Genuine Acceptance

spacious, a photo by a.c.thomas on Flickr.

I have made a return to listening regularly to the Buddhist teacher, Tara Brach. The podcast I chose tonight was titled: "Genuine Acceptance".

This is EXACTLY the nourishment my being needs.

"Acceptance does not = being a doormat."

She speaks about how when we "give up" and resign ourselves to a situation or to how a person is  -- it is under the guise of accepting, but this is not the case. Acceptance is NOT passive.

Genuine Acceptance is recognizing the truth of this moment, without resistance. It is an engaged willingness of our heart to be with the Life that is here.

Easier said than done. I feel like I need to listen to this podcast several times daily. I want to disengage with what's here and distract or lash out or blame or tense against my Life circumstances on a regular basis. I do a practice called "Work of Return" which opens my senses to the thoughts, bodily sensations and feelings that are in the present moment. It can be deeply painful or disconcerting or cause me to cringe when I really am awake to this.

Tara says that true, genuine acceptance is more than just an intention to be awake to what is here. It also involves continuing to stay with what is here in us, soften, lean into, get curious about what is arising, until there is simply a surrendering presence that finds us able to fully let go.

I have a Big Toe in this. I need to go all the way to the edge and dive in.

The statement that really got my attention was this one: "The space of the heart that absolutely accepts what's in me in relation to another is LOVE." I really have to wrap my heart, not my brain, around this. My willingness to engage what is here in me and totally accepting what is here in me -- in relation to another -- is LOVE. I feel like this means if I can FULLY and TOTALLY own my reactions, feelings, thoughts -- about another -- I wouldn't try to place blame on them or want to cut them out or want to run away. That this kind of presence is LOVE. And it's not targeted for the other person. It's not, in fact, about loving them. Because they could be acting like an asshole ! But if I genuinely accept, it is being with what's here for me about them. It may not change me liking them any better or any of that, but I won't act out or resent them or try to poison them as a result. The act of LOVE is really for me and how I relate to another.

Tara ended the talk with this:
If you let go a little, you'll have a little peace.
If you let go a lot, you'll have a lot of peace.
If you let go absolutely, you'll have absolute peace.

Moving to the Light Source ...

We can only appreciate the miracle of a sunrise if we have waited in the darkness, a photo by sharaff on Flickr.

"God could and would if He were sought."

This is the last sentence of the AA literature piece read at the start of meetings, titled: "How it Works". This brief and concise statement has a powerful electrical charge when you really plug into it.

My last couple of days in recovery rooms have all been lovingly moving me to the Light Source -- through the God-connection of the members and the shimmering container of the sacred spaces we gather.

In a struggle last evening, I dropped to my knees and actively sought God. I didn't get a could or would ...He DID. In the form of an angel on earth. Nurturing and Loving and Unconditional. Sending me on my way to carry the message as I chaired the Alkathon meetings that brought us into the entryway of 2012.

My intention for the coming year is simple: keep moving away from a drink and toward the Light Source. I wish every soul traveling this path the same.

Destined ...

Day 92/365 ~ And in That Moment, I Swear, We Were Infinite, a photo by Amanda Mabel on Flickr.

Pulsing
an alive
turning,
purposeful,
within a
3-dimensional
shape,
embedded deeply
and it is of me,
birthing the holomorph
of not-yet
though what is
inevitable,
my God-given path.
Can I let go,
surrender,
into what
I am
destined ...

Skeletons in the closet ...

Today is your big day, a photo by Fer Gregory on Flickr.

Yesterday, I visited a dear friend who has been admitted to an eating disorder treatment program and will remain there for 6 weeks. While she does not look the part, the skeleton in her closet is actively at work, starving and excessively exercising in hopes to be the real deal someday.

As I walked up to her building from the parking lot, there were a cluster of young girls on the path. They were literal stick figures. Hollowed faces and clothing barely hanging on their bones. I see why my friend is still comparing herself to those around her and shaking her head over and over: "I can't be that bad?"

It's a matter of perspective. As I see it, addiction is an inside-job. And so is recovery. When we let the outside inform our interior, we get confused, trying to make sense of what we see and then that influences how we feel.

My friend is at the wee beginnings of what I suspect will be an enormous shattering. She is without her 3x daily rigorous workout regimen. She is watched at every meal and if she refuses, then she is made to drink Ensure. She has no contact via cell phones or internet. It is just her and the 4 walls of her tiny room and tiny roommate and all the other tiny women trying to figure out if they can be full again.

I will admit that I couldn't wait to leave. Not to get away from my friend, no not that at all. It was the empty, vacant stares of the inhabitants of this place piercing through my heart. I became aware of the solidity of myself, much in the same way I feel the personal in impersonal space. I wanted to make space full. I had discomfort in the nothingness of what was here. Funny, this IS my work. But this is NOT the place.
I have another variety of skeletons in the closet I must face ...

The Mystery of the Dead End

No more efforting ..., a photo by playzwifstonz on Flickr.

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
Delicious Ambiguity.”
― Gilda Radner

In a rather spontaneous, in the moment conversation with my healer over a lovely dinner, she shared with me a "seeing" that she had about my biological lineage. One that was riddled with tragedy, from addiction of all kinds to depression to early deaths and even suicide. This information confirmed the inherent wisdom in my being about "not going there" with regard to a desire to meet my biological family. I've been curious about my ethnic heritage, yet have always had a halting in my system about seeking the actual members out. It is quite likely they are not among the living.

The Reality I dropped into today during a healing session with a classmate about this subject was that moving in the direction of my biological lineage would find me at a dead end. AND ...
there is a mystery within this. I don't know what will arise for me. There are threads that have not yet been revealed or turned.

I became aware today that this is the Reality that lived in the background of me but was not something I actually wanted to see or know in this way.   I would watch stories on TV of adopted children being reunited with their birth families and cry my eyes out.   I believe those tears were a deep sadness for a longing that I knew would never come to fruition.  

My healer shared that exploration of this would bring me to great grief -- that I would feel lonelier than I ever have AND that I would be Not-Lonely in a way that I never have.

I feel the tremendous split here, yet now I am not holding myself as the perpetrator who is doing the splitting but rather I am the container for the splitting -- holding the world of my biological lineage and the world of my adopted lineage simultaneously.

I don't know anything else about what this means and I am committed to being present to the mystery of this dead end, to see what else may arise from the ash.

Giving Thanks

Thanks at the Buddhist Temple, a photo by Stuck in Customs on Flickr.

I am aware of all the ways I can be ungrateful. It comes from self-centeredness.
My new sponsor, tough-as-nails on the outside/teddy bear on the inside, really gets this and has no problem telling me about it.

A grateful heart never drinks.

I might add: asking God how I may serve does not make room for selfish thinking.

For most of this week, I have been profoundly sad. Sadder than I have ever been. My sponsor thinks this is fantastic. Not because I am sad, but because I am deeply feeling and letting in Reality -- the Truth and what is here and what I have created. And then I have a tool which is to humbly ask God to take this and do with it what He will, trusting his plan for me.

So on the heels of this great Sadness, I awoke today giving thanks. It began on my knees when I met the day and continued in every waking moment since. For my connection to God. For my life and my breath. For having a home. For my dog - my constant, loving companion. For my loved ones, near and far. For being able to cook nutritious yummy food to bring to my sister's. For being sober and getting to a Gratitude meeting. For my AA family and my sponsor. For my own family - every single one. For the abundance and prosperity I have been blessed with. For the loving texts I received. For the friends who kept me company on the phone for my drive. For the Fall air and sunshine. For the people who worked at the WaWa on a Holiday so that I could get gas to travel. For my favorite women's AA meeting and the 4 others who showed up tonight. For a body that works and moves and feels deeply. For my humanness and my falling tears. For seeing another day on this earth.

My heart is open and full and aching all at the same time. I give thanks for its every beat and the Life I have been blessed with, if just for today.

The Sad Clown

Sad Clown, a photo by ::big daddy k:: on Flickr.

"People say I'm the life of the party
cause I tell a joke or two
well I might be laughin
loud and hearty
but deep inside, I'm blue
so take a good look at my face
you see my smile looks out of place
if you come closer it's easy to trace
the tracks of my tears ..."
~ Smokey Robinson

I have had a significant amount of grief arise recently. It is for the one in me who has carried long-standing patterns that can be linked back to what I learned and how my ground was poisoned from my mother and my father as a little girl.    How I, in turn,  have poisoned where I stand.

I didn't have the kinds of victories that kids need to boost their self-esteem, to feel valued, to feel loved. I do not make these statements from a "Poor Me" place; they are statements of fact -- this is just the way it was. I didn't know my place in the world. So I made it up along the way. My mother did not allow me to have the fullness of accomplishments in public forums such as church; she, instead, would brag about something I did and talk about me as if I wasn't standing there so that she could receive the accolades. Every once in awhile I'd get an approving nod or smile from one of the other church ladies, kind of like when you're telling people about the great tricks your dog does and then someone coos and pats it on the head. It was like that.

One of the more painful realizations this past week was to fully see that I was a very sad child. You wouldn't know it, as the song lyrics imply above, unless you got close enough to take a good look at my face and see the tracks of my tears. I was, in fact, a sad clown. I was the kid who tried to do pranks and make funny gestures and faces to get you to laugh. I understand that this was a very clever strategy I devised to deflect from my pain -- so you couldn't see it and I didn't have to feel it.

I grieve this week for the little girl who lulled herself to sleep sobbing into the deep crevices of her pillow so that her sister who slept in the same room wouldn't hear. So that her father didn't have to bear the sight of a "big baby" as he would say aloud about any indicator in me that was going to lead to tearfulness. I grieve for the little boy who became my father because I am aware that his mother was depressed and sickly and it is likely that anything that was reminiscent of her poisoning ground activated his own toward me.

I began writing in diaries starting around age 10. I wrote melancholy poems by the age of 12. Not a soul saw these, nor did I reveal them. I had a closet full of journals up until the age of 18 that held my sadness. When I came home at the age of 21 to collect my stuff and move out, I discovered that all of this writing was tossed out -- by my mother. I was furious. I had wondered if she read any of them, but more so, that she discarded the outpourings of my soul. It is only now that I understand how much I drank AT her and loathed her during my twenties yet was never really in touch with those feelings.

And, I grieve for her too. The enabler of an alcoholic husband and the pressure of holding a family together so that it would not disintegrate. She too could not bear my sadness -- for to feel it would mean she might have to feel her own. She kept everything at bay so she would not break into a million shattered pieces. This is how she survived.

My sister refused to experience sadness and, instead, fought and rebelled. An early pregnancy found her kicked out and in the arms of an abusive father of her children.

My brother, on the other hand, took in the most toxic sips of the poison in our family -- the end result being isolation, withdrawal, and eventually a psychotic break. I believe he was deeply depressed -- he came by this rightly having inherited the crippling DNA from my father's side of the family.

Because I am awake and willing and sober -- I can feel ALL of this. It can exist in the same house with my genuine playfulness and joy. This needs to be felt in its fullness so that I can make room for what else may be dormant and not yet known to be birthed from me.

Farewell sad clown ... your make up is running and it's time to put away the costume. Live into the one who can be fully here, no disguise required.