The Great Expanse
It's the long stretch of freedom on the other side of fear
April 2004
"Some of us have tried to hang onto our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go absolutely."Alcoholics Anonymous
About ten years into my 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 all your years of sobriety? How does your wife stand 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 of the retreat to go.
At a workshop that afternoon, I was sitting at a table waiting for the room to fill, head in hand. In he walks and loudly announces to the room, "There he is. The man who hates everybody." That was 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 in his face. All six-feet-three of him came over the table at me. There was 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. Used to keep a pint bottle in my back pocket when 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 feeling "restless, irritable and discontented." 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 about sobering up a horse thief goes, when I sobered up all I had was being restless, irritable, and discontented. 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 more than just to survive. I wanted to be "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.
The first day I lasted about ten seconds, and then I jumped up and out the front door. Man, this is impossible, I thought. No way can I sit through how I feel without distraction. The second day I was advised just to count my breaths. It gave 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. I get to sit with it in powerlessness, where the only way out of the suffering is to accept that things are exactly as they're 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 by year ten things were definitely getting better. I loved work. I was 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 thought. 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. We got very quiet and waited. Breathing in and out. Every once in 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. Fury at the jerk who wouldn't leave me alone. Trembling at how little I can actually control and manage: not me, not him. And I was scared to death that I hadn't been able to come up with anything 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 ourselves. Ask for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out.
Not drinking and meditation 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 at AA meetings, I was told to keep coming back. Regarding meditation, with gentleness and patience, one day at a time, I kept coming back. I'm so glad that I did.
