A Year Later.

My dear friend died last year on May 17th, today. I woke up this morning remembering, and wept for the loss of him. Seems like every song I put on reminds me of some aspect of his character. He was wonderfully confident and caring and the people in his life flourished in the light of that attentiveness and focused attention, just as his garden flourished from the care he lavished upon it. Rarely have I met anyone so universally adored, he made friends anywhere he went, and the warmth of his nature was unjudgemental, he was just one of those amazingly loving people you find once or twice in a lifetime, if you are very fortunate.

I thank my Higher Power for the trip my friend and I took across to the big city on the mainland, because that was the last time before he went into hospital, and never came out.

I remember his humour, never biting or unkind, but screamingly funny all the same, he had a turn of phrase that could render his listeners helpless with laughter. He was generous with his possessions, his time and his love, and I miss him.

Our Perceptions Create Our Reality

When new to this idea, that our perceptions create our reality, I was also new to Al-Anon, so I hadn't any experience in living my life differently, to which I could point to remind myself that I might not have all the answers to my own questions.  My first spiritual awakening wasn't light and fluffy, it was a powerful life-changing experience. Since then, I've had many more spiritual experiences, and they have affirmed this understanding to a greater degree each time.

When I can let go, and let my life unfold without too much editorialising, planning, arranging, or deciding on my part, it works out in ways I don't have the imagination to invent in my projections. I've learned to ask for what I want, but to ask in such a way that all I'm doing is asking for the desire, I'm not giving instructions as to how that desire shoud be granted to me. There are replies to my requests which come with shattering speed, so that I'm standing leaning away from them a bit saying, "Oh, already, well, yes, that's beautiful indeed, and just what I wanted, but I'd kind of planned on having the 4-6 week delivery period to adjust to having this in my life..." when the truth is, I wanted it, I asked for it, and here it is, right in front of me, and am I going to let fear stop me from stepping forward to meet it?

I've been talking to my Higher Power a lot on recent walks, telling him how I feel about this response of his, and how the package was unrecognisable to me until I'd unwrapped it a bit, and then when I saw what it was, I was shocked, unready, anxious - feeling that this was too soon, I wasn't expecting it, and I don't think I do want it after all, so could he please take it away again, at the same time as my heart swells with gratitude. When I'm out walking alone, I can convince myself I don't really want the gift after all. When I'm within 50 feet of it, I know that this is what I have wanted all my life. I'm trying to relax, pray for strength to accept that this is meant for me: live in the moment: revel in the joy of it.

I pray to understand that answered prayers can be frightening, but I don't have to pick up the fear and run with it. I can set it down, decide to live for now, and feel my good feelings.

Movement, and Acceptance.

"When you encounter a firm resistance anywhere, it usually means that you are on the wrong road, and had better retreat and try another."
                                           Emmett Fox.

I've noticed, as I grow in my spirituality, that I am more open and accepting of the idea that I can feel what is happening in my life as a sense of movement, either free movement, or movement which is stuttering and stumbling and rough. When it feels like it's my Higher Power's will, the pieces will fall into place smoothly and in the most amazing ways. When I meet with firm resistance, I've learned to accept that the way is blocked for a reason, and I can "retreat and try another" road.

When I was new to program and Al-Anon, I would have read or listened to this same thing I've just written, with raised eyebrows, and a firm belief that the author or speaker must have been operating under a delusion. The only will of which I was aware was my own, and I was angry and frustrated by the fact that I never seemed to get my way, no matter how hard I tried. I would put my head down and bulldoze my way through, like a wild animal fighting its way through a thicket of bushes, determined to reach a pre-set goal, completely unaware that the thicket was there precisely to stop my forward process, because on the other side of it was a huge ravine, and my forced and forward momentum, once I made it through, would carry me over the edge, and down for a long, frightening fall.

I've learned to be aware of the movement in my life. When a door opens in front of me, I take a deep breath, ask my Higher Power for strength and courage, and step through. I've learned to do this whether the door is one of apparent grace and beauty, or a rickety-looking strange contraption held together by bent nails and duct tape.

I've been asking my Higher Power for something, and in the last couple of weeks, it has been being given to me, but from a place, and in such a way, that I'm feeling a little hesitant about it. Not because I don't believe in it, it's blindingly obvious and powerful. I'm hesitant because I hadn't expected an answer so incredibly quickly. While asking, it was with the idea that this could come in the future at some point. Instead, it has been handed to me in the last two weeks. Last night I went out walking for two hours, through quiet residential streets lined by huge walnut trees, and then down to the seawall.
I walked along beside the sea, thinking of a couple of nights ago, when I did the same two hour walk but in reverse, when it had dawned upon me that what I had was the immediate reply to my request - "You've been asking for ____, here it is. Enjoy it."  Once the realisation arrived, I had the often delighted understanding I'll get with these gifts, that before that moment, I'd been blind to the true nature of what was happening.

But once I see it, I have to laugh at my obliviousness.

At church today, the closing song ended, as it always does, "I choose love." Glorious.

Open AA Meetings

At the recommendation of my sponsor, today I called the local AA office to ask for an open AA meeting, to which I can go,  for help with my relationships with my sisters, both of whom are still caught in active drinking, and with whom I am in weekly contact via email. I think I need an open AA meeting to give me more compassion for their personality quirks which are exacerbated by their alcohol abuse.

I spoke to a very nice lady volunteering at the office, and am meeting her this evening at 7:45. She offered to sit with me, so I wouldn't be walking in alone. AA people can be so incredibly kind.

I've realised, through this Fourth Step I've been doing with my sponsor that I still have some judgement about the alcoholism of my sisters, and I don't want to be thinking that way. I need to work on my acceptance of this, and let them live their lives, and be able to just love them. It will be interesting to see my attitude change, and I welcome the prospect of being able to completely let go of my ideas in this area.

AA Rally -con't.

This morning I awoke early, which allowed me to get up and go hear the two spiritual speakers at the rally, first the Al-Anon speaker, and then the last AA speaker. The Al-Anon speaker was very difficult to hear, and much of what she was saying was unintelligible. I found myself daydreaming throughout her talk, unable to concentrate, because I couldn't distinguish what she was saying. The interesting thing about this, to me, was that even with this being the case, the energy in the room was undiminished. I've noticed this at meetings I've attended. Sometimes, a person will speak and their voice is so soft that they sound more like the whisper of a breeze rustling through leaves, than a person speaking. But somehow, the attention of everyone in the room upon that person, the active listening and the respect we give to each person talking, is no less for the words being unheard. The feeling carries us.

The second speaker was wonderful, he'd been in AA for many years, and was humble, honest, and funny about his own character defects and attitudes. I love it when a recovering member, whether in AA or Al-Anon, truly begins to grasp the insanity of their own thinking, and see the humour in what would once have caused them stress and anger.

Overall, I found the rally a great experience, and I'm very grateful to the friend who gave me a ticket as a gift. I'd have gone anyway, but this made it more fun, because when she asked today how I was enjoying it, and then said, "You don't need to reply to that, I can see the answer in your face" and we grinned happily at each other, the sense of shared understanding was a lovely feeling.

At the last AA meeting, when the speaker reached the point in the introductory reading from How It Works: "Some of us have tried to hold on to our old ideas and the result was nil until we let go ... Many of us exclaimed..." an audience member leapt to his feet and yelled "What an order!" He was no sooner back in his seat before another rose to shout "I can't go through with it!"
This was obviously pre-arranged, and made most of the audience laugh, but a middle-aged couple at our table was grumbling about it. They were saying to each other how much they'd hated it, yada yada yada. I wanted to, but didn't, turn to say, "If you just decided not to let it annoy you, you wouldn't be sitting there in an AA meeting, feeling annoyed instead of grateful or at peace."

I had decided ahead of time that I was going to have a marvellous time at the rally, and I did just that. But how many times in my life have I fixated on the one thing which hasn't gone the way I thought it should, or expected, and that has been what I've obsessed about, while allowing the chance of enjoying the present moment to pass me by unnoticed? Many times. Most of the time, when I was very new to program.

I am deeply grateful that I don't focus on what annoys me, and the corollory of that, which is that fewer and fewer things annoy or irritate me. They just aren't worth my time and effort. I don't need to feel superior or turn up my nose at the things that others find fun. I can allow them their joy, and feel my own. Life is good, thanks to this wonderful program.

AA Rally

Last night was the start of this weekend's local AA rally. A program friend gave me a ticket as a gift, and I went with my beloved sponsor, and a woman I sponsor, whose courage for the program invigorates and inspires me. Rallies have an energy which is uplifting and powerful. One of my favourite moments at an AA rally is the countdown to sobriety. That's happening tonight, and the three of us are going back for another evening of laughter and wisdom, and then again Sunday morning, to hear the Spiritual speakers.

I'm thinking I might drop in this afternoon for the "Old-Timers sharing - 30 plus years of sobriety" I like to hear people talk about how sobriety has changed for them over the years. It seems that once the first overwhelming compulsion to drink has been removed, and a few years of sobriety has been gained, that to keep a solid program going, many people turn more to the spiritual side of the program.

Listening to the AA speaker last night, when he quoted "God could and would, if he were sought" I realised just how much my seeking has changed over the time I've been in Al-Anon. My seeking at the start, 28 years ago, consisted of my asking from my Higher Power, that I be granted my own will.
It took me years to be able, or willing, to grasp that what I was asking was doomed to failure, and that if I kept on along that path, I was never going to be able to trust my Higher Power, because I was going to continually be operating under the belief that I would never be granted that for which I was asking.

When my seeking changed from wanting my own will to asking for help, guidance and comfort, my program took a huge leap forward, because the results were swift, breath-taking, and hugely powerful in changing my thinking. I, like other old-timers in program that I've heard, can see that my progress in understanding and acceptance, and my level of serenity, grew deeper in the last ten years than in the almost 20 years prior to it. I don't know if it's because my stubbornness kept me plodding along a  path that led nowhere but back to myself, or if my fear was the culprit (a favourite AA speaker talks often about the fact that it isn't that we're afraid that true honest prayer for God's help won't work, we fear that it will work, and then where will we be, with our ideas about life?) -whatever the reason, when I began to ask for help instead of to be granted my will, everything changed, not the least of which was me.

I began to let go of things I'd had a steely grip upon for years, because I just couldn't trust enough to let them go. I accepted, and I turned over the clutter which had been clogging my thinking before then. That's when I knew I was going to have to leave my marriage, because I didn't want to live with my husband'd anger for one more day. When my friend took ill with cancer, and died within 3 months of his diagnosis, it was a turning point for me, I looked around at my life, and thought, "That could be me, I don't want my last 3 months of life to be lived in this environment of anger, with a man who is so self-absorbed he cannot really see me." With my husband's illness, his self-absorption is understandable, I'm grateful on a daily basis that I'm here now, and not still there.

If I'm going to make it to the library, and the old-timer's sharing, I need to get ready now. Take care, and may your day be blessed with beauty and serenity.

Why Is This Happening?

In the last month or so, I've been waking up two to three hours before my usual time. In the past, I'd have fixated upon this change in sleeping habits, and worried it like a dog with a stuffed toy, chewing it over, trying to find a reason, wanting to know why.

I've reached a place in my life where I can shrug and accept some changes, see them as preparation for I know not what, and take advantage of what they offer to me. I was thinking about this last night, as I was doing my usual tidying up before going to bed. (One aspect of living alone that I really like is getting up to a clean kitchen.) I wondered if I wasn't sleeping later in the last year before I left my marriage because of depression,  but it doesn't matter. I don't have that burning need to know why, before I can accept. I can get up earlier, enjoy having more time in my morning, and I'm grateful for that.

I like this from Courage to Change, page 97:

"I have to accept that I, too, display symptoms similar to those of the alcoholic, among them obsession, anxiety, anger, denial, and feelings of guilt. These reactions to alcoholism affect my relationships and the quality of my life, but as I learn to recognise them and to accept that I have been affected by a disease. I begin to heal. In time, I discover feelings of self-worth, love, and spiritual connectedness that help me to counteract the old responses. Mo matter how severely I have been affected, Al-Anon can help restore me to sanity. "

That's the great thing about this program; it matters not how crazy I have been. If I truly work to make changes in my attitude, my life will change.

Before I learned to accept many aspects of life as they are, waking up earlier than usual by a few hours would have given me an opportunity to drive myself up a wall, trying to figure out why this was happening. I'd have wanted a reason, and a good reason at that. I joked with my sponsor last week that my Higher Power was waking me up earlier because there's some plan for me. She laughed, because she too is a night owl, and is always giving herself heck for sleeping too late. Even at the age of 83, she still has the idea that she "should" be getting up earlier.

I'm going to spend the afternoon with her today, that's always a gift and a pleasure. I appreciate her willingness to work with me, and her humourous take on life.