"Spiritual Awakening" defined

A spiritual awakening soon came to mean trying each day to be a little more thoughtful, more considerate, a little more courteous to those with whom I came in contact. - Alcoholics Anonymous (4th Edition), page 356 

"Teacher, which is the greatest commandment in the Law?" Jesus replied: "'Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments." - Matthew 22:36-50 (NIV)

Jesus' disciples asked him to teach them to pray. They'd been LIVING with him for a while by then. Why did they need a lesson in prayer? Even if they didn't pray TO him, couldn't they have absorbed it? So that gives me a good excuse for not getting hold of this prayer/meditation stuff, right? Excuse is not the operative word, not the correct word. How about rewriting that sentence to, "So, that provides insight into shared insecurities, shared distress over this form of communication, right?" 

In prayer, only one of the two of us has to be perfect, and like a truly great individual, the one who is doesn't need to flaunt it, nor does he make me feel inadequate. I do that all by myself, and it hurts him and it hurts me and it accomplishes nothing put putting a block between me and him. We get to a spiritual awakening by the time we really work the steps. It's an implied promise, "Step 12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of the result of these Steps...." It's not my obligation to have it, to make it happen. It's my obligation to let it happen and get out of the way. Help me do it, God!

Equal

Living on the same level as the rest of the world is refreshing; but it's an astounding and remarkable change from my mindset most of these long years I've been interacting with folks. My universe was in large part three-tiered, though I never thought of it and would have argued "back then" for many more tiers. Yet what mattered was my own level, and I never actually contemplated for those not on my level – in other words for all other people living or having lived – whether one was higher than another. It didn't matter. I occupied the middle stratum, standing alone. And lonely. Lots of folks ranked higher than me, in my mind, and I certainly looked down figuratively if not literally on many more. But I was equal with nobody.

Now it's a level plain, large and populated, abounding in interesting, compassionate, and diverse folks struggling along with me, rejoicing with me, grieving with me – company. No longer is it a lonely place. I didn't change. I just got a new pair of glasses.

Ask and Receive

It's a tough day. Really tough. Then I got this quote in my email box. It helps.

We have not even to risk the journey alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us; the labyrinth is thoroughly known; we have only to follow the thread of the hero-path. And where we had thought to find an abomination, we shall find a god; where we had thought to slay another, we shall slay ourselves; where we had thought to travel outward, we shall come to the center of our own existence; where we had thought to be alone, we shall be with all the world."

— Joseph Campbell
American Professor and Writer

I've tried to read Campbell's The Hero's Journey before, but if he writes this well, I think I better find it and read it.

Perspective

A woman I'm sponsoring is sending me her gratitude list daily. It's helpful to put into perspective my day's activities and emotions -- and to remind me of my own gratitude sources. I just came back from a trip I found to be a real joy. Obviously, there were issues with the trip, more with this trip than with some, and my own negligence and trust-placing caused some of the surprises. Still, it was an awesome experience, an opportunity to observe the world's beauty and vastness, My travelling companion acknowledged the beauty, but dwelt on the inconveniences. What a loss!

 

Perspective is important in looking inward as well as outward.

• Yesterday I got a test copy of a product I put together. Most of it looks great. My mistakes, though, are what I think of first, but they'll be corrected -- that's why we went to the expense of getting a test copy anyway! And the final product will be glorious.
• I got a check yesterday made payable to an entity that has no bank account. But hey, I got a check, and the bank can expand the allowable names on the account, I bet!
• I left a small bowl of chili out last night, necessitating it's being added to the dogs' breakfast rather than a later meal. That was stupid. But I put the majority of the unused chili in the refrigerator appropriately. Yeah, the waste was still stupid. But the financial loss is not worth the emotional enmity.

I'm okay. I'm REALLY okay. Look how far I've come! A car in front of me this morning slowed down unexpectedly to enter the AM Donuts parking area. Two years, six months and a couple of weeks ago, that would have been my car. I no longer felt any need to go there, thought "My car doesn't make that turn anymore." I amended the thought, though -- there's a fruit vendor in the same lot. But I have no need for the donuts. Thank God! One of the glories of the trip was I reveled in creation, in people, in new experiences -- not in new dishes or in stuffing all the food I encountered into me. I ate no sugar, and I didn't eat more than I needed. Thank God!

This day in history

I remember a conversation with my younger son another June 6, sometime around 2004 or 2005. Of course historically, this is D-Day, the landing of Allied forces at Normandy. I was born a Baby Boomer, have no memory of WWII, and to be honest I remembered D-Day's date then because of its personal significance to me -- not the invasion, but my own D-Day. Anyway, we were discussing the historical one and he, born in 1980, said he bet half his generation didn't know the significance of June 6. I said half of MINE didn't know, and less than a tenth of his did. All the estimates are probably too high. 

Anyway, personally my June 6 was in 1997. It was the climactic event of what I lovingly call my "hell year" from October, 1996 to November, 1997. On that day I was so tense, so earnestly trying to hold my world together, I reached up rather casually and severed by rotator cuff with sheer tension. Because of that moment, circumstances made me realize I was killing myself and not managing to help anybody else either. And I began to try to figure out how to take care of myself. But for a while I continued to do it medicating with the food, though I also met an angel who massaged me with her hands and used her words to start waking me up to "the things I cannot change" and giving me the courage to change the things I can. It was a long trip. Through a psychologist, then finally another counselor steeped in the wisdom and traditions of these rooms, and together, through ten years, God used all the events to bring me to the morning of December 17 when I told him life as I was managing was "Stupid!" And it was. But under new management it's fantastic. Thank God!

Blast from the Past

Sometimes a regression is the easiest way to really see how far you've come. I had a trip to yesterday yesterday (the first yesterday being figurative, the second literal when I started this, "poetic" now.) I acted like I used to act. I don't know what the character defect is called. "Surrendering the self" might be appropriate but I've never seen it on a list of character defects. "Fear" works, too. How well "fear" works to describe my past....

A neighboring town had baseball-size hail; we were in the path of the general storm, had no idea how badly we'd be hit. (Short answer: not even much rain.) With excess cars over garage space, we took two cars to find shelter elsewhere. The story is long and involved, but basically I was in one car near my husband in the other, and I was faced with the question of whether to move for somebody else. My instinct was to move. But I fell back into the fear, into trying to imagine my husband's thoughts, and I did what I thought was rude because I expected it would be his choice. It wasn't. He thought I was rude, too. And I was. But my big issue (especially since there was no hail after all) was what it felt like to regress to the character defect of trying to please by abandoning myself, by surrendering my will to the wrong "higher power."

This program is a miracle.

I was working with quotations yesterday for a project, and two stand out:

• "There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered." Nelson Mandela
• the other was not in the list but was a conversation between my son and me when I copied that to him in the IM box:
• son: The converse to the statement is also revealing.
• me: yeah. Like going home and reverting?
  
• son: like going somewhere that has changed and that revealing how little change has happened in you.
  

Remorse

I read for the first time this morning Kahlil Gibran's addressing the issue "On Crime and Punishment." The phrase that grabbed me and sent me to find the rest was "And how shall you punish those whose remorse is already greater than their misdeeds?" It's a powerful piece of writing, one that makes me think from the perspective of the criminal justice system, but even more as a recovering compulsive overeater. It really doesn't matter whether we're thinking about the wrong people did us or the wrong we've done others. It says we're all equaled, all "sinners" and all "saints" or at least we're as high as the highest among us. Fascinating.

The perspective I see right now in reading this, the reason this draft has been sitting open on my computer for a while, is in looking at those who make my life uncomfortable. Through program I've come to see their behavior as the same as mine when I was struggling to like myself. The blame placed on me by the other is not my blame to adopt, as I was so quick to do for so many years. It's his or her own, and no matter what I do, I can't take away that blame, can't relieve him of it. Nor can I punish him for dumping it on me, for that only serves to give him another focus, to make his self-reproach something he can hide from himself in his anger at me.

I feel sorry for him, for I'm no longer playing the game, and I see his hurt, his misery. His remorse greater than his misdeeds -- and far greater than any punishment I could mete out.

God help us all.