Grrrr

Huge doses of steroids have put me back on my feet after a whole month of vertigo severe enough to keep me lying down with my eyes closed 98% of the time.  Apparently, this is caused by some kind of an inner ear problem (probably allergies), and a lot of other people have had it.  I tried ignoring it and getting around anyway, but I got so dizzy I fell.  That's not good since I've got a rather fragile body and don't need any injuries.  So, I gave in and did what worked -  lying pefectly still with my eyes closed.  Enforced meditation.  I told everyone I was pregnant since the dizziness made me feel like I had morning sickness.  (Amazing how you never forget the fun of morning sickness.  I read somewhere that if men got morning sickness, there would be a whole building full of a cadre of scientists looking for a cure.)  I ate a lot of soda crackers.  I wish I could say that I gained something from the experience - that it increased my spiritual growth or something.  But I guess the thing I mostly gained, was great gratitude for not being sick!

Spritual Awakenings in General

I guess most of my spiritual awakenings could be classified as waking up to the truth about myself.  In the past if I had "come to" and seen those things I would have been in despair.  There's a reason why the first three steps of the 12 Steps are the first three steps.  Waking up to reality has the foundation of the realization of powerlessness and unmanageability, followed by the belief (hope/suspicion) that there is a force for good in the universe that can and will restore sanity, followed by the decision to let that power care for us and change us.  At first my spiritual awakenings were definitely rude awakenings and were painful.  But not so much any more.  I am completely dependent on a higher power for my life and any changes that happen in my personality and attitudes.  My awareness of other people and how to treat them comes to me from a higher power also.  To sum up - no spiritual awakening has happened to me except as I was surrendered to the care of that force for good in the universe.

Welcome Memories

At a meeting a few days ago, the speaker mentioned Ron and how much help he was in getting sober.  I remember how Ron spent a lot of time helping people who were stuck and really didn't want to do anything but meetings, so he would take off his counselor hat and put on his AA hat and try to take them through the steps.  From what the speaker said, I'm guessing he was one of those.  Then after the meeting, a gal came up to me and said that Ron had helped her mother do an intervention that eventually got her into treatment and she said how grateful she was.  She said that the intervention itself didn't go that well.  As soon as she realized what was happening, she ran out of the room and went up on the roof where they couldn't talk to her.  But she eventually got sober.  I'll bet Ron was entertained by that.  Going up on the roof was a bit unusual, but stuff like that happened all the time.  People hate being called on their addictions!  It's been over six years since Ron died, but people I don't know still tell me about how he saved their lives.

Spiritual Awakening #7

This was a gradual one.  I don't remember there being a moment in time when I had a flash of light and woke up, although there was one flash a few years ago when the whole concept solidified and I totally got it.  I heard things in meetings like, "My mind is dangerous territory, and I shouldn't go there alone."  Or the "stinkin thinkin" phrase.  The upshot was that I should not believe my thoughts.

I always thought that my thoughts were me and that they were true.  I've come to believe that for whatever reason my thoughts are often - nearly all the time - not in my best interests at all.  They almost always are either judgments of myself or others or worries about the future.  They urge me to do things that are destructive.  I've also learned that being aware of what I'm thinking as continuously as is humanly possible and questioning the truth of my thoughts and then changing them, is a huge key to serenity and peace and love.

Learning that my negative thinking was very likely the cause of the majority of my emotional upsets was a huge turn around for me.  Recently I've been practicing the "morning pages" recommended by The Artist's Way.  The idea is to empty your mind of whatever you're thinking about in order to fill it up with the good stuff. 

I've actually been journaling daily since 1991, or thereabout, for that purpose, and it's been my experience that although I don't have control of my first thoughts, I do have a choice about whether I entertain and believe them or not.  These "morning pages" take the process a lot deeper in that they're three pages of longhand every single day.  All the stuff that's buried under the usual blah, blah, blah of my thoughts usually comes to the surface by the end of that third page.

Questioning my thoughts is a challenge because I have unconsciously come to believe a lot of things that are not true.  Recently I realized that some of it probably comes from the fairy tales I learned in childhood.  For example, I learned from fairy tales that some people are evil and some are good (the wicked step sisters and stepmother of Cinderella) and that when people do things that hurt me, it means that they are just bad people and want to hurt me for no reason.  Of course, I always saw myself as the good person.

Well, the actual truth is that all of us are hurt emotionally - seriously wounded - by the crazy world we live in, the crazy way we bring up children, and we pass that woundedness to each other all the time.  That's the reason there are "bad" people.  I'm not one of those brainless do-gooders that wants to let everyone off the hook because of their woundedness - that doesn't help at all.  Being accountable for our behavior is always the right thing to do.  But having compassion for myself and all other humans means not living with fear caused by my thinking. 

Spiritual Awakening #6

Early in my recovery I read a lot of books trying to find a way to connect with a Higher Power.  One of them was "Love is Letting Go of Fear."  There was a story in the book about a guy on the subway who was very, very disturbed by some children who were more or less running amok.  He got angrier and angrier because their father was sitting right there doing nothing about the situation.  Finally he got so mad that he confronted the father.  The father apologized and got the children to sit down.  He said that he guessed the kids were just letting off steam because they had just come from the hospital where their mother had died and he, himself, was just not quite present since he was in deep grief.

Of course, the moral of the story is that I don't know whether my harsh judgments of other people are true or not.  There may be a good reason for what I've judged as their bad behavior.  In fact, instead of assuming that they are bad people, lazy, uncaring or just have bad motives, it might work better if I assumed the best instead of the worst.

This has helped me immensely in that I no longer wear myself out so much with judgments of other people or myself.  If I assume good reasons, I can just adjust to what is, instead of using my time and energy blaming and complaining and keeping myself in emotional turmoil.

Spiritual Awakening #5

Oh how I hated this one.  I was complaining and blaming to my sponsor about how awful my boyfriend was behaving.  She suggested I take his inventory - write down all the bad things he was doing and what character defects he exhibited.  When I finished, she asked me to come to her house and tell her all about it.  As soon as I finished, she said for me to sign my name at the bottom of the list.  Of course, I was horrified and greatly insulted.  Then she explained that it's actually impossible to see someone else's character defects unless we have some form of them ourselves.  We might be going in a different direction with them than the person we're judging or we might just wish we could get away with the same behavior, but there's something we're secretly judging ourselves for that we're covering up by judging someone else.  If I call someone a miser, for example, I might be feeling guilty about overspending or being "tight" myself.  If I'm not judging myself, I might just see the person as thrifty. 

Oh how hard this one was to swallow.  On the other hand, it's an absolutely perfect way to see my own character defects that I'm blind to.  Very handy.  After enough personal examination, I'm not so shocked at my character defects, and my ego doesn't try so hard to defend me.  None of this has a purpose of trying to make me feel bad or guilty, but just to help me see how I'm getting in my own way and keeping me unhappy.  By continuing to work the steps on whatever I find, I'm able to forgive myself which helps me be a lot more accepting of other people.  Unfortunately, it's a process, not an event.

Pix

Poinsettias last way past Christmas.  This one is a little bedraggled though.

Below is the sweet potato vine is started months ago.  Just as I was giving up and going to throw the potato away, I saw a tiny bit of green, so I put it back in the water.  By spring I'm going to have a huge plant - I think I'll start another one!

Cisco loves the heating pad.  He's such a skinny baby that I feel sorry for him and keep turning it on all day.

Spiritual Awakening #4

This one absolutely amazed me.  I had someone in my life that walked into my house without knocking and another person who took any money I left anywhere in my house.  Of course, I had thrown my usual fits about being victimized, so they both knew how I felt but kept going.  I felt like a helpless victim.  My dear sponsor was not impressed with my victimhood and kept asking me 1) why I didn't lock the door and 2) why I didn't lock up my money.  I thought this was bad advice since the obvious solution was for them to behave. 

Eventually I got it, though, and did what I needed to do.  I realized that I just expected people to do what I wanted and was horrified when they didn't.  She told me that everyone has different rules and different motives for doing what they do and that my expectations were what was making me miserable.

It turns out that those principles are applicable to a lot of things in life.  She suggested that I quit taking other people's words and behaviors personally, bless them and live the way I thought God wanted me to.  I forget about this from time to time, but life always gives me a reason to remember it.

Spiritual Awakening #3

When I had been in recovery about 9 months I realized that I had consistently done something for 9 whole months - I hadn't taken a drink, I had gone to several meetings a week, I talked to my sponsor almost every day, almost every day I had read some of the literature and had asked God to help me pretty much every day.  That alone was a huge awakening - I knew that I had never ever before in my life, done that many things consistently for that length of time.  I knew it was a miracle.  I wasn't a believer in God, but now I was suspecting that there must be a force for good in the universe that had given me the power to do those things.

Then at about that same time I realized that I was happy and had some peace of mind.  Happiness and peace were new things for me.  AND I had none of the things I thought I must have to be happy - my finances were a mess, I had lost my job, my daughter who was still at home was going through a terribly difficult adolescence, plus I hadn't even had a date with a guy in several  months.  That was a miracle too.  The only thing that had changed was my willingness to do some simple things.

A few pix from Christmas

The gorgeous jewelry box from Adam and Thien in its place of honor.

The "check" from Aaron that promises me help with my wildflower garden.

This year's collage.

Spiritual Awakening #2

After the awakening that the only place to live was in the present, I had another amazing realization, thanks to the same counselor that told me about the book, Your Erroneous Zones.  I called her, having a huge fit because my husband had left our youngest two children in the house alone while I was at the grocery store.  Both of them were very severely disabled, and when I got back there were windows broken out and various other disasters had occurred.  He was in the backyard working in the garden.  I was completely beside myself. 

She asked me what I thought needed to happen, and I said that he needed to change!  She asked me how long I had known him (15 years), and what he had changed during that period of time.  I said he now ate vegetables.  She said that many people would have self-examined during that period of time with as many life changing experiences that he'd had during that period, and that they would have made some changes.  Since he had not, she said, how likely was it that anything she or I could say or do would get him to change.  A flash of light went on - he wasn't going to change!  She said that we were now getting somewhere.  So, if he's not going to change, she said, what will you do to fix this problem.  Of course, the obvious answer was that I need to get a babysitter if I left the kids at home while I went somewhere else.

It was another wake up call to stop waiting for other people to see things my way and do what I wantedno matter how right I thought I was.  From then on I either asked someone else to watch the kids when I went some where or I went when they were in school. 

Spiritual Awakenings I Have Had - #1

I heard a speaker say one time that all the spiritual awakenings she had were immediately preceded by rude awakenings.  Very perceptive.  I do have to add in all honesty that her perceptiveness and articulativeness didn't save her.  She relapsed and died a few years ago.  Just goes to show that being articulate and perceptive does not keep you sober.  She stopped working a daily program and that's what happened.

Anyway, the thing about rude awakenings is true for me too.  The very first awakening - both rude and spiritual - was when the very first counselor I ever saw told me to get the book, Your Erroneous Zones."  She said to read it and do what it said and I wouldn't need to see her any more.  Since I was completely at my wits end and was completely physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted from trying but failing to meet my overwhelming responsibilities, I immediately set out to read it as fast as I could from beginning to end.

It was, in my opinion, a very badly written book.  It also challenged my belief system.  As I read it, I occasionally threw it against the wall.  Finally the lights went on when I got nearly to the end of the book.  Contrary to what I had believed, the author said that I wasn't responsible for absolutely everything - that I could ask for help.  He also said that complaining did absolutely no good whatsoever.  Instead, he said, I should take responsibility for myself and start trying to solve whatever problems I was having.  Most importantly of all, he said, worrying about the future and feeling bad about the past was a complete waste of time.  Life is only happening in the present and that's where I should be living.

I felt like a weight had lifted off my shoulders and I felt as if I was capable of solving my problems.  I wish I could tell you that everything went well from that moment.  But it did not.  Unfortunately, I did not have a mentor to talk to to help me put the principles into practice.  The only thing I was able to do on my own was learn to center myself in the present by focusing on what I felt, saw and heard around me instead of focusing on my thoughts.  I was able to be "present" most of the time which felt absolutely lovely.  However, that didn't help me solve my problems.

 I did ask for help - in fact, I demanded it.  That didn't work at all and I was still left with the problems and now the people I demanded help from were pissed.  Even so I had periods of absolute joy being present, which is definitely at the heart of spiritual awakening.  I still have the skill of centering myself in the present no matter what is happening.  I think that the present is where God is and the present is the only place I can get in contact.

Sabbatical

Right after the first of the year I decided to take a short sabbatical from doing a whole bunch of things I don't want to do.  I had three volunteer jobs that I kind of took out of either guilt or people-pleasing and then noticed that they were taking up the time I wanted to do other things that were really important to me.  It turns out that it's a lot harder to quit than I ever imagined.  One of the people has emailed me at least once and sometimes twice a day to ask if I would "at least" do this or that.  I've said, "no."  It's not getting through.  The other person cried.  Dear God.  How do I get myself into these things! 

So...today, in between continuing to say, "no."  I sent a story off to one of my favorite magazines - the first time I've ever put any of my writing out in the hope it would be published.  If I had kept saying yes, I would never have done it.

Unsolved Problems

I puzzle a lot over why we human beings keep doing the same thing over and over expecting different results.  It's the definition of insanity and yet we don't seem to notice it - in ourselves or even in other people.  I also call it "victim thinking" because we see the source of our problems being other people and/or our situations.  Yesterday's reading in one of my meditation books addressed this and reminded me that learning a new perspective on myself and my life was so miraculous.  I think I'm still hard wired to see my problems as originating outside of me but because I still talk to people in recovery, read the literature and go to meetings, I have these constant reminders of a much more helpful way of dealing with life.

"Once is a fluke, twice is a coincidence, three times is a pattern."  The writer of the meditation page was referring to the behavior of other people.  He/she suggests that we ask ourselves when we are upset (one more time) with the behavior of someone else, how many times this has happened before.  If it's three or more, it's time to quit hoping it will change and change ourselves instead.  I used to think, "But it's him/her that's wrong; so he/she should change.  What can I possibly do to help myself if the other person keeps on doing things that upset me?" 

Well, there are a lot of pretty simple, but difficult answers:  Like changing my expectations and accepting that this person, for whatever reason, is probably going to keep doing what he/she is doing.  That alone can increase my peace of mind, because I won't be continually surprised that he/she hasn't seen the error of his/her ways and changed.  I may need to distance myself temporarily from that person, or stop talking about a particular subject.  A lot depends on what the actual behavior is, but I can always figure out what I need to change by talking to other people in recovery.  It is never necessary for me to suffer because of someone else's behavior!

It's Okay Darling...

Cheryl Richardson who has written several books on improving your life sends a weekly email to anyone who signs up, and of course, I signed up!  This week's email had to do with New Year's resolutions.  She doesn't like them either, but still the beginning of a new year is a good time to think about making changes that would improve your life.  She said that research shows that all change comes about in fits and starts so we should be patient with ourselves.  She recommends that when we get off track we should put a hand over our hearts and say to ourselves, "It's okay, darling.  Just get back on track quickly."  I like that.  I'll be doing that a lot, I'm sure.

Non resolutions

January of each year is just an arbitrary time for change.  Change can happen any time.  Hope can happen anytime.  What I want to know, what I wish research would focus on, is what are the most effective ways to make personal change.  The universal problem is that people make resolutions (me included) and then....well, you know....All that actually happens is that we feel discouraged and bad about ourselves.  I have read that the problem is that we are hardwired for short term pleasure rather than long term success and that overcoming the drive for short term pleasure is extremely difficult to overcome.  At the very least someone surely has interviewed people like me who always say, "this is the year I lose 20 lbs"  but who still weigh the same at the end of the year and then finally actually did it.  Okay, National Institues of Health - where are you spending my tax dollars?  All that research into heart conditions, diabetes, etc. would not be needed if we had the answer to the qeustion of how to get ourselves to hang in for the long term.  There are lots of opinions and lots of ads on T.V. but where's the research that proves what will work?

Grief

"There are many forms of loss - divorce, incarceration, illness, death, even emotional change.  When I lost the person I loved more than anyone in the world, I was more than devastated, and in my grief, I pushed everyone away...With the help of so many wonderful {program}members who held me and let me grieve in my own way and time...I learned to live with loss with pain, with despair, until eventually I began to feel alive again."  Courage to Change.

This is the seventh Christmas after the wreck when I lost the love of my life.  I am so grateful that I could mostly enjoy this Christmas season without having to pretend to be myself like I have had to in years past.  I have learned that the world in general finds it difficult to put up with people who are in grief.  We are irrational, irritable, morose, and generally no fun.  They want us to act like ourselves and quit being so self-centered.  I am incredibly grateful for all the program people who expected me to grieve and let me cry as much as I needed to, who expected nothing from me because they knew I had nothing to give.  Because of them, I arrived at a Christmas season with a real smile instead of pretend one.

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

Sunday morning meeting by the pond at the park.  This one white duck looks like he feels like I used to feel - out of place.

Went to The Nutcracker ballet with friend, Mary.  Another friend couldn't make it so gave us the tickets!  Kids were getting their pictures taken with characters in the lobby.

My "for awhile" roommate had a bad case of tummy trouble so we went to the minor emergency center.  This is a picture of the room we were in - someone decorated for a soothing effect.

I have a roommate for awhile.  She's figuring out her next step in life.  My silver Christmas tree that stays up all year wasn't quite the Christmas mood she was looking for so she got this little one.  I like it!

Pix

Bob and Mary Ann with their brand new Christmas tree, hanging the ornaments they got from some of the NHS class of '59.

These pix are of the rebuilding of Mary Ann and Bob's neighbors houses after the tornado in Joplin.

Bob is taking a pic while I take one of him and friends

Mary Ann is opening the ornaments classmembers have given her and Bob to replace the ones they lost in the tornado.

Went to see the Muppets.  The Muppets live in the same world as the Star Trek folks.  Good always wins.

Babies

I kind of envision us humans as babies about a year old or less, standing in our cribs, screaming at the top of our lungs, faces red, tears dripping off our cheeks, snot running over our upper lips.  We have poopy diapers and diaper rash.  We are hungry.  It has been a very, very long time since anyone kissed and hugged us and rocked us.  We are wailing with all our might but no one is coming.  Somehow we missed it when we grew into adults and were in charge of ourselves.  Sure enough no one is coming because who we have to rescue us is us. All the blaming and complaining we are doing will never solve our problems.