Prayer

Conscious Contact

/ Tim / Leave a comment

In the eleventh step we seek to improve our ‘conscious contact’ with our Higher Power. We can do that through prayer and medication, er, well, no, sorry. That was before. Now it’s prayer and meditation. Silly play on words, but in fact, that’s exactly what we had been doing before we came into the program. We used drugs and alcohol (also a drug that often mixes well with orange juice) to take us out of ourselves and somewhere else. Only it never quite got us there. Funny thing about conscious contact, you have to be ‘conscious’ to make that contact and the substances caused loss of consciousness and are detrimental to our body, mind and spirit.

What does ‘conscious contact’ with my Higher Power mean for me today? Let me start by saying that it doesn’t mean spending my days in the lotus positon, chanting a mantra and meditating on the meaning of life. I can’t ‘do’ the lotus position. My body doesn’t fold that way. I must have big joints in my hips and knees. My mind never seems to quiet down enough to stop wandering after five minutes and when it does, I don’t meditate, I wake up, about a half an hour later. For me, the only thing close to chanting a mantra is repeating the Serenity Prayer over and over in times of stress until I find some peace and calm. At this time, I guess my mind needs more structure than the free form meditation. Fortunately for me, there are many ways to have contact with my Higher Power.

I believe that what this step is leading us to is the change in our thinking. We learn to filter our thoughts and deeds through what we learn in our program. We seek to think before we act. We stop and ask ourselves what might happen if we were to do this or say that. We look to where it might lead us. We ask how this might affect those around us, our friends and family.  We think about how it may affect us and our program of recovery. Only then make a decision on whether or not to do it.

It starts slowly.  Like everything in our program, it is a process that takes time. At first we become conscious of something after the fact. After we say or do something that is not how we want to act, we realize it later.  Perhaps when doing a review of our day, we acknowledge that we could have done or said things differently.  Later, with more time and practice we begin to realize when we’re in the middle of it. It’s the ‘Oh shit, I shouldn’t be doing this should I,’ experience. We’re in the middle of a defect of character, perhaps anger, and we have a mini ‘aha’ moment. At first we’re so caught up in the moment that we are unable to stop, though we know we should. It part of the process we are learning. Then we will learn to stop when we see a defect and change our tack in mid-stream.

The final part of this process is when we filter our thoughts and action through our program before acting upon them. That I believe is where we begin to touch conscious contact with our Higher Power. We are aware of who and where we are. Anger, jealousy, and fear do not guide us. Our recovery program does.

All of this takes time. Usually we have to do it for every one of our defects. We have backslides and go back to our old way of thinking and doing but we recognize that it’s not the way we want to live and strive to improve. As was told to me, in order to be successful at this, all I have to do is get up one more time than I fall. It takes time and practice.  There are bound to be lots of ‘oh shit’ moments in everyone’s recovery. With time and with ‘conscious contact’ with whatever Higher Power you have, you will get better at it and those moments will occur less and less.

Recovery takes time. Don’t throw in the towel because you screwed up once. You deserve recovery: trust the process and keep plugging away. You’ll probably find that you’re already more than halfway there.

Photo Credit: Rodney Conrad

 

It’s Not the End of the World!

/ Tim / Leave a comment

How bad things may look right now means nothing.  It’s how good you know they can look with God’s help that counts. Life has a habit of changing itself completely around in 24 hours. Heck, in 24 minutes sometimes. Don’t you dare give up on Tomorrow because of the way things look Today. Don’t even think about it… Neale Donald Walsch

For all of us, times will arise when life seems impossible and difficult and totally unmanageable. It doesn’t matter if we’re in recovery or not. It’s life. It’s how things go from time to time. Regardless, it’s important to keep in mind a few things to help us to get through this challenge.

Whatever is happening, it won’t last forever. Things will turn around and get better. I know that when you’re in the thick of it, time drags and it seems that this will never end. And it will. Don’t quit because you can’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. It will appear, it always does. I have learned that I can get through everything that life throws at me: death, ending relationships, depression, a broken leg, accidents, arguments and anything else comes along. The pain of today will transform into the joy of tomorrow.  That break-up seems to cause the whole world to crash down. But it will get better. And the idea of using or drinking again? Really? Is that what’s going through your mind? If you want to make things even worse than they are, drink or use.  That will really drag out your difficulties. Time heals

My perspective is a limited perspective. I can only see one side of anything until I stretch my mind to consider other perspectives. How is this affecting other people? I took to heart many years ago the idea to look at the best possible intentions of others. When someone does something that affects me, say, your boss gives a promotion to someone else. From my perspective, it’s the worst possible thing to happen to me right now. It could turn me into a tailspin if I let it. What’s the best possible intention of my boss? It probably wasn’t to make me angry or make me feel I should quit this lousy job. Your boss was probably looking for the best interest of the company. Were you? Perhaps there’s another, more suitable promotion for me, or perhaps work performance is lacking and I’m not really the best person for that promotion. I need to remember that it’s not all about me all of the time (though my Ego would tell you otherwise). There are other factors and other perspective that come into play.  Look for the best intention of others and even if that wasn’t their real intention, it doesn’t matter. I have a positive or at minimum, a neutral thought about it.

What I resist will persist. If I want to get through the worst of things, I need to accept it. I stop fighting it, blocking it, avoiding it. I accept it. This doesn’t mean that I like it, or that there’s nothing I can do about it. It means that I acknowledge its presence and that I will deal with it. Here, the Serenity Prayer comes into play. Acceptance allows me to discern whether it is something that I can change or not change. I can’t change people, places or things, but I can work on me. “Resistance is futile,” say the Borg in Star Trek. It is. Once I stop resisting and accept, I can do something about the situation; I stop swimming against the current.

H.O.P.E. Hear Other People’s Experience. When times are bad, it helps to talk to others and listen to their stories. Perhaps they went through a similar problem. Perhaps they have information that could be helpful. Their example will give me hope if I let it. Many times this happens in meetings. We hear something either in the literature of the program or the shares of other members. Often they aren’t even aware of what we are going through right now, but their experience, strength and hope help us along. We all have our Higher Power. Opening my ears to hear other people is also opening my ears to my Higher Power.

Pray about it. In the eleventh step we ask for two things in prayer: to know what our Higher Power’s will is for us and for the power to carry out that will. If I stop putting my expectations of the outcome of things, if I stop telling my Higher Power just how things should be resolved, I have a better chance of hearing what that ‘will’ is for me.

Difficult times come to everyone. It’s life. I love the line from the movie The Most Exotic Marigold Hotel: “It will all work out in the end. If it’s not working out, it’s not the end.” Trust yourself, trust your Higher Power and give time, time. I can live one day at a time because tomorrow is another day.  I am grateful.

Honestly? Yes!

/ Tim / Leave a comment

I’m not sure how many times the word ‘honesty’ appears in recovery literature but I am sure that it’s a substantial number. Honesty is an essential part of the program. The essence of the twelve steps is to dig through the layers of ego driven lies and bravado in order to arrive at the truth of who I am and then maintain that truth, and even dig a little bit deeper as I go along.

“To thine own self be true.”  Shakespeare

The coins we receive to mark time in sobriety have this struck onto them. It comes from the play Hamlet where a father is giving advice to his son who is going off on his own for the first time. Be honest with yourself, says dad. He’s also advising his son to stay the course, not to stray, to be true in the sense of an arrow heading for the bullseye. The first nine steps in the program allow us to find our path of truth. The last three help us to stay on that path.

We’ve all told some whoppers in our day. When looking back at these big lies, we can see that we told them to protect our vision of ourselves or deflect suspicion onto others: lies are always Ego based. The biggest lies are the ones we tell ourselves. The biggest lie I told myself is that I was ‘different’. I suffered from ‘Terminal Uniqueness’: my belief that I was unlike anyone else was killing me slowly. My ego told me that it was okay to try to escape from my surroundings and who I was because no one understood me, no one was going through what I was going through and everyone was against me or I against them. Drugging and drinking were symptoms of deep dishonesty.

Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” Oscar Wilde

It’s a challenging path to the truth of who I am. It’s peeling off the layers of the onion to get to the center. There’s often a fear that we’ll go so far we’ll find there’s nothing at the center. Fortunately, onions grow from the inside out and there’s always another layer to discover: new truth and understanding. But yes, being honest with myself means ripping off the layers that Ego has built with half-truths and lies and getting to my essence and accepting the ‘me’ that I discover. It’s not easy and it’s not something that happens overnight. Like many other parts of our program, it’s a process. But once there, I have a base, a foundation I can build upon.

“Pretty words are not always true, true words are not always pretty; and yet, they are still true.” Aiki Flinthart, The Yu Dragon

Being honest isn’t easy. It’s hard to face who I am and to know that it’s not the world, circumstances or others who brought me to my knees. I did that. I was the one who made those decisions that created the addict/alcoholic that I am. It wasn’t my parents, my partner, my job, where I live or my tragedies: I created the mess that landed with a thump at the door of a recovery program. That’s probably the most difficult truth anyone has to face. It’s the one that I must face if I am to recover.

I build my new life based upon truth, based on honesty. I can begin small by just not telling lies to myself and others. This goes beyond being ‘cash register honest’. Honesty and truth become deeply imbedded in this new character we are constructing. Self-inspection is essential to building this new life.  Even the best bricklayer uses a level to make sure that his work is plumb and follows a string line to make sure that it is straight as well.

“The longest journey is the journey inwards.” Dag Hammarskjöld

Once more I see how the program is simple, but not necessarily easy. It takes courage and willingness to dig deeply into my self and come up with an honest appraisal of who I am. Here again, the Serenity Prayer comes in: serenity, courage and wisdom. I ask for these in my quest for honesty and the discovery of self.