Balance In All Things.

I practise yoga daily. An exercise in my routine -  Stork Pose - requires that one stand upon one leg, the other foot placed against the top thigh, hands in prayer pose. I've noticed over the years, that I cannot do this pose while thinking about somethiing else - if I do, I begin to slowly topple sideways. Stork Pose requires that I pay attention only to Stork Pose. When I think, I fall over.

Hmm, can this idea be extrapolated into more of my daily life? (I've told you I'm a slow learner.) When I think, I fall over. Simple and clear, isn't it? But experience never stopped the stubborn, so I've spent an awful lot of time falling over, because I wanted to think, I was going to think, and no Al-Anon person was going to tell me I couldn't think...grumble snorf mutter...splat.

I have to laugh at my own intransigence, it's too frustrating otherwise. A couple of days ago, I had rolled out my yoga mat, and was going through the exercises with my mind on a business matter, quite unaware that I wasn't living in the moment until Stork Pose. I'd tried to balance quite a few times, before it dawned upon me that I was trying to practise yoga and design business advertising at the same time. (Writing that, it sounds even sillier than it did at the time.)

The instructor on my yoga dvd says at one point "...but slowly, slowly, as you begin to open up, you can go further..."  Yoga and 12 Step have that much in common; practise is required. One cannot begin at the advanced level, one must start wherever one is. It doesn't matter where we are when we begin, that's irrelevant. What matters is that we put this wisdom into practise, and try it out.

Before we know it, we can bend from the waist and place our hands flat on the floor, which seemed impossible at the start, when we could only reach the tops of our knees.

It sneaks up on us.

But only if we roll the mat out, and do the exercises. Watching the dvd while seated in a chair, or lounging on the couch doesn't work; nor does watching Al-Anon from the sidelines. We have to get down there on the floor, and try standing on one leg, regardless of how foolish we may feel. It will soon begin to feel natural, and we can delight in our progress.

How Badly Do I Want Change? con't.

From the ODAT, page 23:

"Learning the Al-Anon program in all its deep meanings, and applying it to my daily life is not simple matter of going to a meeting now and then. Suppose I had decided to learn another language or study art or a science, I would have to work at it every day and practise the things I learned until they became part of me. A philosopher or an artist studies every day for years to perfect himself. How can I hope to perfect myself in the Al-Anon way of life without daily application?"

A few years ago, a friend asked me to teach her the basics of stained glass. I agreed, and we spent quite a few hours down in her basement, working on the fundamentals of how to cut glass, how to foil correctly, and how to solder. My friend then put the glass aside, and didn't touch it again for about 2 years, at which time she asked me to teach her again, because she'd forgotten it all.

I gently refused, instead giving her the excellent instruction book with which I'd taught myself how to do stained glass. (Setting this boundary was very difficult for me, because I respect, admire, and love my friend, and didn't want to upset or annoy her. I reminded her that we'd discussed before the lessons, the fact that I was making an exception for her, because I don't teach anyone how to do glass, and I've had many requests. I'm not a good teacher, I'm too impatient.)

I had taken the time to show her how to do it, it was then up to her to utilise that knowledge, or not. Program is just the same.I learn how to utilise the wisdom of Twelve Step through attending meetings, talking to other members, reading, and working with a sponsor. Other members can be of enormous help to me, but unless I'm willing to put the program into practise in my own life, I won't get anywhere.

Some lessons come easily, and I use the information almost immediately. Others, for whatever reason: my ego, or stubborness, or my ever-present desire for control, (simmering away on a back burner like a stock pot) are set aside, in full view, and not touched again for months. Or years, when I was newer to program.

Life has given me sufficient painful instruction in the result of my knowing, yet continuing to turn my face away, and refusing to admit a reality, to reduce my obstinacy considerably by this stage of my journey.

I heard at the meeting someone speak of setting boundaries with himself - I like that. Saying to myself: this far, and no further. Do not go there. You know what happens, so suck it up, turn around, and walk the other way, repeating the Serenity Prayer as you go.

Think.

From: Hope for Today, page 36: "This slogan is intended to help me think before I act, making sure my actions are wll thought out, not impulsive, compulsive, or reactive. I need to remember, though, that the slogan is not "Think, think, think, think!"
and:
"Think" is an invitation for clarity, not endless rumination. God, help me to think, but not too much!"

I have spent a sizable portion of my life either leaping into action so as not to feel a feeling, or suffocating any possibility of action, in a quagmire of convoluted and circular thinking. I not only did autopsies on past events, I did them on a cellular level. I got down in there with the electron microscope, convinced that were the magnification only high enough, I'd find an answer to my questions.

(What usually happened, is what always seems to happen when I watch a video on YouTube - I watch the first, and some reference in that, causes me to do a search on a second topic, and from there, a third and fourth and fifth...perfect example - tonight I started out viewing a video clip of the comic Russell Peters, and ended up watching Secretariat win the Kentucky Derby..don't ask me how I got there from here...)

I'd search and search, trying to make sense of something that has no sense in it whatsoever - addiction. I had lived my life with the firm belief that if I just armed myself with enough information, and relied upon my intelligence, I would find solutions to any problem in my life. Alcoholism was merely another challenge. Once I began attending meetings, I also began to compile information about addiction from every source I could find, and what I found, after all my searching and reading and pondering was: it didn't help.

My intelligence, my ability to think, to gather information and sort, categorise, classify, was useless in the face of the alcoholic's disease. My brain was, in fact, my own worst enemy, since it locked on to the topic and ground away unstoppably until I felt as if I were going quietly mad.

So, I've had to learn to use this slogan in a very specific fashion. I use it when my emotions run high, and I'm feeling that old familiar desire to do something, anything, to give myself the illusion that I'm "fixing this." I use it when I'm feeling compelled to immediate action; I've learned that short of medical emergency, or a black bear in the back garden, very few things in life require instantaneous responses.

I don't use it as proof that 12-step gives me free rein, to drive not only myself, but anyone foolish enough to lend an ear, right around the bend, with microscopic scrutiny as to "what he meant when he said blah blah blah..."

As a program friend once commented to me: "Why would you want to try to figure out what's going on inside the alcoholic's head? He can't even stand being in there, and it's his head, why do you think he drinks so much?"