gratitude

Connecting with Spirit

/ Tim / Leave a comment

Reconnecting with my Higher Power is the most important part of my recovery.  When I came to the meeting rooms it was to get rid of my addiction, not to be prostletized.  In fact I stayed away from twelve step groups for more than two years because I wanted nothing to do with God, religion, or Christianity.  I tried counseling, meditation, acupuncture and even my own willpower to get clean and sober but nothing worked.  Not for long anyway.  I knew I had to do something to make a change. I was desperate enough that even though I feared I might end up under the thumb of some bible thumping, born-again fundamentalist, I went to that first meeting. That’s how beaten down I was.

I found, very soon, was that my preconceptions were unfounded. I didn’t have to believe any set of rules or dogmas,  bow to any statues or light candles while chanting. I was given suggestions.  In the second step I “…came to believe that a power greater than myself could restore me to sanity.”  It was a gradual thing, this opening up to something other than myself.  I heard others in the room speak about their experiences with their higher power.  It didn’t have to be the God I grew up with.  It could be anything that had a power greater than me.  And, at that point, there were a lot of things that had plenty of power over me including my addiction, alcohol and drugs.  I learned that I could choose my own my higher power, a ‘God of my understanding’.

Gradually I changed my focus to some sort of a spiritually based power.  Gradually I began to form a connection with something greater than me.  I didn’t really understand what I was doing, but I was told to do and I was beaten down enough by that irrepressible demoralization I have spoken of before, that I did what I was told.  I was told to ‘act as if’.  Act as if I were happy, act as if I were sober, act as if I liked who I was, act as if I was connected to my higher power.  At first, I felt like a fraud.  I felt I was pretending to be something or someone I wasn’t.  But it was explained to me that we all do that when we start anything new.  When we begin a new job, we act as if we know what we are doing.  When we go to a new social situation we act as if we are cool, suave and in control even though we have no idea of the dynamics of the people around us. And, gradually we do learn and we can stop ‘acting as if’, because we finally know.

That is how it was with me and that new Higher Power I found through the program. Gradually I started to want serenity, courage and wisdom.  Gradually I wanted to talk to that Higher Power, though it was more of  a one sided chat at first, I continued.  And gradually I began to see results; the main one being that I was sober for the first time in years. I wasn’t made to believe, I came to believe. Gradually that connection to my Higher Power was made.  And finally, I came the realization that my Higher Power always has been connected to me, is with me now and will always be with me.  It’s a knowing that I have in my head and feel in my chest.

Oh, I still have times of doubt.  I sometimes wonder if I am talking to a wall.  I still feel lonely at times.  I bristle when people want to say the Our Father at the end of the meeting or I hear some say how Jesus is their higher power.  But I have gradually come to realize that while we walk the same path, we can focus on different things along that path.  Who am I to say that my way is the only way? As long as I don’t think of the guy who stares back at me in the mirror is my higher power, then I have a good chance of staying sober.

It is only in step one that alcohol and drugs are mentioned.  Where as a higher power, God,  a power greater than oneself is mentioned in six of the steps.  So I find it ironic that people talk about the ‘spiritual part’ of the program.  For those who forged the original twelve steps there was no doubt, this is a spiritual program period.  This program is restoring my connection to my Higher Power.  In fact, the twelfth step tells us that if we have worked the previous eleven steps, it will result in a ‘spiritual awakening’: a realization of the connection with something greater than myself that has helped to break that cycle of addiction. We will have exchanged bottled spirits for a spirit that cannot be contained.  I am grateful.

 

 

Live One Day at a Time

/ Tim / Leave a comment

When we first start our journey in a twelve step program we are told a whole lot of things.  There’s a whole new language of recovery that is very foreign to us: steps, traditions, sponsors, slips and promises are but a few of the terms that have whole new meanings in the program.  I was having trouble concentrating on what was happening around me at a meeting; a lot of what was said passed way over my head. The residual effects of the chemicals in my brain probably didn’t help.  However, I latched onto the slogans.  Here were short sound-bites that I could grasp and understand.  This one, ‘Live one day at a time,’ or ‘Take it one day at a time,’ was probably the first that I could grasp onto.

When I started my journey, I had been living my life either as a remorseful mess because of what I had or should have done yesterday, or I was on the other end of the spectrum, fearful of what might happen to me tomorrow.  To be honest, when I first came in I didn’t have any desire to quit.  I just wanted to be taught how to control myself.  I wanted to get my head straightened out so I could be the gentleman I was sure I was.  I wanted to be the guy who could have a glass of wine with dinner or share one  joint with friends. I wanted to step down the crazy a notch or two and go back to normal.  I couldn’t see my life without artifical stimulation or relaxation.  Those who had greeted me those early weeks told me to take it easy, and just live one day at a time.  My only job, the only one that mattered at that time was to make it through the day sober.  Tomorrow was another day I was told.  Concentrate on today.

Live one day at a time.  Live.  I hadn’t been living.  I had been existing, doing the minimum to survive.  I woke up in a fog, piecing together the details of the night before. Somehow I would make it through the day, waiting, longing for the cocktail hour or until I had finished work before starting the insanity one more time.  I was worried about having enough money to pay for it all. I was all about hiding who I was because I believed that no one else really knew about my problem.  Living?  No, that wasn’t living and although I couldn’t have admitted that to myself at the time, deep down I knew it too.

Being in the present, in the moment is a new way of living for me.  There is always more than enough to keep my mind occupied today.  What happened yesterday is done.  I can cry and scream and explain myself blue, and nothing about yesterday will change. However, I was told I could change my perspective.  I can learn from my past and be mindful in the present not to do the same thing today. All of my regrets and mea culpas for all the days I screwed up in the past do not change them and, more than likely, will screw up today was well.

“Man makes plans and God laughs.”  Living in the present doesn’t mean that I don’t make plans.  I do make plans but I don’t live in them.  The future is there, but I try not to focus too much on it.  There are too many people, too many variables involved that are beyond my control and that might alter what I am planning. So I plan loosely.  I bought a plane ticket a month ago with the plan to spend some time with my family.  I truly hope that it will happen, but so many things may happen between now and then that could alter those plans. If I’m living in the future, that change could upset me a great deal.  I try to relax and roll with whatever the future brings me, trusting that my Higher Power has my back.

We call the present ‘present’ because it is a gift.  It is my gift to open each morning of everyday.  I choose to focus on today.  Today I give thanks for being alive and sober. Today I am going to live.  I am going to be present, here and now and accept with love the blessings and challenges that come my way.  I live today for today and tomorrow I leave for tomorrow. Choosing to live one day at a time simplifies my life and my spirit.  I am grateful.

 

♥  ♥  ♥

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Peace.

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Principles before Personalities

/ Tim / 1 Comment

I have a buddy in the program who has stopped going to meetings.  He’s returning to his program after just under ten years in and another four years out again.  Right now he has under six months.  He says he is fine.  He’s doing his readings and studying his books at home and he’s doing daily meditation.  He told me he has stopped going to meetings because his former sponsor is there, and he feels that the former sponsor is looking at him ‘funny’.  The community is very small here.  There isn’t an option for him to go to other groups.

I heard from another friend, a recovering alcoholic with well over twenty years in the program.  He has stopped going to meetings because there is too much discussion about drugs along with the alcohol.  He’d like to go back to the old times with completely closed meetings and no mention of any drug.  “There are other groups for that.”

I have been hearing similar and other gripes since I became a 12 step member.  Both AA’s and NA’s twelfth tradition reminds us to: “…place principles before personalities.”   What does that mean?  To me, it suggests that I remember the principles of the program: recovery, unity, service, honesty, humility, forgiveness, hope, integrity, love, discipline, perseverance and spirituality.  Not everyone is going to have all of these principles down cold.  (I had to look them up, to be sure, while writing because I couldn’t have named them all.) Some days I’m more honest or forgiving than others.  This tradition tells us that these principle are far more important than the defects of character in those who impart them to us.

I must remember that what is important is the message and not the messenger.  In our case, the medium is not the message.  Recovery is much deeper than those who present it.  Were it not so, for example, AA would have died out when Bill Wilson, the founder, passed on.  Something that is true doesn’t become false simply because I don’t like the person who is telling it to me.  Trust me, many people delivered a message to me that I needed help long before I began my trek in recovery.  Of course, in my sorry state I’d get angry with them and use even more ‘just to show them!’

We will always meet people who irritate or bother us in some way, in and out of our meeting room.  We don’t like to be told what to do and how to do it.  We don’t like to have to do anything.  When someone is sharing I can focus on their speech impediment or their ugly shirt, or their hot body,  instead of listening to what they are saying and that probably isn’t what the program is about.

Early on in my program I heard someone talk about the 70-20-10 Rule.  He said that seventy percent of the time, what you hear in a meeting is good solid stuff that can be stowed in your tool box and brought out later to help you through a difficult situation. Twenty percent of the time, what you hear will have you at the edge of your seat; it’s exactly what you need to hear at this time.  It is as if your higher power is speaking directly to you.  And ten percent of the time, what you hear is an opportunity to practice your patience and tolerance.  This rule has proven to be true for me, and others have told me so as well.  However, what is my twenty percent, may be your ten percent, and visa versa.  Our higher powers just works that way.

There’s an old joke in AA:  What do you need to start a new meeting?  A resentment, a coffee pot and a friend.  If your recovery is at risk because you can’t get around the personalities in the room or how things are managed or what people are doing, then find another meeting.  Try attending on-line meetings, start your own meeting, do anything that protects you from your disease.  If sobriety is my number one priority, then I don’t have the luxury of cherry picking.  I need the program more than it needs me.

Periodically I attend Al-Anon meetings.  These folks have a lot to teach me about life.  I particularly like a part of their closing statement:  In closing, we would like to say that the opinions expressed here were strictly those of the person who gave them.  Take what you liked and leave the rest….We aren’t perfect.  The welcome we give you may not show the warmth we have in our hearts for you.  The message delivered by the personalities around the table and the principles intertwined in that message are what keep me sober, not the personalities who deliver them.  Keep coming back.