Holy Crap

Taking a dump.
Originally uploaded by Aaron Van Dike | www.aaronvandike.com |

"When we have no territory to defend, God rushes in to where God always was. This is a paradox we understand only as we embrace life fully."
~ Jason Shulman

The meat of this seed passage goes on to say: "How can you choose to let go without giving up your own integrity? How can you stand up for yourself and still remain open to all possiblities?" Jason closes this by reminding us that we simply are not defending our own existence and that, if we consciously choose to do this, it will become our own, private holy day.

I know that when I am in a place of defensiveness or resistance and am not letting go, I literally "hold" it in my body in some way. Reading this passage this morning and then having it milling around my being for the day, I became increasingly aware that I was experiencing tremendous pain and constipation. There was stuff in me that just wouldn't come out ! That is, until I went to an AA Big Book meeting tonight and could feel more deeply the places in which I defend and where I don't let go, as it pertains to self will and trusting my Higher Power -- God. Waking up to some insights during this meeting, prompted me driving home speedily because what was "blocked" inside was getting ready to explode ! It was the sweetest (and perhaps smelliest) release -- HOLY crap.

I understood tonight during this meeting that my self will is just as insidious, if not more so, than my alcoholic drinking was. It not only finds me trying to manipulate and control my circumstances, but I also, as Jason points out in the passage, defend myself multiple times daily, which is an act of repeatedly claiming a place for myself or my actions which involves taking my will back.

So I did what Jason suggested which was to name each time I caught myself in the act of defending. Here's the score card from today's match of K versus the world:
- Defending my busy schedule to a friend who wanted to make plans
- Defending my ability to know what is best for my dog with someone who had a different opinion about her care
- Defending my side of the sidewalk when someone with 2 large dogs had to squeeze by me and my little dog
- Defending my choice for a topic today in a group when members wanted to discuss something else
- Defending my position about what was best for a client when a person in authority had a different perspective
- Defending my reasons for why I hadn't been at this particular Monday night Big Book when a member began to playfully tease me

As I ran through this list during and after tonight's meeting, I relaxed into letting go (and then REALLY let go in the toilet once home !) The idea that, in each scenario that transpired today, I could still in some cases claim a stance AND I did not have to do so in order to defend my existence. As an example, with the friend who was like a pitbull trying to find an opening in my schedule for us to possibly get together and me defending at every entry way, I could have simply replied: "It feels like you are really missing spending time together. My schedule is what it is for today. I would love to make a plan with you in the coming week."

It is incredibly exhausting to have a day filled with defending and explaining and claiming and taking one's will back. Not all of my days are like this and thankfully, I am awake and open to noticing when I am holding on and need to let go.

It's one of my favorite slogans in AA: "Let go and Let God". This is Step 3 -- as the speaker said tonight -- the "feel good" step. When you practice it, you feel good. I really get it.

And, after my bathroom spiritual awakening, I feel much better having lightened the "load" .

Celebration and Suffering

Happy and sad fingers
Originally uploaded by zamburak

An invaluable gift of non-dual healing is that the world is no longer, for me, viewed as " This versus That" ; "All or Nothing"; it can now be seen from the places of "And this too"; "Everything has a place"; "This AND That ".

What I have come to discover in my personal house is that a room can be filled with celebration, while another one right next door can be occupied with suffering. And neither one has to be evicted.

For a great many years, however, during my alcoholic drinking, I believed that I was hanging out only in the room of celebration and that life was one big party. The truth is that I actually lived most of that time period in a small corner of the room of suffering and the booze deluded my brain into thinking life was grand. When I stopped drinking and immersed myself into an unhealthy relationship complete with care-taking, bullying, addictions of all kinds and resentments, I made suffering into one of those junk drawers or closets that rarely sees the light of day. There was not true celebration but rather "happy face" was the outer covering feigned for company and everything was about the main foyer having a neat and tidy appearance.

This past week, in particular, I experienced the exhuberance of celebration in my work/career path while simultaneously being steeped in the suffering of multiple losses -- supporting a grieving staff who lost a client with mental illness in a heat-related death; an AA friend who died from a drowning accident; my other dog who resided with my ex and was put to rest a few days ago. Neither set of experiences required me to cancel out the other nor did they find me polarized to one end of the feeling spectrum.

Living non-dually in a world that is filled wth opposites allows for this all to be possible. My house comes to life because of its many and varied rooms -- all of which are open and visible, some cluttered and others neater, some occupied more and some less, yet no room is off-limits. My house is a work in progress. And I like residing here.

Wide Awake ...

Wide awake....
Originally uploaded by pippy & timmy

"Our goal is to shatter and not shatter at the same time. To be awake in the dissociative state."
~ Jason Shulman

On Tuesday night of this week, I shared some of my recovery story at a women's prison. This type of experience is not only humbling, but is a sobering wake-up call. I was aware, as I looked around this small room with women in colored uniforms and I in my street clothes, that I was just a choice or two away from sitting on the other side of the locked door and having one of them as a cell mate. I shared with these women that the easy part of sobriety for me was putting the bottle down and that the far more difficult task was to live soberly.
This was, interestingly enough, the theme of an old timers meeting that I attended last evening : emotional sobriety.

I have had events just today that, in the past, I would've gotten obliterated over. The difference is that I trust myself and I choose to show up in my life. I am committed to being in reality. It is what I am made of.

Just ten minutes before I was to enter the funeral service of my friend in AA, I received a call from my ex. She had made the decision today to put our other dog to sleep. It was the right thing to do. When we spoke, I felt nothing but tenderness and compassion for her. I fully understood how difficult this experience was for her and, simultaneously, I could feel my own separateness and distance from the actual situation. I had not had a relationship with her or the dog in 4 years. I felt the grief place in me that was a composite of all of the sum total of losses up to this point and it was not as deeply personal for me as it was for her.

The funeral was incredibly moving. Almost 300 in attendance it seemed. Standing room only, with people outside the entrances. Probably half of all of the attendees were members of our AA community. I was overwhelmed with the outpouring of love and fellowship and with sorrow in seeing the 3 adult children and 2 grandchildren who were devastated by her sudden death. We sang hymns and heard prayers that were part of my ex's father's service. I felt my missing of him as the Prayer of St. Francis was read and how this has become such an important passage in my recovery literature. The tears freely streamed down my face when my friend's daughter sang "Amazing Grace" accapella, fending off her own breakdown in the middle of it. The countless AA members who filled the pews wth arms draped around one another despite the humid temperatures was a heart-opening sight.

And here's the cool part: I didn't want to miss a thing. In each moment of today's unfolding events, I wanted to be in it, feel and see and sniff it in. I wanted to be up close and in the face of my life.
Emotional sobriety, for me, is being present for the kinds of interactions and events - like today - that I would normally avoid, have an excuse to not be around for, or check out in some way.

Before any of these events occurred today, I was finishing Tara Brach's "Radical Acceptance" book on the train back home from a lunch meeting. I was filled up with emotion reading a poem she included in the last chapter by David Whyte; it captures so eloquently some of the experiences I had today in honoring the passing of these cherished lives.

Those who will not slip beneath
the still surface on the well of grief
turning downward through its black water
to the place we cannot breathe
will never know the source from which we drink,
the secret water, cold and clear,
nor find in the darkness glimmering
the small round coins
thrown by those who wished for something else.

This, to me, is about being wide awake ...

In grief, we are all the same ...

Hands group
Originally uploaded by SHRCC

Death is becoming more a regular part of the cycle of life in my world as of late. Two AA members, a former client, soon-to-be among them my former dog. All of this in just a 3 week period.

Yesterday afternoon, I was asked to facilitate a group with the staff and roommates of a former client of mine who died a week ago. He was doing a trial run of living independently by staying wth some friends, also people with Schizophrenia; during a heat wave, these guys did not have air conditioners. Nor did they have any fans. Their ability to rationally deal with the heat came down to closing all the windows in their house. Two were found dead after several days, from complications of the heat.

Entering this situation, I was already feeling the heaviness of getting the news the night before of a friend in AA who had died over the weekend. I did not know what I was going to do for this group, given the weightedness of my own heart. Before I went there, I prayed and asked God for guidance to help me channel what would be of use to this group who were, like me. grieving.

Upon arriving to the group home, I was told that the air conditioner was not working in the meeting room and that everyone had gathered outside in the backyard, under the gazebo. This already felt like God's work in action -- to be touching the earth and surrounded by the sky and the trees was simply perfect. Two of the residents with mental illness came up to me and nervously asked: "Hey lady, what do you have planned for us today?" I smiled and replied: "I don't really know. What did YOU imagine the day would look like?" One man eagerly said: " I want to tell stories about J and our time with him." I couldn't have thought of a better way to begin and so we did.

The stories were funny and poignant and sad and alive. You could feel our deceased friend's spirit there -- as several people actually named aloud that this was their experience. As I scanned the large circle, there was such diversity among us: people with mental illness and people who were paid to care for them; administrators; case managers; therapists; all ethnic backgrounds and ages; some with lots of education and others with incredible street smarts.
In grief, however, we are all the same. We feel loss and separation and sadness and a longing for the one who is gone to return. This too was expressed among the group members. People cried openly, men and women, and tissues were abound. Some staff were comforted by their co-workers who put a loving arm around them or an outstretched hand for them to hold. There was no judgment about how people shared or the fact that some of the folks with mental illness said the same things twice or said things that were about another subject --- everyone was allowed to show up as they are.

All I did in this session was hold a space, recognizing that there was nothing to do but allow the process to unfold and meet each moment. At the end, when no words were left, I asked how they wanted to close; a resident quickly raised his hand and said he wanted to say a prayer. We all stood, hand in hand, heads bowed and he led us in the best way he could. And it was beautiful.

I hugged nearly every person before I left and they, in turn, hugged one another. God was present in every way possible. I was reminded about the power of asking for God's help and saw the rewards right in front of my eyes. I felt like in my own surrendering to my own powerlessness and the recognition of my own grief allowed me to step out of the way and to let God in to do his job.

Driving home, I felt my own container stretched to its limits. Thankfully, I had a healing exchange already set up in advance with a classmate. It was only 15 minutes into our exchange when I let myself, literally and figuratively, collapse into her healing arms. I tearfully understood that I did not have to do all the holding and that I could ask to be held -- just as I watched some of the people today lean into others when they could not do that for themselves. It was liberating and tender. I allowed myself to fully receive nurturing in a way that was a complete and conscious letting go. Afterwards, the weight around my heart was lifted.

When we have loss, we want to be comforted and reassured and held in some way. We want to know that we are not alone in the experience. We want to know that it is okay to feel our smallness and our humanness and our own tender heart.

In grief, we are all the same ...

Impermanence

empty
Originally uploaded by n.elle
In my non-dual healing practice of Impersonal Movement this morning, I went deeply into the aspect of the work in which I was dropped in and seeing from the heart. In this place, a vasana arose quite clearly: "This will all be gone." I was not aware during this moment of being a separate me in the space I was practicing or in the larger space of the world. The statement brought to my awareness aspects of the room I was in that would no longer be there, then aspects of the house I was in that would no longer be there, then aspects of the community I live that would no longer be there, then aspects of nature and of countries and of the galaxy that would no longer be there. When I had "enough" in terms of following these threads of impermanence, I simply stopped the practice. I did not have a personal reaction to what I just experienced, but rather a long-view as if looking at the passage of time through a telescopic lens.

This evening, impermanence was brought directly into my stream of consciousness as I learned that a beloved woman in my local AA community had drowned yesterday while swimming in the ocean at her shore home. "This will all be gone" took on new meaning. It could be seen and felt in the empty chair in the front row of the meeting. The void in that space was palpable. This vasana occupied the sullen and tear-streamed faces around the room. In this moment in time, it moved from the impersonal to the personal and eventually, back to the impersonal again.

The Buddha's teachings had particular emphasis on the importance of accepting impermanence as in integral part of the life cycle. Thich Nhat Hanh, a Buddhist monk, made this profound statement: "If you suffer, it is not because you believe things are impermanent. It is because you believe things are permanent." Change is inevitable; suffering, as the Buddha taught, is optional.

Driving back home from the meeting tonight, with this news still lingering, I pulled the car over to stand under the gorgeous moonlight. I thought about this woman, someone I could call a friend and what I recalled about the last time I saw her. She and I had coffee together after a meeting. She showed me pictures on her phone of her grandchildren, who she said were "her heart". She spoke about looking forward to her time at the shore. I was aware how much she loved to be by the sea. What a beautiful and cruel paradox: the very thing she longed to be near would the very thing that would take her life.

As I let that understanding settle in me under the night sky, I felt a shift to the impersonal. Some stars that I was gazing at will be gone someday. As will the trees. And the flowers. And the houses. And the people in the houses. And other people in AA. And my loved ones. And me too.

Life and death are in relationship and one cannot exist without the other. Impermanence allows for possibility, for new doors to open. The passing of my friend will help me appreciate the preciousness of my life, here and now. To not take time or moments or interactions for granted. To savor the blessing of being alive.

Thank you for these unexpected gifts, J. May you find a new home in the waters you so loved.

I am Responsible ...

In Buddha's hand
Originally uploaded by Nicolas de Fontenay
I am responsible.
When anyone, anywhere
reaches out for help
I want the hand of AA
to always be there.
And for that,
I am responsible.

This is a statement that is infrequently read at AA meetings. It is, in many regards, the essential message of Step 12. It is a statement not just about the personal hand extended but the impersonal, larger, fellowship hand of the AA community as a whole and what we represent.

I was not supposed to be at this morning's meeting, as I was scheduled to give a workshop. Due to unforseen circumstances, the workshop was canceled and off I went to the meeting instead. By the end of this meeting, it was clear that I was absolutely meant to be exactly where I was. A dear friend, someone for whom I have prayed to return to the rooms after many months of isolation and alcohol/drug use, was sitting at the back of the room, just 3 days clean and sober. His was the most beautiful face in the room. After we embraced and walked out to the parking lot, he shared about where this last run had taken him to in terms of unmanageability and morally corrupt behavior. He has come to understand that at the root of his use is self-loathing fueled by a litany of resentments. He's never truly had a comfort level in working with straight male sponsors as an openly gay man for fear of judgment and subsequent shame. With great sincerity in his eyes, he asked if I would consider working on the Steps with him as a "bridge" , if you will, to acquiring a full time sponsor with whom he could feel safe. There was no hestitation for me; I agreed immediately. This is what the 12th Step is about and what the "I am Responsible" statement is asking of each of us.

He and I will meet tomorrow over coffee and begin with Step 1.

When we pray for those still sick and suffering in and out of the rooms, my friend has always been at the forefront of my mind and my prayers. What a blessing to have my training canceled and to understand that there is a plan for me that is not mine to control, but is God's map for my day.  I only have to ever trust and align my will with this power greater than myself to reap the rewards.

Live and Let Live ...

NASHIK - Meditation
Originally uploaded by Elishams
The topic of our women's AA meeting tonight was from the vignette in the Living Sober book, "Live and Let Live" -- also a common slogan in the recovery rooms.

Many members shared about difficult relationship circumstances and how practicing this can help set boundaries and not get sucked into drama and some of the other pitfalls of co-dependent and otherwise unhealthy dynamics with another human being.

I did not share this evening; I had an intention to sit and listen attentively. What I was aware of for a good portion of the meeting was how I sat in judgment of a particular member as her child made noise and frolicked and how this member needed to get up multiple times to manage the situation. I felt irritated and distracted. I rode the waves of this out. I even laughed to myself as I became aware of these feelings, as it was the perfect teaching moment on the subject of "live and let live". There was simply nothing to do or say about the situation. I began to soften as I caught myself.

An even more poignant lesson was the fact that this member was the last person to share. She spoke, from a very shameful place, of her need to be at meetings and her frustration in not being a good mother and how much she is struggling trying to juggle listening and taking in what is happening in meetings while trying to have a handle on her daughter. My heart began to open even wider in this moment. All previous criticisms I had about the earlier events involving the little girl and her mother melted away.

Live and let live is about dropping the judgments and expectations I have of people and situations and moving into acceptance of difference. I realize that sometimes I might only be able to muster up being tolerant. It may take the form of restraint of pen and tongue. It may involve being quietly patient while riding waves of irritation. If I work diligently at this slogan, I will be able to find plenty of space within my relational field for others to freely express and present and be exactly as they are and still have plenty of room for me to do the same. Live and let live helps me loosen rigid boundaries and not have to cut others out because their way of being will encroach and potentially threaten my  little corner of the world.

Live and let live does not mean that people walk all over me either. Unacceptable or harmful behavior of others may still occur; practicing the slogan allows me to step back or even walk away so that I am not trying to control what others are doing, while simultaneously I don't have to participate or be affected.

Even more importantly is the fact that this slogan has 2 distinct parts:   1)  Live.   2)  Let Live.  
I've been exploring all the ways that I can be in the world with others'  behaviors,  personalities, quirks,  defects and "let live".     I need to pay careful attention,  however,  to part 1 ...  Live.    This reminds me about living fully,  individually,   with clear boundaries for myself.   To enjoy and embrace and bask in the activities of my life in spite of others,  regardless of how others are behaving or reacting.   That I don't have to be deterred from the pleasure of  living my life when others are not engaging or doing things that I had hoped or wished for.   I need to live my life no matter what is going on around me.   This is such an empowering awareness.

Live and let live, ultimately, is about freedom. All that is here has a place and a right to exist.