Endings/Beginnings

Dr. Carl Jung, one of the three founders of modern depth psychology, had a profound conviction… paraphrased, this is what he had to say about it: “Any person who has reached forty years of age, and who still has no means of comprehending who he is, where he is, and where he is next going, cannot avoid becoming neurotic --- to some degree or another. This is true whether his youthful drives for sex, material security, and a place in society have been satisfied, or not satisfied.” 
Bill W.
The Best of Bill
Fear

 Fourteen years ago on this date the slightest clue that my life would be altered in every way had not presented itself. But my life was turned upside down… inside out… that particular Monday. It really doesn’t matter the details of exactly what happened to me that day but what I can see is that an essential element was added to how I perceived the world around me. I sometimes imagine what it would be like, in an alternative universe, if another George kept on doing what he was doing that day. Instead, I was brought to my knees by a self-imposed crisis of a magnitude that is hard to express. I ordered my last drink at Mel’s… September 14th, 1998… one last drink and, Pow! Right in the kisser… I was God-smacked. I left that drink on the bar and walked away. Demoralized and out of answers I went home… curled up in the fetal position on grey sheets and gave up all hope. Nothing about my life has been the same since that day. I have new routines now. I drink daily from the cup of life when I sit a few minutes with the Heart of Compassion. It was the Heart of Compassion that lifted the obsession to drink; it was the Heart of Compassion that led me to the doors of AA; and it is the Heart of Compassion that opens my own heart to the suffering of others. What I do today isn’t mine to take credit for but the spirit that dwells in all of us does the heavy lifting.


Our dentist, Dr. Jim Rolf, DDS has a mission in Afghanistan in which he trains dental technicians and dentists for work in a sorely neglected medical necessity there. His property, where his clinic is on in shipping containers, is being sold out from under him. He hasn't given up and his calls for financing falls of deaf ears... partially because of all the scams attached to charities of this sort in hopeless places and partially out of apathy. He hasn't given up because he admits he is not doing this work of his own power. He is inspired by the Heart of Compassion's call whether or not he succeeds or fails.


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