Why do I do it?
Today, I ache. Knees, back, neck and shoulders. The physical results of sitting for twelve hours a day for days in a row. I want a massage to regain that sense of comfort I prefer. Tomorrow. Today I just ache. Why, you might ask, would I sit if it hurts so much. I’m asking myself the same question today.
Why oh why? All I really have to do is to think back to those days before I began to sit, to meditate.
Below is an article I wrote about what it used to be like all of the time…
The Great Expanse...
“Some of us have tried to hang onto our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.” Pg. 58 Alcoholics Anonymous
About ten years into sobriety I was at a spiritual retreat. Not comfortable but there. I had concerns about this being a religious retreat rather than an AA spiritual retreat. In expressing my concerns, I obviously stepped on one man’s toes. For the rest of the day he was at me. “Is this all you have to show for those years?” “How does your wife stand it. Living with you, crazy as you are?” “If this is really how you feel, why don’t you just drink and get it over with?” Deep breaths helped only a little. Neither he nor I were going anywhere. And there were two more days at the retreat. At a workshop that afternoon, my head in hand, sitting at a table waiting for the room to fill. In he walks and loudly announces to the room, “There he is. The man who hates everybody.”
The straw that broke my back. As he started to sit down right in front of me I told him that I didn’t appreciate the comments and wished he’d cut it out. Standing over me, he laughed. Time stood still as I lunged at him from across the table, throwing a glass of water into his face. All six foot three of him coming over the table at me. Nothing but silence as the room gasped.
Oh god, oh god, I’ve done it again. Started another fight.
I’ve been meditating for a long time. Used to smoke dope and meditate. Take hallucinogens and meditate. Keep a pint bottle in my back pocket as I went to meditate. I’ve even drunk puked driving home from meditation. I’m grateful for my attempts at meditation. I think they helped keep me alive, but not sober.
By the time I finally got to AA, my idea of hell was sober quiet time alone. Nothing to drown out restless, irritable and discontent. My sober state of being was intolerable. And I had no idea how to get along with myself or others without being drunk.
Fortunately I bottomed, sobered up and became willing to work the steps. As the story goes about sobering up a horse thief, when I sobered up all I had was restless, irritable and discontent. My first five years were hell. But I didn’t drink. I went to lots of meetings, worked the steps and was of service. And eventually I began to try meditation again. Simple stuff at first. Just sitting quietly for ten or fifteen minutes. Mind racing. Running over the day, plotting strategies for getting what I wanted, for revenge, justifying my resentments and my fears… it was not pleasant. It didn’t feel very spiritual. Mind racing about how to arrange life to suit me. Racing about how to wrest satisfaction and happiness out of life. Sometime during my fifth year I went to a meeting and said, “If it doesn’t get any better than this, I don’t see the point.” I was ready to die. I had to find an end to this restlessness. This anger. This fear.
I’d come to believe in step two. Was doing my best with three. The other steps began to come. Magically sponsors appeared. Each with just the right lessons for just the right length of time. Survival began to be a possibility. But I wanted much much much more than to just survive. I wanted happy joyous and free.
It became time for step eleven. Time for prayer and meditation again. I was following instructions by now. I had hope. I had experienced the sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly aspect of the promises. I was hungry for more. So I began to sit. Still. Twenty minutes a day. At least that was the goal. Twenty minutes of just being quiet. Creating space for knowledge of god’s will to come in.
First day I lasted about ten seconds. Jumped up and out the front door. Man this is impossible. No way I can sit through how I feel without distraction. Second day I was advised to just count my breaths. Give me something to do until I could calm down. Breath in, and out is one. Breath in, and out is two. Breath in, and out is three. And I’m out of here. There was just no way. I wasn’t capable of stopping the thinking and the feelings that went with it all. Just like with alcohol. Powerless and unmanageable.
By this time I’d met people who had what I wanted. They meditated. I was convinced that I had to learn to meditate or I’d die. So I asked. For help. For willingness. For the strength. And one day at a time, ten years have gone by.
Meditation is just perfect for people like me. It is how I continue to take inventory. Being present with exactly how I am at any given moment. Nothing like quiet time to really notice what’s going on. No escape. My troubles are right there for me to look at. Where I know in my heart when I’m wrong. It shows me my insanity close up and personal. To sit with in powerlessness. Where the only way out of the suffering is to accept that things are exactly as they are supposed to be. It is where I’ve learned to become entirely willing and to humbly ask. It is where I make amends to myself for those never ending resentments. Where I learn to fall in love with myself and my faults or else.
From the beginning I’ve worked on staying sober as if my life depended upon it. And things were definitely getting better. Loving work. Happily married. Sober. And still starting fights. Still unable to not act like a complete jerk. In total despair I called my sponsor and told him I’d blown it again, again. In tears, I asked what to do. He invited me over. Let’s see what could be done. And over I went. Willing to do anything. The pain of having done it again was eating me alive. Again, I just didn’t see the point of going on. If all my work was going to keep failing, why bother.
As always he invited me in. “Get comfortable. We’re going to meditate on this and see what happens.”
You’ve got to be effing kidding me. I’m dying here and we are going to meditate. Whatever. I’m willing to do anything to have this gone. And we meditated. We got comfortable. I usually meditate in my recliner. Same today. We got very quiet and waited. Breathing in and out. Every once and a while he would ask me a question. “Can you feel the anger that led up to the explosion?” Oh, indeed I could. I was still trembling. Another long quiet silence. More breaths. “And what lies underneath that anger?” Immediately I began to shake in fear. Terror at the unmanageable parts of life. Furious at the jerk who wouldn’t leave me alone. Trembling at how little I can actually control and manage. Not me. Not him. And scared to death that there wasn’t really anything I’d been able to come up with to change how he felt about me or about how he’d behaved. Another long silence to just feel how scared I was. “And what lies behind all that fear?” I began to rock with laughter. Suddenly, in just the briefest of moments, I saw how all the stories that I regularly told myself led up to this fear. I felt the self-reliance and the price of that failed strategy of life. “And what would it be like if you let go of those stories?” A light went on. Happy joyous and free beyond my wildest dreams, that’s how it would feel. That’s how it felt. In that moment I touched a place that I’d been craving for my whole life. Peace beyond my wildest dreams. In that time of meditation, of sitting quietly and asking for knowledge of god’s will for me, it came. Straight into my heart. Let go. Let god. Seek through prayer and meditation for a conscious contact with a power greater than us. Ask for knowledge of god’s will for us and the power to carry that out.
Not drinking and mediation are integrally intertwined. Living sober is very difficult for me. I’m stubborn and arrogant. In sobriety I’ve been beaten into a state of reasonableness where I had to ask for help. On that day I’ve described, and on many others, in the quietness of meditation that help came. I was able to stick with something that I knew I couldn’t do. Something that seemed impossible and was so uncomfortable that I had to run from the room. Early on in I was told to keep coming back. Regarding meditation, with gentleness and patience, one day at a day I kept coming back. I’m so glad that I did.
From the Grapevine April 2004
So I keep sitting. My life depends upon it.
Today, I ache. Knees, back, neck and shoulders. The physical results of sitting for twelve hours a day for days in a row. I want a massage to regain that sense of comfort I prefer. Tomorrow. Today I just ache. Why, you might ask, would I sit if it hurts so much. I’m asking myself the same question today.
Why oh why? All I really have to do is to think back to those days before I began to sit, to meditate.
Below is an article I wrote about what it used to be like all of the time…
The Great Expanse...
“Some of us have tried to hang onto our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely.” Pg. 58 Alcoholics Anonymous
About ten years into sobriety I was at a spiritual retreat. Not comfortable but there. I had concerns about this being a religious retreat rather than an AA spiritual retreat. In expressing my concerns, I obviously stepped on one man’s toes. For the rest of the day he was at me. “Is this all you have to show for those years?” “How does your wife stand it. Living with you, crazy as you are?” “If this is really how you feel, why don’t you just drink and get it over with?” Deep breaths helped only a little. Neither he nor I were going anywhere. And there were two more days at the retreat. At a workshop that afternoon, my head in hand, sitting at a table waiting for the room to fill. In he walks and loudly announces to the room, “There he is. The man who hates everybody.”
The straw that broke my back. As he started to sit down right in front of me I told him that I didn’t appreciate the comments and wished he’d cut it out. Standing over me, he laughed. Time stood still as I lunged at him from across the table, throwing a glass of water into his face. All six foot three of him coming over the table at me. Nothing but silence as the room gasped.
Oh god, oh god, I’ve done it again. Started another fight.
I’ve been meditating for a long time. Used to smoke dope and meditate. Take hallucinogens and meditate. Keep a pint bottle in my back pocket as I went to meditate. I’ve even drunk puked driving home from meditation. I’m grateful for my attempts at meditation. I think they helped keep me alive, but not sober.
By the time I finally got to AA, my idea of hell was sober quiet time alone. Nothing to drown out restless, irritable and discontent. My sober state of being was intolerable. And I had no idea how to get along with myself or others without being drunk.
Fortunately I bottomed, sobered up and became willing to work the steps. As the story goes about sobering up a horse thief, when I sobered up all I had was restless, irritable and discontent. My first five years were hell. But I didn’t drink. I went to lots of meetings, worked the steps and was of service. And eventually I began to try meditation again. Simple stuff at first. Just sitting quietly for ten or fifteen minutes. Mind racing. Running over the day, plotting strategies for getting what I wanted, for revenge, justifying my resentments and my fears… it was not pleasant. It didn’t feel very spiritual. Mind racing about how to arrange life to suit me. Racing about how to wrest satisfaction and happiness out of life. Sometime during my fifth year I went to a meeting and said, “If it doesn’t get any better than this, I don’t see the point.” I was ready to die. I had to find an end to this restlessness. This anger. This fear.
I’d come to believe in step two. Was doing my best with three. The other steps began to come. Magically sponsors appeared. Each with just the right lessons for just the right length of time. Survival began to be a possibility. But I wanted much much much more than to just survive. I wanted happy joyous and free.
It became time for step eleven. Time for prayer and meditation again. I was following instructions by now. I had hope. I had experienced the sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly aspect of the promises. I was hungry for more. So I began to sit. Still. Twenty minutes a day. At least that was the goal. Twenty minutes of just being quiet. Creating space for knowledge of god’s will to come in.
First day I lasted about ten seconds. Jumped up and out the front door. Man this is impossible. No way I can sit through how I feel without distraction. Second day I was advised to just count my breaths. Give me something to do until I could calm down. Breath in, and out is one. Breath in, and out is two. Breath in, and out is three. And I’m out of here. There was just no way. I wasn’t capable of stopping the thinking and the feelings that went with it all. Just like with alcohol. Powerless and unmanageable.
By this time I’d met people who had what I wanted. They meditated. I was convinced that I had to learn to meditate or I’d die. So I asked. For help. For willingness. For the strength. And one day at a time, ten years have gone by.
Meditation is just perfect for people like me. It is how I continue to take inventory. Being present with exactly how I am at any given moment. Nothing like quiet time to really notice what’s going on. No escape. My troubles are right there for me to look at. Where I know in my heart when I’m wrong. It shows me my insanity close up and personal. To sit with in powerlessness. Where the only way out of the suffering is to accept that things are exactly as they are supposed to be. It is where I’ve learned to become entirely willing and to humbly ask. It is where I make amends to myself for those never ending resentments. Where I learn to fall in love with myself and my faults or else.
From the beginning I’ve worked on staying sober as if my life depended upon it. And things were definitely getting better. Loving work. Happily married. Sober. And still starting fights. Still unable to not act like a complete jerk. In total despair I called my sponsor and told him I’d blown it again, again. In tears, I asked what to do. He invited me over. Let’s see what could be done. And over I went. Willing to do anything. The pain of having done it again was eating me alive. Again, I just didn’t see the point of going on. If all my work was going to keep failing, why bother.
As always he invited me in. “Get comfortable. We’re going to meditate on this and see what happens.”
You’ve got to be effing kidding me. I’m dying here and we are going to meditate. Whatever. I’m willing to do anything to have this gone. And we meditated. We got comfortable. I usually meditate in my recliner. Same today. We got very quiet and waited. Breathing in and out. Every once and a while he would ask me a question. “Can you feel the anger that led up to the explosion?” Oh, indeed I could. I was still trembling. Another long quiet silence. More breaths. “And what lies underneath that anger?” Immediately I began to shake in fear. Terror at the unmanageable parts of life. Furious at the jerk who wouldn’t leave me alone. Trembling at how little I can actually control and manage. Not me. Not him. And scared to death that there wasn’t really anything I’d been able to come up with to change how he felt about me or about how he’d behaved. Another long silence to just feel how scared I was. “And what lies behind all that fear?” I began to rock with laughter. Suddenly, in just the briefest of moments, I saw how all the stories that I regularly told myself led up to this fear. I felt the self-reliance and the price of that failed strategy of life. “And what would it be like if you let go of those stories?” A light went on. Happy joyous and free beyond my wildest dreams, that’s how it would feel. That’s how it felt. In that moment I touched a place that I’d been craving for my whole life. Peace beyond my wildest dreams. In that time of meditation, of sitting quietly and asking for knowledge of god’s will for me, it came. Straight into my heart. Let go. Let god. Seek through prayer and meditation for a conscious contact with a power greater than us. Ask for knowledge of god’s will for us and the power to carry that out.
Not drinking and mediation are integrally intertwined. Living sober is very difficult for me. I’m stubborn and arrogant. In sobriety I’ve been beaten into a state of reasonableness where I had to ask for help. On that day I’ve described, and on many others, in the quietness of meditation that help came. I was able to stick with something that I knew I couldn’t do. Something that seemed impossible and was so uncomfortable that I had to run from the room. Early on in I was told to keep coming back. Regarding meditation, with gentleness and patience, one day at a day I kept coming back. I’m so glad that I did.
From the Grapevine April 2004
So I keep sitting. My life depends upon it.
