gratitude

Gratitude

/ Tim / 2 Comments

There is no room for resentment, anger or fear in a heart full of gratitude.

This is a statement that I picked up from my sponsor.  He will celebrate 27 years in the program next month.  He’s picked up a lot of tidbits over the years. I am picking them up from him.  He’s also taught me that I can trace these three emotions back to my ego. When I have a resentment, it’s because I didn’t get my way in the past. When I am angry, I’m not getting my way now. And when I have fear, it’s because I am worried I may not get my way in the future.

When I am feeling resentment, anger or fear, I believe it is all about me.  It’s all about ‘my way’.  It’s what I want to have happened, happen now or to happen.  It’s all about unfulfilled expectations in the past, present and future.  I heard another tidbit from a member this past week that summed it up quite neatly.

Expectations are resentments under construction.

Past, present and future expectations find their source in my ego and getting ‘my’ way. Expectations have little regard for what is going on around me, who I am dealing with, or where I happen to be at the time. And when they fail to materialize, then I become upset because you didn’t say you liked the gift I bought you; the traffic is making me late; the noise is making me lose my concentration.  All expectations of how things ‘should’ be and not accepting how they are. The world revolves around me, don’t you know! Expectations start in the future and stealthily move through the present and slip into the past as resentments.

Gratitude removes me from resentment, anger and fear because it moves out of me and away from my ego. When I am grateful I am no longer thinking of just myself. I am thinking about the things that have been given or done for me.  I stop and realize that this world isn’t just about me and about my thoughts, feelings and desires.  I see how much I have been given by my Higher Power and by others around me.  I see your part and how important it is in giving me the incredible life that I have.  I am thankful for what I have been given, for what I have and for what I know will come my way in the future. I stop taking things for granted.

An earlier sponsor loved gratitude lists.  She suggested that I think of at least three things I was grateful for every night before I went to sleep. She told me that when I am upset about something that if I focus on the wonders around me and be thankful.  During the day, the real or imagined storm that is whirling around me will lose its strength immediately if I am thankful.

This sponsor died suddenly after only working with me for six months. I remember feeling abandoned and and fearful because now what was I going to do, who was I going to turn to, why would my Higher Power do this to me?  I was focusing on how her death was affecting me: this wasn’t how I wanted things to go! I was turning the tragedy of her death into my tragedy because I expected that she would be around to guide me for a much longer time. Fortunately, I had worked with her long enough to realize how egocentric, how selfish I was being.  I began to focus on how grateful I was for what she had taught me, for the love and kindness she shared with myself and others and for the challenge to follow her example of living the program.

The practice of gratitude takes practice.

It doesn’t happen overnight. And there are still times when I can get all tangled up in my mind because my focus is not on the present moment but on my resentments, anger or fears.  With practice I am able to see my fear for what it is: an expectation of the future. If I remove that expectation, I can accept life on life’s terms and not be shaken by what happens.  If I am not upset with how things turn out, then I have no reason to create a resentment.  But as I said, this takes practice.

Getting into the habit of making a written or mental gratitude list is changing my focus away from the belief that life all about me.  It changes my focus to see the wonders around me instead of in me. This habit helps to keep me focused in the present. I’m still working on it. I still have fears, resentments and anger, but they are less intense and I move on quicker.  I can accept what is and not wish to change it. Like me, my focus on gratitude is a work in progress.

♥  ♥  ♥

Please like and share this blog, not to stroke my ego, but for those who need the courage, strength and hope to start and continue their journey down Recovery River. I would appreciate it if you would sign up and follow as well.  My intention is to post Mondays and Thursdays.   Please comment and offer suggestions.  I’d love to hear from you.

Peace

Living the Program

/ Tim / Leave a comment

I am an addict.  It doesn’t matter what substance I used, how often or how long I used it, or how long it’s been since I’ve used it.  I am and always will be an addict. I am grateful that I have some time in my program, but I must always be aware that I am just a couple of bad decisions away from a crash and burn.  I know from hearing others in meeting rooms how easy it is to slip up and what can happen if I do go out again, and it won’t be pretty.  I have never heard of someone who came back to their program talk about how wonderful it was while out there using or drinking again.  “The idea that somehow, someday he will control and enjoy his drinking is the great obsession of every abnormal drinker.”(Alcoholics Anonymous, p. 30) This idea must be crushed and obliterated from my mind.  My ego tells me I can be different from everyone else.  Experience, my own and others, warns me that I am not.

It’s not sobriety that has brought about the changes in my life. It’s the spiritual awakening that is the result of working and living the 12 steps. Not drinking and not using may mean that I am sober and clean.  But they don’t give me sobriety. In my early thirties I stopped on my own once for about five years. But I wasn’t really sober: I was fighting against my desires to escape life.  I really wanted to have a beer with friends, a glass of wine with dinner or share a joint, but I knew I shouldn’t.  And I wasn’t the nicest person to be around because I still had all of the ego charged character traits that I always did, only now they weren’t being softened by that gentility of the first pipeful or shot. My recovery was missing something.

That something, I believe, was the spiritual experience, or awakening.  A psychological shift in thinking that has allowed me to surrender, stop trying to control everything, and realize that I was the greatest threat to my existence.  I was drowning in the river of life and still trying to swim upstream.  If I wanted to really live, I had to understand that when it came to certain things, I was completely powerless.  If I just stopped thrashing about, I could at least float with the current.

Surrender on this existential level wasn’t that hard. There really wasn’t much left to give up. I had lost my dignity and self respect.  I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror.  My liver was enlarged and who knows what other physical problems I was on the verge of encountering. I had alienated most of the people around me and was finding comfort in gloomy establishments with people who were living much like I was. My life was circling the bottom of the toilet bowl. Somehow I still had enough sense to see that I was on the path of losing myself. So in spite of my misgivings and preconceptions of what recovery was all about, I showed up at a local meeting and took my place at the table.

I understand that I was ready to surrender, to try something else because my way wasn’t working.  A friend of mine calls it his Gift Of Desperation.  I was powerless and I couldn’t manage my own life.  That was my first baby step into the program.  The eleven remaining steps helped me to recover and slowly brought me about to a more awakened state of being and opened me to a relationship to a Higher Power.

My life today is changed from what it was before.  My sobriety today is of a different quality than I had when I quit solo for five years. It is different because I work at living a twelve step program. I know that this is a lifelong process, and it is one I do willingly because I like the changes in my life and my being.  Today I like who I am and I can look at my reflection in the mirror without cringing.  The changes in my life are not because I am put down the bottle or the pipe. They are a result of working all twelve steps of the program and awakening to the spirit.   I am finally enjoying the trip down the river.

♥  ♥  ♥

Please like and share this blog, not to stroke my ego, but for those who need the courage, strength and hope to start and continue their journey down Recovery River. I would appreciate it if you would sign up and follow the blog as well.  My intention is to post Mondays and Thursdays.   Please comment.  I’d love to hear from you.

Peace

 

The End of the World! …not really

/ Tim / Leave a comment

When we speak of humility, that elusive quality of character, we often speak of accepting ourselves as we are.  We speak of downplaying ego and of selflessness.  Humility also has something to do with how we react to what is happening around us. It isn’t just a quality on how we see ourselves, but also how we respond to our world.  It is keeping things in proportion.

Humility is keeping things in proper perspective.  It’s not exaggerating about what is happening in our lives, not bragging about how great we are, nor is it commiserating about how bad things are.  How we love to exaggerate. To quote Charles Dickens: “It was the best of times; it was the worst of times.” For most of us, before we got into our twelve step program, there were high highs and low lows.  Seldom did we find ourselves balanced anywhere near the center. And we loved to tell everyone just how good it is, how much money we made, where we lived, who we were married to.  Or, we droned on about how life had done us wrong, how bad things were going at work, how that SOB was going to get what’s coming to him. It was either the best or the worst but rarely a happy medium.  How do we get to that balance?  We give ourselves over to humility.

Humility is that quality that reminds us that we can deal with anything; those things we like and those which challenge us.  It reminds us that we are not alone in life, that we have a Higher Power guiding us and friends around us we can count upon. We learn that we can make it through everything. We can ask ourselves: was it really a bad day, or was it 15 minutes that I milked for the rest of the day?

I remember when I first started teaching.  Managing a full classroom of ten year olds, trying to prepare and present lessons, keeping the principle and parents happy were way beyond my limited experience at the job.  If one thing happened that I wasn’t expecting, say a half an hour before the final bell, suddenly the whole day was a fiasco.  It was the worst day ever. It would be better if I quit now and worked at KFC.  Well, that was my scenario, more or less.  But no, it wasn’t the worst day ever, it was a small thing that I let colour my perspective on the whole day.  I can see now I was operating with plenty of egocentric pride and hardly a speck of humility. Ego and humility cannot exist together. When I claim I’m a humble person, I’ve just let my ego take over.

How grateful I am to learn that I can make it through everything.  I am quite fond of saying that it’s not the end of the world until it’s the end of the world!  I have a Higher Power and I will always get through whatever comes my way, until I don’t make it. And then it won’t matter. Meanwhile I choose to live while I am alive and not wallow in hiding for fear that things might not go the way I want them to go. Besides, in spite of my desire to have it so, it isn’t all about me.  I’m not the only one involved here in this game of life. The world happens.  The world happened before I arrived and will probably keep on long after I’m gone. Humility reminds me that I’m not that important in the big picture.

Someday, I hope to become the guy my dogs think I am. Until that time, I keep working away at changing for the better: remembering that I am just another of the creatures on this earth doing the best I can with what I am given each day.