Step 2 - Day 47

Mood: Rested. Mellow night at home yesterday. Rain kept me from doing yard work, so I roasted a whole chicken for dinner. Lazy morning, with cats sunning themselves on the deck, and me eating fruit and cottage cheese for breakfast with them. Just the way I like my Sundays....

Music: "Have A Talk With God", by Stevie Wonder. I can listen to this now, post intro to Al-Anon, because I know God for me is "one of my understanding". That works for me.

Garden: Still wet and weedy. I did get my compost bin set-up this morning though. It got it's first load of rotting veggies too. I love seeing everything used. Nothing going to waste. Nothing is a waste, everything has a purpose, people or banana peels!

Step 2-

"Came to understand that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity."

I want to talk about what Higher Power is to me, today. Since I mentioned that Higher Power in the Twelve Steps is a "God of my understanding", what exactly is that for me, at this time? For me God is creation itself, the force that is responsible for all creation, all that we see. But God is also the emptiness, or potential, from which all creation arises. God includes everything, seen and unseen. Nothing is left out of this. Nothing. Everything is an integral part of this web. Nothing is not originally from the same source, so everything is to be honored as from the same creator. Life is interdependent, and all-encompassing. So everything has purpose, meaning and is, ultimately, a creation of love. Everything from the one source is made from the same loving force.

So, when I think about a Power greater than myself, I am not thinking about some being or entity, I am thinking about the order of the universe. I am thinking about the web of life, and how I fit into it. I also believe this web of life is changing and evolving, like all living systems do. The definition of something that is no longer alive, dead, is that it has stopped adapting and changing to the environment. Stasis=death. And evolution is constant. Every encounter, every event, every person in my life has meaning. All that they encounter and learn from, is impacting me on a minute by minute, hour by hour basis. It is phenomenally complex, but also simple. Complex because of the uncountable number of influences and interactions that take place. Simple, because they are all taking place for one purpose-Love. They are all taking place so that there can be an ever increasing evolution of love, in all forms. Cool, huh?

But what do I mean by love? To me love is connection. Identification. Awareness of unity, of sameness, of belonging. I seek it, but I already am it. I already belong to a vast web of life. I am already playing a role in that life. I, by recognizing this, can act in a way that honors that interconnection and life. If I know I am "my brothers and sisters keeper", and I mean ALL my brothers and sisters;two-legged, 4-legged, and many more legged, than I know what will not only sustain my life, but also the life of "all my relations". I will try to live in a way that honors and ensures that. This is not just on a physical level, but emotional and mental levels as well. And how do I do this? By practicing harmlessness and kindness. To act as if everyone was part of my family, and treat then as such, even if they are the family member that rubs me the wrong way, most of the time. It is important to practice patience and tolerance too, so that I too will be given it, when it is my turn. And it will be, eventually!

So, how can my sense of Higher Power restore me to sanity? For me it has always been about relationship. And respect. Insanity for me is a disconnection from life. A sense of being out of it, out of this world, not part of life, alien to it. Fearful or destructive because of that sense of alienation and disconnection. Disconnection can come in many forms too. But it starts in the mind. With illusions and delusions, a moving away from being present. An escape into realms of the mind. This mental disconnection leads to feelings of emotional pain, and feelings of isolation, alienation and fear. I am, on one level, an animal, and when I the animal feel isolated, cornered or threatened, the fear causes all sorts of aberrant behavior. This can result in physical actions being taken, or further isolation, such as my retreating from society. That or others isolating me also, shunning or expelling me from the community out of their fear.

My earliest sense of connection came from my birth, and also my family, shortly after my birth. What happened during that time imprinted on me what I thought and felt about life, family and my connection to the community, and the greater web of life in which I belonged. I came into an educated and very young family. My parents were both college graduates, just out of school, but very immature and naive. They were poor, coming from poor families, the first in their family to go to college and very inexperienced about life. Other than school, they both really didn't know much. And to top it off, both of their families of origins had mental illness, sex abuse, alcoholism and poverty. We lived then, in a poor and rough neighborhood, where most of our neighbors were like their families had been, except black, Hispanic and Irish. I don't remember feeling safe except when I was very young and mostly cared for by a baby sitter, and indoors mostly. Once I started going outside to play, that's when the trouble really started.

To me, that time in my life represented when I lived amidst a collection of people that had very little sense of connection, of community or interdependence. Everyone was out for themselves. Even children. Largely neglected, we were easy targets for older children or adults. Street savvy is what kept you alive, helped you to know when you were in-danger, or how to deflect attacks or abuse from others. I had to learn this the hard way. Ironically enough, my family was there to help. My parents wanted to help people to advocate for themselves, as tenant union and community organizers. You can't organize a community though, until people feel and recognize, that they are a community. People just saw me as another kid to dominate or exploit, and I had my share of run-ins with bullies, abusers and thieves. My brother and I had our first tricycle stolen, the first day we had it, by a neighbor boy who wanted for his sister.

These experiences really imprinted on me, at a very young age. Though I had parents who were more aware and educated, it did not change the effect of that early emotional environment of fear and abuse. When we moved to another community a few years later, in another state, I felt shell shocked and leery of strangers. I was already on the defense, even before there was any need to be. It is sad that so many poor kids, probably the majority of kids in this country, have these kinds of experiences growing up. Poverty, addiction, abuse and neglect take a heavy toll on young hearts and minds. Add to that my own family, with it's history of mental illness, emotional dysfunction and sexual abuse, and I got a heavy schooling in how to disappear as a person. I may have been there physically, but inside I was crushed. I remember not really knowing how I thought or felt about much of anything.

I have seen this change over the years, as I confronted things in my life. As crisis precipitated, from the result of my distorted thinking and ability to relate to others, I had to re-think everything from the ground up. Sometimes it has seemed painstakingly slow. But there has been progress. The way the Twelve Steps is contributing to that now, has been in how I see myself in relationship to others. I began to understand and have a sense of interconnection in the past, but saw it more from an environmental and planetary level. In Al-Anon I am taking it right down to the human and personal. I am being re-schooled in a sense of independent-interconnectedness. In the past, I thought it was my will that was responsible this. I believed if I was good enough, tried to do everything right, I would find my way to heaven or nirvana. With the steps I am getting a first-hand look at the effects, on a relationship level, of this very basic sense of connection to a larger whole. A power greater than myself. It really does make us crazy to think we are in control of everything.

Another effect of my past experience is the lack of a sense of gentleness, compassion and warmth. In the CTC this morning Today's Reminder read, "If I am being hard on myself, I can stop and remember that I deserve gentleness and understanding from myself. Being human is not a character defect! Today I will be gentle with my humanness." One of the ways I have healed from past abuse was recognizing that I deserved better treatment. Kinder and more patient relationships. It takes a while to trust that this is something that can be trusted and relied upon. When substances, and mental illness are involved, it is the unpredictableness that is so frightening. The chaos and confusion that seems to be the standard. As I find more sanity and I give this compassion and warmth to others, I attract others that can give it back to me. I also have to be willing to accept too though, and trust that it is real.

So, in closing, I would like to say that I look forward to greater and greater levels of sanity, as I come to know my Higher Power's will, and follow it, knowing that I am in the hands of a vast and loving force that wants nothing but my highest good. This awareness is very liberating and comforting to me. It gives me hope that there is a way to live life that works. It gives me faith that I can find my way to a way of living that will bring me a greater sense of joy and connectedness in my life, and to the world. I believe that this will bring the peace that I, and we all crave, in the world. One mind at a time. But we can only do it for ourselves. And we must try. I believe the fate of our world hangs on this effort that we are all being asked to make. Won't you join me?

Thanks for listening!

Keep coming back:)