“They say that as you grow older, you gradually lose your mind.  What they don’t tell you is that you probably won’t miss it very much.” – – unknown

Last week as I was leaving my doctor’s office he noticed that I was reading a copy of Eckhart Tolle’s “The Power Of Now” while I was in the waiting room.  He offered another author that he liked and I quickly advised him that I had been “modalitied up the kazoo,” and that my issue was sticking with any one particular method of practicing peacefulness.  I pointed to the book and said “Like this one – – it just seems too easy and too good to be true.”  Indeed.  When I pick up a book like this, or A Course In Miracles, or The Four Agreements, it reminds me pretty instantly how identified I am with the spooky world inside my head.  My saving grace, though it offers little comfort, is that we’re all in the same boat.  Millionaires, poor folks, call center reps, even some “spiritual teachers” are all at various levels of unease.  The mind, I often forget (thanks to the tricky workings of my mind) would like me to identify with it and see problems everywhere, rather than do something as simple as take nice deep breaths and stop thinking here and there.  Thought, time, resistance, the mind . . . they’re all the same thing.  And none of them are me.

I got off the “mindfulness” boat long ago.  I grew weary of the term early in the new age boom of the 80’s and 90’s, and really feel fortunate to be able to look at that word and question what exactly my mind is “full” of.   Usually poop.  No matter what I train my mind to do, it usually has it’s way with me.  I’m certainly not advocating walking around zombie-like and never ever engaging in a single thought: what I’m trying to write about here is not only taking periodic, brief breaks from the endless cycles of thought, but also keeping attention on and/or in my body.  Feeling the presence in me rather than thinking about it. Bible verse and other spiritual modalities make reference to God being “closer than hands and feet” and “closer than breathing.”  Boy, that’s pretty close.  To know that re-connecting with such a Source is that simple is just plain mind-blowing.  Literally. And scary.  Without all of my thoughts and my mind, what’s left of me

For those of atheistic, or agnostic bend, Tolle offers another option of referring to the remarkably accessible presence as just that, “presence,” or “the now.” For it’s opponent (he goes to great lengths to say in so many words that “presence” offers no opposition – – it just “is.”) he makes reference to “the pain body.”  Don Miguel Ruiz calls it “the parasite.”  A Course In Miracles states it quite plainly as “the ego.” That accessing a peaceful, indeed, quite magical Self that is my true identity does often seem too good to be true, is no surprise.  I’m so much more conditioned to complaining, blaming everyone around me, and feeling like a helpless victim of circumstances that it’s a deeply grooved response mode I’m quite familiar with.  Too familiar.  All three of the modalities I’m mentioned talk in different terms about the ego being absolutely terrified of dying, and mounting a huge resurgence as soon as even so much as a moment’s enlightenment seems possible.  And the fact is, enlightenment is available not in the past, not in the future, but right here, right now.  All I have to do is keep at least some of my attention directed in my body while I engage in every day activities?  Seriously?  Yeppers.  It works.

I once heard Tolle say that going about our day complaining about all of our surroundings, our workplace, other people, blaming, shaming, gossiping, is much like looking in the mirror and then attacking the mirror.  Doing such a thing would be insanity.  And attacking a mirror is exactly what I’m doing when I’m performing everything mentioned prior to the mirror analogy.

I remember years ago seeing a Dennis The Menace cartoon in which he asked what he could do for the day and his mom said “don’t play in the mud,” then “don’t jump in any puddles,” then “don’t let Ruff out of the yard,” to which Dennis replied “that’s not doing, that’s dont’ing.”  No matter what the modality, practicing being present isn’t not complaining, not being unhappy at work, not blaming, it’s keeping my attention inside, not thinking about the Presence inside, but just letting my thoughts be there and  becoming aware of and feeling that beautiful Presence that makes me the same as everyone else.  When I practice this even for a few seconds, it’s pretty impossible to look at another person or situation and judge it.  It’s just there.  And underneath the person or situation is what’s real about it: it too, contains Presence.

At work this past Friday I had a conversation with a co-worker that embarrassed me when I thought back to it today.  In fact, it, and my entire work situation started to eat me alive (parasite).  I began paying attention to the presence inside, would have a huge resurgence of ego saying, “but look at what she’s doing at work, and man, the way she rips everybody and gossips to keep her mind off herself and, and, and, and . .  .” as my predictable ego would sense me going beyond duality, beyond being happy/unhappy, content/discontent, at ease/diseased.  And suddenly I was awakened from a bad dream again.  Until the next time I decide to sleep walk with my ego in charge.  I like the “Presence” way better.

A few months ago I lost a book called “The Infinite Way” that I’ve enjoyed immensely since the early 90’s, and I still had my original copy.  It was in early May, I believe when we went our separate ways.  I used to refer to it as “my little gold book” not only because of the gold cover, but also because of it’s content.  A couple of weeks ago while coming to from a brief meditation session, I had an image of my book bag that I use during the school year.  I hadn’t touched it since spring classes ended.  On a whim I went to check it out, and of course, there was my little gold book.  Someone up there (um, . . . in here) likes me.  From there I went to several other publications that I really like and soon was practicing being here now like good ol’ Ram Dass preached years ago.  I believe I’m back on track albeit ego-fits preclude me being my true self 24/7 lately, on occasion that is to say, I’m prone to a blast of gossip and slamming other people, much like attacking a mirror.  In fact it’s not like attacking a mirror, the actions are one and the same.  In fact such an insane episode I can even take as a good sign that my ego is terrified of receding into the background more than it’s used to.  Just for today, I’m not concerned with becoming an “enlightened being” or “whole,”  I’ve wasted too much time looking for something I could have found sitting in a chair by myself.  It was and is here always.  I just need to focus my attention inside, no matter what I’m thinking.  I am not my mind.  A Course In Miracles states in so many words that everything exists in the mind.  There is no “out there.”  Ok.  Then I’ll be joyfully content with whatever form comes to me of a suggestion that was made to me years ago: “in order to find God, you need to lose your mind.”  Working on it.

Peace

“Only those who risk going too far can possibly find out how far they can go.” – – T.S. Eliot

For the longest time I’ve wondered what it would be like to be at “peak” health, and think I came close maybe ten years ago due to a healthier diet and running sometimes twice a day.  I dropped down from a little over two hundred pounds to about 148, felt great, but couldn’t help notice (and go into denial about) frequent bouts with feeling tired.  Go figure.  I was averaging about 50-60 miles per week in training for Twin Cities Marathon, but for a few weeks was more in the 80-90 range.  Insanity for anybody but an “elite” runner, but I managed, and quite frankly as I mentioned, in-between the tired bouts I felt fantastic.  And trim.  And finished with my third best marathon time ever.  A few notes to myself: I was ten years younger then, was earning considerably more money and thus could more easily afford training stuffs, I was ten years younger then, plus I was ten years younger then. Did I mention that I was ten years younger then?  Still, that stubborn streak, or possibly some lack of acceptance about aging, has me going for 1000 miles total by Labor Day.  I began my goal on June 1st, thus giving me 92 days to average 10.87 miles per day.  Quite the daunting feat for anyone, (except my ultra-running friend Sheila and her husband who likely both take care of 10% of that before they brush their teeth in the morning), much less a 58 year old.

A large part of what I’m doing is with what feels like a very extended mid-life crisis.  I finally decided a year ago that I want to write for a living, not work in a call center as I have been doing for so many years. The process to get there has been painfully slow, and this fall I’ll finally be getting enrolled into a creative writing program.  Granted, the call center I’m in has likely been the most pleasant experience of all I’ve been thru, it still is difficult to be in as they all are from time to time.  With all due respect to a great employer, I just don’t want to be there any more.  I read of a similar plight in Marshall Ullrich’s book “Running On Empty,” his diary of running across the entire country in hopes of finding his own depth and quelling various internal fires.  It didn’t sound pleasant much of the time, still I’ve been intrigued ever since by the idea of what it must have felt like to go through such self-induced agony.  I have no idea how he feels about himself now, about five years later, but at the time it seemed like he reached a major life break-through.  If that’s the case, I’m all in.

I’ve not had the pleasure of doing what I love for a living as many of us have the misfortune to be able to say.  The very least this experience is giving me is one more thing to write about.  Already I’m having some beginning fears, ups-and-downs, the mood swings that accompany jumping from running about 20 miles a week to 50-60.  Plus, in order to reach my goal on time I’ll need to average in the 80-90 range for at least part of my little journey.  My work buddy Brian has a child who suffers from a nut allergy, and is active with FARE , Food Allergy Research & Education.  I told Brian earlier in the year that if I had a cause, I would run 1000 miles for it if someone else was willing to do all of the administrative/fund raising end.  The result has been a beautiful personalized website (see below) complete by Brian’s wife Beth where anyone can donate money for research or just leave me an encouraging word.  Believe me, I’ll need them.

So inward hoe to the writing source again, and likely I’ll be writing with more frequency about my joys and sorrows in the next few months.  Already I’ve encountered some nasty obstacles:  I’m being denied access to my favorite ten mile route due to road construction.  My five mile route then got closed off, and most recently my 8 and 4 milers have been altered considerably.  I mapped about the various routes years ago and strategically planned them with various SA pit-stops and other stores where I could stop and re-fuel.  I don’t own a “fanny-pack” nor do I care to use one, I’ve always found such equipment to be overly cumbersome.  So I’ve usually plunked down a buck or two for whatever beverage or fruit/candy bar that struck my fancy at various stations.  No more.  So I’ve compensated by doing laps on a pair of makeshift routes that allow me to stop home for a drink, or at a local BP station close to home.  The good news there I guess is that I may spend a little less money over the next month or so (construction in some of my blocked areas is supposed to be done by the end of this month), then return to my regular haunts.

I usually go through three pairs of running shoes a year which are typically anywhere from $100-$150 depending on make and model, and boy are they a godsend.  I honestly don’t know how distance runners survived pre-70’s without specially designed shoes.  It has become quite the science over the last few decades, and there is a particular shoe type for just about every type and size of runner imaginable.  The downfall is that shoes are advertised to be supportive for 300-500 miles or three months, whichever comes first.  In my experience it’s been more like 200-300 miles.  Max.  Thus I’ll likely go through 3 pairs of shoes this summer alone, rather than the full year it usually takes to wear out the same number.  Luckily for me, I still have what feels like another hundred miles or so in my current pair.  There’s a lot more to running than most people think.  We don’t just put on any pair of shoes and head out the door for a half hour or so, then spend the rest of the day eating spaghetti.  If most of us adhered to the imaginations of a lot of non-runners, more of us would have a lot more injuries than we do and would weigh about 350 pounds.  I prefer to buck the image.

As I build my endurance and try to lose some weight, I am finishing out week number one at 50 miles with today’s five miler.  I am tired, and wondering how I’ll be feeling a few weeks from now, but finding more and more arguments to stay in the “here-and-now.”  I need to pay extra attention to diet and once again look at food as fuel, not just something to satisfy my taste buds with or to overindulge in.  Running right now is an obvious drug for me: when I’m alone and running any cares seem miles away, and I’ve had a lot of them lately – – miles and worries that is, worries of things real or imagined, and wondering if I’m ever going to fulfill my dream of writing as a vocation.  So in addition to the improvement in health and attention to the now, I also am finding additional motivation to indulge in my passion, my first love, symbolically “putting the pen to paper.”  Many are giving me leeway to not run the entire thousand miles by Labor Day, but at this time I’m of a different bend.  I may not make it, but I’m going to go down swinging.  Regardless, I suspect I’m going to come out a pretty different person on the other side.  My crystal ball doesn’t afford me the details of exactly what that might be, but it is yet another carrot I’m dangling in front of myself.  I feel a Presence with me more and more lately that is carrying me through to the other side no matter what the outcome, and I look forward to regularly spending very focused time with It for an hour or two on the road every day.  It is one of my Comforts, indeed.  Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a thousand miles to run.

Peace

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“Some people never get, some never give.  Some people never die, some never live.” – – Don Williams

I was watching an episode of the Twilight Zone a few weeks ago in which a couple was stranded in a town, having their every move dictated by a little fortune-telling machine in the booth of a restaurant they had been in.  Since an initial reading, they returned repeatedly for guidance, convinced that they were trapped in this town they were passing through, and could leave only when the oracle allowed.

I have been in recovery for over 26 years now, and I swear that there’s nothing that can form a vice grip on me more than when getting obsessive about a psychic or tarot card reading and living my life according to what I heard.  Twelve steps out the window.  Serenity gone.  Happiness internally only when the outside circumstances and people with me behave according to the dictates of myself and the reading.  It’s only been in recent years that I’ve been able to admit that more often than not when I go in for a reading, I’m looking to hear about future events that will conform to my wishes.  The wonder and usefulness of tarot and psychic readings can easily be perverted into addictive drugs by a mind not focused on the here and now, and instead looking toward fantasies of the future to make it happy.

There is great wisdom in metaphoric stories like “The Wizard of Oz,”  in which Dorothy strays from her own inner teacher (home) to find bliss on the yellow brick road.  True, she learned lessons on the way to Oz, but the predominant one was that there is in fact “no place like home.”  Dorothy ultimately finds that her true joy is in the love she had all along, not the cravings that came about due to her own inner dissatisfaction.  The story of the prodigal son is told over and over again in mythology and movies past and present. Sadly, the real story is usually of someone unable to cope with inner turmoil, instead turning to outside addictions.  That is, those that present an illusion of being outside.

I once began a long string of tarot readings with a few different readers.  What was I looking for?  Same as about everybody else when we go for a reading:  finance and romance.  When am I gonna hit it big.  When is that next perfect person coming into my life.  I noticed after a while that with each reading, I would get an answer for when “Ms. Right” would come into my life, but the aforementioned time would come and go with no one materializing.  So I’d go for another reading.  Same result.  Another reading.  Ditto.  I got into therapy during a very lonely aftermath of all of those readings stretching a span of about two years.  After some probing, my therapist asked me, “did you ever notice something you commonly did after every single one of those readings?”  He knew the answer but didn’t give it to me, letting me go off on my own til I finally put two and two together a few weeks later.  After every single one of those readings in which a partner was prophesied for me, I dropped out of circulation, making certain that the alliance never happened.  After one too many painful endings, I was trying to ensure I would never get hurt again.

Another common trick  I’ve noticed is looking for reassurance that someone is going to “get theirs.”  One Facebook ploy I’ve seen in this regard is that every now and then somebody posts something referencing “karma.”  This often makes me aware once again that I’m not alone, because the way the word “karma” is used on the social media, it can be defined as “God getting someone for doing something I didn’t like.”  Karma, of course, always only works on the other person.  Unfortunately, I can’t even pretend to not be prone to thoughts of “God will get you” on my behalf.  Enough of this, and eventually, luckily, I notice that I’m living in my own manufactured misery.  I’ve even noticed in my case that on occasion the other person is getting their just dues.  And then it stops.  Once again it was therapy guy to the rescue when he said, “fuck with an oracle and it’ll fuck right back with you.”  Wow.  That’s an eye opener, and gave me a shiver down my spine.  I wonder if God’ll get him for that . . .

A few things I’ve seen over the years have taught me the following: 1) No reader is perfect.  Everybody has an off day including the most adept of psychic and tarot card readers.  The reading still needs to filter thru the ego of the reader, and sometimes information can be a bit skewed.  2) Readings provide a potential future, not anything written in stone.  I could write volumes on this. 3) Readings can be an extremely harsh mistress to someone going through an addictive cycle.  Number three, I’m afraid, is one that I haven’t learned fully yet.  The worst thing that I let readings do when in an addictive phase is consume me with potential futures.  The number of writers and philosophers who talk about “living in the here and now” as the only way to create a better future is overwhelming.  Go to any Barnes & Noble and it will seem like every other book written has a version of that sentiment written.  I know. Believe me, my considerably lighter wallet is testament to that.  All of this can take away from the gifts offered by very well intending readers, and I’ve met many who are not only wonderfully kind, but extremely talented and with only my best interest at heart.  I can still cause a reading to go awry.  Readings can be an absolute wonder, but I’m writing this due to the fact that I’ve been pretty consumed by the many I’ve had over the last year.  The few situations in question have morphed into something different so many times over the last year, my obsession with the possible outcomes so great, it’s been crazy-making at times.  It is indeed living half a life.  So to all of those wonderful readers who have spent time with me in the last year, thank you so much.  The info you gave me was accurate as it could be, I’m sure – – but I managed to make it into a replacement for my own heart and soul, a tragic and grievous error that I don’t wish on anyone.  And of all of you I ask only one favor: if I ask you for a reading, please provide me with one.  But only after I’ve submitted to a sobriety test.

Peace

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“Sorry guys, I gotta go and see about a girl.” – – Robin Williams in “Good Will Hunting”

The above quote is from the character Sean Maguire as portrayed by Robin Williams in the aforementioned movie.  In the scene, Sean/Robin is explaining to Will Hunting why he doesn’t regret missing the historic game six of the 1975 world series won by the Boston Red Sox.  Williams’ character had a ticket to the game, but when he saw the woman who was to become his wife sitting across the bar he was at,  he pushed his ticket across the table at his friends and told them he had other plans.  As a result, Sean had a marriage of 18 years, including the last two spent taking care of his terminally ill spouse.  Still he regretted nothing, and certainly not meeting his wife in lieu of a baseball game, even through the pain he’s feeling two years after her death.  I have a similar avenue I hope to never regret.  There are a number of people I’d like to tell very simply how I feel about them . . . hopefully shortly after re-enacting yet another scene from this film, the one at the end where Sean tells his young client Will, “it’s not your fault.”

I’ve at times felt an intense sadness over the last few weeks due to the loss of someone I’ve never met.  I don’t cry easily, but I have to confess that I felt even more grief when I found out that Robin Williams had completed alcohol treatment right here in Minnesota about a month ago.  Then came some tears.  I suspect part of my sadness comes from that kinship, one owing to my own bouts with alcoholism and depression.  Depression is a topic I intend to write more on at a later date, a topic I think is sadly misunderstood by the masses.  Robin knew it all too well, likely along with the loneliness and sense of separation that can accompany one even in a crowd.  I’ve seen more references to “Mrs. Doubtfire” and “Mork & Mindy” on Facebook in the last few hours than I can count, a movie and tv series that he indeed ought to be remembered fondly for.  Mine are more for the many, many poignant moments in “Good Will Hunting,”  and for a very beautiful, and simplified rendering of the story of the Fisher King in a movie of the same name.  Briefly, the story is of a young king who leaves home in search of the Holy Grail, only to come back a discouraged old man dejectedly accepting that he would never find his treasure.  He then sits at his throne and tells a passing fool, “bring me some water .. . I’m thirsty.”  As the fool pours water into the king’s goblet, it magically transforms into the Holy Grail.  The astonished king asks the fool, “How did you know I’ve been looking for this my entire life?”  The fool smiles simply and replies, “I didn’t.  I just know you said you were thirsty, you asked me for a drink, and so I gave you one.”  How sad that Mr. Williams wasn’t able to get his own cup filled.

I have to say that I have a fantasy of sorts, in hope of averting the possible regret I may be setting myself up for.  There are a few people I work with, certainly a few others in my outside life, that I have to fight the compulsion to just walk up to and hug and say “I just wanted to remind you that you make my day so often, and I love you.”  I also know a few in both places who are sometimes down, maybe sometimes feeling trapped in their lives, or maybe just a little lost and confused as we all are from time to time.  That’s where the very moving “it’s not your fault” scene comes into play for me.  Somebody on Facebook posted that scene, and as I watched it, I was moved to tears in seconds.  What a different world it would be if even a few of us took the time to express such sentiment to someone we care about, even once.  I would like to be one of those few.

The passing of yet another celluloid image usually brings about a notification of mortality in me at best, sometimes more, but not often.  Robin Williams death, particularly learning of it being suicide, brought instant grief.  I get so irritated when I see those idiotic Facebook posts that say that “depression is a result of staying strong for too long” or that it’s because a person is not choosing to be happy.  As a lifelong dysthymic, I can tell you for certain that it’s a tad more complicated than that.  The Williams with the constantly running motor that we all saw on various talk shows always struck me as an over reaction to depression.  Mr. Williams likely had some very deeply rooted issues that still ruled his life.  Most of us do, it’s just to varying degrees.  Whatever pushed him over the edge no one may ever truly know,  but even with his last breath he gave the world a gift, telling us all basically to cherish life.  A life he apparently was no longer willing to try and access.  This was his prerogative.  While those left behind don’t like it,  every person has the right to commit suicide if they so wish.  As a writer on A Course In Miracles named Hugh Prather used to say, “all death is suicide.”  Some of them are just quite sudden, shocking, and every bit as sad as the slower versions. I wish you the peace you sought on earth, Mr. Williams,  I wish all of the joy you gave to millions to be visited on you.  And I wish your next incarnation, whatever it may be as, to be one filled with your inner longings much more within your reach than in this past one.  Thank you for all that you gave me.  I promise to try and pay it forward.

I’m setting myself up for a very politically incorrect task.   One I don’t even know if I have the courage for.  I often try to talk myself into believing that  my desire to grab onto you and hug you and you tell you that I love you is fleeting and happens only when the Robin Williamses of the world die, but it’s just not so.  It’s with me constantly, and sometimes not saying it makes me ache.  There are at least a dozen of you, and in truth there are many more.  Some of you have touched me deeply with a single word that changed my life, some of you I’ve had long, long conversations with and felt refreshed and enlightened as a result.  Some of you have afforded me the absolute honor and privilege of being your confidant, and have trusted me with some of your secrets, and most importantly have had the courage to show your vulnerability and cry in front of me.  For this you may think you lean on me too much,  in truth, you have given me an honor I can’t possibly describe.  Still, it’s not my job to save the world.  Or is it?  It is my job to love, and isn’t that the same thing?  As I said earlier, I don’t know if I’ll ever have the courage to make my fantasy a reality, partly out of fear that if you’re a woman you may think I’m hitting on you, partly if you’re man that it may bring to the surface a homophobic fear or two.  Mostly I think it’s just my own fear of breaking down a barrier that I’ve wanted to for so long. as if to say good-bye to an old, protective friend.  Here’s to my fantasy coming true. I will start right now and if you’re reading this you know who you are.  I love you.  And whatever your burden may be, it’s not your fault.

Peace

“If you don’t have answers to your problems after a four hour run, you ain’t getting them.” – – Christopher McDougall in “Born To Run”

I’m needing to conduct a class tomorrow on one of the main products sold by the company I work for,  so this weekend I’ve been holed up for the most part, studying as I did most of last semester whenever an exam was looming large.  Translation:  rather than cracking open any material, I’ve spent most of my time sitting around and fretting about it.  To a degree, I’m stuck.  I know the material as I work with it on a daily basis.  I have no problem with being in front of a group of 15 people or more, as I love performing, and the more the merrier.  My concerns are twofold.  1) I’m going to be presenting in front of one of my supervisors, and 2) I’m going to be presenting in front of one of my supervisors.  Though it’s only a practice run and I’m likely going to be getting excellent feedback that I in fact need, I’m still nervous. So now, at 4:01 in the afternoon the plan is to give my material a quick run-through before I actually go out and attempt a ten-miler (after the sun goes down a bit more) and during the time I’m doing so enlist the assistance of any angels, faeries, kindred spirits, ascended masters, mosquitoes, wookies, tazmanian devils, anyone or anything who will listen.  I am officially stuck.  My outline is complete, and with some spontaneous “tweaking” done over the weekend I think it’s a good plan.  After all is said, done, and written, I still need to allow for flexibility dependent on how engaged the class is going to be, or more importantly, how engaged I can cause them to be.  In one of the guideline points my supervisor wrote out for me, she said “Get creative here, Michael.  You have lots of resources.”  For the life of me, I have no clue where they went off to.  Running to the rescue.  I hope.

It was in 1978 when I was sitting in an easy chair at the home of my friend Chris,  halfway watching a late afternoon college football game and was probably cracking open my fourth or fifth beer, when Chris said “Let’s go for a run.”   I gave him the most intelligent response I could come up with: “What?”  “C”mon,” he said, “Let’s go for a quick run.”  He was already putting on his running shoes.  Chris was known to do such things.  Sometimes he would want to bowl on the spur of the moment, or go to a movie, or maybe play a little boot hockey, all activities I was ok with because I knew that I could trick my way into sitting my 220 lb body down most of the time.  But, running?  Get real.  Frank Shorter had won the Olympic marathon in 1972 and the ensuing “running boom” was in full swing.  Chris had hopped on board and was training for his first marathon.  Sitting on his coffee table was a copy of  “The Complete Book Of Running” by Jim Fixx.  I knew he was all in where running was concerned and admired his ambition, but right now he was interrupting my beer drinking time.   So imagine my surprise when I found myself jogging ever so slowly up and down Clifton and Fulton Avenues in St. Paul.  I mostly walked, and Chris was kind enough to go at my pace, which is to say no stopwatch was needed to time us – – just a calendar. One and a half miles later we were back in Chris’s living room, I was plopping myself back in the easy chair,  and greeted my waiting beer can with something like “Hello, Gorgeous” and resumed my slurping.  But an odd shift had occurred.  Chris pulled a few more of his “Let’s go for a run” maneuvers on me every now and then, but I was no longer surprised.  In fact, I looked forward to when he would pull the trigger.  Running made me feel good.

At my six month sobriety point, July of 1989, I went into a gradually deepening depression.  Having only a part time job and lots of spare time on my hands, I began running whenever I could to make myself feel better.  From that month of July to the following in 1990, I went from 220 pounds to about 130.  It was not uncommon for me to lace up my shoes on a whim and go for “a little jog,”  not to return until I had covered 14 or 15 miles.  The depression was dealt with through therapy, and in January of 1991, not knowing a thing about what it took to run a marathon,  I dropped an application in the mail for Grandma’s in June of that year.  I somehow felt confident that mailing the application would trigger the necessary chain of events that would give me everything I needed to know.   A synchronistic series of conversations led me to register for a twelve week training class with the Minnesota Distance Runners Association, where we would be lectured by experienced runners each week, (including little Sue Olson who once ran Grandma’s while 8 1/2 months pregnant) and challenged by each other with some increasingly long runs together.  I finished my first marathon in 4:22, a time I’ve still not bettered.  What I was intrigued by however, was this amazing capacity that running gave me to go a little deeper into myself.  Indeed, stuck points in problem solving usually warranted a five or six miler.  I can’t say that a series of uninterrupted light bulbs has gone off ever since then, with every single problem being solved on a run, but it has often produced a solution.  The worst case scenario is that usually I feel more clear headed when I get done.  Again, running makes me feel good.

The Hopis say that running is a form of prayer.  I’m not Hopi, though.  The general consensus seems to be that my lineage bends more toward Mayan.  You know, the Mayans?  Yeah.  The ancient tribe that has been looked at as an enormously advanced spiritual culture.  The same culture that used to play a baseball-like game in which the losing team was sacrificed.  By that type of criteria, I guess many parts of the world today are pretty spiritually advanced.  Great folks, the ancient Mayans.  Wouldn’t wanna lose a chess game to one of them, though.  Heritage aside, I am an oddity in that I’m the only distance runner that anyone knows of in my immediate or extended family.  There is no rational explanation for anyone in my family to go off and become a distance runner.  Maybe it’s just that nobody else had a beer-drinking buddy named Chris thirty-five years ago.  Ironically, Chris ran into some back problems later in 1978, topped out at nineteen miles in his training, and was ordered by his doctor not to run long distances again.  He never completed a marathon.  I am now training for my fourteenth.

I chase after the ever elusive “runners high,”  that breeze of a feeling when my mind and body shift into another gear, I feel like I can run forever,  and experience one of the few times in my world where “being as One with all things” really is an experience rather than a theory.  Alas, the runner’s high is a matter of grace, and happens unexpectedly, and not very often.  The only equivalent “activity” I’ve ever had has been meditation.  The late William Glasser certainly didn’t write “Positive Addiction” by accident:  half the book extols the virtues of running, the other half is on meditation.  The book was my bible for a while.  Today, my bible is the running itself.  I’ve run sporadically this week, and don’t feel quite as “up” as I normally do.  My neurons need to be fired up with activity.  My outlook needs to be revamped.  After I get done with my run, I suspect the supervisor I’m nervous about presenting in front of will look more like an ally and a mentor than an obstacle to somehow sneak beyond.  Running really is a form of prayer.  Though I’ve once again barely scratched the surface of a topic dear to me,  even writing a little about it makes my heart sing.  Running enhances creativity, keeps me fit, helps me maintain a reasonably healthy weight, and there are no gym fees.  It mellows me out, give me great stamina in many areas life, and makes me feel more vibrant and alive.  No, it’s not for everyone, and I’m sure not advocating it as being a be-all or end-all. With running can also come injuries, although I’ve been very fortunate to escape with very few (and no knee problems!) over the last thirty-five years.  I love to run.  It is one of my joys in life.  It can be every bit as ageless as meditation or yoga.  Ask the Indian runner who completed his first marathon at age 92 in 6:42. The next year he took off almost an hour and came in at 5:43.  He began running at age 89 to grieve the loss of his son.

The benefits are many, the down side small.  I’ve run in a -60 windchill, and in torrential downpours.  And yet the one thing that bothers  me is running in the wind no matter what the temperature.  Living in Minnesota, this can be pretty tough to get around.  Today my single-eye is on the benefits.  I truly want to produce a good class for all of the newbies coming into my workplace.  As I’m relatively inexperienced in teaching classes,  my intuition is leading me to participate in the activities that make for a better me in order to do well.  My fall back is the following quote from ultra-marathoner Ephraim Romesberg, stated at mile 65 of the Badwater Ultramarathon, a 135 mile race that begins at the base of Death Valley, and finishes atop Mount Whitney: “I always start these events with very lofty goals, like I’m going to do something special.  And after a point of body deterioration, the goals get evaluated down to basically where I am now – – where the best I can hope for is to avoid throwing up on my shoes.”  With that in mind, I have no place to go but up.  Hello ten-miler, my old Friend . . .

Peace

“Who is that behind you?  He’s huge.” – – a client of mine at a church as I gave him a Reiki healing treatment.

A couple of Saturdays ago my friend Scott and I were driving to the Twins game when one thing led to another and I told him how I first came upon Elton John’s “Your Song,”  a tune I still consider to be the most beautiful song I’ve ever heard.  It was Christmas Eve, and after the usual fighting and family chaos, I laid down with the little $1.50 turntable and radio combination my mom picked up for my gift for the year (I loved that little music box!) and started crying myself to sleep as I usually did.  I turned on the radio just as “Your Song” was coming on and I was suddenly transported to heaven.  For once my Christmas wasn’t ending on an entirely dismal note.  After I finished the story, Scott and I parked about six blocks away from the stadium as we usually do to avoid paying for parking.  As we walked by one of the local bars, Scott called my attention to a song coming through the window and into our hearing range.  It was Elton John’s “Your Song.”  Hmm . . .

Wrestling gently with a dilemma lately, I asked the assistance of an angel named Raguel with a matter close to my heart, and made it clear that sometime during the day, a sign that everything would work out okay would be very much appreciated.  So I headed out for my eight mile run, and stopped myself at one point on Cretin Avenue and found myself looking at the tiniest of feathers sitting in my path,  something I’ve heard is a notorious angel sign.   I’ve been having some vision problems lately, including an issue with occasionally having my sight get blurry and repeatedly unfocused in my left eye.  So after I picked up the feather and put it in my pocket, I was suddenly stunned a few blocks later that my vision was perfect just at the time I needed to see that feather.  Go figure.

As an aside, “Reiki” (alluded to in the beginning quote) in English translates to “universal life force energy,” and is a healing practice I’ve been doing for about twenty years now.  The church I would give treatments at in the early 2000’s was built on an old Native American burial ground.  It was not uncommon for “visitors” to show up as a gesture of support or even as a tongue-in-cheek gag, possibly so we wouldn’t take ourselves too seriously.  It worked.  From what my friend was describing during and after our work together, I’m pretty convinced he was telling me that we were in the company of the Archangel Michael, as one of the characteristics of archangels according many who write of angelic realms (Doreen Virtue in particular) is their immense size.  I remember dating someone in the late 90’s and telling her periodically about an angel story or two.   One night she turned to me and said “your whole life is like this, isn’t it?”  Well, not always.   But she had clued me in to fact that dealing with angels had happened enough in my life that I was taking it for granted.  Recently I came upon this Doreen Virtue quote: “Those who regularly contact their angels report great improvements in their lives.  They feel happier, more peaceful and confident, and less afraid of death or the future. They know they’re not alone because they have trustworthy guardians watching over them.”  Whether one believes in angels or not,  it’s certainly reassuring that something can help us get through tough times.  And enhance the good ones.

I still get this deliciously playful feeling that there are so many writers out there encouraging me to engage in the very activity that my parents told me not to.  I used to regularly at least pretend that there was some unseen force that I could call upon in my time of need.  Having it drummed out of me, I forgot about angels for years.  They obviously didn’t forget about me.  In early recovery I was turned on to a writer named Sophie Burnham who wrote several books about angels.  No offense to Burnham,  but I feel much more in sync with Doreen Virtue, and as a result with my own guardians and others.  This is no idle fantasy for me.  I don’t know about anyone else out there,  but I’m not averse to asking for a helping hand every now and then on any number of matters, and that’s the key:  if you truly believe in angels, know that they are respecters of free will – – they cannot help unless they’re invited to do so.  And when they do some truly miraculous events can come into play.  They didn’t have the power to stop my parents or sister from dying, but their presence was comforting beyond belief.

I love that I have permission to “play pretend” as an adult, and at least in my own life can vouch that angels are real.  I have zero intention of convincing anyone else of their existence, but I can say that those who don’t may be depriving themselves of not only immediate help in pressing situations, but also some downright fun companionship.  I’ve called on them for everything from healing a physical wound to finding my lost keys.  A friend of mine is close to giving birth, and she told me recently that this time around she’s definitely felt a presence she hasn’t felt in her earlier pregnancies, possibly because manipulative little I gave her a book about the Archangel Gabriel,  who “brings glad tidings of great joy” to those who will bear children.

The inherent peace, calm, and beauty added to my days when I remember to ask my angels to participate in my activities makes them so much more fun.  Make no mistake, angels also have a sense of humor, and how blessed are we that they look beyond our egos and see only our inner light.  Again, it makes no difference if we believe in angels or not:  they believe in us. Help in being happier is available 24/7.  All we have to do is ask for it.  And accept it.  It’s only until recent years that I thought the only people who could possibly benefit from those “abundance” or “manifestation” books that take up so much space on bookstore shelves were the authors.  I thought likewise about angelic realms until fairly recently.  Fortunately for me, I was wrong.  There is loving, playful, caring help always.  I’ve only scratched the surface of angelic realms here, and depending on the amount of feedback or Facebook “likes” I get I’m certainly willing to do more.  I could write about angels all day.  The least I can do is give a little press to a group of beings who make me feel so safe and loved so often. Just as long as I remember to ask for help. And there’s certainly no shame in asking over and over again.  As I understand it,  there are quite a few unemployed angels out there just waiting to provide service.  I’m in the process, as Doreen Virtue suggests, of getting into the habit of asking my angels for help with just about everything.  In closing I have to say that my original intent was to write about marathon training.  As I usually do, I sat to meditate beforehand, and as I sometimes do, I asked the Archangel Gabriel,  the angel of writers,  if there was something different I needed to write about.  What I just wrote began to take form almost immediately.  I usually get a really nice rush of satisfaction both during and after writing.  While composing this post, I’ve g0tten this otherworldly sense of warmth that feels so very exquisite.  Wow.  Thank you, Gabriel.  Thank you all angels.

Peace

“Yes, I still see them.  But like a diet of the mind, I choose not to feed them.  They’re my past . . . everybody’s haunted by their past.” – – Nobel Prize winning mathematician John Nash, upon being asked if he still saw his apparitions.

I seem to be very graced with a recurrent phenomenon,  one that heralds the coming out of a rut, or for me most recently,  a sort of dark night of the soul.  I truly believe I’m the poster child for Christmas.  I love the lights, the music, and though it may be seasonal kindness being displayed,  the heightened sense of brotherly love in the air.  What I like mostly is the symbolism of light bringing about a rebirth of my mind.  What will sometimes happen at the tail-end of one of my aforementioned dark nights, no matter what time of year,  is that I’ll spontaneously hear a Christmas tune playing in my head.  After a brief moment of relief in knowing that somehow I’m going to be in a better place shortly, I will almost immediately observe my surroundings and current situations in a much more optimistic way.

To my surprise this time around, after a particularly dark and difficult four months, I began (about two weeks ago) to hear a song I composed around Christmas time over ten years ago.   I mentioned in an earlier post that I began playing piano at age forty and took to it rather quickly, in fact starting to play at a church within a few months of picking up the instrument.   One day while kind of warming up before a service in front of our little congregation of ten or twelve, a woman who I know had terminal cancer wandered over to the beat up old grand I was playing on.  I was in the process of putting the finishing touches on a composition  that I was to use as the prelude for not only the service this particular evening, but for quite a few to follow.

Embarrassingly, I can’t remember the lady’s name.   What I do remember about her is that she announced one night that she was dying,  I would never in a million years guessed that anything was amiss with her prior to her announcement or even afterward.     I think the phrase “she/he lights up the room” is one of the more overused phrases I’ve heard in my life,  and in fact can only think of a handful of folks I would apply it to.  This woman was one. She had this odd, wonderfully rich laugh that I swear was coming from some other world or dimension, and for a person with terminal cancer,   she sure did spend a lot of time encouraging and comforting other people.  She had us all in the palm of her hand when she stated her plight calmly on the night of her announcement,  adding that she says “thank you” to her disease throughout the day.   We all felt just a little bit humbled.   Myself?  I was a bit squeamish from the very recent memory of my giving the finger to another driver on the way over,  probably because he wasn’t driving exactly the way I wanted him to.

So on this particular night, she strode over to me and listened intently to what I was playing,  a short little ditty meant to usher in folks in a calm and pensive mood.  I remember her asking “What is that called?”   When I told her I didn’t know yet,  she said “It sounds like silver snow would sound.”  I had my title.

She lived out something that I hope I get to embody one day,  though I sense myself a long way from my goal.  While she said frequently that when she found out about her cancer she was shocked into her sense of mortality,  she also had graduated to a point where she was living a process of surrender,  an honest-to-goodness living out of knowing that she truly wasn’t a body.  She was merely shedding a layer.   And doing so quite gracefully and in a state of peace that the rest of us envied.   It was, she said,  just a passing through a dark phase.  What she was passing into was something the rest of her fellow parishioners could only imagine.  That this woman did it with such genuine fearlessness floored us all.

I had other issues going on at the church at the time,  including some disagreements with the ministers about what direction the music was to take.   The congregation seemed to be unusually tight-fisted when it came to donations, and still none of the ministry saw the humor in me playing an instrumental version of “Carry That Weight”  (“You never give me your money ..”) while the collection plate was being passed each week.  I was also just plain not into the message the ministers were giving.  Nothing against them,  just not my cup of tea.  So we parted ways, and it was with real sadness I heard that my “Silver Snow” lady passed away about six months after I cut off my attendance.  Her dark night of the soul was over.

That “Silver Snow” would be the song that would pop into my mind while I was meditating two weeks ago,  a song I hadn’t thought of for probably five years, symbolized to me the validity of everything I’ve heard various spiritual modalities, if not religions, state about passing phases of life and death.  There’s an old shamanistic saying: “He who dies before he dies, doesn’t die when he does die.”  That is to say that layers and layers need to be shed in preparation for a final release to be done as gracefully as my late friend displayed.  My dark night is giving the strong appearance of being over,  and yet it has given way to the birth of a real need for diligently monitoring my thought processes,  to, as the Dalai Lama once put it, “treat every thought like an only child.”

“Silver Snow”is a really gentle piece.   And since I heard it reborn in my head,  though I still feel the residual bumps and bruises of my recent dark night on occasion,  I’m recognizing them more and more as phantoms of my past.  To be graced with the symbol of this beautiful woman returning to my life in spirit nearly brought me to tears when I first heard the song in my head,  knowing that I was ever so gently being awakened from a bad dream.  As parents sometimes may find out,  if a child is awakened too quickly from a nightmare,  whoever awakens them may be perceived as part of the same nightmare.   For me at this time,  all I have to say to my recent dark night is “thank you.”  Not just for passing, but for all that it continues to teach me. As gracefully and gently as my lady friend lived her life,  I was likewise awakened ever so gently and quietly by the miracle of silver snow.

Peace

It’s as though your heart invented compassion

You have so much

You buck the rules

And it frustrates me, because my cloudy ego sees me adhering to them perfectly

You please so many with the way you listen

Indeed, you have been my confidant

You hold the silver glass in front of me

I only see your image, and the things that make you imperfect

You have tried to teach me acceptance repeatedly

Repeatedly I’ve fallen woefully short

You used to smile in the morning,  laughing about your noisy shoes

The smiles and laughs have been replaced by anxiety and tears

In fact I’ve made you cry more than once,  that dark side of me that just won’t quit

The part that only gets joy out of the sorrow of others

You’ve shown me the meaning of friendship again and again

Again and again I’ve shown you what it is not

You trusted me with your secrets,  supposedly seeing me as a safe haven

I’ve not betrayed your trust, but I’ve laid your secrets on shaky footing

And rendered them with the threat of no longer being secrets

You’ve given me cause to crave a partner again, something I thought had vanished from me

I’ve proven again that I’m nowhere near ready to love one unconditionally

You gave me the freedom to be myself,  no matter what mood I was in

I rewarded you with the chains of expectation

I have envied your life of spouse and family, problems and all

Yet I’ve proven once again why I live alone still

Your messages to me during our work day often made me smile

Mine often caused you pain

You invited me fearlessly and intimately into the various rooms of your life and psyche

I returned your invitation with reasons to fear and keep your distance from me

You have often been a light to me in very dark days

I have often been the darkness that has snuffed out your hope

You are a blessing to me at any time

In return I never let you know which one of me will show up

These are the reflections I see,  and yet I don’t judge myself by them

They are part of me, not part of you

I try to dump them on you but they just won’t stick

I remember sitting down often with you for an intimate lunch and comforting you as you cried

And the next day I became the source of your tears

I tell you wonderful things about yourself, things I want you to believe so badly

And yet I treat you like nobody could possibly believe them

I do remember making you laugh and smile

And seeing your pleasure as I handed you chocolate

And simultaneously handed you palms full of cruelty

I pointed out your flaws readily

You returned like the innocent child looking for the forgiving part of its parent,

The part you just wouldn’t give up on

I’ve sometimes felt taken for granted by you

Instead, it was me who was assuming you would always be there

Your friendship often felt like a celebration

I seemed bent on making it a solemn ceremony

There is a huge gap in my day when we don’t talk

I cause those days to happen often

Why do you keep me around

I’ll never know,  unless my guess is correct

Your heart invented compassion

You have so much

You hold the silver glass so well

The glass I refuse to look in until its too late

I will miss you

“It’s a terrible thing to live in fear.  All I want to do is to be back where things make sense . . . where I won’t have to be afraid all of the time.” – – Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding in “The Shawshank Redemption”

When I was about two years sober, I left AA meetings behind for awhile and began attending ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics) instead.  While away from AA, I was still quite proud of my sobriety, and I thought rightly so, and thus spoke of it often during my sharing times in small groups.   After my Friday night ACA meeting ended one time, I noticed a woman named Jean, sort of a patriarch of the group, standing a short distance away and shaking her head at me.  I moved to satisfy my curiosity and asked her what was up.  “You really think you’re hot shit with that addiction of yours,don’t you,” she said. I said the first thing that came in to my head.  “Huh?”  Jean then casually pointed her finger and motioned around the entire space of the room we were in and said, “Point out one person in this room who doesn’t have an addiction of some kind.”  Theoretically, I understood what she meant immediately and felt a bit embarrassed.  Experientially, it took quite a few years before I got the full gist of what she was saying.

I first saw “Shawshank” in late 1994, the same year it was released.  Though I know it kinda bombed at the box office, I was intrigued while at a Blockbuster Video and read the back cover of the movie box which described the film as “a movie about friendship.”  Even upon first viewing, I found that description to be aiming a bit low.  Recently I saw an old review by Roger Ebert in which he gives his opinion of the flick as “an allegory about being in a hopeless situation.”  I find that to be more palatable, yet only a beginning.  The prison, quite simply, represents the human ego to me, the rest of the characters thoughts in the mind of the lead character Andy DuFresne, and the escape plan Andy’s ingenious and inspired route to be freed from his egoic and addictive patterns of behavior.  I’m not talking about the usual cop-out of patterns heaped upon us in our childhood so we can blame our parents for our actions.  I”m talking about something much more primal.  Most of us act out of very basic patterns of security, sensation, and power addictions which subtly are used to ensure that the outside world is giving us the “good” feelings we need.  Insidious as these grooves are, I am in no way suggesting that anyone purposely acts like an addict.  What I am suggesting is that as a partial way to maintain the status quo, and peace, many of us (ok, all of us) kiss off addictive behavior as “ok” so as to stave off needing to confront the issue and go through uncomfortable growth work.

“These walls.  First you hate ’em, then you get used to ’em.  Enough time passes, it gets so you depend on ’em.  They send you here for life, and that’s exactly what they take – – the part that matters anyway.” Thus states the character Red after a fellow inmate puts up an enormous fight to commit a crime while still in prison so that he won’t have to be released into a world of freedom, a world he has absolutely no point of reference for.  As a kid, I remember the number of times dad “lost the paycheck,”  and thus we sometimes went without food.  More often than not we were fed, but were really, really pinched in regard to getting new clothing or going on trips.  My dad got me a used,worn out baseball glove when I was in fourth grade that I somehow managed to make last til I was 14.  We kids grew up thinking this type of thing was normal, and in fact when occasionally confronted by an outsider about Dad’s drinking, any one of us could be heard to say,”It’s not so bad,” or the equivalent.  Of course  it wasn’t so bad.  We were talking about Dad, after all.  Although his behavior hurt us regularly, we defended him to the hilt to the outside world.  Still, carrying out the same primal instincts of protecting my dad and those like it, such as resisting what the “next right thing,” might be for personal growth, I can no longer blame on my parents or family.   My walls are still intact.  On occasion, rather than confront a friend on what may be harmful behavior, or more commonly, when I don’t want to look at my own reflection, I’ll take the path of least resistance and leave things alone.   My walls are very dependable.

I started drinking when I was 12 years old.  I got sober when I was 31.  Inside my 31 year old body was the emotional maturity of a 12 year old.  Make no mistake: when regular drinking begins, emotional growth stops.  Then imagine my surprise when I learn that drinking is nothing more than a symptom.  As each year of recovery has passed, and I’ve inched my way along to at least some semblance of adulthood, I see more and more what lengths I’ll still go to in order to not confront my patterns.  People often have an image of alcoholics as skid row derelicts and are then surprised to find one in their own office.  Speaking for myself,  while still drinking and being in the work force, I can proudly say that I produced superior work.  What I didn’t understand until after I quit was that one of the main drivers of my excellence was my need to ensure that I had a steady supply of money to drink.  Bills somhetimes didn’t get paid, but I’d be damned if I didn’t have alcohol money.

Likewise, the more embarrassing image to maintain is one that belies what goes on inside consistently in sobriety.  I recently picked up a copy of  “The Handbook To Higher Consciousness.”  Upon reading a few pages, I had that “Oh, my God,” reaction for the first time since I read AA’s Big Book twenty-something years ago.  Somebody wrote a book about me. The difference is, this book doesn’t target only chemical addicts.  It points out dogged lower-level patterns of behavior that ALL of us partake of, those that satisfy the aforementioned needs to maintain levels of security, sensation, and power.  All of them dependent on what other people and situations do.  If a situation or person doesn’t pan out as I want it to, I will notice one of my lower level areas flaring up, and then try to forcefully control the situation to satisfy my need and get back to “normal.”  This is the continuing work laid out not just of addicts, this is all of us.

Imagine the most amazing of everything:  sunsets, sex, money, fame, glory, family, the absolute depth of a mothers love for her child.  Imagine ALL of these things going on in your life all at the same time.  Bliss! And CONSTANTLY! Then add in an astonishing thought: maybe, just maybe, even as amazing beyond description as all of this is, ALL of it is only a SHADOW of what’s possible.  That’s prison.

In Plato’s story of The Cave,  Plato is actually writing about the life of his mentor, Socrates.  As the story goes, a group of men are sentenced to live their lives in a cave, and facing away from the cave entrance.  Thus all they ever see are shadows on the wall, and not having any other point of reference, experience the shadows as the real world.  One day one of the prisoners undoes his chains and escapes.  To his amazement, he sees immediately that there is an entirely different and brighter world outside the cave.  There are real people,  and a warm fire and a warm sun that were actually casting the shadows from passersby that all of the prisoners took for granted as everything that was real and available.  So the escaped prisoner goes back excitedly to tell the other prisoners.  Upon his telling them of the other world, they kill him.  The possibility of freedom from their prison was not only more than the other prisoners could comprehend,  it was far too frightening to be loosed from their metaphoric chains, the only world they were familiar with.  The ego/shadow world is one that we all defend ferociously, and unconsciously so.  “Enough time passes, it gets so you depend on ’em.”  I’m not pouting because the woman I wanted to be with isn’t giving me attention, there’s something wrong with her.  My best friend didn’t just make that big mistake, and even if he/she did it’s no big deal.  In order to placate and satisfy my lower level addictive thought patterns, they need to be defended to stay alive.  If it involves another person who I rely on to supply me with good feelings, the easier the defense.  If it involves a situation that does the same,  I can come up with any number of reasons why nobody else understands that my workplace is Utopia or why the group I hated five minutes ago because I wasn’t their center of attention is all of a sudden the best thing since baked bread because somebody else is attacking them and only I get to do that.  Plus they  just gave me five seconds of attention.  My addiction has been satisfied.  Sadly, my good feeling didn’t come from my heart.  It came from a shadow.

The Andy DuFresne character in “Shawshank” represents to me the spark of divinity in the “right mind” of the human ego that an individual discovers and then fans repeatedly.  Along the way, grisly things might happen, such as the “Sisters,” the sadistic group that repeatedly attacks Andy in the film.  While Andy doesn’t like what’s happening, he comes to accept it as a “normal” part of his prison/ego, and maintains his sanity primarily due the fact that he’s discovered his way out of prison, and is keeping it in the forefront of his mind.  Serendipity surfaces and takes care of the problem for him, again due to his unyielding focus.  This part of the film is so profound to me as those events or patterns, or regular events, or even people in our lives that we accept as ok only because we haven’t discovered another point of reference for the situation or person’s behavior.  We become resigned to what’s going on as an external and “normal” situation, thus giving ourselves permission to ignore the addictive pattern that got us into the situation in the first place.  Andy however, is given the gift of desperation, and nineteen years later, escapes with the assistance of one tiny rock hammer.  One tiny thought.  One second focused away from the addictive pattern and as these newer thoughts mount and multiply, he escapes to freedom.  And the world around him (or us) is altered considerably.  Change isn’t always without casualties.  The warden’s suicide and the sadistic guard being taken away are nicely symbolic of how patterns we thought were just a part of life, eventually fall away.  Even some we may think were in our best interest.  While AA was in its fledgling stage, Dr. Bob Smith was heard to tell his cohort Bill Wilson, “and remember, Bill–the good is the enemy of the best. Let’s not screw this thing up.”

I’ve been working with “Handbook To Higher Consciousness” for a few weeks now.  So difficult are it’s principles that I’ve already put it aside three or four times and told myself “Nah.  This isn’t for me.”  Of course not  It’s challenging everything within me that I’ve come to know as true.  Oddly, it’s not giving me cause to shout off the rooftops.  It is instead giving  birth to a different type of compassion than I’ve ever felt before.  I’m sure not tooting my own horn:  my friend Judy once told me, “Living on the razor’s edge doesn’t make life easier, it often makes it harder.”  What I’m noticing is that everyone else’s addictive patterns are becoming more evident to me . . . I’m finding out how alike we all are.  All of us in the same “Shawshank.”  On occasion I’ll balk, go back to my corner and meditate on what an a-hole the other person is.  Such are the ways of progress.  If I didn’t make mistakes, I wouldn’t be learning.  What’s emerging, with great difficulty, is an entirely different view of the world.  It would appear that my rock hammer, like Andy’s, has also been worn down to a nub.  I’m finally heading home.  Aspiring to a spiritual life includes so much more mundane day-to-day work than I ever imagined.  Keeping the final outcome of “Shawshank” in mind, with Andy escaping, “crawling though a river of the most shit smelling foulness I can’t even imagine,” then  Andy going from bank to bank collecting his dues.  Yeah.  I like that imagery.  It will offset the mundane. And it all started with the lead character chipping away a tiny piece of his prison wall almost by “accident”, a wall much more fragile than he ever thought possible.  I can do that.  “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”  That’s goddamn right.

“I find that I’m so excited I can hardly sit still or hold a thought in my head.  I think it’s the excitement that only a free man can feel.  A free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain.  I hope that I can make it across the border.  I hope to meet my Friend and shake His hand.  I hope that the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams.  I hope .. .” – – “Red”

Peace