Recovery

Today I worked with four young male recovering heroin addicts.  I closed with one of them and he is moving on with plans to go to school and, possibly, begin working with other recovering people.  As I told him, he has the potential to go far.  Another of the individuals today has already begun his post-addict life.  The two others are relatively early in the process and I can just begin to see the light coming on in their eyes.  All four clearly demonstrate the power of love and connection and how that power can change lives.  It is a wondrous experience, for me, to be so immersed in that power.
I am still struggling with being sick (general malaise and diarrhea).  It doesn’t happen often, but I do not like being sick.  I find it hard to maintain a positive attitude in spite of disability, pain and sickness.  Writing the above paragraph and staying focused on love, certainly helps!

A Broadening Perspective

Today I encountered one of the foundational phrases that I heard and came to espouse in my scientific past, “If you cannot measure it, it does not exist”.  At one point, several years ago, I was speaking to an international audience about my research, and I questioned the validity of a theory of a prominent colleague based on the fact that it was not testable and was, therefore, worthless.  I find it amusing and quite ironic that I now base my life on things like God or the power of love, things that are totally untestable.  During my scientific years, I did not realize that I was closing myself off from a great deal of information, that science had a very definite part, but was not a total answer.
During dinner tonight, my wife, Maria, and I were having some light conversation and, in response to my comment about something being trivial, she said “nothing is too trivial for the physical plane”.  I tend to get involved in all sorts of drama, such as the living problems of relatives or the way my boss treats me, which mean very little if one takes the perspective of eternity.

Spiritual Beings Having a Physical Experience

I just facilitated a four day men’s spiritual retreat in Mexico, near Rocky Point on the shore of the Sea of Cortez.  We got back late on Sunday and I have been sick and mostly in bed with cramps and diarrhea since then.  It is now Tuesday evening and I am happy to say that I feel better.  I don’t like being sick, but know it will pass, as things do.
The retreat was a wonderful experience for all ten of us.  Lots of love, connection and emotional vulnerability.  Early in the retreat we spread the ashes of a friend in the Sea.  We then talked about grief, change, who and what we really are.  I put the stress on each of us being spiritual beings having a physical experience.  As usual, I attempted to facilitate the movement of each individual a step or two further along their spiritual path, by providing the emotional and spiritual space they need.  It is important, for me, that I keep things general and have respect for individual differences.  I truly feel a lot of love for these guys and want the best for them.

Holding Hands With Personal Demons

As I said in the meeting tonight, “I believe that life is perfect right now, and there is a pretty good chance that will be true tomorrow!”  Perfection , for me, does not mean there is no room for growth and change, it just means that things are just fine the way they are and that I very much enjoy the human experience.  That attitude is quite remarkable since I have spent most of my life living with guilt, shame, low self worth, rules of conduct and a lot of fear.  It took being near death a few times for me to realize the truth of what I heard years ago, that “nothing matters very much and very few things matter at all”.  With that in mind, the emotions that were troubling me, my personal demons, fell away, with effort.
As I said in the previous paragraph, I had a lot of personal demons.  The way I have gotten (mostly!) past them is to “hold hands” with them, confront them and work through them, one at a time.  When I say hold hands with them, I mean accept and embrace them as part of me, I can then do the work of confronting and working past them.  During the process, my central focus was my spiritual condition.  I could only do the work from within love.  The process was neither pretty nor fun.

Complete Understanding

During my experiences today, both with clients and at my recovery meeting, it, once again, became quite clear that it is not possible for most people to completely understand the experiences of another.  What I call “deep listening” makes it possible to come a great deal closer to a complete understanding, but it is still like being outside of the experience looking in, rather than having had the experience.  Deep listening certainly allows for greater understanding and genuine empathy, but it is not the same as going through the experience.  This realization came about through discussions about what it meant to be addicted, dependent on and obsessed by some sort of chemical, what I typically describe as ‘being owned” by the chemical.  It is not possible for a non-addict to completely understand what it is like to be addicted.  However, even without a given experience, it is possible to truly listen and come to a valid understanding, rather than simply projecting beliefs, it just requires more effort.

A Divine Meeting

Today, while working with a family, I was reminded of a comment made by deCastillejo in her book Knowing Woman, "For there to be a meeting, it seems as though a third, a something else, is always present.  You may call it Love, or the Holy Spirit.  Jungians would say that it is the presence of the Self.  If this 'Other' is present, there cannot have failed to be a meeting." In this case, there was a very strong feeling of a presence and I felt very much like a divine conduit along with my typical indications of sweating, runny nose and speech improvement.  Also, each of the family members were being authentic and completely present.  It was an important, loving, magical, and totally exhausting, couple of hours.  It feels amazing for me to be present for such a life changing moment.

Achieving Peace and Serenity

I was reminded today that my experience is that it is not possible to skip over the unpleasant emotions like shame, guilt or hurt, often associated with past events, and move straight to peace and serenity.  It is clear to me that in order to achieve higher levels of communion and deeper levels of peace, it is necessary to completely resolve and integrate those feelings first.  For me, the first step in the process of resolving my past issues was breaking down my denial and becoming aware that I was carrying around feelings of hurt, guilt and shame, an unpleasant realization.  The next step(s) involved several years of shedding light on those feelings, understanding where they came from and recognizing the truth about them, that they were lies or misunderstandings.  The final result has been a sense of freedom I did not know was possible and a deeper love for myself and others.

Joy in Simple Things

One of my friends has a “special needs child”.  She is profoundly disabled and has a lot of pain.  She also finds great joy in the simple things in life, as do I.  Pain and disability has a way of stripping away a commonly held grasping toward the unimportant things in life, transient things like material possessions, money, power and prestige.  It then becomes more possible to see and feel joy in simple, basic things, like feeling a breeze, being with family or a hug.  In general, children have not yet gotten lost in the meaningless aspects of our culture.  They can teach us much, if we adults can listen.

Looking for Love

During the recovery meeting tonight the speaker mentioned what he described as a very strong and indefinable and powerful feeling in his home group that he found very comforting and supportive.  The others, including me, in the meeting believed what he was describing to be love and connectedness.  There was a general acceptance of its importance in recovery, a recognition that we are all seeking that feeling.

Love and Faith

A day of rest.  I did my exercises, paid some bills, went to a movie and relaxed.  The movie, “The Croods”, was all about the consequences of a life based on fear versus a life based on love and faith, very touching.  I cried several times due to the truth expressed in the movie about the confining nature of a fear based life versus the freedom and power of a love and faith based life.
Two things that I practice on a daily basis are gratitude for my life and staying within my physical limits.  The fact is that because of my age and disability, I have relatively little endurance.  I try, successfully, to be grateful and not do very much and, as a result, I end up tired, but not exhausted, at the end of each day.  Recently, I also became aware that any resistance I had to experiencing the events of my life also made me tired, any resistance to “what is”.