Sunday, October 21, 2012

To The Extent I Own My Feelings I Grow Spiritually


Over time I have changed. I am similar to but no longer the same person I used to be. This helps me look at people I interact with and see myself in them and them in me. All of this helps me keep the focus on my insides where it belongs.
When I get angry or frustrated at someone, whether petty or serious, I attempt to discipline my mind by remembering “that someone” is as perfect as I am. Together we are, collectively, the Son of God. We are perfect. We are already-loved spirits currently having a human experience.  I focus my mind on me and my emotional responses/reactions to the situation involving “that someone.”
Sounds pretty impressive, doesn’t it? Mature. Spiritual. Focused. Wise. Deep. 
I wish!
After 25 years of sobriety I have learned a bit about focusing on me. I have made a little progress. It used to be that by Friday, I might have a realization about an incidence that occurred on Monday. Now, it generally occurs within 24-hours. This has come to me as a result of doing several 4 th and 5th Steps of AA’s suggested program of recovery and continuously doing the 10th Step: (4)Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves; (5) Admitted to God, to ourselves,  and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs; (10) Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
Doing Steps 4 & 5 has taught me always to look at my behavior, my attitude, my thinking, my assumptions – all of which play major roles in how I perceive, react, respond, or contribute to a situation. Learning to do that I am reasonably able to keep the focus on me, which is where it always belongs – where my spiritual learning occurs.
I wish I could write and tell each of you this process occurs instantly.  As I mentioned, it still takes time for those thoughts to enter and calm my mind. Before I get myself into this observer-of-self state, I am frustrated, angry, blaming, fearful, and totally focused on “that someone” who has caused me some sort of upset.
Over time, however, I have changed. I am similar to but no longer the same person I used to be. This, too, helps me look at people I interact with and see myself in them and them in me. All of this helps me keep the focus on me. My emotional chaos, lack of serenity, constant state of upset and disappointment, fearfulness, and anxiety all comes from inside me. These feelings are not “caused” by external events or people. They are mine to deal with and mine to own. To the extent I own them I grow spiritually. To the extent I don’t I don’t.
I remember a very funny situation that occurred as I matured. While a young man, still in the ministry and the father of two small children, I became enamored with the sitcom “All in the Family.” It involved an unadorned blue-collar family headed by Archie Bunker and his wife Edith, their daughter Gloria and son-in-law, affectionately known as Meat Head.
Meat Head was a flaming, young, progressive college graduate full of righteous causes. Archie was the typical bigoted, hard-headed and very opinionated worker bee. Their clashes – moral, social, political, and economic – were very real and very funny. It was a ground breaking show. To put it mildly, Archie was not Father-Knows-Best’s Robert Young.
As a young Presbyterian minister, who had worked in the inner city of Trenton, NJ, I truly identified with Meat Head. I felt his frustration and anger when trying to convince Archie how “all wet” he was about an issue. Archie was so typical of the white, protestant church-goers I had to lead and shepherd – frightened, stubborn, stuck.
Fast-Forward a decade.
I had gotten divorced. The children were awarded to their mother. At age 14, my son came to live with me. Television stations were beginning to show reruns of “All in the Family.” My son and I watched them and laughed together many evenings.
My son, very bright and well-read, had an instant affinity for Meat Head, just as I had. I, on the other hand, found myself really understanding and sympathizing with to the Archie character! How had this happened? I had no idea. It was funny and scary at the same time. I hadn’t gotten sober yet because my drinking hadn’t gotten out of control at that point, but I certainly didn’t remember changing into an Archie.
I keep this story of me and Archie and Meat Head as fresh and green as I can. If I can change about something like this, why can’t someone else? If I can believe I’m right, why can’t someone else? If I can get scared and search for solutions that alleviate my fear, why can’t someone else? If I’m working for my peace and serenity, why can’t someone else? Well, that “someone else” can and does.
By remembering my changing relationship with Archie I keep the unreliability of my thoughts very fresh. By remembering my pre-sober years I keep the unreliability of my thoughts fresh. Why is this important?
That knowledge of my unreliable thought processes is a key to my being able to see my own complicity in any given situation, as well as my being able to see myself in another or them in me. In that “seeing,” I believe the Holy Spirit has an opportunity to touch both of us. That spiritual touching is the “miracle” the Course in Miracles is all about.
Thanks for listening, and – as always – feel free to forward this message to your friends, family, and those accompanying you on your spiritual journey.
Don
#3 October, 2012
Copyright, 2012
PS: I will be on the road for a week. I will not be sending my message next week.

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Controlling My Mind Is Not The Answer; Learning to Pay No Attention To My Thoughts Is.


After about a month of attending AA meetings and enjoying my new-found “pink cloud,” I asked an old-timer to summarize the real essentials of the Program.  Knowing my propensity for intellectualizing, he told me, “It’s really simple, Don. You really only need to do 2 things: First: Don’t drink while you work the 12 Steps with your sponsor. Second: Change every thing else about your life.” While I stood there stunned, he just roared this enormous guttural laugh of his and then walked away.
I truly didn’t know whether he had been serious or not. He was – both serious and right.
I learned, without knowing I was learning, that thinking alters behavior and – simultaneously – behavior alters thinking. When I worked AA’s 12 Steps, didn’t drink, went to meetings, talked to my sponsor regularly, volunteered for service work, shared as honestly as I could, and really listened to others share, lo and behold, I changed. My thinking changed and my behavior changed. Everything about my life was changing, just like the old-timer had said.
Please understand, I didn’t sit up one night and, after reading some in the Big Book, consciously decide to alter my thinking and my behavior. By doing all these things I did – simply because I was told to do them – I changed. I became softer, my desire to drink just disappeared, my fears began to wane, my acceptance of myself began to grow. I was healing. I was being transformed.
As I mentioned in last week’s message, A Course in Miracles (ACIM) says in dozens of different ways, “Whatever is bothering me, upsetting me, frightening me, angering me, pleasing me, fulfilling me, satisfying me – remember, it is always an inside job. It is always the end result of my perception of my universe. It is always the result of my thinking.”
ACIM is also adamant that I cannot consciously alter my thinking. My thinking is all screwed up. My ego-world, which I created, does not truly exist. Only God exists. And He already loves me.  But my ego will have none of it. To accept the reality of being an already-loved spirit in the eyes of God is to have my ego die. My ego will smile at that thought and say: “Don’t worry, Donnie. That’s not going to happen.”
My ego self cannot fundamentally alter my ego self! My ego’s right. It is not going to happen.
I also stated last week that I am responsible for my happiness and my well-being. When things aren’t going right, my first reaction, still, is to find fault outside me. But, pretty quickly I can now stop and look instead at my behavior, my attitude, my thinking, my assumptions – all of which play major roles in how I perceive, react, respond, or contribute to the situation. That must be my focus, not trying to find fault outside me.
But how do I do that? If that’s how I think, how do I change that?
If I am to fundamentally change the way I think, controlling my mind is not the answer. If I try to control my thoughts, I simply begin thinking about my thoughts all the more. However, learning to pay no attention to my thoughts – that’s the answer.
I am not what I think. I also am not a body. I am not a human being that has, somewhere inside, an eternal soul. If I am none of these things, then who the hell am I?
Inside me is an Observer Self – so the Buddhists say. I think they’re correct. I believe ACIM says much the same thing when it refers to my Higher Mind – that part of myself that can hear the Holy Spirit. I also have an ego self that chatters constantly. I must discipline my mind to listen to this Observer Self rather than the constant chatter of my ego self in order to hear. That’s all I need to do to “control” my thoughts. Listen to my Observer Self, while learning to acknowledge and then ignore, my ego self.
As AA admonishes, if you always do what you’ve always done, you’ll always get what you’ve always got. It means the same thing when AA says the same person will drink again. In other words if nothing changes, nothing changes. Reading AA’s Big Book  and thinking about it did not get me sober. Doing the Program did.
Trying to change what I think about will not change my thinking. Learning which of the two voices inside me to listen to – and then really listening to my Higher, Observer Self while hearing but ignoring my other, louder, ego voice  – will.
Thanks for listening, and – as always – feel free to forward this message to your friends, family, and those accompanying you on your spiritual journey.
Don
#2 October, 2012
Copyright, 2012

Sunday, October 7, 2012

I Am Always The Common Denominator Of My Life


If you only knew what you were doing to me. If you loved me you wouldn't act this way. Don't you care about me? You are making my life miserable. Sound familiar?
 “Oh how I love focusing on you. If you would only stop doing this or that or if you'd start doing this or that, then finally, maybe I'd be happy. Relieved of the responsibility of self, it was so easy to be critical, resentful and dependent on you. If you only knew what you were doing to me. If you loved me you wouldn't act this way. Don't you care about me? These were my constant thoughts.”  From “Wisdom of the Rooms,” by MichaelZ. Visit: http://www.theWisdomoftheRooms.com to sign up for FREE.
That description from Michael Z was a wonderful description of me, too, while I still drank. I blamed by boss, my ex-wife’s attorney, my second marriage, my over-whelming job – a lot of things wee the reason I drank. My vodkas anesthetized my feelings until the alcohol, itself, became the problem. My standard line was: “If you had my life and my bad-luck experiences, you’d drink too. “
Early in my recovery program with AA, two learning experiences led me to learn to put down the magnifying glass and start using the mirror. The first was a simple trick of grammar. I learned to stop saying, “If this or that bad thing happened, it caused me to drink.” I learned to reverse that sentence and say, instead, “Because I was drinking, this or that bad thing happened.”
I learned this by listening to an exchange in an AA meeting early in my sobriety. A guy said that it seemed like a lot of men in the group had done truly awful things when drunk. They had gotten caught, went to jail, got divorces, lost jobs, etc. He went on to say that he couldn’t relate because a lot of those things hadn’t happened to him every time he got drunk. When it was his turn, an old-timer said quite simply, “Stop. Think about it. Maybe you didn’t do stupid things every time you got drunk. But, you’ve indicated that every time you got caught doing stupid things, you were drunk.”
After the old-timer shared, I remember thinking to myself – “Wow! Maybe I wasn’t drinking because of all my lousy bad luck. Maybe I was having lousy bad luck because I was drinking.” That realization began to alter my perception of reality and I began to get very much better a lot more quickly. I was able to begin to put down the magnifying glass, which I used to focus on all my lousy bad luck, and began to use the mirror to understand my role and responsibility that contributed to my bad luck.
The second learning experience happened when I was doing my Fifth Step with my sponsor, having completed my “fearless moral inventory,” or Fourth Step. A lot of my inventory had to do with my messed up relationships with my children and with all the significant women with whom I’d had a romantic relationship. As I was going through these failed female relationships, my sponsor asked me to stop and summarize the common denominators of all these women. I thought for a moment and began spewing out a litany of common physical characteristics, common behavior patterns they all seemed to possess, and common issues that kept cropping up. He simply sat there and slowly shook his head. I asked him, “What are you getting at? What do you want me to say?” Again, he just shook his head. Finally, exasperated, I said, “You obviously know the answer. Why don’t you tell me the common denominator?” He smiled and said, “Don, the common denominator of all your failed relationships is you.”
Damn!
So simple. Although I thought I had learned that lesson and had “moved on” to bigger issues, here it was again. Over the 25 years of my growth in sobriety, that issue has come back to bite time and time again. If the common denominator is not me but you, if it’s not me but the situation, if it’s not me but the event – then I am a perpetual victim because I can never control you, situations, or events. I always will remain at the mercy of someone or something else. It’s a built-in pity pot.
A Course in Miracles (ACIM) says in dozens of different ways, “Whatever is bothering me, upsetting me, frightening me, angering me, pleasing me, fulfilling me, satisfying me – remember, it is always an inside job. It is always the end result of my perception of my universe. It is always the result of my thinking.”
I am responsible for my happiness and my well-being. When things aren’t going right, my first reaction, still, is to find fault outside me. But, pretty quickly I can now stop and look instead at my behavior, my attitude, my thinking, my assumptions – all of which play major roles in how I perceive, react, respond, or contribute to the situation. That is to be my focus.
I am always the common denominator of my life and thinking. It’s always about the mirror, not the magnifying glass. When I use the mirror the opportunities to my the Holy Spirit increase exponentially.
Thanks for listening, and – as always – feel free to forward this message to your friends, family, and those accompanying you on your spiritual journey.
Don
#1 October, 2012
Copyright, 2012