Solitude

February 2, 2019 / Tim / 2 Comments

“People who take time to be alone usually have depth, originality, and quiet reserve.” John Miller

In my disease I spent a great deal of time alone. I also spent a great deal of time feeling lonely. And I spent a lot of time wishing it wasn’t so. I hadn’t completely isolated myself. I wasn’t barricading myself in my room and hiding under my bed–yet. I still went out occasionally, but not really to socialize, more so to get what I needed. I preferred my own company and loathed it at the same time. I wanted friends but didn’t want them around me. Addiction is full of contradictions.

I have always known that I need time to myself. It’s how I process my thoughts. I am an introvert and I know I need to be alone to recharge. My energy comes from silence. I need my Fortress of Solitude in order to restore myself. It’s not being alone and wishing I wasn’t. That’s loneliness and loneliness is an ego driven downward spiral. The times when I feel lonely are the times when I would rather not be alone. I can solve that. I can pick up my phone and chat with someone or go down into town.

Solitude is a time for repair of the body, mind and soul. My cell phone is in another room and away from the temptation to pick it up at every beep or burp it makes. I prefer the ambient sounds of where I live when I am in my solitude, but some may like some relaxing music. I like to have a notepad nearby should a thought pop into my head that I know will slip out as quickly as it came if I don’t write it down. I can use my solitude to read. I can use it to think. I can use it to meditate. In solitude I unplug and detach from life.

Solitude, used in this way, is a contradiction. When I am in solitude I am making and restoring connections. I connect with myself. I use my morning time to analyse how I am feeling about myself and life. I use it to think about what is important to me. I believe that it’s important to think about things, mull them over in my head, question my beliefs around a particular topic. I need to do that for my writing as well as for my sanity.

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Sometimes solitude takes planning. Depending upon your life, you may need to schedule this time alone. In my readings of the past year I’ve learned that people who are successful in many aspects of life make time for solitude because they know how important it is as part of their creativity and drive as well as in maintaining balance in their lives. They do this as part of their daily routine as well as taking vacations from their job whether it’s an afternoon away or a sabbatical year. I really ‘need’ that time in the morning from 5:30 to 7:00 and I see the difference when I don’t get it.

I live a fairly quiet life but even so, I can fill a day with odd jobs and tasks. I am conscious of the amount of time I spend on social media, watching TV (How did we survive before Netflix?) and the ubiquitous cell phone with all of its apps and time wasters. I need to unplug from the business of life in order to tune into what’s really important and I’ve learned that I can’t figure that out on the fly.

I need my solitude.

Acceptance is the Starting Point

January 29, 2019 / Tim / 1 Comment

In my addiction I would often scold myself and tell myself when I came to in the morning that I wouldn’t do that ever again. But by noon, all bets were off; my head was clearer(?) and I could tell myself with just enough conviction that it wasn’t that bad and I would do better today. Of course, during the last few months of active addiction, there was no morning regret. I had no dignity. I had little emotion. I had but one goal: the continual desire to seek and find oblivion.

I knew before I arrived at my first recovery meeting that I needed help. I just couldn’t stop on my own any more. I figured that if I could use the meeting to keep my head on straight for one day, then perhaps I could quit for longer. I thought that I just needed that push to get me up onto the ‘wagon’ and I would be able to handle it by myself. After all I had quit on my own in the past for fairly long periods of time. I could lick this on my own.

A member of the group invited me to return to the meeting the next day and since I wasn’t doing much of anything and perhaps because no one really wanted me around any way, I took her up on the offer. And I kept going back. I started reading Twelve Step literature. I started counting my clean and sober days. Time in the program because important to me. I always chased the gold star in school; now I was chasing the 30-day chip, then two month and so on. I stayed. I began to work the steps and my life began to change.

Why did this work for me? I think that when I came into the program I was finally ready to accept that I was powerless and that I needed help. I was ready to surrender. My acceptance of the situation that I found myself in (and which I know was of my own making) became the jumping off point into recovery. The evidence of my addiction was before me. I could no longer deny it. I couldn’t pass it off as a bad night or a difficult week. There just wasn’t an end to what I was going through. Once any of us decide that we have hit our bottom, then we can start moving forward again.

I’ve learned since I’ve been in Recovery that what I resist will persist. As long as I was resisting my disease, fighting it, not acknowledging it, I was giving it the upper hand. The heroin addict, the compulsive gambler or the two liter a day alcoholic are doing the same thing: fighting against the facts, denying that they have a disease which keeps them in their addiction. Admission and acceptance are the foundation of recovery. Once I accept, I’m saying to myself that there’s nowhere else to go. I have to deal with the situation or it is not going to change. Acceptance of the situation made me willing to do the work to move forward.

And I am learning that this applies to all situations in life. Once I accept a that I cannot control persons, places or things, then I can work on the one thing that I can control: ME.

I am grateful.

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Opening up

January 22, 2019January 21, 2019 / Tim / 2 Comments

A human being is a part of the whole called the “universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in all its beauty. We may or may not be able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security. ~Albert Einstein

Throughout his whole life Einstein never lost his wonder at life and the greatness of the universe. His sense of ‘awe’ stretched from the vastness of time and space to the tiniest particles of matter and non-matter. In all of creation he saw that there was something beyond what the senses could sense. He believed that science and religion would ultimately end up at the same point with respect to the universe and this rather persistent illusion we call reality.

Spirituality, I believe, is that which connects us. The self, my ego, is that which tells me that I am separate. Science may be disintegrating the old images of God as creator but at the same time it is opening our minds to a newer reality of something far greater than ourselves at the centre of all. Exactly what that is? I have no idea. I too have a sense of awe and wonder when I contemplate the the seen and unseen universe of time and space.

I can take a cup of water from the ocean. It has all of the chemical properties of the ocean but it is not the ocean; where are the tides and currents and immense power in this cup of salty water? However, when I pour it back into the ocean it again becomes the ocean. It reintegrates so fully that I can never remove the same cup of water from it no matter how hard I try.

I see Consciousness in the same way. I am a drop of water splashed up from the River of Life. I possess many of the same properties as the river, but I am not the river. I can look around at all the other droplets splashed up at the same time and I can notice differences: different sizes, colours, position. But once my drop falls back down into the water, I become part of the River once more and those differences no longer exist.

I think that is what Einstein is getting at in the above quote. We are more alike than we are different. We imprison ourselves by our beliefs in our separateness rather than free ourselves in the knowledge that we are all the same. Man, woman, child and all of nature are all the creation of Universal Consciousness. It’s a tough concept to grasp, given our world as it is and how we have been taught all of our lives. But just knowing and opening ourselves up to other possibilities, is a step in a new direction. Just working toward a changed perspective is enough to free us from the bondage of self. And that’s a reason to be grateful.