PoM 293
My 2 year old son learned that he could jump out of his crib and run rampant through the house, so we had to build him a little bedroom.
It’s been a week and while he’s getting used to it, he still wakes up shrieking from time to time.
I went and changed his diaper, got him his formula and massaged his back, head and arms…but I wasn’t really reaching him.
I could feel his agony and I began to slowly, ever so gently, caress his forehead…and he began to relax.
He stopped crying and then, as though very thoughtful about his crying jag, reached up to me, put his little arms around my shoulders and pulled me closer to him.
It was a tender moment and I told him he could cry with me…anytime he wanted.
PoM 294
After running PrayerCall/Monks for 12 years there’s a phenomenon I have noticed we call the “Shooting Star Syndrome”.
I come in really hurt, depressed, broke maybe even having suicidal ideations from time to time, willing to do anything.
I start going to meetings, then reluctantly get a sponsor, then start working the steps, and then start helping other people get well.
Then all the gifts of recovery start to appear: I’m no longer feeling “pitifully and incomprehensibly demoralized“ or depressed. I start to feel high self-esteem. My energy level soars.
I’m practicing chastity, but then I begin to look at my food and lose, or gain (if I am underweight) a lot of weight. I start exercising become athletic, limber, strong, and my body begins to look sexy and attractive again.
I get a better job, I go back to school or start my own business. Money starts rolling in.
I dress better. I start going to concerts, or I start playing a musical instrument. I might even start dating.
But, ever so slowly, I start to “Put the life AA gave me, in front of my AA life”.
I start showing up for fewer PrayerCalls and when I do I don’t read with everybody else anymore, or I do the check-in at the beginning and end, but during the readings I multitask and work on my computer, or surf my iPhone.
I stop calling my sponsor every day and do it maybe once a week.
I stop reading the basic text Hope and Recovery.
I stop making out reach calls to newcomers and I don’t serve others sex addicts. I’ll accept a call, but I don’t make any calls anymore.
Then, like every human being in the world, I reach my limit. I’ve spent all the spiritual capital that I have been saving up in the early months and something happens, usually something very little that triggers me…and I slip.
Then, something pernicious, bordering on evil, happens…The slip is not that bad. I don’t feel as hung over as I did when I first came in to PrayerCall, and that registers in my mind.
I didn’t get fat, lose my girlfriend, lose my job, or fall into a deep depression…but I still want sobriety so I start back using the tools again, but not as hard as I did at the beginning.
This time instead of having three or four months of sobriety, I lose my sobriety at 30 days. Then again, something pernicious happens…I start to doubt the program and I start to fear that I can’t make it back.
The next slip is only seven days out, and then three days out. Then I am lost and hopeless.
I think PrayerCall doesn’t work and I slowly drift away.
But it’s not the program that doesn’t work. It’s that I have forgotten to maintain my program once God blessed me with every conceivable blessing.
Getting sober is courageous, dangerous, sexy and exciting. There’s that ultimate challenge “Can I do this? Can I really change my life?”
But staying sober… Is boring.
I’ve got to be able to handle that feeling and do the maintenance work, whether I like it or not, or the disease will sneak up on me…and rip my throat out.
Just sayin’
PoM 295
I have recently been working with a sponsee about his extremity, around exercise.
I know that, for me, after arrogance, selfishness, dishonesty, and obsessiveness…Extremity is my worst character defect.
It’s not all bad. My best character assets are:
Courage
Honesty
Unselfishness
Militant willingness
Funniness
But anytime you serve others, God blesses you…
So, I was playing my guitar, as I love to do, and I noticed something: I have always reached for the most difficult musical and technical ideas that I can reach for.
All my life, I have always reached for the most extreme thing and consequent, sometimes, I miss notes. Not often, but sometimes.
Carl Czernzy, Beethoven’s most famous student, one said “In music, nothing is worse than missing notes”.
While this is a Eurocentric musical worldview and is not held, at all, by the Afrocentric musical worldview…his point is still well taken.
If I am more moderate…I sound better.
PoM 296
30 years ago, my third AA sponsor told me “You don’t even know what your worst problem is, do you?”
I figured he was going to tell me, whether I liked it or not so I said “No”.
He said “Arrogance”.
If he had said I was a one-legged, blind, sailor from Singapore, I could not have been more surprised.
I had absolutely no idea…And he was absolutely right.
That’s why you need a sponsor.
You need somebody who can kick your butt… Without hurting your feelings.
It’s a delicate balance…but it keeps you in good humor and mental health.
I have a sponcee who is being totally arrogant.
It’s costing him a great deal, and it’s costing those around him a great deal, but he can’t see it…just like me.
The good thing about sponsoring is you get to work on your own stuff while you’re helping other people.
I know that this person is in their mother issues, fighting for their psychological life, having nothing to do with the issue at hand.
As a consequence, God has blessed me. I can see something, in myself, that I have never been able to see, for the last 50 years.
When I fought my own mother, to become a professional musician, I simply could not hear anything she said that did not support my position.
I had the fight of my life, for my psychological life.
As a consequence, I simply could not hear that I was not talented enough to be extremely successful.
Now, it turns out that there are other reasons to create art, that have absolutely nothing to do with success, and are actually more important than success, like finding your soul…but nobody knew that in 1971.
So the only common sense reason to go into art, then, was to become a professional and make money.
I simply could not hear that. I was arrogant.
Arrogance comes from the Latin word “Arrogare” which means “To claim for oneself”.
There’s nothing wrong with claiming something for oneself…If you can really do it.
And I really thought that with extremely hard work and dedication I could be extremely talented…And I was dead wrong.
But when you’re in your mother issues and fighting for your life…You just can’t hear that.
I have a new forgiveness for my mother that I did not have before today.
It’s nice to let go of old resentments.
It makes my heart feel relaxed and comfortable.
PoM 297
Tradition Ten:
“We have no opinion on outside issues”.
As PrayerCall has evolved the last 11 years, we have pretty much minded our own business, focusing on ourselves, and trying to get healthy in as many areas as we could.
Tonight, I dropped in on an old friend of mine, and in the course of conversation just asked him if he would tell me about his experience with God.
He was kind and generous enough to write this response:
I don’t see much evidence for a personal god, i.e. an intelligent being who created the universe, watches over it, or intervenes in it.
I DO see quite a bit of evidence for a more generalized spirituality- an evolution towards intelligence, mindfulness, cooperation.
My hope is that we are slowly evolving towards a much better world, one with much less suffering and much more understanding…
Tom,
Thank you so much for your response.
Gosh, I hope you’re right.
I, too, hope we have evolved and are evolving.
The ancient Incas, Israelites, Mayans, Egyptians, Aztecs and Chinese all sacrificed their children in the fire when they needed rain, a good harvest or to slam their enemies into the ground. Somewhere along the line, it occurred to someone that this wasn’t working too well.
So, I think we got a little better as a species that day, as you note.
Reminds me of the old joke: there’s a Rabbi ringside at a prize fight. His friend says “Will you say a prayer for the fighter in the white shorts?
Rabbi: “I will…but, it’ll help if he can fight”.
Later, on the plains of what would later become Europe, when the Goths, Visigoths and Vandals were slaughtering each other, a group of rather peculiar guys, who were trying not to get laid, and to live by themselves, started proposing an idea of perhaps “Might doesn’t make right”. And a subgroup of society, who were not as physically strong, began to flourish and had the privilege to live…and that was women and children.
That seems like a pretty good move, to me. I like women and I have a two-year-old son…so I appreciate that we may have moved up the spiritual ladder a notch or two.
As a bookseller you may know this next story:
When Gutenberg invented the printing press in the 15th century, books became cheap and plentiful and women learn to read. It didn’t make sense to educate a woman back then because they weren’t allowed to work or own property, so it was a bad business decision to invest in their education.
I believe we evolved as a species when we invested in women’s minds and not just the hotness of their bodies or the prettiness of their faces…although L’Oréal and Chanel may disagree.
So, I agree with you that is there is tangible evidence that we are evolving…however ridiculously slow that progress may be.
The first question is a little more tricky:
“I don’t see much evidence of an intelligent being who created the universe, watches over it, or intervenes in it”.
I’m not sure of that either.
But, I am sure that separating the questions makes it easier to understand.
As a professional teacher, to me, the beauty of the old Jewish story of God creating the universe is unparalleled.
Is it true? I have no idea…
But the really useful question, to me is, “Is there a God that intervenes?”
To understand the truth of this question requires the correct sense.
I don’t listen to a painting. I don’t look at a symphony. That seems idiotically obvious.
The big leap is that I can’t use my understanding when approaching God. It is the wrong organ. It has to be experienced.
There is a group of people in the world who have that opportunity. The ones who are sick, hurt, lonely, lost, disenfranchised, wounded and aggrieved.
Patrick Carnes, PhD , says that two out of three Americans fall into this group. John Bradshaw says that 95% of Americans fall into this group.
To those people, the powerless, reaching out for power that they do not have is sensible…not reasonable.
And many of those people get to experience God…not all, but many.
Just sayin”