Outside Eyes

I found myself recently trying to do too much with too little time.  Why did I not say, “I can only do this now, but not that.”  Because I was trying to do things for ‘outside eyes.’  I was doing it to please others.  They already like me and appreciate what I am doing.  They have no expectations of my doing EXTRA.  I run a weekly meeting.  I bake treats.  I stress myself out to bake when I really have not the time today.  The meeting does not require treats.  Is this blog for outside eyes? No.  It is to remind me that I need a meeting! 

Apology

 A good apology is ruined by excuses.  Apology allows for honesty, courage and humility.  All good things.  Excuses cover up the truth.  To contact someone, a boss, colleague, partner,  with a legitimate reason, out of your control, for being late is one thing.  To walk in and give an excuse because you don’t want to face square the real reason for tardiness.  The truth of irresponsibility, selfishness and laziness is usually covered up with an excuse.  Apology allows us to more honestly face the truth.  If we don’t pay the consequences now, we will pay down the road.  I have found it so.  

The Not So Real

 We know we are living a lie when we tend to turn reality into sugar.  You did really bad behavior in some past event or time.  But memory of it says, “Oh, that was not so bad,” or “That really was fun,” or “That was not my fault.”  Why sugar some bitter time in the past with memory?  Because we want to repeat it.  As bad as it was, it gave us something we wanted or avoided something we do not want, such as a feeling.  Some of us do bad behavior to avoid loneliness.  Early in a bad drinking career, we think it was not all that bad, so we repeat it.  Or we admit it was bad but there were circumstances that we will avoid the next time.  We won’t drive drunk.  We will only drink this or that. And so it goes.  Too much sugar can kill you.

Barely Living

We can live without living.  It is often our way to avoid pain.  To avoid the pain of poverty one had known when younger, they might work so hard as to lose a love that was once theirs.  Work draws all the attention.  Life goes too fast for love.  It is love that will slow you down.  An alcoholic is alive, but not really living.  They drink to avoid pain and they lose what love they had.  Love slows us down.  If you practice the spiritual life it must be for love and not to avoid pain.  The spiritual life will be for love if there is a growing relationship.  You know it is growing because you become less about yourself and more about others.  Foxhole prayers are just another way to avoid pain.  They are not relationship with a Power that is Love.   

The Garden

 Love is a garden, I was told.  We have to keep working at it.  When I see a beautiful garden like our San Francisco Arboretum, I am well aware of how much work it takes to make it what it is.  A beautiful love takes work.  Even messy love takes work to deal with the mess.  Someone told me that they love AA.  It is a Recovery Program for Alcoholics.  They love it because they work at it.  If I say I love the spiritual life, it is because I work at it.  There are times when it seems so much work, bother, time-consuming, and it is those times that I must especially pay attention.  Absence of feeling does not mean absence of love.  It means get out of myself.  Gardeners are not selfish people.  

In Between

Where is God?  Well, one place I have found God in action is that space between outside stimulus and  response.  Stuff happens.  People say and act as they do.  That is outside stimulus.  How do I react? Anger, resentment, revenge, whining, self-pity, are all responses in which there is no space for God.  The stimulus and my reaction are bing-bing.  But when I pause, that is God at work.  I may feel a response for a moment.  Feelings happen.  But action need not follow if God gets some space.  This is why I need a spiritual practice in the morning, early.  

The Script

 Why do I get angry, resentful or upset at what someone says or does?  I have come to realize that on some days and occasions, I have gotten up and written a script for how the day should go.  People have their lines to speak and their actions to perform according to the script.  Unfortunately, they don’t read the script.  They say and do things free of my program for my happiness.  So, I am really the director of a fantasy play.  I am the only one in it.  Even God has opted out.