Oxygen

 I try not to give bad behavior, bad thinking, any oxygen.  That is, if some person, place or situation is not to my liking, I try to turn it over to a Power, my God, instead of stewing over it, or trying to solve it with anger, revenge, self-righteousness, and judgment.  If I wallow in my dysfunctional thinking, or push "solutions" that deep down, I know are not working, I am giving oxygen to this darkness.  I am suffocating  my soul.  My spiritual life is on life support.  It is best for me to stay close to the tools that bring me into acceptance, compassion, and patience.  When I think I am a god, only bad things happen and I cannot breathe.  

Apology

 Some people rarely make apologies because they are so self-centered and self-righteous.  But some people are very good at making apologies and pat themselves on the back.  Yet the reason they are so good at apology is that they have had a lot of practice.  I used to mess up and rarely apologize.  In time, I learned how to apologize for all the mess I made of the world around me.  Since I made a lot of mess, I became good at apologizing.  Well, now I would like to become good at the ability to love, selflessly, so that I don't have to practice so much at apologizing.  Some virtues are only half-way to where I want to go.  

Old Ideas

 Someone was talking about "old ideas" that you thought were gone from you life.  You got "fixed."  Well my old ideas remind me of weeds and crab grass.  You pull them up, and things, me, look good...for a while.  Then it seems they come back again.  And I don't look or act so good.  The garden of my soul, or lawn, if you will, is always in recovery.  I need to work at the roots of my weedy thoughts and behaviors.  A spiritual path is one way to see the roots of problems coming up before I act them out.  I seed my garden with readings, prayer, service, unity with others, but the old ideas wait for me to look away in complacency.  Insidious.  

More Body

 Though the body has to change, practice discipline, before the mind will change, the 12 Steps of AA are all about the mind because the problem is in the mind and not the body.  Nothing about jogging or going to the gym.  That has been tried as a solution to drinking and has proven short.  The body does not crave alcohol, but the mind tells you "one more will be better."  The body wants health.  The mind wants oblivion.  You won't pick up the phone, write out a 4th step, go tell a sponsor the results until the mind is ready.  The mind holds the fear, doubt, and all sorts of stuff.  We blame the body for it.  But the body is the victim of the mind.  Stone sober, my body never said take a drink.  But my mind did.  The body feels, and the mind thinks.  Before that first drink the alcoholic cannot seem to recall in mind the results of that last idea to "have a drink."  The body recalls the feeling from the last time, but the mind is not taking incoming body calls.  

No Opinion

I received good advice about listening.  Listen like you have no opinion.  I realize how hard that is to do.  I am too ready to critique while supposedly listening to someone.  I am coming up with some answer or something to say.  In prayer, I am supposed to be listening to God.  I am not so sure sometimes.  If I am not hearing or feeling what I want or think is supposed to happen, I "get to thinking."  Or when an event happens in my life that I did not plan or expect, do I listen to the event or just whine, critique and complain?  When someone speaks up in a meeting, am I judging before they say anything? Tough to learn if I am going to be this way about listening.   

Baptism

 Today, I am 80 years a Catholic.  I was baptized on this day at St. Frances of Rome Catholic Church in the upper Bronx.  So for the first four weeks of my life I was not a Catholic.  That meant Limbo if I should die before baptism.  Limbo is adjacent to Animal Heaven.  Both are not quite there, but not real miserable.  The problem with being baptized and then growing up is that Limbo becomes out of reach.  As a Catholic I had to go to mass every Sunday or I would burn unless I went to confession just before the trolley ran me over.  I think non-Catholics have it a lot better.  They are ignorant of the One True Faith and God does not punish much the ignorant.  Maybe just a dunce  cone cap in a corner of the universe, but not fiery hell.  But Catholics know the rules, so if they disobey then off to hell.  There in hell they join other Catholics who “thought for themselves.”  So I wish there was an Adult Limbo because it does not look like I am going to make the cut to get into heaven.  

The World

 Just because you got sober does not mean that the world is going to change.  You get sober for yourself.  Some situations around you will change, but many will not.  Some things don't go our way.  Such as?  Job promotion, love life, being ignored, mistreated, house maintenance issues, mechanical failures of one kind or another, late or non-functioning transportation, medical issues and the weather.  Sobriety cannot depend on anything else.  Do it for yourself.  You are worth it, and someday, with the help of a few others, you will believe it.  

Expectations

 As we begin to move into a better spiritual balance, or sobriety, we begin to leave selfishness by the roadside.  We begin to do for others without asking that they do for us in return.  No quid pro quo here.  We begin to love without strings attached to our actions.  We know that we are moving away from this selfless life when we hear ourselves muttering, "Why don't they do for me what I do for them?"  We think our good behavior, as we see it, is supposed to be a model for everyone else to follow.  This is a return to focus on self, even while we are being of service to others.  We are not in charge of their spiritual growth or sobriety, but only our own.  

Low Spots

 When people get sober and/or into a good meditation practice, they can develop the expectation that they will feel good all the time.  When they hit trials and low spots they begin to think something is wrong, or they are doing something wrong.  Low spots are part of life, real life.  The alcoholic might avoid them out of fear.  So they become grandiose, in a self-centered way.  This manifests itself in fantasy, blame of others, judgments, criticisms.  We must all realize that life on life's terms means that there will be low spots in everyone's life from time to time.  Low spots are not so much to be solved as to be accepted.  Continue with the spiritual practice, in moderation but consistency.  The low spot will pass.  

Diet

There is a phrase that summerizes bad criticism.  It is, " I eat my brother/sister to fatten myself up."  What it means to me is that we tend tend to criticize so that we fatten up our own egos.  It can blind us to see how God might be working in someone's life.  It cannot comprehend what might be motivating someone's heart to act or be a certain way.  We can tend to bury in anger the frustration that we cannot change someone else.  Sometimes we can criticize authority because it rubs against our own sense of inferiority.  Of all the people and situations that do not warrant my criticism, I could substitute a prayer for them.  Maybe even one of praise.   

Self improvement

 Self-improvement is not a good goal.  Self-annihilation is what we need.  The self is all about the self.  It is like a bad apple.  You cannot make a bad apple better.  It is like an alcoholic saying they want to drink less, drink better.  No go.  If we are going to be transformed then it is going to be God's work and not ours.  Your power is only good for self-fixing and that won't do.  You tried it and failed.  Powerless.  Ask God to show you what needs fixing, and while you are at it, surrender your life to God.  Then be patient, humble, listening, useful to others.  The best of you is buried inside the worst of you.  God will crack you open in time.  

Fabrication

 Virtue that is unobtrusive, anonymous even, can be very helpful in breaking the shell of self-focus.  Example: you walk into a room where all the chairs are askew, not in any order.  No one else in the room.  You straighten out the chair setup and sit down.  Then some other people enter the meeting and note with relief that all the chairs are in place.  You say nothing but a hello.  That is unobtrusive virtue.  It is done without any admiring audience.  What is the good?  Not the orderly room, so much as you will confront your own need to fabricate your self-importance, the great thing we always have to be.  The anonymous rubs up against the need to be noticed, important, essential.  No humility there.  Not much growth either.  

Who Is Where?

The question is not, "Is God in me?"  People with that question, try to go deep, whatever that is, in prayer, so as to get to God in their very center.  They meditate.  They try to let go of surface thoughts and feelings.  Empty out.  But what if God is not in me?  I am in God.  I am in the center of God.  If God were the ocean, I am a within a shell in the center of the water, a shell that needs to be cracked, battered away, worn away, because that shell separates me from God.  So I don't so much go within to I get rid of the shell.  Bad behavior, judgments, the need for superiority, esteem, power, control are some of the things that make up the shell.  Part of the prayer is to find ways to recognize these shortcomings of shell.  And let God break us open, as by ourself, we cannot.  Some people meditate on the Big Book, the Bible, a good spiritual book, not to be read so as to finish, but to be read slowly, so we can chew on whatever takes hold of us.  With some embarrassment, "Is this really me?" and acceptance of our human powerlessness, we will be taken deep, in that the shell will be cracked open.  So read slowly.  Pause as Grace moves you.  We will all die not having read a lot of good books.   

Over Do

People will drink alcohol to feel better, or at least to feel less badly.  If you were thirsty, water would be a better drink than alcohol.  But then sometimes people want to feel better than the better they now feel, as if better than better is real.  What can follow is the slippery slope of overuse.  We do it with other things such as exercise.  We run for a half hour and feel good.  Then we think we will feel twice as good if we run for an hour.  Like too much drinking, too much exercise has us waking up the next day saying, "I will never do that again," or some such mea culpa.  Overuse is the search for oral or physical magic.  Some people find that they can take quite a bit of a bad thing.  They drink too much and exercise too much.  The magic is elusive and imprisoning.  We become addiction-prone.  Now when I am thirsty I drink water.  When I exercise or read or cook or pray, I try to do such in moderation.  I can be addiction-prone.   

The Neighbor

"Love your neighbor" is what we hear in  religion and ethical circles.  Well, as someone said, your nearest neighbor is yourself.  So love yourself.  How does that go?  Easy does it.  Don't beat yourself up with over-scheduled demands.  Don't be so harsh on yourself by cluttering up your life with more things than you can realistically do.  And if you are not good at being realistic, ask someone who knows you.  After people sober up and get some recovery, they tend to try to do too much.  Then comes frustration.  Self-condemnation.  Anger.  And then bad things happen and nothing gets done from the list of projects.  I tend to make high demands upon myself.  So I am trying to become more realistic.  And sometimes my self-demands are covering up something that I really need to do but am trying to avoid.  Trudge.  

Pride

 False pride never thinks it needs forgiveness.  Such a person is better than others, and so false pride is light on forgiveness and acceptance of others.  It condemns behavior that it judges as beneath itself and thinks that such "bad" behavior people should be punished.  That is why I admire recovery programs rather than institutional religion.  People in recovery programs go out of their way to welcome a newcomer to a gathering.  No one feels better than anyone else.  Or if they do, then they are not in recovery.  At one time or another we are all newcomers to something.  Better that it be something good.  For the newcomer, the good does not always look so good.  That is why they are newcomers.  

The Thought

 The thought of a drink is not the same as a desire for a drink.  When an average drinker has a thought of a drink, it does not mean that they desire the drink.  Thoughts come and go.  The unaverage drinker, the alcoholic in recovery, can have thoughts of a drink, but it might not equate with a desire for a drink.  You see alcohol at an event.  You see people drinking. It engenders thoughts, but not necessarily desires, if you are in good recovery, sobriety.  I see a clean car and I have a thought of cleaning my car, washing and soaping and polishing it.  But I don't have the desire to do it.  My car stays dirty.  Fit spiritual condition can deal with thoughts of all kinds.  Of course, if I was  really spiritually fit, I would wash my car.  Wait till Spring.  

Go Forth

 In the Bible there are several instances where one is invited to go forth, leave where they are, the familiar, and journey.  It is like a pilgrimage.  The bible words for "go forth" really mean "Walk toward yourself" as Rami Shapiro says.  In the spiritual life, the stage of deep meditation is a pilgrimage whereby you journey toward your truer self, your deepest heart self.    This is also a meaning of "salvation."  You go into the darkness of unknown lands, beyond familiar thoughts, feelings, and comforts.  Where is God in all this darkness?  God is like your shadow, goes everywhere with you but in this deep darkness you cannot see, apprehend God.  People in Recovery are moving away from familiar addictions, friends, places, lifestyles and into a new life.  You cannot feel the sun if you stay inside the familiar.  You have to go outside to feel the sun.  You have to go outside your familiar, but limited,  self, to experience this new life of salvation.  In the sun you see your shadow.  

Listening

It is important to have someone who listens to you.  That is one of the reasons that a person in Recovery has a Sponsor.  The listener helps a person feel that they are understood.  How?  They ask a question to help the listener to more fully explain.  They affirm what the listener is saying, or question what is being said without judging.  The listener helps the speaker to more fully understand themself, or their situation. I have had times when I spoke up and was ignored.  Or I did not say anything and no one even seemed to recognize I was in the room.  Or I said something to someone and they changed the subject.  Stuff happens.  So have a friend who listens because many people will otherwise disappoint your expectations.  A listener will help you let go of your need, and therefore your expectations, to be heard by so many others.  God, the Listener, I find in Heart meditation.  

Earth

Humus is a Latin word that means "earth."  It is also a root word for "humble."  We come from the earth.  We are but dust, and yet we are so much more.  To be humble is to avoid falsely building ourselves up, false feeding the ego.  But it does not mean that we are nothing, food for the worms when we die.  To be humble is to be on a gradual movement, the unfolding of our inside giftedness, the heart light that is truly ourselves.  Some of this revelation will come in silence and an inner peace.  Sometimes we are more disrupted to find out how beautiful we really are than to find out our faults.  If you can learn to love yourself, then you can learn to love all.   

Mirror

 One of the purposes of prayer is to separate or withdraw oneself from that which causes the mess up in one's life.  Addiction would be one example.  But there are others.  We might not be able to move away from a debilitating relationship, job, behavior all by our own power.  We need prayer.  Also, meditation can help separate us for a few moments from obsessions, bad behavior, bad attitudes.  When one does separate enough over time from all this, then our original self, purer self, as we are created, begins to shine through.  We become the mirror of our original glory.  It is a heart of Love.  

Tissue Tears

 A memorable phrase of spiritual growth is "Your issues are in your tissues."  The deeper your meditation, the more issues will be uncovered in your life that may be full of pain in the memory of them. No longer buried, they come up as tears.  You are grieving.  Some issues are deeply buried, and some we think we handled earlier in our spiritual practice, but find we only touched the outer edges of the pain. Some people stop meditating because they sense the pain and want to keep their tissues dry.  But if you have enough tissues and wet them all, you will find beneath all this hurt, a most beautiful you, totally loved from your inception.  You will love this you and reveal this discovery in the non-dual way you love others.  You will become forgiveness, compassion and Love.  

Martyr

A martyr, witness, is someone who pays a high price for claiming who they are.  They resist powerful forces that try to make them someone else, or reject who the martyr claims to be.  Popular culture thinks of martyr as someone who whines a lot or is in the "poor me" mentality.  That is self-pity.  A martyr actually loves those who oppose them.  A martyr has a contemplative life of daily meditation on a deepening level.  They have come to know who they are and have the courage to live it out.  So if you are living a life someone else chose for you, and you are feeling empty, then Meditation may awaken you and give you the courage to find your truer self and resist the false self that pleases those around you.   

Merit

To "merit" is to earn something by working at it step by step.  I merited Boy Scout badges.  I merited a certificate for working at something.  Now, there are some things we want but we have not worked for them.  We are at the level of "desire."  A person may say, "I need to stop drinking/drugging."  But that is not desire, yet.  They just don't want the hangover, divorce, unemployment, wrecked car and so on.  Desire has an urge to it that presses the "action" button.  With the action button they begin the work, step by step.  In time, they get lots of badges, little round medallions.  Desire>action>medallions.  Hold onto that desire.   

Do Less

 Sone people say they are too busy for meditation.  Well, why not meditate and do less?  Meditation can bring you to doing less, but with an inner awakening.  You become more aware of what drives you to be busy, what really does not need to be done and a new priority account.  Unawakened, we don't see how much of our busyness is done out of fear, ego, self-esteem issues, a desire to please someone so they will like you and all the other things that leave you unfulfilled and even empty.  The insides prayer of quiet and still meditation may even give you a sense of gratitude for this day, without having to earn it by doing, or performing.  Other busy people may think you are lazy at first.  But then your change in attitude, and demeanor, will cancel that out.  Do less.  Accomplish more.  

On Your Own?

 Are you thinking of making some change in your life, on your own?  If so, this will affect only the faculty of your mind.  It will not touch the heart.  You need a greater Power than yourself to include the heart. So a spiritual practice that takes you deep, is what you need.  The heart connect is deep.  The feel good meditations are horizontal and do not really touch the depth of the heart.  With only the mind, our decisions will value what we accomplish, or what others think of us, as the criterion for a decision.  The heart asks if is it really our true self that will be fulfilled, fed and flourish in any change of life decision.   

Beware

 Keep yourself as one who expects temptation to come upon you each day.  Many a person, foolishly, decided they were no longer tempted by this or that.  They thought themselves free of whatever.  They did not feel the urge.  No longer vigilant, they grew slack.  The temptation is only in hiding.  It waits, detached from feelings, cravings, wants.  For what?  For when the "cured" person begins to make decisions from the will-power, the mind, and no longer from the heart.  Then one day, cunning and insidious, the temptation attacks the feelings, the unguarded thought, unguarded decision.  You have no defense and you give in.  Bad things happen from there.  If the heart is not fed a spiritual connection each day, bad things will happen.  

Self-Esteem

 Do not focus so much on wanting glory, honor or praise from others.  It will bury humility and make a god of self-esteem.  Once self-esteem becomes a god, you can never get enough of it to satisfy.  You will become competitive for recognition.  You will calculate how you are better than someone else.  You compare and contrast. You will get resentful, and that list will grow long.  Develop the interior life.  You will realize you are loved by a power greater than yourself.  The good you do is from that power of Love.  You will break the bondage, the chains to self.  

Slippery Slope

 Why focus on prayer early each day?  For one, if you start early, you may return to it briefly during the day.  We are trying to keep God in mind rather than on some back burner, to be called upon at some later time each day.  If we ignore early morning prayer, we might become captive to the events of the day.  Not only will they become our focus, but they will become our ALL, as in all-encompassing.  The ego will rule.  Anxiety will develop.  Maybe fear too.  And then we simply forget God.  As someone said, "To grow careless little by little is the mother of forgetfulness."  If I don't start out with prayer early in the morning, I often get to bedtime and say, "What happened to the day?  I forgot to pray."  Many a person has gotten into Recovery, become very busy, successful, seemingly important, and then gone back to their addiction.   

April Fool

 If you have an addiction disease, don't ignore it.  Don't be an April Fool.  Addiction has a voice and you can hear it in recovery.  The voice is called self-centeredness.  It tells you that you are different, separate, unique, misunderstood, ignored, not like other people.  A good path of attitudes that will lead to destruction and isolation.  If you listen to this voice you will not get into recovery.  You will just destroy yourself.  Humility says that you are just an ordinary addict, just like all the other addicts.  Skin color, sexual preference or identity, income, ethnicity makes no difference.  Addiction is an equal opportunity destroyer.  Yes, all the spectacular things you did when high were done by countless others and some even more bazaar than your actions.  Animals have learned.  It is safer to be in the herd.