Open-Mindedness

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In Plain English

September 17, 2009 in Faith, Perseverance, Willingness by Chris | 3 comments

I bought a book the other day, right after I vomited my insanity here; Mindfulness in Plain English.  And I’m encouraged because I finally found a definition of ‘faith’ that I can work with.  No GrandWizardMagicalSantaClaus required.  What a relief.  I have some nice, plainly written instructions to make a beginning, and then there are retreats, with advanced instructors.

Reading the course application, I wonder if I could even do it at this point, but I believe I could get there.

I am also considering getting rid of my television and limiting my internet time just to help reduce the amount of noise in my head.  My sense is that television interferes with my ability to think clearly and hinders my growth.

I’m headed to Atlanta, ID with my sponsor tomorrow afternoon to enjoy 3 days in the mountains without indoor plumbing, electricity, paved roads or telephones.

I appreciate all the feedback I got from my last post.  Looking back I can see that this is really an issue that I’ve held on to for decades.  The appearance of an old friend from when I lived in Sweden reminded me that there was a time even then that I was desperate for there to be something I could  have real faith in, and being surrounded by a religion that made no sense to me at all.

It appears then that it is in my nature to yearn for an understanding of or knowledge of something that I can only understand or know through my own experience.  Faith that makes sense to me isn’t belief in something because it is written in some book.  It is belief in something because I have observed it within myself.  If I’m going to have a relationship with that I have a great deal of observing within myself to do.

The God of Cash and Prizes

July 4, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 6 comments

The God of Cash and PrizesI 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 »

Does This Make Sense?

January 23, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 7 comments

HeiroglyphicsThe spiritual journey does not consist in arriving at a new destination where a person gains what he did not have, or becomes what he is not. It consists in the dissipation of one’s own ignorance concerning one’s self and life, and the gradual growth of that understanding which begins the spiritual awakening. The finding of God is a coming to one’s self.
-Aldous Huxley

Just got home from work, fired up the old (seriously, if you saw it you’d laugh) ‘puter, opened up iTunes to listen to some incredibly talented/incredibly fucked up Amy Winehouse. With a name like that she probably is legally barred from getting sober. I had the JayZ remix of Rehab I wanted to hear. So I’m listening to that, right? And I’m checking in at the station to see if there are any new comments. And the ‘mix’ part of the remix hadn’t come in yet and I forgot that I had enabled autoplay on finetunes and I’m listening and listening and listening for something to make sense because it isn’t making sense. But what I’m listening to is Amy Winehouse and Maureen McGovern singing They Tried to Make Me Go to Rehab/We May Never Love Like This Again. They Tried to Make Me Love Again? We May Never Go to Rehab? Something. It didn’t make so much sense it made sense. Or at least there was a beautiful kind of absurdity to it; a perfectly absurd song for a perfectly absurd afternoon in a perfectly absurd life. CBS Mona Lisa Atari.

It was the perfect bit of accompaniment to this afternoons discovery that there is another warrant for my arrest. This time it is just a requirement that I go check myself in at the jail and go home. I knew this was a possibility. It had been my understanding, of course, that the prosecutor was going to serve the warrant to my attorney so that I could go take care of it. Seems it was issued on the 16th. He didn’t know about it, and I was just sitting around paranoid so I checked. Puma saxophone saxophone. I have to exercise great open-mindedness to be able to see any point of view but my own about certain things, and even then I sometimes have difficulty not selling myself into my own idea. You know what I mean? In this case I have a hard time separating my desire to be left the fuck alone, so I can continue uninterrupted the more or less decent life I have been given since I got sober, from the idea that prosecuting a single violation on three separate cases will net anyone any benefit. I feel it is an egregious waste of money, mine, of course -or rather my father’s- and the public’s. It appears to me that the public can have my amends at a third the price. But what do I know? Absurd. Vaio Mickey Mouse trumpet trumpet trumpet, you know? It’s not my call. It’s not my place to judge.

Internet Explorer Nike Oscar and I hate my job. I need my job at the moment. I’m still catching up from a terrible December. The only paycheck I’ve had in a month paid my rent and left me with $2.00 Missing 2 weeks of work while I was in jail and while I was waiting for the next schedule after I got out combined with having my hours cut as a result of that adventure put me drastically farther behind where I had tried to plan to be when I addressed the legal issue. You do the best you can to live life on  life’s terms and Jaguar NBC Eiffel Tower. You know what I mean?

It’s just always some dude I don’t know and Apple Apple Apple Texaco television. Again.

Reading Culture, originally uploaded by eworm.
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