We Made It!

This day, being the day when many of us review the year and give some thought as to how well it went: we look at the social and economic tail-spin the world at large has been plummeting through, seldom stopping to appreciate the fact that we are here, and, for this moment, we are alright.

I sat down this morning... took a deep breath... lighting some incense and candle... took another deep breath. It was a simple act…mind you, nothing pompous or anything like that, but I love to do this: count the months… hmm… twelve of them: the days, three-hundred and sixty-five of them: the hours; eight-thousand, seven-hundred and sixty of these: the minutes too, because sometimes this year it has been a minute by minute challenge and there are, whew, five-hundred-thousand- twenty-five and six-hundred minutes… every precious one of these I honor and am grateful for.

It has been a full year: full of excitement, discovery: the love that was shared with my precious mate, Bonnie: pleasures of all sorts as well as expectations unmet, defeat at times and persistent bouts of pain too. But I made it out of nothing I have earned. I didn’t get this far because I am a good guy and God loves me more than the multitudes that did not make it to this day. If we are here, now; we just won the lottery of life this year and it has been our joy to have shared it with each other. 

Mostly, I am grateful for the bones that paved the way... the bones of those who have gone before... some of whom we mourned, who passed away this year: the ones who danced down the streets like dingledodies... the ones I shamble after as I have been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everyone goes "Awww!"

And I thank Jack Kerouac for most of that last paragraph... my gratitude goes on and on into next year. In 2012 we get an extra twenty-four hours... whoopee! uh... unless the Mayan Calendar ... nevermind.

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geo, 4,581

Addiction/ Treatment or Punishment

Our prisons are full and they are full of people who would not be there at all were it not for one addiction or another. It is hard to convince a non-addict/alcoholic that addiction is a disease that is treatable. Looking at the lives of those who have sought treatment and turned their lives around, it is obvious that our punitive reflex to drugs and alcohol related offenses only make the problem worse. We can injure any other part of the body, come down with any cancer or genetic disability and consider the person afflicted to be blameless. However, it seems to be impossible to see addiction/alcoholism as a brain injury equal to the toxic affects on the brain of overexposure to lead or mercury by society. The medical profession has known this for over a century. Today we have M.R.I.'s and other tools that can pin-point where in the brain we are injured by this disease. Whether or not it is a genetic or environmentally induced condition isn't contested because it is often found to be both.Furthermore, the genome having been decoded has found that the genetic disposition of the alcoholic is qualitatively distinct from that of a normal drinker.

Compassionate treatment goes much further than punishment and this too is known by all but politicians who prefer the demagoguery  of declaring a War on Drugs and Three Strikes laws to putting the equal funding into medical facilities.Tags such as The War On Drugs peg the emotional buttons that sane efforts don't evoke. It is time for a change.Turning our mental hospitals into compassion care centers for mental disease would go so much further in my opinion.

geo, 4,580

Love? God? Compassion...

 Love? It is an oft used word, like God, that is hardly understood at all. It is hardly understood at all because the word covers so much territory and carries so much baggage with it. 

Whenever I hear myself, or someone else, say; “I love everybody!” I am cautious. I fear I will be required to return their frequently misunderstood conception of what they believe love means and I become reticent to reciprocate. It is the same for me with the word God. The two are interchangeable in my mind. I’m inclined to use compassion more easily because I don’t have to think about its meaning. I instinctively know that Love and God are actions too; but, because of a lifetime of indoctrination, I hardly understood them that way at all. Compassion embraces the action and I automatically see the expansiveness of caring… deeply caring… without bringing with it any baggage of expectations, fear or churchy do-gooding. Compassion is a connection I make with the world around me and expresses itself immediately or not. I pray, or meditate, to be open to compassion and to be able to move with it.

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geo, 4,579

My practice keeps the wild dogs at bay

Sometimes I wonder why I am doing all of this spiritual-goody-two-shoes business. Really, am I a saint? What is this all about? However, I have developed and certain amount of consistency in my practice that keeps the wolf from the door. At heart I know I am more inclined to go after my own business and forsake this Bodhisattva crap. Really, I am serious. Why bother… we all end up under the same shovel of dirt anyway? 

But my practice keeps my wild dogs at bay. I sit every morning and allow my inner-self to percolate into an acceptable brew (I am aware that this is a pre-Mr. Coffee metaphor but allowing it, the inner-self, to drip doesn't fit). Somehow the power of what we call God transcends the selfishness of my desires.

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Geo, 4,578

Relationships with Other People and Isolation

No matter how long I’ve been around, I still go through periods where I want to isolate and don’t want to be around other people. I don't go insane or get into any destructive behaviors. I don't vegetate in front of the TV or cram my face with creme puffs... nor am I tempted to run to the liquor store; however, I have found that separation from other people is not entirely a negative thing. In fact, if I use that space creatively, the relationship I have with my innermost being is magnified for the good and the bad. But I’ve learned that such periods of doubt and depression ought to be cut short if nothing positive comes of them. These periods ought to improve my relationships with other people as well as with God because these are interrelated.

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 geo, 4,577

Have a Sacred Christmas

Many of us celebrate this day as the birth of Christ. To me it is the celebration of my own spiritual awakening… the birth of my spirit, the Christ within. The other three-hundred and sixty-five days of the year allow me the space to open up my own spirit and tap into the grace of that spiritual awakening. In that sense the cliché rings true, everyday is Christmas. I don’t have to wait for some Santa Clause vision of God to grant my wishes because my wishes don’t matter as much as the hope to pass on what I have found. It isn’t so much that I don’t have hopes and wishes for myself but, rather, my hopes and wishes take second place to the vision, the passion, the power and the grace of the Spirit of that Christ that was born in my heart.

The word Christ is from the Greek adjective, Christos, and it literally means, anointed one. Poets, philosophers and great minds of all sorts (athletes and warriors too) were said to be anointed with the spirit. Olive oil would be ceremoniously poured, or dabbed, over their heads as a public recognition symbolizing this spiritual anointing. It would not be improper then to call Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, Muhammed Ali and Alexander the Great a Christ in this sense. It would also be easy to say that awakening the Christ within would then be an act of grace and an anointing: a christening of sorts, eh?

geo, 4,575

Experiance Trumps Opinion

When I listen to others explain spiritual principles, concepts, or visions of deity, I expect to hear them share their experience. My mind slams shut when I am proselytized by  opinions that are not from the heart. What I know of God is scrutinized by the same standards. If I haven’t personally experienced aspects of God, and only have opinions based on what someone else has written or said, no matter how holy the saint or sacred the text, then I am speaking from my head and not my heart about something I have no actual relationship with. 

I can say that I have experienced a seemingly serendipitous set of coincidences and felt an amazing release from the neurosis of alcoholism but I do not have a tag for it. I use the word God at times to explain this phenomenon but I prefer to call this power, The Spirit of Recovery. This removes the baggage that sometimes comes with this simple three letter word, God, for me. However, my experience does not grant me the permission to dismiss the experience of others; however fantastic or grand. Thus, coming from the heart, the truth of its bearer is to be respected.

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geo, 4,574