The Last Chance Texaco

Posts Tagged ‘Higher Power’

“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.

“We don’t want anybody up here. We just tell people this place is nothing but a bunch of queers and weirdos,” my sponsor told me.  There is a kernel of truth in it, of course, but there is a sweetness about the place and the people there that is hard to describe.

I exaggerated about the indoor plumbing/electricity feature of the town.  Most of the people have running water.  Some of them even have HOT water.  And there is electrical service in the town which is serviced by it’s own small hydro-electric plant, but people don’t use it much.  Even so, it is remote.  I haven’t heard quiet like that or seen dark like that in a long, long time.

The first night we grilled steaks on a campfire. watched stars shooting through the night sky, and had dessert with some neighbors.  During the next day I listened to AA speaker CDs, CDs about the Eightfold Path.  I enjoyed the hot springs and the wilderness.  We had breakfast with friends and went for walks.  I took pictures of dead pickup trucks which are allowed to remain there to deter the Sun Valley people from discovering how wonderful the place it.  I read and napped and practiced meditating.

Why did I have such a hard time realizing that having a Higher Power does not mean having a deity?  I am more and more convinced that having a Higher Power without having a deity is necessary for me and that my path back to feeling connected to that Power  will largely be the byproduct of practice.  The small time I devoted to the practice certainly led me to believe that, as the book Alcoholics Anonymous says, “we can but clear the ground a bit” and that clearing the ground through a practice of meditation may be the hinge upon which my progress turns.

I was in a great place to begin a practice, not having the usual distractions of home and office around.  Even so, focusing on mere breath is not as easy as it sounds

“Somewhere in the process, you will come face to face with the sudden and shocking realization that you are completely crazy.  Your mind is a shrieking, gibbering madhouse on wheels barreling pell-mell down the hill utterly out of control and helpless.  No problem.  You are not crazier than you were yesterday.  It has always been this way, and you have just never noticed.”  Bhante Henepola Gunaratana

That’s a relief.  If there weren’t passages like this in the guide I was reading I would be sure, as I have always been, that I wasn’t doing it right.

Anyway, I imagine that things are as they should be, and I imagine that I am still on track, even if it does not appear to me that I am.  I just know that

When I was 12 I lived around the corner from Kris. He was the most naturally athletic kid I’ve ever met. He was fantastic looking.  He had 3 older brothers and they all had ‘toys’ – motorized toys.  Dirt bikes and snowmobiles and ATVs.  He was fearless and he was cool and I was intensely jealous of him, not that I would ever have admitted it.  I was too busy trying to be his friend.

When Kris was finished with it I took over his newspaper route.  When he stopped mowing our neighbor’s lawns to take over mowing the lawn of the church we lived next to, I started mowing them.  He shoveled half the sidewalks in our neighborhood with a snow blower.  I shoveled the rest of them by hand.  I bought HASH jeans and listened to Elton John to be more like him.

The summer between 6th and 7th grades my father rented a rototiller to till our garden and afterward he offered me the use of it, along with the vacant lot he owned next door to our house.  I took it and tilled the hard, dry patch.  I removed huge lava rock.  I turned in compost.  I plowed the patch into rows and I planted corn and squash.  All summer long I hoed and weeded and watered and waited.  Every day I tended my little farm.  By the end of summer I was selling corn, three ears for a dollar, out of a wheelbarrow in my neighborhood.

By the end of the summer I bought myself my first dirt bike, a little 125cc Honda.  It didn’t really matter that it was Kris’s old dirt bike.  It was new to me.  It was MY motorcycle.  I EARNED it, and I loved it.  The fact that Kris had a brand new bike didn’t even enter into my consciousness.  I have always been, I think justifiably, proud of that accomplishment.

If I am completely honest, though, I have to admit that I did not create that motorcycle on my own.  My effort was absolutely necessary, but my effort alone didn’t put money in the bank to buy that bike.  At the beginning I was given the tools  to accomplish that.  I was given a little patch of land and I was given the use of the tiller.  What I did with it was entirely up to me.

Even beyond my effort and the tools there was an underlying force I had to cooperate with, the force that germinates seeds and produces fruit; a force that can be described, but when examined to it’s origin is mysterious and miraculous.  In the end, while my effort was essential, it had very little to do with what was produced.  My input had less to do with the result than any other input and yet I feel justified in being proud of my input and I enjoyed the product like it was mine alone.  How much more might I have enjoyed it if I had humbly acknowledged that what I got was the product of a gift; if I had been more grateful?

I mention that because with all the difficulty I’ve put myself through over belief and faith, I have really been living in the insane idea that the important ingredient in my recovery is what I have put into it.  I have ignored the tools that were given to me and denied the power that makes it work.  It is as ridiculous of me to believe that I got myself sober and keep myself sober as it is for me to believe that I got that dirt bike on my own.

So, while I still don’t have any kind of “conception” of a Higher Power, I acknowledge that some power seems to exist; I don’t know what it is but I can describe how I experience it.  I also acknowledge that the tools are a gift; that in the final analysis, while my effort is essential, and while I think I am justifiably proud of what I put in to it, there are other forces at work that are also essential to my continued recovery.  My recovery would not be possible without the gift of the program and without whatever power it is that saves addicts like me from the hopeless condition I lived in before I got sober.  I am still proud of the effort I’ve put into it.  But I didn’t do it on my own.

Caught in the Snide

And in that dreadful place

Those spooky empty pants and I

Were standing face to face.

I yelled for help. I screamed. I shrieked.

I howled. I yowled. I cried.

Oh! Save me from those pale green pants

With nobody inside.

-Dr. Seuss

Isn’t that the essence of fear?  When we finally find the courage to face our fear we often discover it is empty.  Having conquered one, we move along in life, unaware of which of our unknown or unacknowledged fears lies ahead; what opportunity for incredible spiritual growth remains to be discovered. Read the rest of this entry »

I wrote a post over at the Second Road the other day about the hurdles we face in finding the Higher Power of 12 step programs. The idea for the post came from a conversation I had with a friend a few nights ago wherein he told me that the only ‘God’ he was willing to believe in, when he got to AA, was what he called “The God of Unintended Consequences”. The conversation was interesting enough to me that I immediately started researching the 2nd step observations of the early AAs and the neurobiology of belief.

I garnered some great knowledge in this, and I gained some really useful clarity about the roles of honesty, open mindedness, and willingness in having an effective spiritual experience. I understood, as I never had before, why it had been so important for me to cling to the alternate names of God we use; Higher Power, Creator, and Spirit of the Universe. Read the rest of this entry »

It’s amazing to me, I guess it shouldn’t be at this point in recovery, but it’s amazing to me how quickly I return to my default setting; to return to the way of thinking, if not behavior, that always gets me back to where I came from unless I take purposeful action. Like when I turn on my computer after a power outage, extra stress in it’s many forms, seems to erase the growth I’ve had since the last time the machine was shut off. It is just so easy to fall back on the old way of being. It takes so much conscious effort to keep trudging forward.

Since I became aware of this warrant thing and became spiritually ready to face it I’ve had an extra set of challenges that I didn’t have before it came to my attention. I am finally an employable person but with unresolved warrants out in the world I am afraid to go to work, lest I destroy another job by being hauled out by the police. Lest I lose my home and what few artifacts of civilized living that I have accumulated in the last year after losing everything. A power surge of fear and BOOM! I’m back at my default setting. Fear. Perhaps to a lesser degree than at any point before in my life but fear just the same.

Because of that fear and not being economically productive in that last month my finances have gone completely to hell. Completely. Here are the facts of the situation. Yesterday my phone was shut off for nonpayment. I have $15.74 to my name. I don’t have any idea where the next money is coming from. I have mentioned the situation at meeting level and to my sponsor on a few occasions in the last couple of weeks, trying to be make it more clear that I was asking for help and direction and the bottom got nearer. By yesterday, when my phone got shut off, I hit full tilt panic. I have prayed. Ceaselessly(ish). I have been working with others and getting out of myself (regularly). I have attended meetings regularly – with days free now I’ve added a noon meeting to my regular 5:30 and 8:00 schedule so I average 21+ meetings a week. I have done step work.

My friends point me to the book. My friends remind me that “fear of economic insecurity will leave us.” My friends ask me if there is a roof over my head, if my electricity is on, if I have food. While I can only see the day that those things disappear is nearing they remind me that it isn’t that day today and I need to place my reliance on God. I counter with “how far do I have to let this go before I scream for help?” They smile. “You’re right where you need to be.” “Fuck you, asshole” I smile to myself. I go home and cry.

Coinciding with that stress, I have the unprecedented apparition of Mr. Astonishingly Handsome Tall-Smart flirting with dangerous abandon but from the safe door-to-door distance of 1698 miles. Except for wrestling with a handful of boys who weren’t actually interested in me, I have been alone, and by that I mean not even a date with anyone who might be a potential companion, for 14 years. It hurts. I don’t think I’m ugly. I don’t think I’m stupid. I don’t think I’m ‘too picky’. I don’t even think I’m too broken, not for someone with the right stuff, the stuff a life together is made of. I’m pretty sure I have exactly that stuff lying dormant in me. I can say with some certainty that a major contributing component to my justifying relapse in the past is the absolute hopelessness I feel about ever hearing someone I love breathing beside me; how much I miss kissing a man’s neck as he shaves in the morning, the feeling of an arm around my shoulder pulling me toward him, the sleeping weight of a thigh on top of mine.

Here my default setting splits me apart. Run to and run from but run blindly. I want things from it that are quite real and quite reasonable. Know me. Let me know you. Share. Reason. Some of them are the height of selfishness, the most egregious manifestations of my disease. Save me. Love me no matter what. Make me feel loved. Kill the loneliness. Be the Carpenters/Bacharach/Bayer-Sager/Mitchell song in the soundtrack of my life. You be the Professor and I’ll be Eliza. You be the Doctor and I’ll be Tammy. It all looks the same to me. Be my higher power (small caps – big shoes). Just like the relationships I had in the Dances with Junkies part of my life, I am still ill equipped to discern ‘the true from the false’.

My friends keep reminding me that I’m not going to be successful at this as long as I’m not placing my trust and reliance on G*d. They think I’m not placing my trust and reliance on G*d.

That’s silly. Of course I am. I would have been high already. And that’s the thing about recovery and spiritual growth. The default settings improve over time. Mine have. I know they have. I would have been high already. I’m not where I want to be but I’m closer than I was a year ago. A year ago I would have been high already. Of course I’m placing my trust and reliance on G*d. He is obviously doing for me what I could not do for myself though I would have liked to.

Before the grace of G*d, I would have been high already.