I’ve Never Regretted Something I Didn’t Say Or Do

Old timers in Alcoholics Anonymous have simply wonderful one-liners. One of them is a quote from the Big Book: “Always practice restraint of pen and tongue.” (This idea, of course, was stated long before email, Facebook, or Twitter existed.) Now, we might have to say “… of keyboard, texting, or tongue.” Of course this thought extends, as well, to acting without restraint.

A member of the AA fellowship, Michael Z, recently published in his message [http://www.thewisdomoftherooms.com]:

Restraint of pen and tongue was a foreign concept to me when I arrived in the rooms.  Before recovery I was quick to speak my mind even when my mind wasn’t made up – it didn’t matter.  I was quick to retaliate for perceived wrongs, quick to take your inventory when I was feeling less than, and quick to tear you down to make myself feel better.  And if I had been drinking, the insults, judgments and condemnations flowed even more.  Afterwards, regret was heavy and the familiar feelings of shame would descend forcing me to retreat into the bottle once again.

When I got sober I heard the saying that feelings weren’t facts.  As such, I was told that I didn’t have to act on every feeling I had, instead I could write about it, pray about it, and share them with other people.  I could restrain from acting on them and wait until I had a clear direction as to how to react.  What I found was that nine times out of ten the feelings would pass, and I was glad I hadn’t acted on them.  I was also relieved that I had less regrets because I hadn’t said hurtful things.

Now that I’m sober a while I still have to be constantly vigilant about acting on or saying things that I might regret later.

I have shared with you before that I have great conversations with myself as I mow the yard or rake leaves – any well-defined task that doesn’t require a great deal of constant thought. These conversations are especially true when I’m “talking” to Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, et.al., concerning how to make Congress work for all of the USA rather than just for Conservative Principles. They always hang on my every word that comes out of my mouth. I’m invariably pleased to have been so extremely helpful!

But my AA Program, bolstered in recent years by my growing understanding from A Course in Miracles (ACIM), has taught me that I don’t have to believe everything I say. Even when “talking” to these fantasized political figures, my concentration and focus will wander and I find myself off on some other subject entirely. For instance, in the middle of my pontification with Paul Ryan, I find myself suddenly talking about problems I’ve had removing the cutting blade on my mower. Now where did that come from? Did I think that maybe Paul Ryan might know the perfect way to remove, sharpen and replace the blade? That he might care? Or is it possible that my thoughts are that undisciplined?

If my thoughts really do come from nowhere only to be replaced by other thoughts, also coming from nowhere, then why oh why would I prefer they also come straight out of my mouth with no filters: no editing; no common sense; no reservations? Now, I always try to insert a brief pause between my thought and my voice or between my thought and my action. I cannot count all the times I have had a thought I believed was extraordinarily important to state – only waiting for the opportunity to state it. Finally, the opportunity presents itself for me to say something, but I couldn’t remember what this great thought was. It was simply gone!

Duh! How unbelievably important could that thought have been?

I can conclude this discussion as Michael concluded his remarks: Today I really feel the truth in the words: “I’ve never regretted something I didn’t say…” or do.

As I’ve stated before, “I have to understand, on a visceral level, who the “Me” or “I” really is when I am speaking or thinking. The “I” that says to myself, “I really need a newer, more reliable car” is a different “I” than the one that says to Spirit, “I can’t do this anymore; help me perceive things the way You see them.”

Although these messages are mostly for me, thanks for listening to me and getting to know me – warts and all. As always, feel free to forward this message to your friends, family, and those accompanying you on your spiritual journey.

Don

#4 Oct 2016

Copyright 2016

PS: Please register and vote!

Another Perspective On Perception

I have discussed perception a lot in these messages. I do that, in part, because it is so central to A Course In Miracles (ACIM). In fact, ACIM defines our change in perception as our Atonement. It is effected by the Holy Spirit – not by an act of willpower on our part – only when we are truly open and willing to see things, events and people differently. Perception is also very central to recovery and the achievement of serenity in Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Members of the AA Fellowship will not talk about how you go about changing your old-thinking perceptions. Rather, they will tell you, as they told me, to focus only on today – don’t drink, go to a meeting, share openly and honestly, talk to your sponsor, work the steps, pray to your Higher Power, and the rest of your life is none of your business. Doing this earnestly, you will come to discover that your compulsion to drink has melted away, serenity and joy have begun creeping into your life, and your perception of the world is changing.

In a small book given to me by a friend [What Color Socks Does God Wear, Doug Bennett, 2015] the author discusses, among other things, how we developed our perceptions and why they are so difficult to change. He comes at this from the perspective of science and logic. It was very interesting reading.

“How do we learn from our reality? Isn’t reality just what is ‘out there,’ the stuff that we walk around in and bump into once in a while? Let’s look at how that works.

“We perceive our environment, what we think of as reality, with our senses. [Karl Pribram, eminent neuroscientist, psychologist and philosopher, who postulated that we humans think in holograms] proposed that the process we … use to perceive things involves memory of learned experience. In Pribram’s model we take in information from our environment through our senses and convert it to holograms. Those little holograms are taken to our memory, where we retrieve something from our memory that matches the input information. That retrieved information is projected back out of the receiving sensory organ and forms what we see or otherwise perceive.

“This means that everything we perceive is learned,” [p. 35]

So, what if I haven’t learned it yet? Does that mean I wouldn’t “see” anything? The answer is “yes!”  I remember reading of the Spanish explorer’s conquest of the Aztecs of Central America, who maintained constant “watchers” for potential enemies. Why didn’t they “see” or report the square-rigged sailing ships of the 16^th century Spanish ships as they moved close to shore? The Aztec watchers had no frame of reference for these massive forms “floating” on the sea. Early reports indicated they had reported large, slow-moving clouds floating above the ocean. That’s all. When they began to see men disembark, they thought they were gods who came from the clouds. The watchers simply didn’t see “traditional” enemies. There was nothing alarming to report.

We know what eventually happened.

Bennett goes on to describe how, as we learned these initial experiences, it wasn’t just the physical perception that we learned. Each physical perception was accompanied by meaning and feeling reactions, as well. When we “see” something, the meaning and feeling reactions occur at the very same time as the physical perception. When you see a snake out of the corner of your eye, the registering of the sight of the snake, the fear we learned from that initial experience, and the jumping-out-of-the-way all occur simultaneously. They were all learned together. In Bennett’s words, they form a perception packet of information – the object itself, the feelings, and the associated physical reaction. It is this “packet” we recognize, project outward, and then respond to.

“There are several apparently different aspects to our learned responses. To give them all a convenient handle I have invented something I call a perception packet. I am not proposing that such things really exist. This is just a way to explain the process. Imagine that for each situation in our life we have a little packet, a perception packet. Every time we encounter that situation or that person or thing, we look up the packet for that situation, open it up and it tells us what we have encountered, how to feel, and what to do in that situation.” [p. 38]

ACIM and AA alike teach what I see reflects primarily only who I think I am. If I am essentially angry, I will perceive anger in almost every situation or person. I will be wary, fearful, untrusting, or tentative. If I am essentially open-minded and trusting, that’s what I will perceive. If I’m on the lookout for a quick mark, I will see everyone else looking to take advantage of me. ACIM states what we perceive is merely a reflection of our own thoughts. AA says it much more simply: If you spot it you got it.

As I’ve stated before, “I have to understand, on a visceral level, who the “Me” or “I” really is when I am speaking or thinking. The “I” that says to myself, “I really need a newer, more reliable car” is a different “I” than the one that says to my Holy Spirit, “I can’t do this anymore; help me perceive things the way You see them.”

Although these messages are mostly for me, thanks for listening to me and getting to know me – warts and all. As always, feel free to forward this message to your friends, family, and those accompanying you on your spiritual journey.

Don

#1 Sep 2016

Copyright 2016

Feelings Are Not Facts – Unless You Want Them To Be

This thought, feelings are not facts, is nothing new. I have, however, come face to face with that over frustrations from having our house on the market. I get frustrated and so does my spouse. “Natural enough,” you say. Certainly, but feelings, as opposed to emotions, are just feelings – unless I want to really pay attention to them.

When I was an elementary school student – maybe 4^th or 5^th grade – my older brother and I went to see “The Thing from Another World,” with James Arness (Matt Dillon of ‘Gun Smoke’ fame) in his first role as the “Tbing.” It was scary to us. You have to remember this was in the early 1950s. As we walked home that evening, it was dark and the streets of Artesia, NM were dark and deserted. We tried to ignore our frightened feelings. We walked slowly. Tried to whistle while we walked. Slowly, however, we moved off the sidewalk and out into the empty streets. Then our pace began to pick up a little – just a little, then a little more. Finally, a cat (or something) rattled a trash can, and – boy howdy -  we were off like rockets. We raced all the way home.

Our anxiety over monsters and invisible boogey men had finally been responded to with our running bodies and suddenly the feelings we had had become facts. The faster we ran, the scareder we became.

I think each of you can identify with that phenomenon.

There are helpful emotions we all harbor. These can all be boiled down to emotions tied to Love or to Fear. Each emotion, however, is like a diamond having many light-catching facets. Love consists of the major sub-emotions of Acceptance, Joy, Peace, Compassion, Courageousness, Serenity, etc. Fear consists of Apathy, Guilt, Anger, Hate, Lust, Envy, Pride, etc. But each of these sub-emotions consists of a variety of fleeting feelings.

For example, the sub-emotion Acceptance consists of appreciation, balance, consideration, delight, elation, friendly, gentle, gracious, mellow, open, playful, tender and understanding. The sub-emotion Anger consists of being argumentative, defiant, frustrated, harsh, hostile, impatient, mad, mean, petulant, rude, spiteful, stern, vengeful, and willful.

These feelings are not factual – unless I want them to be. When I begin to voice these feelings to others and they begin to join in the conversation with me, slowly these fleeting feelings become facts.

I cannot (nor do I want to) control my major emotions. Nor can I control having fleeting feelings. I can, however, control the transition from feelings-as-non-facts to feelings-as-facts. I can do that by acknowledging to myself that I am feeling thus and thus and reassuring myself that these are instant, fleeting egoic feelings. I do not suppress them, nor do I give voice to them. When I give these feelings voice, I give them a certain kind of reality. Slowly I begin down a very slippery emotional slope – just like my brother and I did when we began picking up our pace until we were running headlong out of sheer terror.

When I control this transition from feelings-as-non-facts to feelings-as-facts, I am reminding myself that I am not a body nor am I what I think. I am an already-loved eternal spirit (my True Self) simply having a human experience. I am cared for. I am loved. I am whole. I am Light. I am at one with all other living creatures. I am at peace.

As I’ve stated before, “I have to understand, on a visceral level, who the “Me” or “I” really is when I am speaking or thinking. The “I” that says to myself, “I really need a newer, more reliable car” is a different “I” than the one that says to my Holy Spirit, “I can’t do this anymore; help me perceive things the way You see them.”

Although these messages are mostly for me, thanks for listening to me and getting to know me – warts and all. As always, feel free to forward this message to your friends, family, and those accompanying you on your spiritual journey.

Don

#4 Jul 2016

Copyright 2016

Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!

Here I sit this afternoon watching a snowstorm do it’s business on Tennessee’s Cumberland Plateau. It’s a cold, gray Friday and the sky is dumping a mix of drizzle and sleet amidst mostly snow. Sometimes the snowflakes are quarter-sized, some times much smaller. When the flakes are large and floating downward like autumn leaves it is very beautiful, quiet and serene. The smell of a snowstorm is very distinct to me. The crunch of the snow under foot is comforting and deadens the typical noise of the surrounding hardwood forest that is our backyard, where the deer and squirrels move silently as they search for something edible. I feel sorry for them and want to run out and give them a healthy granola bar or some other snack.

I just finished yesterday with cleaning up after Wednesday’s storm. So, as I sit here, I am thinking of the difficulty and mess that’ll be involved in cleaning up the walks and driveway tomorrow.

But that’s not living in the NOW, is it?

What’s wrong with me – worrying about tomorrow rather than living today? What’s wrong with planning? Anticipating? Preparing? Do these mental activities interfere with my spiritual development? Am I “giving in” to some temptations of my fleshly body or am I simply spiritually weak?

Then I remember the old Buddhist saying about the difference between the enlightened and the unenlightened: “Before enlightenment, I arose in the morning and went out to carry water and chop wood. After enlightenment, I arose in the morning and went out to carry water and chop wood.” Enlightenment is an inward spiritual reality of “content” and has nothing to do with external worldly “form.” 

I comprehend that I can look upon a terrible worldly tragedy, not with my physical eyes that see form, but with spiritual eyes of true vision. I can see tragedy and still be filled with love, peace, joy and serenity. But, I still attempt to apply spiritual content to the physical world of form. Whenever I do that it gets me into trouble. It can spin me into states of anxiety, depression, self-judgment, and virtually any negative emotional state other than serenity, love, joy and peace.

I can, generally, get out of a bluish funk by concentrating on gratitude. That has been somewhat working for me today. I am grateful that I’m in my home, warm and toasty.  I am grateful for our dog, Beau, who is fascinated with snow. He doesn’t like its coldness between his pads, but he’s fascinated nevertheless. I am grateful for the smell wafting from our kitchen. My wife is experimenting with a Midwestern sugar cream pie. She’s not very pleased with the result, but I thoroughly enjoy eating her ”mistakes.” I’ll relish that tonight. I am grateful for the opportunity to go to an AA meeting this weekend. Being surrounded by folks of all stripes, who accept me as I am, does more for my positive state of mind than anything I can imagine.

So, I’ll continue to sit in my study, and gaze out the windows at the swirling, fluffy flakes as they make their way to take up residence on our property.

And ….

I’ll let tomorrow’s snow shoveling take care of itself – tomorrow.

Now, I think I’ll go make a big bowl of popcorn and start a new novel.

Although these messages are mostly for me, thanks for listening. As always – feel free to forward this message to your friends, family, and those accompanying you on your spiritual journey.

Don

#3 Jan 2016

Copyright 2016