Uncover, Discover and Recover

I know very well from my own experience how hard it is to imagine taking on the suffering of others, and especially those of sick and dying people, without first building in yourself a strength and confidence of compassion. It is this strength and this confidence that will give your practice the power to transmute the suffering of others.
    This is why I always recommend that you begin the *Tonglen practice for others by first practicing it on yourself. Before you send out love and compassion to others, you must uncover, deepen, create, and strengthen them in yourself, and heal yourself of any reticence or distress or anger or fear that might create an obstacle to practicing Tonglen wholeheartedly.

Glimpse After Glimpse

Sogyal Rinpoche

*Tonglen: Tibetan meaning of Tonglen meditation practice is sending and receiving.

 

#

Taking on the suffering of others wasn’t part of the bargain when I first began this practice. I had no desire to heal anyone, nor did I wish to involve myself in their recovery in anything but the most superficial manner. I just wanted to have some relief from my own suffering. It is extremely difficult to think about anyone else but myself when I am in pain. I had to uncover the source of my suffering (distrust, anxiety, anger, fear) and share that with another human being to get any sense of what the spiritual path was about in helping others. From the outside it takes on the appearance of self-absorption but, in practice, an open-minded and thorough self-appraisal is the fulcrum that levers us to a higher level; the level where I found that I was worthy of recovery. It truly was the opposite of self-obsession as soon as I saw the universality of grace in the Heart of Compassion. Uncover, Discover and Recover is another trinity that completes the whole in the circle of my own individual expression of compassion for others.

geo 5,263

LOVE!

Those adolescent urges that so many of us have for top approval, perfect security, and perfect romance --- urges quite appropriate to the age seventeen --- prove to be an impossible way of life when we are at age forty-seven.

The Best of Bill:

Love (The next frontier:

Emotional Sobriety), pp. 52-53

~  

   This day of the year is devoted to romantic love as a Hallmark Holiday in these parts of the world. Valentines Day was once a day of contempt for love’s labor lost because of my failure at holding on to whatever is meant by love. It is also the day, February 14th of 1985, that I packed my ex, our daughter and two dogs into the car to bid them farewell so many years ago. I swore then that I’d never invest so thoroughly in love again.

   It is also a date that gives me pause because I realized, somewhere around the age of thirty, that I had no practical concept of love between two people. Love, to me, was more akin to dependency… first, as a child for its parents and a weird co-dependency, one for another, in any relationship. Until the day our daughter was born I had no real appreciation or knowledge for that bonding that arose naturally from the depths of our being: the mother for our daughter and an enlightened love for both the daughter and her mother on my part. From the day of birth on, my experience of love has been a process of letting go as our child grew from her infancy. Because of our eventual divorce, the necessity of letting go of that irresistible possessiveness of grasping, for my own mental health’s sake, became an imperative.

    Who hasn’t suffered heart break at one time or another in our lives? The wisdom of the Heart of Compassion is vast and incomprehensible. We who have tasted and lost the embrace of love are fortunate in that we have an opportunity to experience what love is actually about. Some of us get it sooner than later. For myself, I had to work on the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous before I got a better understanding of mature love. Emotional sobriety is growing out of a spiritual awakening that can only be compared to the helplessness I felt as I stood aside her mother going through labor when our daughter was born and took her first breath.

    Today I am most fortunate that I have invested heart for heart in love once more. It could have never happened.

geo 5,262

Spiritual Practice

“Recently, a Christian theologian asked me how to bring about a global spirituality. The person who interviewed me seemed to distinguish between the spiritual and ethical, but there is always a relationship between the two. Anything can be spiritual. When I pick up my tea in mindfulness, when I look at my tea mindfully, and I begin to drink  my tea in mindfulness, tea drinking becomes very spiritual. When I brush my teeth in mindfulness, aware that it’s wonderful to have time to enjoy brushing my teeth, aware that I am alive, aware that the wonders of life are all around me, and aware that I can brush with love and joy, then tooth brushing becomes spiritual. When you go to the toilet, defecating or urinating, if you are mindful, this can be very spiritual.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

Creating an Enlightened Society, p. 53

Shambalha Sun (Jan 2013 edition)

~

One of the statements I hear so often made by newcomers in AA meetings is; “I don’t get the ‘spiritual aspect’ of this program.” Even though we have worked the Steps and haven’t had a drink in more days than we ever had, it is assumed that, if I don’t believe in a mutually shared concept of God, I am not getting the spiritual aspect of the program. This sense of estrangement from the spiritual ought not to be a problem because, once it is understood, the process of recovery is profoundly spiritual no matter what I believe. Sometimes I wish that the word God would be banned from discussions in meetings even though I have had an awakening that deepened and strengthened my relationship with my understanding of God. I have found that it is more important how I apply my beliefs than whether or not I believe in any concept of God that is foreign to my experience. At the podium of my first Sunday speaker meetings was one of our West Coast founders of the Fellowship from the Pacific Group, Clancy. He said something that cut straight to my heart from there. I don’t even remember what else he might have said but I did hear this: “I’d rather you have a sponsor you can trust and believe in than a God that you don’t trust or believe in.”

geo 5,251

Drive-By Spirituality

God speaks to us in many ways as we find to contact Him. His answers, abstract as they may be, are detected in mind, emotion, and in the new conscience we have developed. We are inspired in accordance with our thoughts and conduct, either with feelings of faith, accomplishment, and serenity, or with confusion, self-pity, and fear.

The Little Red Book:

Step Three,

A Hazelden Publication, p. 38 

~

The mind and the brain have different associations in the East. Westerners think mostly of how the brain works when the mind is spoken of by Zen Buddhists, Yogis or Tibetan monks who consider the mind as the consciousness of the whole body and the “Mind” is the ocean of intelligence beyond the limitations of what Alan Watts calls this “bag of skin”. This distinction is important because we can be heard to say, in the rooms of AA and so on, that the mind of an alcoholic or addict is a dangerous neighborhood to go into alone. When I think of the mind in those terms I think of a gangland occupied by myriad temptations and dangers. Gangs led by ego and desire: followed by confusion, despair, the seven deadly sins hang out there waiting to ambush an unwary interloper.

    What kind of Higher Power do I need to go in and clean up this mess? Many of us have tried to do this by walling off and the isolation of safe neighborhoods, never venturing into the mind, or we entered of our own volition and found ourselves bewildered and powerless. Perhaps we tried to adhere to principles of  a religion or practicing faith in our fellowship or psychiatric therapy,, but find ourselves tempted even more by the attractions there. It is akin to cruising by riding in a squad car and just driving through arresting the drug dealers on the corners and so on with a bunch of rules and "thou shalt nots". Sure, this is a power greater than ourselves but we need something more powerful than that if we expect to make the necessary changes that will make the mind a neighborhood that is a welcoming, safe and inspirational place to venture.

   No human power can make this happen. We need the full resources of God, the Heart of Compassion, or Mind, to make peace there. To calm down and put our natural desires to practical purpose works if we go there with God because the heart of Compassion knows the neighborhood…i.e., God abides in the hearts of our friends and enemies. Opening my mind to a greater Mind that encourages, commends, enthuses and inspires creativity, is the means by which this Spirit changes me; not drive-by sermons and admonitions, no matter how well intentioned.

geo 5,260

Order vs Suggestion

STEP TWO: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.

Given the choice between an order and a suggestion, the recovering person will go for the latter every time. I know I did. There is even a finer line drawn in the first three words of this step. It does not say that we believe… but rather that we came to believe. The difference between these two approaches is dramatic and, for many of us, downright miraculous. For many of us it was a miracle that we came to!

The Zen of Recovery:

Step Two,

Mel Ash

~

There is a neo-gothic Episcopalian Grace Cathedral on top of Nob Hill in San Francisco. The most precious moments of my youth were spent sitting in the wonder and the beauty of that huge quiet space in which my spirit was transported. At that time, in my young and inquiring mind, I was agnostic at best and atheist the rest of the time. I had yet to suffer the bruising onslaught of bad choices that arose from the consequences of a life exploring and stretching the envelope and limitations of unrestrained ego. I was there… more naïve than innocent, but certainly not of evil character... I was there wholly in a state of awe. I came to believe, not so much in God, but I came to believe years later, in the suggestion that a Power greater than myself was an active and restorative spirit personally invested in my sanity. Once more, I reflected back on those special moments and could deeply understand what this phrase meant once the obsession to drink was lifted. No sermon or command could have done the job. It had to percolate from the depths of my heart. This is where the Heart of Compassion met me half way and filled to overflowing the vast cathedral of my soul with awe and wonder.

geo 5,259

Happiness

All those who suffer in the world do so because of their desire for their own happiness. All those happy in the world are so because of their desire for the happiness of others.

Santideva: Bodhicaryavatara s. 129

~ 

I suppose it could be called an oblique strategy to give up finding my own happiness by doing all I can to evoke happiness in others. Subverting this, of course, is the tendency to do so with a hidden agenda of finding happiness for myself. That is called love with strings. I know from experience that any parent knows what it is to give of oneself completely with no strings attached; especially in the first few years of their child’s growth. A mother doesn’t give milk from her breast with the hope of the child one day giving back the milk. It just doesn’t work that way but the bonding that takes place during the most natural of all blessings is returned ten times ten along with the suffering of love.

    This quality of spiritual attainment is a most attractive one. It beats the hell out of warnings of impending doom and damnation. We have had this thrown on us by prohibitionists who would scare us away from the ravages of alcohol and drugs. Such admonitions fall flat on our ears because our initial experience with these toxins is that of intense pleasure and, once we experience them, we often find ourselves mocking the prudes who would... with all good intentions... earnestly try to steer us away from disaster. 

    The most common complaint most of us have about recovery programs is that they lay out a life for us that mocks the joy we found while we were drinking or using. In other words: sobriety of this sort is boring. Until recovery can be seen as an adventure, our eyes won’t open to the possibility that sobriety isn’t the goal at all. Being able to help another human being without strings is the adventure we sought all along because, in doing so, we are no longer preaching a dull and futile struggle. The beast inside will always win that one and we will eventually burn out. In fact, until we are no longer preaching anything at all, the power of the Heart of Compassion won’t open to us. I simply come to a point where, if I see a hungry man and, if I have an apple… well, what do I do with it?

geo 5,258

Psalm 142

PSALM 142

1.    I cried unto the Lord with my voice; with my voice unto the Lord did I make my supplication.
2.    I poured out my complaint before him, I showed before Him my trouble.
3.    When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then I knowest my path. In the way wherein I walked have they privily laid a snare for me.
4.    I looked to my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul.
5.    I cried unto thee, O Lord: I said, Thou art my refuge and the portion in the land of the living.
6.    Attend unto my cry; for I am brought very low: deliver me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than I.
7.    Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the righteous shall compass me about; for thou shalt deal bountifully with me.

Psalm 142,

King James Version

~

The psalmist revealed an essential part, the key, to recovery, here: “I cried unto the Lord with my voice; with my voice I did make my supplication. 2. I poured out my complaint before him, I showed him my trouble.”  

   Some might wonder why it is so damned important to name our disease and admit it out loud in front of others. We do it because it works and it works so very well if I pour it out whole-heartedly. This isn’t a minor part in the process of recovery. Indeed, I can see where it is the single most important admission I could have made other than when I ceded to my innermost-self the hopelessness of my condition. Everywhere I turned there was no help to be found via the hand of others… no phone call I could have made… no religious devotion… no contrivance other than surrender to that mystery of God… of the Heart of Compassion… in the midst of the soul wrenching grip of alcoholism. This disease is far stronger than me and my efforts alone so the next step was to enter the land of the living… surround myself in the Fellowship of others who had been likewise freed. Thus encompassed, I am guaranteed a life of bounty, a strong bond of love, which is dealt graciously by the Hand of God.

geo 5,257