Curiosity Killed the Cat ...

Lady Lula's Bright Eyed Stare
Originally uploaded by Zulpha
Remember my post from Friday about "Replace Fear of the Unknown with Curiosity" ?

Fuck that.

Curiosity killed the cat.

I am wading neck deep in the unknown right now. Any ounce of curiosity I had or false sense of adventure is gone. I need night vision goggles ! It's blacker than black. How fitting for an entry made on Halloween night !

Here is what I am clear about:
1. I am powerless.
2. I need to believe in the God of my understanding to keep me sane.
3. I need to turn my will over to the care of God. Any time I try to take it back, I am spinning out of control and making myself nuts.
4. I need to repeat Steps 1-3 early and often.
5. The Serenity Prayer is my go-to tool, kind of like an Allen's wrench -- good for adjusting mostly anything.
6. Lastly, I will not drown or die from any of this.

Here is the part that really gets me. Imagine a person in your life who you love beyond anything. And you are totally aware that they are struggling with the fight of their life. And you cannot help them and they do not want your help because they need to walk this alone.
This requires total faith and trust in their process. And, that you have no option but to completely surrender and let go.

The sneaky, curious cat who persists in finding other ways to get something it wants does not always have 9 lives to borrow from. Sometimes it just goes splat.

This is a one moment, one step, one day at a time operation. I ain't snoopin around to figure a way out of this discomfort or darkness. I want to land on my paws and hold my head up to see the light that's promised on the other side of all of this. I have to trust that.

32-p1
Originally uploaded by *Zephyrance - don't wake me up.

The title in this photo speaks volumes:

REPLACE
FEAR OF
THE UNKNOWN
WITH
CURIOSITY

YES !

This is so simple, it's fucking brilliant.

In last night's meeting, we were reminded about the life or death importance for an alcoholic to stay in the day. And how fear of the unknown, particularly the future, was not only unhelpful and even paralyzing, but it is the breeding ground for picking up a drink.

Part of not blocking the flow of life, I am learning -- painfully and slowly -- is being open to whatever presents itself and moving WITH the current of that situation instead of trying to control, detour, avoid or become completely irritated about it. Today is a perfect example. I arose very very early this morning to prepare for meeting with my sponsee. As 5, then 10, then 15 minutes surpassed the time she was to arrive, I texted her to see if she was alright. 10 minutes later, she texts me back to say that she overslept. After some initial minor irritation about the fact that I could've slept in later, I relaxed. I was thankful to have a jump start on my day and I answered several emails that I wouldn't have gotten to. I had a leisurely breakfast. At 9a, I was to have a practice call with some non-dual healing classmates. As I was the lone person in the "conference room" for almost 15 minutes, I hung up. I emailed the other members to tell them I'd waited and wondered if all were okay. I laughed out loud. Here was yet another scenario ! I did the practice anyway and enjoyed it immensely. I read all of the group papers for one of my classes and sent the students their grades. These are some gifts that come with approaching the events of my life with curiosity and wonder versus fear, personalization, disgust.

Here's the real deal: the shift in forms or rhythms or whole events are not happening to purposefully scare me. They are not looming with an intent to catch me off guard. They aren't even about me !

Curiosity can take me on an adventure. I can follow my curiosity to somewhere I may not have considered exploring before. Fear of the unknown is blown out of proportion from exaggerated tall tales that I create about what I believe could happen, based on past bad experiences. No part of that equation involves being in the present.
Being curious is in-the-moment and is active. It is VERY alive. Fear of the unknown is passive, it is waiting for and expecting something bad. It is crippling. It lacks life.

Replace fear of the unknown with curiosity. Now that's a mantra I can really LIVE with.

Surviving the Big Wave ...

Sandy Beach
Originally uploaded by © KristoforG
In a session with my healer yesterday, I got to the heart of what is scary for me when life stuff feels too big or overwhelming or too painful to feel ...

A wave too big that I'll never survive it.

It is from this place of terror whereby my dam and concrete wall construction is done. In non dual-healing terms, it is the territory of nega-Chesed: counter to flow, loving-kindness, it is tsunami-like and spinning and chaos. For me, it is the stuff I believe I can't bear or that I don't want to feel for fear I will drown in it.

The truth is ... I have survived big waves. My means of coming out on the other side may not have been very functional, yet I did make it to the shore. My alcoholic drinking was a temporary and illusory means of perceiving control over the accumulating wave of all of my history that I could no longer keep at bay, for fear it would wipe out everything. My busyness and workaholism during my long-term partnership was another way I surfed over the very same waves of my childhood home, packaged slightly differently, but able to spill and crash just the same.

So why not just get the surf board out instead of building a fortress ? Why do these waterfalls of chaos terrify me still ?

My healer's response to this: Because you think you'll die.

Another truth: I am going to die, AND, not likely from life's messiness. I may get very very soaked, feel uncomfortable, damp, washed out ... but probably will not die from feeling this.

One of the ways I have tried to fool myself and others is to silently build my dams underground and operate from the guise of "being serene, at peace". This is Chesed's partner, Gevurah, trying to counter it and ending up being out of balance with Chesed. My healer tells me that the real healing is in not believing my presenting Gevurah. The peace I convince myself and others of during times of distress cannot always be trusted. It is one of my covert ways of trying to escape the waves in an effort to not die. It feels more like burying my head in the sand, when the onslaught of water is eventually gonna come whether I keep it down there or decide to look at where and how fast the water is coming !

Another truth:   the "Big Wave"  is a construct of my anxiety about the unknown,  an embellishment of the challenges in life.  My belief that a situation is too enormous is my fear about my ability to be able to handle it.

Surviving the waves of life is not for the faint of heart, yet it's not about heroics or bravery. I believe I understand in this moment it is about willingness to be in the flow of life. Any act to dodge or avoid this turbulence is an attempt to get out of the stream, thereby missing life in all of its currents and movements and surprises. Through a barage of tears yesterday, I said aloud to my healer that I don't want to block the flow of my life, I want to be in it. This, for me, is how to survive the "big wave".

Tuning In ...

Cuba Gallery: Radio / vintage / retro / grass / wood / background
Originally uploaded by Cuba Gallery - Now on Twitter!
As a 48 year old woman, I still surprise myself. I forget sometimes how such small things are so enjoyable to me. It's simply about remembering what I like. My merging with and wanting to please others in the past, particularly my former partner, found me abandoning the memories of the things that brought me real joy. I re-discovered another one just yesterday: the radio.

The impetus for this reunion with the radio had to do with my baseball team being in the playoffs.  I could listen to them on the radio in the car,  but alas,  not online because these are the "big" games and aren't broadcasted online.  In several conversations with my sweetie,  a deeply passionate baseball fan and radio listener,  she was stunned that I didn't own a radio!   This is when it really hit me -- how I turned my back on a former pleasure.  So I took myself to a Radio Shack yesterday and purchased a good old fashioned radio.  I haven't had one in years.   I was beyond tickled last night as I sat in my big overstuffed chair in the livingroom,  grading mid term exams and listening to my ball team's nail biting last game,   losing their opportunity to enter the World Series this year.  

I am listening this morning to my favorite college station, which has a lovely Sunday morning program called "Sleepy Hollow". It's often instrumental or jazz or blues music, featuring songs from movie soundtracks. I used to listen to this program every weekend when I first got sober, 20 years ago. It was part of my morning routine. Then, when I began dating my former partner, she didn't like the music on this station; she preferred R & B. And, like the good co-dependent ACOA, I ditched my favorite station and adopted hers. I like THIS music and would never choose an R & B station over it today.

And here's another thought ... as a person living alone, I forgot what incredible company the radio is. Transmission from the outside brought to the inside. There is a whole world out there amid the giant signals towering high above life on the ground. I love being reunited with musicians and instruments that I haven't been this intimate with in quite awhile ... Joni Mitchell,  Tom Waits,  violins and saxophones.

I am finding great comfort spending the morning with my old, forgotten friend. And even more so, appreciating the return to myself  because I was tuning in ...

Breaking Down the Dyke ...

Little Falls Dam Panorama
Originally uploaded by photobunny
Dyke: an embankment to prevent flooding; a barrier or obstruction; a disparaging name for a lesbian.

The last structure came loose at about 7am this morning and the floodgates opened up, pouring their glorious waterworks down my face. My writer's block was pent up in this well-constructed dam.
I have a classmate to thank for this in part. She chose the absolute right healing and it has everything to do with flow. My "Gevuric" protective wall had been keeping out my "Chesedic" river of aliveness. I understand in this moment that this particular dam was not one of my typical "keep everyone out" concrete walls of years past; this was carefully and quietly built from the inside-out to keep me from falling apart. It has much to do with my current circumstances involving someone from the past and how 4 years ago, this situation nearly drowned me --- hence the new and improved super dyke (pun - intended !)

I have had a challenging relationship with Gevurah: a sefirot in Kabbalistic terms that has the qualities of judgment; boundary; structure.   For much of my adult life until a couple of years ago,  I had no real sense of boundaries and,  consequently,  this skewed my judgment and ability to discern.   These things are at the heart of the situation I refer to from my past.   As I began my non-dual healing program,  I went to the other extreme:  any hint of danger in the air, like a busy beaver I am feverishly building a barrier that will keep me protected. The dams I have constructed over time have either been over-the-top as in "large enough to fit around a castle, complete with a moat" OR poured with so much cement that they actually hurt people who want to come near and block me from intimacy.

In this recent episode, the construction seemed to have been going on silently underground, with hardly any noise or tinkering. What felt like "peace" was not quite that, yet I couldn't put my fingers on it. I got a bigger hint of this in the form of not being able to write. I literally had nothing moving inside of me, which is highly unusual these days. Lastly, I spent this past weekend with the woman I love. I was so moved in the fluidity of her expression of emotions. At one point, we were lying together and tenderly kissing and her tears began to fall in the midst of this moment onto my face. I was envious of her utter letting go in such a space of intimacy. I tasted each salty tear and longed for my own to fall and alas, I could not muster even a miniscule drop. This was my final signal that a full blown dyke was up in operation -- right under my nose !

I cannot protect myself from the outside no more than I can protect the outside from me or protect me from myself ! Damn Dam !
This is an illusion I have bought into so many times and, while there is temporary relief, it never truly brings peace.

After my healing yesterday, I began to feel the stirrings. In my AA meeting last night, the sharing of some of the women tugged my heart in a way that I hadn't let myself experience in a couple of weeks. And then, when I arose this morning, I could feel the outside of this structure begin to quake and bend with the impending pressure of the waterfall behind it. I put a load of wash in down in the basement and I could barely get up the stairs and into my apartment before it all broke loose. Tears, glorious tears, came streaming from of every part of my eyes, snot running from my nose, and audible sobs jetting out into the atmosphere. It was sad and it was not sad and it was a joyful release and it was grief and it was forgiveness and it was allowance of just being a human trying to make a life here on earth, one day at a time.

And then the words and the melody of a tune that my love and I listened to several times over the weekend would not stop playing and more tears and more tears kept coming. I have this gorgeous song below.

What a relief, breaking down this dyke ...

Making Something out of Nothing ...

this is the end
Originally uploaded by bogotagothic
My schedule as of late has not afforded me time to write. I also have not been called or motivated to write. Perhaps a block or too many daily things that are wanting of my attention more so than the empty page. I have actually thought, at times, when I am answering emails or doing other work on my computer, "Why am I not writing?" It is fleeting and then vanishes. "How can I make something out of nothing?" is the delayed response I am having to the first question about not writing.

I have learned in my non-dual training that everything is information and has a place and even has nutrients. This would then mean that believing I have nothing to say is indeed information about my current state and that I need to give this a place and see the nourishment in it.

Which brings me to my AA Big Book meeting tonight which looked at the chapter entitled: "We Agnostics". When it was my turn , it was clear to me that there was no mistake that I should read this passage: "Imagine life without faith ! Were nothing left but pure reason, it wouldn't be life. But we believed in life -- of course we did. We could not prove life in the sense that you can prove a straight line is the shortest distance between 2 points, yet there it was. Could we still say the whole thing was nothing but a mass of electrons, created out of nothing, meaning nothing, whirling on to a destiny of nothingness? Of course we couldn't. The electrons themselves seemed more intelligent than that. At least, so the chemist said."

The threads of seemingly nothing that have been blamed for my writing roadblock are actually the gateway into something much larger than I.     Let me stay here and see what arises ...

My body is pulsing with a highway of sensory activity. Hands tingling, in-breath, out-breath, heart thumping, solar plexus throbbing, swirling thoughts put pressure on my temples. I place each thought in front of me:
"There's nothing interesting here."
"You'll only be making it up."
"Just go to sleep."
"This is stupid."
"Give it up !"
" Who cares?"

Heart racing. Head hurts.

"God does." This is the response to "who cares?"

It is very, very quiet now. A rhythm in my body feels like a gentle wave.

It doesn't matter if there is nothing to say or write or to be profound about. God cares. It matters only that I am here. Whether or not I write is secondary. Perhaps my quandry was this: "Am I actually enough, just as I am, if I have nothing interesting to say?" Can it just be this ? Do I actually have the balls to hit the "post entry" button and leave this mish-mosh of nothing here on the page ?

I am back to the Big Book passage. "Imagine life without faith!"

I need to trust this nothingness. Having nothing to say is my truth in this moment. I am not going to analyze this or dig deeper or beat myself up over it. This is what is here.

I feel the tired press into my eyeballs. The screen is getting blurry.

Nothing more.

Seesaw of Sobriety

Pinhole Seesaw
Originally uploaded by Darren C.
The last 2 nights at AA meetings, there has been discussion about Step 10 -- specifically, the aspect of this step that focuses on emotional balance. That we don't just look at the "debits" but also the "credits".

Most of us alcoholics had (and still have) a distorted view of life, especially our relationship to others, to the outside. I have suffered greatly at the hands of all-or-nothing thinking. When I am engaged in this mind-fuck, it is literally like experiencing the world only on one end of a seesaw. I was either flat on the ground, feeling lower than low, inferior and self-deprecating OR I was high-as-a-kite, flyin in the air with seemingly no cares and being all in my head, ego fully inflated, looking down upon everyone from my superior position, like teeny ants to be squashed on the ground.

When the seesaw isn't in motion and you are sitting on one-end only, no matter how you slice it, you're stuck. Until there is some movement. If I'm sitting with my butt hitting the ground, then I need to let go, surrender to put the seesaw in motion. But I need to do this a little at a time, with intention, mindfulness -- otherwise, I am catapulted into the air and I am back in a place of being out of balance. If I am the one dangling in the air, I can't remain in this elevated position. Something or someone is going to bring me down. I can choose to surrender to this process so I can descend with some grace or I can be dropped swiftly and pay the price for landing painfully hard.

The 10th Step is a checks and balances tool. Where did things not go so well today and what was my part and what can I do differently and who do I owe an apology or an amends ? And, as equally important, what went well today and what am I grateful for as a result ?

For me, the 10th Step is what keeps me in integrity throughout the entire day. My every action is thought about, not acted on impulsively or impatiently or out of anger or fear. This Step helps me with restraint of pen and tongue. It guides me about when to slow down, when to pause, when to act and put something into motion.

I experience the greatest serenity when there is a back-and-forth, give-and-take ride whether it's in relationship to others or in relationship to myself.

The Serenity Prayer perfectly describes each aspect of being on the seesaw:
The one suspended in the air: accept the things I cannot change.
The one on the ground: courage to change the things I can.
Balancing between the 2: the wisdom to know the difference.

This is the seesaw of sobriety.