle by using certain tools in recovery. Using those tools and applying the principles of the program really is relatively simple. Not easy. But simple. When the issues are big, like learning to not pick up and not drink or facing an overwhelming obstacle, it has been relatively easy for me to immediately pick up the tools and use them. But throw me into a meadow of ordinary living and remove the imperative to make ceaseless effort and it doesn’t take long for me to start feeling like a “decroded piece of crap.”

Forgive the tangent, but I’m pretty sure that most of you don’t realize that those of us who grew up in the Intermountain West actually say things like ‘decroded’. We do. It’s true. And Preston, Idaho? The place where Napoleon Dynamite is from? That’s where my family is from, too. In fact my grandfather and great grandfather both graduated from that same high school. My relatives occupy more real estate in the Preston cemetery than any other family. That movie could have been  a documentary as easily as a comedy. It was an LDS version of Gray Gardens. And you know what that means – Napoleon Dynamite should become a Broadway musical!

It is easy to let up on the spiritual program of action and rest on our laurels. We are headed for trouble if we do. Alcoholics Anonymous, page 85

There has just been a cumulative effect of many little things piling up on me recently, coupled with uneven or absent application of effort to ‘expand and enlarge’ my relationship with my Higher Power. I haven’t let up entirely, of course. Dropping everything instantly would require a force of will that I just don’t have. You have to work to fail utterly, but it doesn’t take any effort at all to let one thing slip. And then another. And then another. The slippery slope is gentle. You travel quite a distance before you fall off the cliff. I’m still attending meetings daily, for example. I stay in touch with my sponsor on a daily basis, too. I work with 5 sponsees, two of whom are actively doing the work, two are actively pretending to and one, the one who is probably the most like me, is actively wishing he was willing. (Thinking about him breaks my heart. )

In spite of these things I have increasingly felt restless, irritated and depressed. Finances, for example, have been hugely problematic since last August. There is a definite move in my future, either at the end of this month or next, which is adding to my anxiety. I have become increasingly irritated in meetings by an entire class of AA member whom I have judged (either rightly or wrongly) to have not done ‘the work’. In spite of the reinstatement of my probation, a blessing of some magnitude, I have only been able to focus on the additional terms of my probation. One of my court orders reinstating my probation actually says that as one of the terms of my reinstatement that I am to “complete AA/NA” – that little gem just about made my head pop off. I have never really recovered from my bout of bronchitis and right now my throat is so sore I can barely swallow. I haven’t slept more than two consecutive hours in months. I am acutely aware of being single.

For someone putting consistent effort into the program these things are easily navigable. For someone who has “let up” they are the beginning of a slow decline back into the insanity of addiction; a decline so gentle that it is hardly perceptible. I couldn’t see it, but something was gnawing at me. I knew something was not right. And somehow, before yesterday I had not noticed how long it has been since I was willing to pick up a pen and write any inventory. My writing here had trailed of significantly and anything that showed up here was by sheer force of will rather than the organic process that I typically experience. My regimen of prayer and meditation has weakened. Naturally a simple knowledge of God’s presence in my life has not netted the same results that earnestly seeking God did.

One of the most uncomfortable truths for me is that nearly every time I take someone else’s inventory, like I did to that poor girl the other day, I am really taking my own inventory. Those that irritate me are more often than not just like me. It often takes me days to see it, though, and I don’t know that I’ve ever been able to see it before I pick up a pen and write inventory. The up-side of this discomfort it that it reminds me that I am growing. In fact, I’m probably growing a lot.

How could we make amends?
So it’s one more round for experience
And I’m on the road again
And it’s going to take some time this time.
-Carole King

I am so relieved to finally have this chapter over with. Well, this part anyway. My relationship with the Department of Corrections is far from over, but the big hurdle is – the hurdle where I have no power. From here on out the results are directly related to what I do. Ultimately, all they are really asking for is that I do what I’m doing -stay sober, be accountable. In a way that seems like the true test of addiction and of recovery. In active addiction staying sober was unthinkable and being accountable was impossible. In recovery staying sober and being accountable are both absolutely possible. I have seen (and been seen by) the last of the three judges who had all placed me on probation back in 2001. I have accounted for the fact that I simply vanished for 13 months while I was supposed to be supervised. The State has had three opportunities to show that for the good of the People I need to be placed in a correctional institution and on each of those occasions the Court has disagreed. A year ago the story would have ended differently.

“(H)e had the extraordinary experience, which as we have already told you, made him a free man.” (p. 28)

Going several rounds with these judges gave me the opportunity to become more effective at speaking to that particular type of audience, authority figures, and I’m grateful for the experience. It didn’t take away the tears. I kept them from pouring. I kept my voice in check, mostly, but there was emotion there in me, the kind that I normally associate with deep prayer; the kind I let myself fall in to when I’m in the shower, say, or whenever I can have some uninterrupted time with God. But by the third time I was able to get right to the bottom of the matter and let Her Honor know that I knew the gravity of my error, that I didn’t believe it was the sort of thing that would happen again because of the work I’ve done, that certainly I hoped to not go to prison but that either way I knew that I would be useful. God gave me a message to share and I would be able to share it wherever I was.

“We, in our turn, sought the same escape with all the desperation of drowning men. What seemed at first a flimsy reed, has proved to be the loving and powerful hand of God. A new life has been given us or, if you prefer, “a design for living “that really works.” (p. 28)

God’s hand-prints are all over this experience of mine. And yet the unrealized, finite and fearful part of me still worries about things; is still ungrateful and selfish. Perhaps I can never be entirely free from worry or self-pity. I recognize that those defects are pretty significantly diminished today and it has occurred to me of late that mindfulness of what I am grateful for might alleviate some of that insane suffering. So, lest you think I’m the most ungrateful son of a bitch that ever lived, here is a quick and dirty of what I am grateful for today:

• Being ‘on the road again’ on my little gay scooter! Motorized transportation rocks!
• My friend Robert who agreed that we should start our own club since, because we don’t have bikes with at least 600 cc., the Sober Riders won’t have us. We’ll be Scootin’ Sober. We may even get groovy wind breakers or something.
• The fact that food stamps are easy to apply for.
• That I have clear cut directions for finishing probation.
• That I have probation at all.
• That I can’t be thrown in prison for thinking stupid, selfish thoughts about not getting my way.
• That I can sometimes recognize that I’m thinking stupid, selfish thoughts about not getting my way.
• That people who love me love me enough to point out when I’m thinking stupid, selfish thoughts.
• That I have a purpose, that I can be useful to God wherever I am.
• That God has allowed me to be useful out here instead of in there, and most of all, that
• God loves me. Like, A LOT!!!

So, in this particular “round for experience” I have made my amends. The judges have permitted me to do the right thing and supported it. And three times now God has let me know that I am most useful out here doing what I’m doing. I’m “on the road again”; literally and figuratively, and that is fantastic!

HELLS FAIRIES: A GLBT scooter group in Chicago is ready to ride. Photo: Alex Rumsey

They say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
-Andy Warhol

The book talks over and over about needing to take action; about heading for trouble if we rest on our previous accomplishments; about having a ‘daily reprieve’ based on our spiritual health. It directs us to seek to “improve our conscious contact with God”, conscious contact that we gain, at least in the sense of recovery from addiction, by first taking the steps. Of course they knew the 12 steps were but the beginning of a spiritual way of life. “We realize we know only a little. God will constantly disclose more to you and to us.” It tells us that there are “certain trials and low spots ahead.” It never says that we will be entirely, completely and forever free of alcoholic thinking.

So . . . I had a bad day. Obviously.

Actually, in terms of fucked up thinking and out of control emotions, it was the most fucked up day I’ve had in recent memory. Moreover, it’s exactly the kind of thinking that used to send me straight for a bottle or a bag. The feelings of worthlessness were also compounded by the fact that I’ve been ill. For a week now I’ve been trying to pretend that I don’t have bronchitis and today I finally went to the doctor to take care of that. Illness probably accounted for much of it, truthfully; “how great the spiritual change that it brings”.

This time, this round of overwhelming hopelessness, I didn’t experience the compulsion to get loaded. This time the tools I’ve been taught to use kicked in. When the ride is bumpy you grease the wheel bearings, right? So when life gets bumpy I pick up the “simple kit of spiritual tools.” Even though at the time they didn’t seem to bring me much relief (if any), they did keep me busy for awhile. I did what I could to live in the solution, to keep my side of the street clean, to carry the message, to seek God and I got a decent nights sleep.

And this morning everything looks much better. It’s not what I would have in my idealized life, but it’s do-able. If nothing happens in God’s world by mistake, then God’s will is what happens. Just who do I think I am to argue and pout about God allowing me to pay for the consequences of my own actions?

My other actions had consequences, too. The action of taking the steps, the action of working with others, the action of being honest about what was in my head, the action of asking for help, the action of praying, the action of going to bed early – all these things had consequences. The consequences are that I helped another addict, I relied a little more on God, I gained a little faith, and most importantly – I didn’t have to get loaded.

And that’s a miracle.

Vintage Ad #305: MAAAARFAK!, originally uploaded by jbcurio.