Congregation

 The word "congregation" as used in religion generally refers to the worship gathering of people.  They are a gathering for that moment in time inside the worship building.  Afterwards, they disperse to their own private lives.  But the root word, "congregatio" refers to a group of people in the bible who are wandering around in the desert with no permanent home.  They stay together for safety and support.  They are no longer slaves, but they are not in the promised land.  So a congregation really refers to a people who could be worse, but are by no means done with their journey and need to support one another.  They are tribal kin, not strangers from various neighborhoods, separated by income, politics, color or language.  People in recovery meetings are coming from slavery to substances, and moving towards a fuller life.  They need one another and all need a Power greater than themselves.  

Freedom

 The addict has given up freedom of choice.  But there will come a new freedom if the addict finds a spiritual path to recovery.  What is this new freedom?  The freedom to become their best self, the person they can be with all their gifts and talents functioning more fully.  Addicted, they survived.  Addicted, they acted like someone they were not.  At times they did not function much at all.  But when they become free of the daily desire for that substance, that craving, they open up a door to new energy and insight and become a transformed person.  They are free and it will show in the brightness and lightness of their being.  They become more helpful to others, more aware and attentive to those around them.  A walking miracle one might say.  

In Love

 A lot of people are able to be "in love," but not able to love.  What?  "In love" is emotionally charged and is more about one's feeling good than about the other person.  When "in love" we go out of our way to please, impress, and even control the other person so that they will give us what we want.  We will seem to be our best self, but it is really a false self because it is love turned inward.  That is why so many young people and others who are into arrested growing up, pick up and drop partners, lovers, companions on a rather frequent basis.  Some people cannot "find love" because it is more about getting and not giving.  Giving is a lot of "letting go" and not getting our preferences.  It is about forgiveness, acceptance, imperfections.  One learns to love only after one discovers their own flaws, faults, shortcomings.  It is a sobering experience but a step toward fulfillment in giving and service to another.  

Obedience

 We in the USA hold "freedom" of the individual in high regard.  We write it into our original legal documents.   Obedience therefore seems to be a bitter pill that we turn away from swallowing.  Yet it has great value.  A believer in a religion or spiritual practice, must practice obedience if such person is to live true to their belief.  It is not so much obedience to rules and regulations, as to a manner of living, a perspective.  A Buddhist is not free to ignore meditation, lest such person be a Buddhist in name only, and not in manner or practice.  A Buddhist does not wait for "free" time to practice.  And often, they must obey a Roshi in direction and practice.  A Christian or Jew has the "surrendering" God as their example.  Their God humbles itself before and with the believer.  Christ is the God who gives up power to obey the Father.  An addict lost freedom when they became addicted.  In recovery, they obey a sponsor.  Freedom to do as you please is infantile.  I try not to make too much of it.  

Idolatry

 I find that some people who say there is no god, in fact do believe in a god.  It is self-idolatry.  They are all about themselves.  They are getting ahead, acquiring stuff, seeking fame, power and control all for self-grandiosity.  And I meet those who say there is no god because the world is a mess and if god were powerful, god would fix the world to suit them.  These people also worship something, a perfect world of their fantasy.  The god I favor seems to be about letting go, giving up, serving, love, and not about control or power.  I would be lost and bereft of belief if I needed a god of power and control, or if I was all about worshiping me and my fantasy world to make me feel better.  When I let go, I seem to find, or more likely, get found.  

The World

  What does it mean to “leave the world?”  One hears this in monasteries for instance.  Are monks running away from life, real world problems?  No.  “Place” does not avoid life or problems.  To leave the world does not mean getting away from the everyday, but from a life that is exclusively for yourself.  Then what?  Begin to live for others, be of service, especially service that does not look for rewards or good feeling, but rather serves for the sake of the other.  It is to become more selfless and less selfish.  You can begin this kind of life focus without going anywhere geographically.  It is an interior job of the spiritual path.  

Plus Good

 Simply doing a good action, being helpful, may not always be enough for the doer.  Why?  Because an attitude may be missing.  If we are concerned about ourselves, being recognized, noticed, thanked, and we receive nothing of the sort, it can lead to self-pity and resentment.  Instead of now noticing what is negative in ourselves, we simply begin a negative commentary on others.  I try to keep in mind that my "good works" are not about changing others, but about changing me.  I try to keep negative thinking out of my doing for others.  I have no control over how my "helpful" endeavors affect others, but I do have some control about how they affect me.  Replace the negative with the positive.  

Fruitful

We can do good works, but they are not always fruitful.  I can be of service to others and yes, they are helped, but I remain fruitless, because I do the good deed without any joy, gratitude and thanksgiving.  I am doing good while being resentful and judgmental of the very situation and people are am supposed to be helping.  So I remind myself, early in the day, to be grateful that I have the health and sanity to do any good for others.  Then I am grateful and can act with joy.  There were times passed, when I could do little good for myself, yet was self-focused in a narrow sense.  I was in need of help.  Someones gave it to me.  They said they were grateful for the chance and they seemed joyful about giving time and energy to me.  I try to be and do likewise.  Makes for a fruitful life.  

 

Second Life

 Many of us get a “second life.”  Divorced, addicted, job-change, a residence move are examples.  The over and done relationship is a first life.  You have a chance for another relationship.  Will you live it the same you as the first one?  If so, it will be a rerun, not a second life.  If you enter into recovery from addiction, will you live it the same as before you tried recovery, dropping only the addictive substance and all else staying the same? It will be a rerun.  You lost your first job but now have a chance for another opportunity for employment or career.  Will your deportment, manner, habits be the same as the lost job time? A rerun.  You do a geographic to a new residence or city. If only the geography and address changes, it will be a rerun.  A “Second Life” can be wonderful, surprising, and most profound if you are the one who changes for the better.  This is a spiritual recovery or discovery.  

Less Than

 One of the cruelest things to do to another person is to say or do something that makes them feel “less than.”  It gives them the feeling that they do not belong or fit in.  I can encourage someone to improve or grow, but from a sense that we are all in this together, or trying to grow together.  Some people will destroy themselves in an effort to feel “part of.”  Addictive behavior can be a lot about feeling “less than” and trying to feel “part of.”  A good way for me to be of service to others to to help them feel that they are “part of.”  We grow best from being part of and not in isolation.  

Forget Me

 When I am doing something for others I need to forget about me.  Stop thinking about me.  Why?  Say I am cooking for people.  If I focus on me, I can get resentful, that I am doing this, and why is someone not helping, or why does not someone else cook too.  Or maybe self-evaluate as in: this meal prep is not going as planned, and so I am a failure.  No one will like me.  I will be criticized.  I hate this place! And so on.  So I try to have gratitude about being able to cook at all, having food, a kitchen, utensils, pots and pans, and being of service to others.  I experiment to see how something might turn out.  I  am open to discovery.  I have the energy to cook.  All positive.  I have a better day when it is not all about me.  

The End

 When Covid hit in early 2020, I said, "My life is over!"  I meant that my working, income producing, uplifting work of teaching in front of groups of people had come to an end.  But as it turned out, life was changed, not ended.  I discovered Zoom and Venmo.  Zoom was a whole new format way to teach and Venmo was a way to get paid.  No travel.  No airports.  No bad beds and so so food.  I could stay at home and teach on computer.  I do miss the people in person, and the coming together with one another.  But this is all a change and not an ending.  Covid left me with a loss of control in some sense.  I always could tell how I am doing in front of a live group.  I could sense if I was making a helpful connection.  On Zoom, I don't know since most of the people pick up the session from a recording.  And they say nothing. So I work on trust and hope.  And try to be of service.  

Thankful

 Being happy is important.  I think it helps to keep one sane and balanced.  But we too often equate happiness with things going our way in the present moment.  This is not always the case.  Plans, projects, friendships, health, the weather, can all or in part be quite messy and ineffectual.  So how to find some happiness?  Gratitude for the good things that are in our life but are not so apparent in the current mess.  It is so easy for me to forget gratitude for things because they are in my everyday life, and I take them for granted.  I woke up alive, in my own bed, and don't have regrets for bad behavior last night.  There will be food in the refrigerator.  I have a God.  Many people don't have some or most of these things.  One or two people love me.  I don't need some substance to change my mood or get temporary happiness.  I am having a better day already!

A Slum

 My spiritual life was a slum, as in “the Slum of the Soul.”   Ruth Burrows coined that phrase.  I wanted to be rid of this slum and become beautiful inside.  I wanted to be more than better.  I wanted to be cured, healed, thinking this would be true happiness and joy.  Does not work that way.  Some things, flaws, defects will be with me forever.  Bad?  No.  Staying a slum can crush the ego centered self.  But what I do is build a garden in the slum.  I have seen this in inner cities.  If you cannot change something completely into your fantasy, why not build something beautiful upon what there is.  There will be the flower of acceptance.  The bulb of tolerance.  The greenery of compassion mixed in with some patience.  All of it will be service to the world around me, the neighborhood of people and situations in which I live.  It is a step by step process.  It is an everyday of weeding.  My garden is for others.  I am now more free and happy.  I call it recovery.  

The Product

 Are you a person or a product?  A person is someone trying to become who they really are.  A product is something that is trying to be attractive, to be noticed, to be wanted.  If you live as a product, you then package yourself in a certain way to become attractive, noticed, and wanted.  You don’t much care for the unadorned you, or the smart you, the quiet you,  or the caring you, since no one seems to want or notice you much.  You look in a magazine and see a body, a person who becomes your model.  You exercise, buff up, shop, dress in a certain manner, to become the package over against other packages, like so many products on a grocery shelf or sales lot.  Many people are shopping for a certain product in partnering.  They have in mind what the “look” has to be.  Are they interested in knowing the real you?  Are you?  That can take a lifetime, as we are mysteries to one another at times and even to ourself.  Love? That takes patience. Product shoppers lack patience.   

The Wanters

 When someone comes to you or you run into someone who has a want  or request, you can ignore, critique, or point out how they can take care of whatever by themselves.  You may be right, but you may not be changed for the better.  Sometimes we are just protecting ourselves from other people we think are lethal.  ACA meetings are all about adult children issues.  But often people are not so lethal, just a seeming bother, and so we critique them or avoid them.  Nuisance.  But if we want to be a better self, we might think about responding in a more loving manner.  Do not judge.  Rather love.  People are imperfect. They are human.  So their wants or seeming helplessness are an opportunity for me to be changed for the better.  Get out of myself.  At the end of the day I can ask myself how many times I responded with resentment, and how many times I responded with love?  Little by little I will do it more for love, if I am on any decent spiritual path.  

Assumption

 Today, in the Catholic Church, it is the Feast of the Assumption.  What is that all about?  Jesus mother dies and is assumed into heaven body and soul.  OK.  You role your eyes and say Catholics are weird.  Yes, if you merely dwell in facts and not meaning or the underlying point of it.  Which is what?  That the body, flesh, creation, things, are all holy, and in union with the One.  But we usually only see and live “separation.”  Mary, for instance, did not live her life in separation from the One, Creator, Life, Love.  She gave her all and not much was written abut her.  Why not?  Because when you give all, you may not be much noticed by those who wrote history.  Or you might be noticed, but avoided  or ignored, as in dying on a cross.  But when you give all in Love, you are most united in spirit to body.  The more perfect the love, the less likely to be any separation between your insides and outsides.  A divided life is an unfulfilled one.  

Fallon In Love

 Getting Drunk is a bit like “Falling In Love.”  What?  Am I crazy?  Perhaps.  You walk into a room or a place and you see someone or hear someone and look at the person.  You did not walk into the room thinking about “falling in Love.”  But suddenly you are attracted, and want more of this person.  You want to meet the person, and then spend time and more time with them.  They become your focus and other important things take a back seat to “Love.”  The same with getting drunk.  You see and want that first drink.  Maybe you were not even thinking of drinking a moment before that first drink.  But you see and want.  After the first drink you want more and more.  You are falling for alcohol, and everything else takes second place, or no place.  Falling in love can end up badly in a relationship with a person, and there are no twelve steps to save you.  A drunk has a way out.  

The Absolute

In deep mediation, or contemplation, I let go of all my anxieties, desires, thoughts of past and future or even of the present.  I stop searching for anything or anyone.  And then there is this “spark” that mystics speak about.  A sudden awareness deeper than any sense of being alone.  I think the spark might be when the Absolute recognizes Itself, dwelling within me, because it is no longer hidden from Itself by my baggage of thoughts and feelings.  A sense of Oneness with Itself, the Absolute gazing on Itself in Love.  What then?  I awaken from the meditation and begin to see the world around me of persons and nature, creation, as All, as One.  No adversaries, or judgments of separation, differences, or problems.  Just the All.  The Absolute gazing on Itself creation through me.   

Steps

 Recovery from addiction has a program of steps, 12 of them.  You work those steps on a gradual basis, but daily, and you shed an old self destructive you, to find a much better person there all the time you were partying and hiding from this Self.  The meditative life has not steps, but yearnings.  For what ever reason you begin to hunger for something deeper, other, than the daily fair of active living, or active living with no depth.  As you practice a meditation on a daily basis, like the addict does the steps, you begin to yearn to be taken deeper and deeper.  In both the steps and yearnings, it will not be your own power that takes you to new self discovering, but rather a Power, Energy, Spirit, Love, that cooperates with your efforts.  Then you will find you, the wonder and joy of you as you were made before you tried to become self-made and self-destructive.  

Drop Outs

 A lot of people have left the Christian path because Jesus did not rise up to their idea of him.  They wanted a fixer-upper, a damage control power, a feel good warm fuzzy, a healer of disease,  and did not get what they wanted.  I get that.  I was there.  Then I decided I needed to read about what Jesus said and did with his own life.  I found that a lot of what I read had little to do with what I wanted but more on what I needed.  Since I was selfish and focused on me, I wanted a Jesus who would handle the messiness of such a life.  He did not.  He talked about letting go of self, surrendering, not being the center of my world, loving rather than judging, accepting rather than manipulating, listen rather than talk, and such stuff that I did not really want to do.  But when things got low enough, bottomed out, I backed into what he suggested.  I had little choice.  My ways did not work.  I still have to work at the world not being all about me.  And stop blaming.  

Summer Game

 Hide and Seek is a summer game for children.  Young children hide and want to be found.  For them the game is interactive, the seeker and the hiders.  Older children, beginning a life of separation, do not want to be found.  Success is to be separate and hidden.  If I am into my meditation, and then interaction with people in a loving and accepting manner, I am interactive.  I am seeking God and being found in prayer.  If I ignore my interior life, I will be separating from God, and will act that way with others, hiding my truer self behind a mask.  But God won't play that game.  God is ever the seeker.  It is I who am hiding.  So don't blame God for not showing up to your alienating life.  

Heart Pain

 We each have an inner want, an energy to seek for fullness, to answer a pain of the heart.  Even if what is wanted and needed cannot be identified, the pain is there.  It may disguise itself as loneliness, restlessness, dis-ease.  Some get rid of the pain but not the want.  They intake a drug, a drink, a needle.  They shop.  Internet splurge. No pain for the moment.  But the empty spot stays unfulfilled.  I think a spiritual path is one that touches that pain.  Find a tradition that has that path built into it.  I have found it in the contemplative life of a religious order.  

Wisdom

 School education is to learn a lot, grow in becoming wise with information and knowing how.  The mystic is in the process of becoming unwise.  Unwise means letting go of all the information you were fed about God the noun.  The mind, the storage box of world wisdom, needs to be emptied so God can show up to you as God is, not as our little minds think God is.  I won’t experience God as Love if my mind tells me that God lives somewhere else, heaven, and comes to me when I am good and do the right things.  

The Other Side

 Inside my room or cell, life mostly on my terms.  I control a lot about the room.  But when I step through my bedroom door I am entering into life on life’s terms.  Am I ready?  Yes, if I am in a good spiritual condition.  Because then I realize stuff might happen or show up, or be annoyingly repeated, and I have little to no control.  I walk out of my room with acceptance.  This keeps me serene more than resentful.  I am free from having the things in life control my emotions such that I react negatively to life not on my terms.  I don’t look to get my way.  I have preferences but not demands.  If I am not practicing a spiritual way of life, then look out!  The rage will rise again.  

Explanations

 I like the story of Matthew.  Jesus simply passes by and says "Follow me."  Matthew is a tax collector sitting at a table counting money.  Not only does he get up and follow Jesus, but he gives no explanation as to why he did it.  Nor did he have any expectations of what he would get out of following Jesus.  For me, a spiritual path needs no explanation nor expectation of what will happen on it.  I simply feel an urge, a pull, an inclination, or a "call" if you will.  People ask why a monastery or priesthood or whatever.  I don't have to have any reason but that I feel the pull.  If I say I want more silence and solitude, then I have an agenda and am not open to the One who is inviting me.  Sometimes the heart cannot find the words or the reasons.  It just knows.  

Too Much Info

 I would not read too much about meditation before beginning a practice.  Too much info and you begin to thing you know what it is and how to control that “good Buzz” you imagine will come if you do the right technique.  Meditation is a relationship with a Power Greater Than yourself.  That is, not you.  We don’t control relationships.  We show up. We listen. We wait.  And then, at times, in the seemingly ordinariness of it all, something happens, unique to each one of us.  So don’t try too hard.  Don’t control.  Don’t be greedy for more.  Then, in time, you will begin to show up to life in service, and not judgment, in acceptance, not resentment, in letting go, instead of grabbing for more.  and you will find peace. 

By Myself

 Being by myself is not the same as being alone.  Do you “live alone” or do you “live by yourself?”  There is a difference in the answer and I can often tell it in a person who is in recovery.  To be alone, for me, is more about being separate from others, toward disconnection, a path to isolation.  So you walk into a room with other people already there and seek to sit separate from anyone?  You might ask yourself if you want to be alone or want to be by yourself.  Being by myself, I am comfortable being me.  I can be near others because I like me and can be with myself comfortably around others next to or near me.  Being by myself is not about geography or distancing.  It is about practicing a spiritual life that makes me grow in being at peace with me.  Sometimes people separate themselves because they don’t like themselves and assume others won’t either, or since they don’t like themselves, they don’t like or even trust the proximity of others.Am I alone in a monastery? No, but I am often by myself.  

Inside To Outside

 Someone said, “I don’t meditate much, since I don’t believe in any God.  But I do try to be of service, to be helpful to others.”  Such is this person in recovery from addiction.  Yet they are meditating in the sense that they are working from their insides to their outsides.  Like what?  Well, they are of service to others because first of all they know it will change their insides.  So they are in touch with their inside needs. Second, they have some empathy for others, and that comes from the insides.  Empathy and compassion, thinking of others, is the result of some interior life, even if we don’t formally recognize it.  Plus the energy of the Higher Power does not need a person’s “belief.”  This person used to be a helpless addict, self-centered, and self-willed to the max.  The person did not change all by their own power.  They had none.  Such is addiction.  Happiness spreads from the insides to the outsides.  

Empty

 Do you ever feel empty, as in “I feel so empty inside.”  When it happens to me, I do one of two things.  I try to find a fill up on my “outsides.”  In this manner, I am trying to fill me up with things outside of me, be it persons, activities, places, study, internet, and none of it solves the emptiness.  On the second hand, if I realize that the emptiness is a necessary, and good thing, I try to fill it up on my “insides.”  I turn to meditation.  This is usually a much better solution for me.  I believe that we are supposed to feel empty at times, to remind us that we need to attend to our inner, spiritual life.  This life needs the food of meditation.  There can be a lot of happiness and fulfillment in the world.  But not if that is my only solution to the inner emptiness.  

Unlikeness

 If my truest self, my best self, along with the flaws that get in the way, is within me, then whenever I spend my time focused outside myself for fulfillment, I am living in the land of unlikeness.  The outsides are not unlike my insides.  The quest for happiness on the outsides will leave me alienated from ME.  Like what outsides?  Fantasy for one.  Living completely in the land of imagination.  Imagination is good, but not if it is your full time  focus.  Spouse or partner.  You think they will be your fulfillment, but they cannot be that.  To live only focused on them or on family members, is to try and make them super people responsible for your happiness.  You will end of blaming or complaining.  They are mere humans.  What family, community, partner can do is be a key to open you up to yourself in the relationship.  Otherwise you will never learn to get out of your own way.