Forever Dawn

 I have a sense of my smallness when I look out at the stars before the dawn.  At the ocean especially, the clear sky can be the best.  While I have been sleeping or ignoring the Creator, the stars keep attending to their maker.  And when the dawn comes and passes I realize that it is only passing for me and for everyone on this small planet.  It is always dawn somewhere in this universe for God to enjoy.  There are many planets and many suns.  What gives me joy, solace, and peace is that this God would pay any attention to me.  As tepid  and thoughtless as I might be on any given day, God is here, patient and loving.  My God can be everywhere and yet right here.  So I won’t try so hard today to be important, but rather loving, and attentive to others even if they ignore me.  My smallness need not be an obstacle to love.  

Craziness

 Some people in addiction recovery tell me that they struggle with the acceptance of a Higher Power to restore them to sanity.  I think that they miss something that goes before the acceptance of a HP.  the second step says whatever they believe to be their HP will restore them to sanity.  So they first have to admit they are crazy.  Otherwise, what is this “restore to sanity” stuff about?  If you look down upon people who practice or believe in spiritual stuff and say, “Only crazy people believe in God!” Then you quality!  You are crazy.  You stuck yourself with needles, ingested mind altering stuff, so you are are crazy.  Should be a short step to accept the HP is working in your life.  

Equality

 I would not make too big a deal about equality.  In relationships I try not to focus on equality, or sharing equally, or being equal.  Why?  A relationship for me is all about changing me and not changing the other person.  People get married, or partner up with the idea that after they commit, then they will change the other person to suit themself.  In the monastery, I am not equal to the other monks.  I am not a monk. I don’t get to attend their community meetings.  I cook for them.  They do not cook for me.  I bake.  They eat.  So what?  They won’t change.  That is not why I am here with them.  I want to be changed on my insides.  No resentment.  No judgment.  Acceptance.  Humility.  Being of service.  They help me to become a better me, by just being themselves.  Priests who think they are better than the people they serve, just don’t get it.  To be subordinate has a lot of wisdom to it.  The ego disagrees.  

Alone

 Just because you are alone does not mean you are in solitude.  If you are by yourself, yet thinking you are better than others because of your “solitude” it is not solitude.  If you are alone thinking about yourself, comparing and contrasting yourself, you are simply isolated.  You may be merely resting from having to put up with others.  Solitude begins when you stop thinking about yourself in relation to others, when you begin to have humility for your shortcomings and begin to see how you can be of service to others.  Service will develop in your compassion, forgiveness, acceptance of others, not in your judgments. I can tell when I am simply escaping and when I am truly in solitude.  

Empty Void

 Some of us have an "empty void" inside us.  We try to fill it up with "more."  It can be stuff we buy, things we ingest, changing our outside look, partnering up or sex focus.  None of it works.  These do not touch the insides.  Friendships that are selfless, helping others, meditation, gardening, cooking, walks for absorbing nature can all be what feeds the insides.  I know if I am filling the empty void or not by my attitude to people, places, and situations in my life.  Resentful, judgmental, whining, self-pity, irritable, restless, are all signs that I am still empty.  Each day, I must attend to filling myself with that which will make me free.  And a little happy and joyful.  

Be Found

God cannot be found by our searching as one searches for something hidden.  Such a search assumes we know what God looks like, and only need to look in the right place and there find God.  “Oh, there you are God,” as if we had some concrete notion of God.  Faith does not have an image or mental concept.  Those are the empty things religions argue over, and even kill to prove their concrete image is the correct one.  Prayer, if it goes deep enough, lets go of these infantile images, allows us not to find God but to be found by God.  Then we will come to know ourselves and say, “Oh, here I am.”   

Thanksgiving

I hope you are having a good Thanksgiving.  I am thankful today that people act their natural way.  Actually, my thanksgiving is that I do not get upset that they fail to act the way I want them to act.  It used to bother me that people are the way they are.  They were simply being themselves, while I wanted them to be someone more in keeping with my own program for happiness.  You could call it life on life's terms or acceptance.  The important thing is, I don't get upset within myself, muttering at "imperfections" in others.  My happiness, peace, spiritual growth cannot be waylaid by the behavior of others.  It is my own inside job.  Let people be themselves.  They may have good reasons for that of which I am not privy.   

Living Amends

It is one thing to say, "I am sorry," and it is a good start.  It is a word start.  You need to have an action to follow up the words.  You have to live out the "sorry" in your everyday encounters.  In some circles it is called a "living amends."  I sometimes say I am sorry so that I feel better,  but I think the person to whom I say this might feel better if they see some action, some ongoing manner, change of attitude and behavior on my part.  Then we both know that my apology is coming from the heart which is where the power to change lives.  

Self-Guidance

If my life is not working out on any particular day or time, I find that I have been listening to my own ideas about things.  So, if I keep listening to my own ideas I suspect things are not going to get smoother or easier.  I need to ask for ideas from others who are having a better time of it.  This is why I do not try to live life alone in myself. It can be ok to be with myself in silence and solitude, but not isolated from the wisdom of others in whatever form I can find it.   I give thanks for the wisdom of others.  

Thanksgiving

 It is Thanksgiving week in the USA.  Canada had theirs.  So much could go wrong or right.  Lots of travelers, and you may be one.  Or you are cooking the turkey which happens only once a year, with all the once a year fixings.  Company coming, or you are going to be the company elsewhere, maybe with people you don’t know that well, or maybe don’t even like all that much.  I think it is good to start out with a thank you for the week.  You don’t have to be alone.  Senior Centers and AA have turkey parties on Thanksgiving Day.  So I am going to start out my week with my “Thank You List.”  This way, if the unexpected happens, or chaos I cannot control, I will keep some balance.  I call it emotional sobriety.  

Drop-Out Catholic

 The key to yesterday was “no indifference.”  The recovering person was not indifferent to a drink.  They left it in the hands of “Power.”  So you are the ex-Catholic.  Long ago gave up on holy communion and church stuff.  Made no sense.  Not worth it.  Bunch of hypocrites, and so on.  One day you end up at a mass, maybe a wedding or funeral, or just with a friend or relative.  Same old stuff.  Then comes communion time.  Your aisle starts moving out to approach the altar.  Whoops!  Split decision.  You go along.  But you don’t have indifference.  In the communion line you say to your heart or mind, “None of my past training gives me anything now to believe that this is more than a wafer of bread, a sharing ceremony.  So if it more than that, God, or whoever, you are going to have to make it so to me.”  You cannot conjure up any faith.  You are empty.  Your prayer was a surrender.  You are not angry or bitter.  You reach out and receive the host.  Something happens.  Unexpected?  Well, that is how surrender goes.  

The Return

If you are in recovery or an ex-Catholic, or drop-out Catholic, I have a comparison.  In recovery you go to meetings, read the literature, work steps, help new-comers and be of service.  Then one day, you have a sudden desire to succumb to your addiction.  Example: a drink looks good.  All of the above help does not seem to fill that empty space inside you that the drink will fill.  You suffer the emptiness of no sufficiency in yourself to resist.  So you say, “Power, I am empty.  It is up to you.  I am powerless.”  You surrender.  Something happens, whatever it is, and you don’t take that drink.  You live another day, not on your power, but one not your own.  All of the above program stuff is to get you to that place of knowing your own nothingness and surrendering to a Power that is not you.  Tomorrow, I do the drop-out Catholic stuff.  Bet you can’t wait.  

Liberation

 Prayer needs to move beyond debt-relief.  Yes, we can pray for forgiveness, and mercy for our past or even our present if bad-behavior  crops up.  But at some point we need to have prayers of liberation.  From what? From doubt.  Faith must have some doubt or it is not faith.  As we enter into deeper prayer, beyond the text books and steps of instruction, we will need faith.  But at some point we will wonder if this is making any sense, especially if few around us are on their own deepening path to discover of who they truly are.  So don’t try to escape doubt with activism, busyness, getting things done, being productive in such a way that prayer goes back to a few words of gratitude and then onto things that are simply a cover for fear of your doubts.  When you think nothing is there, you are right.  No Thing is here. You are in the right place.  You are no thing and you are all you need to be.  

The Questioin

 The question I ask myself is not “do I like doing this,” but rather “is this good for me.”  There were or are things I like doing but they were not good for me.  Then I did things I did not like doing, but they were good for me.  You don’t get out of incomprehensible demoralization by asking “do I like this.”  You are too sick to know what is good for you, but sick enough to know you must make a drastic change.  I have found it so.  People ask me if I like cooking in the monastery.  Or do I like cooking at all.  But an answer to that question depends on how my ego is doing.  My ego has had its day of reign.  It was not a very successful ruler.  It was happiest when most self-centered, when self will ran riot.  Then came incomprehensible demoralization.  So I cook for others because it is good for me to do this.  It connects me with the community in a healthy way.  It may at times be boring and at time creative and exciting.  If I do it for praise, then I have slipped off the path of becoming my best self.  

Programs

 AA can teach you how to become a sober person.  It cannot teach you how to become yourself.  That is a journey ultimately done alone in deep meditation.  As a sober person, you will be a better person.  That is fairly simple, since as a drunk you were pretty messy, selfish and so on.  The Steps will give you some structure for praying and for faith.  Not the faith in a god object up in the sky.  It is faith that energizes you to pray without knowing where it is going, but “believing” it is going to good inner discoveries.  You move beyond words of petition, or thanksgiving and even gratitude.  You move to silence and stillness.  AA can help free you from a fear based life you had, so that you can trust the deepening process.  Persons not on such a path may ridicule you as strange or “far out there.”  Or just shrug their shoulders.  Or give you a a blank look if you try to articulate anything of your path.  Eventually, along the way, you may discover what you were trying to escape in drinking.  

Just Pray

 If you want to pray then just pray.  Some people say they are too busy or they have not found the right teacher, the right method, the right place.  But in fact, they do not want to pray because the obstruction is none of the above. It is themselves.  They are imprisoned by a Self that does not want to simply be with itself.  They think that if they leave the “world” and find a structure that will teach and guide them, then they will pray.  Run off to a monastery, retreat center, house of prayer.  Most of these structures, if they are not being renewed, obstruct, rather than instruct.  The structure becomes the obstacle in that it does not challenge or direct you to be with yourself, doing nothing, but praying.  A good structure is one that is person oriented, not structure oriented.  A person must learn to trust praying as themself, and if they do that, with some initiating structure, they will makes mistakes, but will find their truer self, who is the only one who can truly connect with Ultimate Reality indwelling.  

No-Hearer

Solitude is not simply about being away from others, which could be but isolation or avoidance.  No, solitude is more than letting go of company, people, projects.  It is about letting go of that self-reflective part of you.  You become a "NO-HEARER." What?  Think of the wind blowing.  Your "self" is aware of the wind, though you are alone in silence.  You feel the wind, and hear it.  But at some deeper place within you, a solitariness takes over and you no longer are aware of the  hearing self.  You become a no-hearer, though the wind continues to blow.  You are beyond, beneath such awareness, such feelings.  This is where scars of the past receive the spiritual salve that heals.  After this deep solitude passes, you are more connected to the world than you were before.  People are the same around you, but you see them differently.  And so they are not the same.  Who changed?  

Solitude And Fantasy

Fantasy is an escape from solitude.  One cannot be in fantasy unless they are alone and not busy accomplishing something that requires their attention.  If you find your self in fantasy it is a call, an inclination to solitude.  A drink alone can also be an escape.  To be human is to need some  solitude, but our culture does not tell us we need it or what to do with it.  We "feel alone" and don't want that feeling.  We are taught to accomplish, to be with "friends" associates in some endeavor.  At times yes, but not all the time.  Our frantic pace in life, busyness, is in part that escape from finding a way to have the solitude that we need to be fully human.  Even a monk can stay busy and engaged in exterior things, choir prayer, so as to avoid that silence and solitude.  A walk in nature without purpose, that is, without trying to solve some problem, to fix something, can be solitude time.  Meditation without a focus can be solitude.  Alone is not alone.   

Detachment

 The monk does not give up the things of the world as if they were evil in themselves.  The world is good, until we are imprisoned by inordinate attachments to the world.  What is that? It is the slavery to “more.”  Our freedom to love is eclipsed by this want for more.  There is never enough.  This slavery to more is what the monk gives up.  It is what the person in recovery gives up.  It is what one must give up in order to love.  We use or sacrifice created things in the interests of love.  Love is for growth in heart to heart relationship. “More” is about selfishness energized by fear.  It alienates us one from another.   So I have things, but I don’t “possess” things.  Love is a lot of emptying in order to become full.  The heart knows.  

The Scars

There is the story of Jesus healing ten lepers.  Everyone saw these ten as lepers, scarred, to be avoided and isolated.  Jesus saw something else.  He saw a human being worthy of being loved.  He saw beneath the scars.  For me, the scars represent the wounds of a lifetime, often being produced in our growing up years.  We tend to live and confine ourselves to the limits of our scars.  We might even isolate some.  But there is more to each of us than our past.  There is so much potential and it comes forth strong when we are loved, accepted, included and encouraged to see our basic goodness.  So I try to do this with people who are down on themselves, living by their past, ashamed, defeated, hopeless.  I try to love them until they can love themselves.  It was done for me and now I must do it for others.  

The In-Between

 People get down on themselves when they relapse from good behavior.  If they get so filled with shame, guilt, failure, they may not recover.  So I try to remind people about the good they did between relapses.  Even dry, they did better than stark raving drunk!  And any sobriety is better than none.  This may move them toward emotional sobriety, as well as physical.  And if they wish they were dead, I remind them that others have a different opinion and love them now.  Maybe they will love themselves later after doing some positive things "with others."  I don't think it is a good idea to emphasize time sober.  Especially if you have a lot of it.  Emphasize today.  It keeps us all even as we trudge that happy road of destiny.  

The Thought Comes First

I heard people say that they were not even thinking about doing something, but then did it anyway.  I believe that most of the time I am thinking about something before I actually do it.  Example: I go into bar.  I am NOT there to meet anyone.  I have other better things to do.  I am not thirsty.  But I go in for maybe a drink.  I stagger out hours later, the poorer in health, stomach and pocket.  What happened?  Well, at some point in my head the thought came that it would be a good idea to have "another."  As someone said, "You get drunk in your head before you relapse."  Accidents do happen, such as hitting your finger with a hammer while driving in a nail.  But they sure don't happen by walking into a bar if you are a drunk.  Or by going to a liquor store for supplies, "just in case."  Meditation makes me honest.  And I am the richer for it in pocket and heart.   

The Abyss

 In each of us is an “infinite abyss” that nothing but the “Infinite” can fill.  My job, my partner, my living situation, geography, and dog or cat will not fill this abyss.  And being infinite we are always beginners for the next level of depth.  So take the attitude of choosing the lowest place at table.  Always beginning and waiting for the invitation from the Guestmaster, the Infinite, to invite you to move up into the depths of the banquet of Love.  Not always feel good, this entering into the unfamiliar right after you got comfortable.  But the spiritual food becomes more nourishing with each acceptance of the deepening invitation.  Method only gets you to the table.  

No Need Comfort

 Do you meditate to feel comfortable, trying to get to that familiar feeling, that place in meditation in which you feel a sense of peace?  It is a false sense of arrival.  It is complacency.  You do not yet feel a need for God.  You say, “I don’t believe in God.”  Good, because you will have to let go of all those images and thoughts you were given that you now don’t believe in.  We only disbelieve in images of the mind.  No one can disbelieve in nothing or no thing.  So let go of the something you don’t believe in.  While you are at it, let go of your method that gives you peace.  Go into the dreadful depth of surrender to all thoughts and images.  Yes, it starves the mind and imagination.  Then you may be touched by the “Unbelievable.”  And you will hunger with a need you never knew you had.  

Grace-Digging

 My prayer life is a lot of grave-digging prayers.  Some day, my remains will be buried, but I have spent a life-time burying the “I” as I was created to be.  Why?  I wanted to fit in.  I wanted to be a success in the world’s eye.  I wanted to avoid the curse of loneliness, of failure to succeed in the race for being a “winner” as the world, empty of a spiritual-filled center, held out to me.  Why would I walk into a bar filled with strangers and ask for a drink?  Or more.  Why not walk out and feed the reason I walked in there in the first place?  Go do zazen somewhere or sit quietly in a sacred space.  So my prayers are digging up the me that fortunately does not die.  This is the good news.  the breath of Grace. Neglected, but not dead.  I am hopeful.  

Heart Entering

 As is said, you can leave Egypt with your feet, but you cannot enter the Promised Land but with your Heart.  So it is that many a person says, “I am leaving the world,” to take up a spiritual, meditation practice.  They walk away to live alone, become a hermit, monk, spend more time in some quiet place of silence and solitude, but this is all about moving away in a spacial sense.  You cannot walk into Love, Ultimate Reality, Nirvana, Non-Duality.  You must honestly face your inner self with its masks, role-playing in fantasy, and other protective devices that served you in the “world.”  Patience, fortitude, trust.  The process will embarrass you, and humiliate you, before it humbles you.  Many will not wait for the humbling aspect.  Your futility and nothingness.  If you stay with the unveiling of your false self, your self-invention, you will face your nothingness.  And then?  You will be awakened.  No wonder it is called “Fear of the Lord.”

The Compass

 I cannot navigate my way to God using some method as my compass. I come to God by love.  I might feel a sense of peace in a method, a sense of direction, a map or pointer but if there is no love, then I am missing the reason for an interior practice of prayer.  How do I know if I am going to God by love?  I will know by how I relate to people and situations around me, especially where I am not in control.  If I find myself meditating, but living a life otherwise governed by fear, anger, resentment, and escape, I probably have not contacted a Spiritual Power by the path of love.  I remain adrift and maybe lost.  A solution? Find someone, some book, some way that has gotten beyond your misdirection.  Those who have been there can be the best teachers.  

A Cause

 I suspect that someone who is inebriated with a cause or maybe just inebriated, are quite certain of their cause and themselves as they talk with enthusiasm about “the solution to life” or the answer to life.  They are not much in listening to any other opinion or alternate way that might threaten their certainty.  Their solution, filled with animated talk, may be in religion, politics, lifestyle, or relationship.  But I think at the route of this is a living outside of oneself.  That is, being interiorly empty, spiritually lost, bobbing around in a sea of alienation, grasping for meaning.  

Social Skills

When I was growing up, my contemporaries were learning social skills so that they could engage others in social occasions, gathering events.  I did not do that at the time.  I escaped social skill development, but found other methods, crutches, to be in the midst of a social gathering, party.  Even today, I am rather behind.  I went to a going away mid-morning event for one of our old monks who was transferring to another monastery for his health.  I had been directing people where to go to find the venue in the monastery, so when I walked into the room, the party was on with lots of conversations.  I know what I am supposed to do, but I lack the enthusiasm to mix in.  Everyone looks occupied with someone or some eating.  And of course, no one seems to notice I am in the room.  You have to talk loudly to be heard.  I go to the food trays and pick out something for a plate.  Someone asks me why I am wearing a mask.  Apparently, I am the only one.  I say hello to one or two others, a little conversation and then I am ready to go.  I stayed long enough so I don't feel guilty.  I go to my room and enjoy the quiet, the prayer, reading and being with me.  And the Presence.  I don't think I am a loser.  But I avoid a second opinion.   

True Self

 I often use the term, "True Self" in the spiritual journey.  It means finding how to best live life with your gifts and talents.  For a Christian, it would be how best to live the Gospel, as your best self, not as someone else might live it.  If you are in Recovery, it is how to live the 12 Steps, the Traditions and Concepts, as your best self.  You need a spiritual focus for this.  You have to have some meditative life that touches the insides of you to find who you were made to be.  So much teaching is about conforming to some outward program practice.  Do this and do that, as if we are all the same.  The world needs different talents. No one way makes for a whole.  People telling us what to do focus on our exteriors.  Yes, there needs to be some of that especially in the beginning of a formation.  But at some point you have to balance it with an interior practice, learning to listen to an interior voice.  Then the interior influences and adjusts the exterior and you have discovered a "True Self."