So far this year, I’ve only had one noteworthy fail in my aspiration toward sobriety.
While I’m not happy about it, I can say that I’ve learned from it, and showed quick and resilient bounce-back from it.
Although that doesn’t mean there wasn’t damage — there’s always damage.
It’s in feeling the pain of knowing the harm that I get deeper in touch with the Love that sustains.
That’s been my foundation this year — the love.
Marilynne Robinson has a mystical idea which is actually very practical — that it’s in honoring the dignity and beautiful complexity of People that we begin to see the many immaterial realities which tie us into a rich tapestry of experience (that’s me starting out with her beliefs and paraphrasing them into my own interpretation, although I’m still remaining true to her thought).
As one of my heroes, she spends a lot of time in solitude with her own mind.
This is an aspect of my personality which worries my loved ones — it hasn’t been working before.
Which is a solid critique, and one I’m all-too-aware of in my own consciousness.
The test of any spiritual program, if it’s any good, is that it should manifest its virtue in creating more compassion, Love, and general good-naturedness around others.
I’m fortunate to be able to practice this every day at work (at a job I’ve happily held down for over a year now).
And by practice I don’t just mean I’m this happy, always patient and tolerant guy.
In fact, there’s one co-worker in particular who trips my trigger rather consistently.
I look in my notebook: Wrath. The antidote: Patience.
Please allow me to see
what’s being revealed to me.
There is this tiny little snippet of consciousness I call my experience.
Then there is his experience.
These two are not the same.
When I get angry, it’s because I’m not noting that there is an entire world he’s coming from I’m giving no credence to — I’m trying to run the show using my own fallible and infinitely erroneous landscape.
But there’s a greater consciousness. When I meditate, when I pray, when I write, I’m inching outward into this greater consciousness on my own.
The Hope for which I Pray is that ultimately I’ll be ever more able to live in this greater consciousness for more of the time.
The buzzword of the last decade was “Mindfulness.” I’m in no way anti-mindful, but there needs to be a word that incorporates the Heart.
People-pleasing, I’m told, can lead to resentment and an erosion of a consistent sense of self.
So I’m learning how to continue to remain polite while also being able to set boundaries, allow people to be the beautiful people they are while still being participant.
A hard balance for me to strike. Always has been, since as far back as I can remember.
But I’m 45 now, and continuing to be emotionally immature is not an option.
Confronted with the “you should have done all of this twenty years ago” issue, all I can do now is be present, happy when possible, and make amends where I can. (Where to start?! And How?!)
The rooms tell me it’s one day, one breath at a time. “Easy does it.” The first three steps, they tell me, are the most important in life-long sobriety. Finding that place in the cosmos, connected to Source which is also the End.
That’s all I’ve got today. I hope each and every one of you are well.
Affectionately,
Aaron