Spirituality

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Gradually things got worse

March 24, 2011 in Fear, Living in Recovery, Spirituality by Chris | No comments

That is my favorite phrases in the book “Alcoholics Anonymous.”  It is part of chapter 1, Bill’s Story and it is in a place where he has described his life and his alcoholism to that point in pretty graphic and heartbreaking detail.  “Gradually things got worse,” he says, though one can hardly imagine how.  Things in life are like that.  Sometimes you cannot tell anything is wrong at all until, seemingly suddenly, they are terrible and then looking back you can see that you’ve been ambling down a gentle slope for a long time.

I started a part-time job recently; a little extra income to keep my hefty health insurance bill paid.  After enduring what I went through two years ago I hope never to be without care again.  So I got this little job at a discount retail store as a sales associate in the home goods and furniture department.  The were happy to capitalize on the fact that I am 6’4″ and  I was happy to have a little extra structure in my life that has lately been an emotional, economic, and professional free fall.  And on my 2nd day at work I was asked to carry a large terra cotta pot to the front of the store.

I could not catch my breath.  The effort required to do that simple thing shocked me.  That small event drew my attention to the symptom and I noticed that breathing was often hard for me, even at rest.  I remembered shooting a small video with my cell phone back in December and noticing that it’s most pronounced feature was the sound of me breathing.  Well, having worked to maintain health insurance I took myself to the doctor’s office.

My own physician was booked several days out but the nurse suggested that my symptoms dictated that I be seen immediately so I came into the office, fully expecting that they would listen to my lungs, prescribe some kind of inhaler or pill or both and send me on my way, symptom free.  They did listen to my lungs, and heart, and then they strapped an ECG on me, ran the test for several minutes, and sent me off to the emergency room.

If you have ever walked into an emergency room with cardiac symptoms you know it is a really different experience than a regular ER visit.  I was scooped up in a wheel chair and rushed into the back faster than I could say infarction and within seconds a swarm (probably not the right word for a group of medical professionals) of people in scrubs surrounded me, putting stickers and electrodes on me, piercing my skin and drawing blood, hooking up IVs and sticking oxygen under my nose, and asking me questions.

The doctor, who to my delight was one of the most attractive young men I have ever seen, was in the room in record time.  I love that young doctors tend to introduce themselves by their first and last names rather than Dr. Last Name the way older ones do.  It makes me more comfortable.  He had his stethoscope all over me with his lovely blue eyes closed and his head tilted and I am pretty sure my heart was beating out “I love you” in Morse code.

This post will come to talk about my experience, strength, and hope regarding my addiction, but that is going to happen in part 2.  Right now I have to go to work so I can keep myself covered with health insurance.

One breath at a time.

November 4, 2010 in Faith, Hope by Chris | 2 comments

Perhaps the best thing I’ve done for my recovery in a long time is to start to sponsor a practicing Buddhist.  It has added a sense of urgency for me to revisit all that 2nd & 3rd step stuff that I’ve struggled with ever since my surgery.

Pennies From Heaven

April 6, 2010 in Greed, promises, Spirituality by Chris | 7 comments

“Although financial recovery is on the way for many of us, we found we could not place money first. For us, material well-being always followed spiritual progress; it never preceded.”  -Alcoholics Anonymous

I’m still doing my usual routine, staying close to sober friends, attending meetings, writing inventory when it is indicated, seeing my sponsor regularly; the same stuff I’ve done for the last 38 months or so, yet I find myself in an odd situation.  As I have taken on a larger role and accepted more responsibility in the company I work for I have discovered that the reasons I have had my paychecks bounce in the past is only that my company is astonishingly mismanaged.  And that is unacceptable to me.  So I’ve written inventory about my boss and about my job.  I’ve prayed and prayed and prayed.  I’ve talked to my sponsor and with a small handful of close friends and family. Read the rest of this entry »

Unmixed Attention

January 3, 2010 in Early Recovery From Crystal Meth Addiction, Spirituality by Chris | 3 comments

“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.

Old Ideas

September 26, 2009 in Faith, Spirituality by Chris | 4 comments

“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.

Queers & Weirdos

September 21, 2009 in Faith, Perseverance by Chris | 6 comments

“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 its 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

If You Lived Here You’d Be Home Now

June 10, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 8 comments

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

May 2, 2008 in Living in Recovery by Chris | 4 comments

“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.

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