Improving My Reception

 I had an interesting and unusual experience last week - I received a package from Amazon. That's not unusual - what is unusual is that I wasn't expecting it and it's something I needed. The package contained 2 black polo shirts, which I need for work.

When I received the package, I didn't know what it was, so I opened it up and discovered the shirts. They were two Hanes brand black polo shirts. I wondered if I had ordered them by mistake, because a few days before, I was looking on Amazon at these exact shirts. I started to doubt my sanity, but then I remembered that I had no money on my debit card with which to pay for these shirts. I went to my card account and found I still had no money, and that I hadn't sent any to Amazon in over 3 months. Did Amazon, out of the goodness of their corporate heart, decide to send me something I was just looking at?

Then I found a little slip of paper inside that said this was a gift from someone, but it didn't have their name. There are only 3 people who know my shipping address, and I quickly narrowed it down to one person. I found out I was correct.

So what's the deal - is this a coincidence, or is it evidence that the Universe is constantly conspiring for my highest good? I'm choosing the latter - I want to believe what I've read and been told - that there is a force for good in the Universe that is unconditional Love, and that this force - Spirit - is always giving. I like to compare it to the Sun, even though Spirit is infinitely bigger and more powerful than the Sun. All the Sun does all day (and all night, even though we don't see it) is send out light. It doesn't matter if it's cloudy or not - the Sun is still emitting it's rays. The Sun, I know, doesn't care whether I'm a "good" boy or a "bad" boy - it just keeps shining on me. Receiving those shirts from an anonymous benefactor is tangible evidence to me that Something is working on my behalf. 

I must admit that I don't have blind faith in my Higher Power. I do, however, have an intuitive sense that an underlying Substance that is perfect Love and intelligence governs Life and governs my life.  This intuitive sense is my faith, and a lot of days it seems like it's not very developed. What I do have faith in are the spiritual principles of recovery from addiction - honesty, openmindedness, willingness, surrender, humility, love, hope, courage, faith, strength, and others. When I practice these principles, I am able - I have the power - to stay in recovery and be a blessing to those around me. When I stop practicing these principles, I relapse into depression and active addiction. It's that simple, and yet it's not. I have faith in these principles because when I practice them, and I see others practice them, I see them work. I see sobriety and recovery. I've experienced the results.

The question that baffles me is why do I backslide? Why do I make real progress, and then relapse? 

I've experienced a ton of healing in my life, but I've also experienced a ton of sickness. I think it's about 50/50 right now, but the healing might be getting in the lead. Since July 17th, I've experienced sobriety, hope, insights, changes in attitude and behavior, and an overall improvement in my reaction to Life. I seem to be cooperating with Life lately, and that urge to self-destruct has gone into remission. As this has been developing, I've also receive signs that Spirit is active in my life. I like these signs; two of the big ones are the shirts I received and the job for which I received them. It really is a miracle that I'm back in grocery again, and all I'm going to say about that is that I recognize this job as an opportunity to make indirect amends for the shitstorm I caused over 20 years ago!

So, I've got all these signs, and I'm feeling good about my experiences and the progress I've made over the past 8 weeks (which really is no time), and I believe more and more that something Divine is working in my life - how do I keep this going? Consistent spiritual practice. I begin to learn that today  I have no more important job than to maintain my sobriety/recovery. I begin to understand at a deep level that I cannot do this on my own; I must accept & receive the help of my Higher Power. Then I continue to develop my relationship with that Higher Power. 

I can see more clearly today how I rationalized the thinking and behavior that pushed me away from recovery and toward relapse. I can see how I created the clouds that obscured the Sunlight of the Spirit and made me believe again that my life had no value, that I had no value. These "clouds" are fear, doubt, low self-esteem, lack of humility, resentment, self-pity, escapism, isolation, lack of connection, and hopelessness. When I allow these clouds to form, they effectively block Spirit, even though Spirit is still there. Spirit never leaves me; I try to hide. 

I believe one of the key elements in keeping the faith is active gratitude. Active gratitude is simply seeking and seeing the blessings in and around me, and being thankful to Source for them. As we know by now, what I focus on grows and grows - when I focus on the shit in life, shit grows; when I focus on the good in life (and in myself), the good grows. So when I seek and acknowledge good in my life, I find it more and more; that's just the way the Universe works.

So here's the point - my experiencing the coincidences and miracles in my life is really me opening up my mind and heart to experience them. I'm improving my reception. I believe I live in an abundant Universe - that blessings and miracles are swirling around me - and that the only thing that keeps me from receiving these blessings is poor reception - a closed mind and/or a closed heart. God shows up in my life in a lot of ways - through different people and different events. In order to receive, I need to stay open; otherwise, I'll walk right by my blessings. 

The way for me to improve and maintain my receptivity, my reception, is to keep a consistent spiritual practice, which includes prayer, meditation, and gratitude, and also a sense of expectation throughout the day. For me, it's skillful to expect something good - something good will happen. Expecting specific things has often proven unskillful for me - my focusing my mind on specific things seems to make me miss the better things that Spirit has in Mind for me.

I don't know how to end this, probably because there isn't an end; no matter how practiced and skillful I get, there will always be room for improving my reception. So for now, I'll say blessings on your path, thank you for reading, and

Namasté,

Ken

Learning How to Question My Thinking

I like to share about the (mostly) positive experiences that I encounter on my journey. The reason I haven't shared much lately is not that I haven't had positive experiences lately - it's that much of what I've been experiencing has been difficult to put into words. Something happened today, however, that was a real 'aha' moment for me, and I can very clearly see the hand of Spirit working in my life, something for which I have been praying lately. So here we go:

I have been living in sober living in Prescott Valley since February 8, 2020. Part of living here is paying the rent, which requires, in most cases, getting a job and earning money. It sounds fairly simple when I write it down in black and white! However, I found a bunch of obstacles to me gaining employment - lack of my own phone, lack of reliable transportation, lack of decent clothing, etc. But the real obstacle was my thinking, which was heavily influenced by a still-depressed mood. Put very simply, I wasn't feeling working, ya know? I really had trouble expressing what I felt to others, and I was often dishonest when asked how my job search was going. I had a lot of irrational reasons (fears) why I didn't want to venture into the job market. Once my rent bill would have hit $1000, I'd be asked to leave and be on the streets. A few events stayed my sentence of homelessness - I was offered a position by the owners of this house to wave a sign in front of their other business in exchange for rent credit; I filed my tax returns and received a good refund; our pandemic crisis occurred and I received a stimulus check, with which I bought a bicycle.

Somewhere along the line my mood and disposition improved and my fears lessened enough for me to stick a toe into the cold, scary waters of the job market. I had received notice that one of those dollar-discount stores in the area was hiring. I had applied to one of them a couple of months ago, but I don't think I passed their stupid pre-employment screenings about whether or not I'd snitch on errant co-workers. So I applied at another store online, and I thought I was applying at the one that is next door to the supermarket I frequent, because these stores all have 'dollar' in their name. 

Today I got a callback from one of the stores, and I set up an interview for tomorrow. Yay! I got my foot in the door! I called my sponsor and let him know, and I told him the name of the store. He said, "Oh yeah, that's over by Home Depot," I said, "No, I think it's by Safeway." And we left it at that. But, I got to wondering, was I wrong? I looked it up, and, sure enough, I was wrong - I applied to the one next to Home Depot, not the one next to Safeway. I of course let my sponsor know he was correct.

So how does this turn into a spiritual moment? Well, I've heard a couple of things regarding that - one is that anytime we go against our egoic (fear-based) thinking, that's spiritual. The other is that any time an alcoholic questions his own thinking, that's a spiritual experience. I thought about where I'd be tomorrow if I didn't verify my destination - at the wrong store looking confused. Worse, there's a good possibility that I would have used that mistake against myself, and lost any confidence I might have gained lately. Such is the nature of early recovery that we don't get over our own mistakes in sobriety right now as well as we will in the future.

So this is another save - an instance where I did the right thing (checked out my own thinking) and saved myself some trouble. But I can't take full credit! For the past few weeks I have been earnestly working the spiritual part of my recovery program that includes prayer and meditation. Skillful prayer and meditation opens the consciousness - it's that simple. There's a lot of progress when someone in recovery begins living in the solution rather than the problem, and I had been living in the problem - relying on my own thinking the majority of the time. That type of living makes life more difficult than it already is. When I begin practicing openness or openmindedness, and when I start practicing trust and willingness, all sorts of doors start opening up, and I'm grateful for that Truth. 

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths." (Proverbs 3:5-6, NKJV)

Namasté, 

Ken

Miracles Happen

Two days ago I sold my car. On December 1st I earned a DUI, so my license is suspended until the case is determined, and I needed the money, so why not? I received $2400 cash. That's not the miracle - I probably could've gotten a bit more, as there were at least 40 hits on my FB ad. I wanted to have an auction! Here's where the miracle starts - I met with the first person who responded, and he bought the car. As it turns out he is in recovery from heroin addiction for 5 years, and we had a lot to talk about as we drove around Waukesha. (By the way, for anybody who cares, the accent on Waukesha is on the first syllable, not the second - it's WAU kee shaw). The miracle completes with what I didn't do. I had $2400 cash in hand, and what I would've done without a doubt some years ago is fly to Vegas and go on a killer bender. I did not do that. I put the money in the bank and wrote checks to people to whom I owe money. Miracles aren't always flashy.

Miracles are personal. We can observe someone else's miracle, but we can't experience it. I can observe a miraculous healing in someone else, but I don't get to experience it until the healing happens in me.

When I was a member of Unity Church of Christianity, I heard often that Jesus wasn't the exception, He was the example. Jesus discovered His oneness with God (Source) and His oneness with all of Creation - this is why He could seemingly manipulate circumstances and produce miracles. Some will tell you that Jesus didn't perform miracles - He simply saw what was possible in people, and people who had faith in Him responded accordingly.

Take the paralyzed fellow who was laying by the pool of Bethesda for 38 years waiting for someone to help him in while the waters were roiled. Jesus asked him if he'd like to be healed, and the man explained his situation, so Jesus said, "Not a problem!", and nudged the man with His foot so he rolled into the pool and he was healed! Sometimes we just need a little nudge! But what the Bible says happened (John 5:1-9) is that Jesus told him to take up his mat and walk, and the man did so - he was healed. Jesus had the ability to see past appearances, and know the Truth - that God is in us all, and all things are possible with God. The man at the pool had the miracle in him all along, he just needed a little nudge from someone in whom he had faith.

And that's what we need in recovery from mental illness and addiction - someone who believes in us and in whom we can believe. We don't recover by accident. 

Miracles are extraordinary - outside of the ordinary - events. The person who lives after receiving a death sentence from their doctor. The homeless person who meets 'by chance' the right person on the street who sets him on the path to homefulness. The person who recovers from a seemingly hopeless state of mind and body, and ends up staying sober for the rest of their life. The person whose life is destroyed by mental illness, finds ways to recover, and ends up with a better life than they had before. All of us in recovery have experienced a miracle - the unfortunate fact is that most people who become alcoholic will remain alcoholic until the end of their lives, so recovery is definitely an extraordinary event - a miracle. It doesn't mean that those who don't recover can't experience the miracle, it just means they haven't yet. All of us, when we develop the ability to look past or above appearances, can experience miracles. It takes faith, courage, and an open mind.

I am fortunate today. I believe things can be different. I believe I can be different. I have the faith, the courage, and the open, expectant mind to receive miracles in my life. I look past the mountain of debt; I look past my history; I look to the angels in my life, and I look forward to a clean, sane life filled with joy and purpose. And so it is! Thank you God!

Namasté,

Ken

The Way It Is? Mindfulness and Imagination as a Pathway to Change

We, as humans, get really used to the way things are. We get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and do our business without having to think too much about it - like what happens to the water that goes down our sinks, toilets, and showers, or even the origin of the water. We get dressed, probably without knowing who made our clothes (no, Levi Strauss and Tommy Hilfeger did not actually make the garments you're wearing). We hop in our cars, and we don't need to even know how a car works to utilize it. When we turn on the radio, do we think about how that works? How music travels invisibly through the air from some location to us so that we can listen to it? And many of us go to a job that starts at 7, 8, or 9 in the morning, lasts 8 hours, and we'll go to 5 days a week, without ever wondering if there would be a way to live on a 20 hour/week job, or no job at all? And the list goes on, and on, and on...

We don't have to consciously think about all the things we do in a day - unless we want to change something in our lives, or change our entire life.

One of the curious aspects of addiction (and mental illness, as well, I think) is the narrowing of our imaginations when we're suffering from it. For instance, I have a few challenges, or opportunities for growth, going on right now, and I look forward to working through them, knowing that they'll make me stronger and lead me to an even richer life than I'm already experiencing. However, if I start drinking alcohol today, all of those challenges will become huge insurmountable problems that nothing but another drink will fix. Such is the nature of alcoholism, and I think it's like that with depression as well. On days when I'm not feeling any symptoms of depression, life looks great, and I see many possibilities. On days when I'm symptomatic, it's really difficult to see a decent future, and everything around me looks and feels like crap. (It's those days that I get through by faith - knowing, but not seeing, that things will get better).

So, a big part of recovery is reversing the narrow-mindedness that comes from the diseases. Now, a challenge comes in - the longer we stay in our active addiction or depression, the more ingrained is the negative, narrow-minded thinking, and the more difficult it is to change. This can be very frustrating! People can tell us that it (whatever 'it' is) gets better, and they're happy and smiling, and we're slogging through the shit wondering, "When?" Bit by bit, day by day, 'it' does get better. Very slowly. This is a critical time in early recovery when much support and a lot of patience is needed, because the feeling of wanting to give up and go back to our 'comfortable' misery appears often. Medication is often required to assist us in staying in a state where we can assist ourselves.

After a time, our thinking returns to a state where we are able to resume our normal daily lives, take care of ourselves, support ourselves, and begin to enjoy life and living again.

But what if you're like me? What if, when things return to 'normal', it's still not good enough? What if, even when things are going great, there is still a indefinable longing inside for something different? Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending upon your point of view, there is not a pill that will fix that. There isn't a pill that will make me perfectly accept the way things are. I hope not, anyway.

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, 
Courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference. (Excerpt from the Serenity Prayer by Reinhold Niebuhr)

I'm coming to appreciate that part of me that longs for something better - that part of me that longs for more peace, more power over my thoughts and actions, more effectiveness in helping others. Previous to understanding how to channel it, this longing in me produced depression and the desire to go back to alcohol and drugs. I wanted to extinguish the longing. Today I better understand that the longing is a good thing, because, properly channeled, it allows me to explore and discover more and more of this existence.

One of the things needed for this journey is the belief that there's more to life that what I'm seeing in this present moment, and for that, I need to be willing to expand my consciousness, my thoughts, beyond what I presently know. Jesus talked of this when He mentioned that you don't put new wine into old wineskins, or you'll burst the wineskin. I can't move to the next paradigm using the same type of consciousness I was using in the old paradigm.

I mentioned at the beginning of the post just a tiny fraction of things we might take for granted in our daily lives. Taking these things for granted, or not thinking about them, makes it easier to live our daily lives; however, it sucks for trying to get somewhere we've never been before.

All of my life I've thought about the way things used to be - long ago, before I was born. I like sitting at the shore of Lake Michigan, and try to look at it through the eyes of a Native American 200 or 300 years ago. Lake Michigan means different things to us today than it did to the person observing it back then. Back then, the person looking at it might have looked at it as a source of life - both water and food. I've wondered why people ever settled in Kansas (the Great Plains). Did they just get tired of traveling in covered wagons and give up? Because 150-200 years ago, Kansas was one great big flat treeless field. "Oh, yes, this looks like a great place to settle - absolutely nothing as far as the eye can see!" And when English settlers first settled on the North American continent - what were they thinking? 450 years ago, there weren't housing developments and roadways and cities in North America - just a lot of land, and people that we used to refer to as 'savages'. What about a long, long time ago, before there were even governments, or kingdoms? What was life like then?

For the longest time, my thinking made the world as it is today seem false and unnatural, and much of it is! But it made me disdain today's world. If we didn't have mass generated and usable electricity, most people today would plain just die. Ok - what does that have to do with mindfulness or depression, or alcoholism, or spirituality?

It is this: Anything is possible. In the midst of alcoholism and depression, the only thing that seemed possible was death - either quickly, or painful and slow. In the midst of recovery and spirituality, anything is possible. I have been rescued and elevated from a 'hopeless' condition of mind and body to live this life in recovery and achieve or attain anything I can set my heart on. The only limitation I have is my own thinking - my current mindset.

I am not 'stuck'. But in order to be able to change my thinking, to change my life, I need to examine the areas in which I'm accepting 'the way it is' or the way things are. Those are the things that I have to unaccept, and and change it around to 'the way things could be'.

This is wonderful news to me. I don't have to stay stuck in who I am, or who I've been; I simply have to shake up the neural pathways in my mind and develop my power of imagination. 

I can see very well the way things are. I can stop fighting them and move on to the next step: Begin to see the way things can be.

Namasté,

Ken

Stigma Revisited

First impressions can be lasting. They don't have to be, but, sometimes they are. I continue to discover the cognitive distortions (thinking errors) in which I engage that need to be corrected, or adjusted. Usually the problem with a cognitive distortion, as the term implies, is that there is some element of truth in every thought - it's just that I've distorted it, for whatever reason. I think that most often cognitive distortions are assumptions and suppositions that are applied too broadly, or sometimes too permanently.

I have heard that alcoholism is a disease of perception, and I know that major depressive disorder is as well. For me, I can take a grain of truth and create a beach of misery. A great deal of my recovery involves discovering my distortions, accepting that I have them and operate by them, and practicing moving my thinking toward something more workable in my life. It's a lot of work for me. A half-century of bad thinking habits doesn't get turned around in one day, just because I realize my thinking sucks. I had to have a lot of help in the beginning, and sometimes still need help to see where my thinking is tripping me up - creating less-than-desirable results in my life.

So what does all this have to do with stigma? As I've mentioned once or twice before, the default for the human brain is auto-pilot. It's a mechanism designed to protect us, so that we don't have to consciously repeat our thinking every time we see a snake <DANGER!>. It's a good mechanism, very protective, but it's not always true. We may get scared by things that look like a snake - a gnarled stick, for instance. We might decide that anything with scales is bad for us, and transfer our fear of snakes onto harmless fish. According to the first thing that came up when I Googled it, stigma is "a mark of disgrace associated with a particular circumstance, quality, or person." I can stigmatize myself, and have often done so, and I can stigmatize others.

I attended a class a few days ago, and learned some more about the human brain, which, big surprise, really interests me. The brain is a hugely complex organ, even more complex than what I had previously thought. It seems a miracle to me that we don't have more breakdowns. But what struck me is this: Our two most noticeable organs our body has are our skin (yes, the skin is an organ) and our brain. The skin, because it's our clothing - it's what people see about us - and our brain, because the workings of our brain show up in our speech and behavior. So, if to the beholder, someone's skin looks different than our own, or their behavior is different than we expect, the beholder's little reptilian brain can go into yellow or even red alert. If we see somebody who appears or behaves outside of our 'normal' range, we take notice. It happens naturally.

There are lots of types of stigma, but here, I'll focus on appearances and behavior. Many years ago, my very first real job was at a sheltered workshop for developmentally disabled adults. Now, many people with a developmental disability (what used to be called mental retardation) have physical appearances outside the norm. Let's pick on folks born with Down Syndrome, a disorder caused by a chromosomal mutation before birth. People who live with down syndrome are often mildly to moderately developmentally delayed. Physically, "A few of the common physical traits of Down syndrome are low muscle tone, small stature, an upward slant to the eyes, and a single deep crease across the center of the palm – although each person with Down syndrome is a unique individual and may possess these characteristics to different degrees, or not at all. (https://www.ndss.org/about-down-syndrome/down-syndrome) [emphasis added]. The very first thought someone might have when they encounter a person with Down Syndrome is, "They're different." Stigma starts when the person who has that thought never bothers to think past that first thought. Stigma continues on when the person attaches a judgment to their first thought - "they're different, so they're bad (or dangerous, or stupid, or evil, etc)." The disgrace of being born with Down Syndrome. That's stigma - attaching a negative judgment to someone, most often for something over which they have no control.

So often folks are pre-judged base on the condition with which they live, not on their behavior. To get past the initial thought, one very often has to get to know someone - to sit down and talk with someone, and listen, and work at understanding. One has to look past the outer appearance, and past the brain, to see who is really in there. It takes time, it takes patience, it takes intention, it takes effort. Mother Teresa said she saw Jesus in everyone she met. In order for her to do that, she had to look. She had to put forth the effort, because most of the people she dealt with were sick and impoverished. 

I love people today that years ago I would have avoided. But the truth for me is that for years and years I only judged myself by my skin, my gender, and my brain. I felt ugly, I learned growing up that men were bad, so I was bad, and my brain surely didn't work right at all. It's no wonder I wanted to die. When I was given the opportunity to challenge my thinking and my beliefs, I began to see a Ken that I had never known. I began to see a multi-talented, kind, caring individual who really does have a pretty big heart, once all the calcium was chipped away. And I began to know that I am more than my looks, I'm more than my gender, and I'm more than my brain, and I began to become ok with all of me. I don't know if I started with me, or with other people, but I also began the scary and challenging work of getting to know others beyond their labels. And I stopped being so afraid of people. I began to see that, as we say in NAMI, we have more similarities than differences.

Here's the spiritual part of all of this - spirituality is about developing the ability to see and believe beyond appearances. It's about looking for the universal Truth that we are all children of a loving and benevolent Universe, and discovering that Truth in ourselves and others, and then living that Truth. We are all connected; that is why what I give out returns to me. So I seek to know you, the real you, underneath your human shell, because in getting to know you, I also get to know me, and I get to know God.

Namasté

Ken

Who the Heck Am I?

I started a post the other day. My intention was to explore identity. I began to write down all the things I am - male, Caucasian, Wisconsinite, citizen of the United States, etc. - all of my descriptors. I didn't finish. But what was curious to me was that most of the descriptors weren't my choice (or, if they were, they were made before I was born and I don't remember). It's not my fault I live in Wisconsin. I've tried to leave a few times, but I keep coming back, and for 6 months out of the year I ask "Why?". I don't recall asking to be born a white male, and I did not give my consent to be baptized (although I did give my consent to be confirmed in the Lutheran church). I learned English at a young age because that's what was spoken around the house. My uncles, on the other hand, were bi-lingual - when playing cards, they often spoke in German (probably because they knew I wouldn't understand). So where I live, my first language, my citizenship, my first religion - they make up who I am, even though I didn't choose them. I found out pretty early on that I wasn't very happy with who I thought I was. It took a long long time to change that state of mind.

Humans love to identify and classify. It's how we make logical sense of the world in which we live. That's a rock; it has certain attributes because it's a rock. There's a tree; it has certain attributes because it's a tree.

But then we try to classify ourselves. Some people have no problem with that. Some folks proudly state exactly who they are, even though what they're claiming was something that was foisted upon them before they knew they had the power to choose. Our egos need an identity in order to thrive. Strip away all of the things we think we are, and the ego has nothing for which to live.

I had a Boston Terrier for about a year. Cute little guy, but he didn't know he was a little dog (he weighed 20 pounds, but was very strong). He liked to go to the dog park and run with the big dogs. Most of them tried to ignore him - he didn't care. I really loved that dog. Domesticated dogs don't have an identity other than what we give them. 

I don't think a wolf knows it's a wolf. I don't think an oak tree knows it's an oak tree rather than a pine tree. And an oak tree is probably not proud to be a mighty oak because, when it was just an acorn, it knew it had no other choice (if it knew anything at all).

In the helping professions, we avoid identifying patients with their conditions. There's good reason for this - the cancer in room 420 is more than a cancer - she's a mom, a daughter, a sister, a wife, a journalist. When the person who lives with alcoholism isn't drinking, he's more than an alcoholic - he's your neighbor, someone's son, and he might even be your doctor. The person who lives with mental illness may be symptom free for months or years; why call them the manic-depressive or schizophrenic?

Yet we have this urge to identify and classify, and, the narrower our minds, the more rigidly we adhere to the names we give others. Remember being 8 or 9 years old, and going grocery shopping with mom, and seeing your homeroom teacher in the grocery store for the first time? Wasn't that a trip? There was a great amount of confusion - "what's she doing here? She's my teacher!" We did not understand, at first, that teachers have lives outside of the classroom - that they've got spouses, and homes, and maybe children, and they gotta eat too! It's usually experiences like these, and reading or watching movies, that broadens our minds to the existence of other peoples and different ways of doing things. I've mentioned this before - when I went to prison, I discovered that 'murderers' didn't murder 24/7, and 'thieves' didn't steal 24/7, and most of the 'drug dealers' were out of business - at least for the time being. All of the people I met in prison had aspects that weren't criminal offenses. All of them were human (and, I suspect, still are).

Alcholism, addiction, and major depression are all conditions that have a narrowing affect on the minds of those of us that live with these conditions. For me, my mind narrowed to the point that life sucked, living sucked, the whole world sucked, I'm useless, and my only options are to drink and/or die. So, a large amount of recovery for me has been allowing my mind to re-broaden - to begin to see that I do have options and choices, and that I'm not locked into a certain way of being. In fact, I consider myself very fortunate that I had to get to the point where I had to surrender just about everything I thought I knew about myself in order to live. The world I live in today is vastly different than the world I lived in 3 years ago (and very much different than the world in which I grew up).

There was a CEO who was in need of a CFO (chief financial officer) so he picked 3 CPAs to interview. He asked the first one, "What is 2+2?" The first CPA answered, "4." "Thank you," said the CEO, "you may go." The CEO did the same with the second CPA, with the same result. When the CEO asked the 3rd CPA "What is 2+2," the CPA replied, "What would you like it to be?" The CEO said, "You're hired!"

And that's what I feel like today - the 3rd CPA - because each day I have greater choice on who I want to be today. Who I am is how I show up. Or, how I show up is who I am. I am not bound by my past, nor am I bound by those things that I am which I did not consciously choose. I'm not even bound by the language I learned, porque aprendí a hablar otro idioma. 
I'm not bound by religion, and I'm not bound by my disorders. 

A side benefit of this broadening of mind I've experienced is I judge people less at face value than I ever have before. I can see more of the whole person than I've ever been able to before, and I now appreciate people for who they are. This is part of what makes life an adventure. To paraphrase Whoopi Goldberg, if everybody were Whoopi Goldberg, the world would be a pretty boring place.

I don't know who I am today, other than a living, breathing embodiment of my Creator, living to become more of who I really Am. And more and more I recognize my relationship to my brothers and sisters. I'm a part of the Human Family, and we're all here trying our best to find our way. For me, it makes what used to be a really frightening world into a pretty nice place to live.

Namaste,

Ken

What I Get When I Open My Mind

I used to not believe what I could not understand. This is kind of the way humans are, I think. But I took it one step further - because my thinking was so right, if I couldn't understand it, it wasn't understandable. I did not seek to understand; I didn't even seek to accept.

For instance, if anybody ever saw any good in me, either they were lying or I had them fooled. This kind of attitude makes for very short relationships, and by relationships, I mean all kinds - friendships, romantic relationships, jobs, etc. If you thought I was a decent person, you were either lying or delusional, because deep down, I knew I wasn't a decent person. I wasn't the kind of person that had anything that was likable or any sort of skill that was useful to anyone. 

This belief in my innate badness is very much a shame-based belief. It was so strong that it persisted despite much evidence to the contrary. Most people (I think) think they are pretty good people who occasionally make mistakes or do bad things. My perception of me was that I was basically a bad person who occasionally did good things. 

In my opinion, it is impossible to stay in recovery and keep this attitude. Or, it is impossible to keep this belief and stay in recovery. It is also impossible, in my experience, to keep this shame based attitude and have a healthy relationship with God. 

I will not say that I presently have the best attitude or belief about myself that I could have, but it's better than it used to be. I'm finally beginning to see that there are steps in between the alpha of desperately sick and the omega of perfectly healthy, much like there are steps to acceptance. 

I saw a bumper sticker a few years back that said, "Don't believe everything you think." Good advice! As I've mentioned in previous posts, the human brain is set up to jump to conclusions. It takes effort (plus a little insight) for most folks to move past their first thought. But lazy thinking isn't my only problem. It is the tip of the iceberg. My problem is the thoughts and perceptions generated from a lifetime of thinking that I'm a piece of breathing, walking shit. The change in my thinking must come from my depths - surface change isn't lasting change.

So here's how this whole scenario used to show up for me: I would get some opportunity that would give me hope that I had some kind of chance at having an enjoyable life. Because I had this great opportunity and some hope, I could avoid doing the things that were majorly self-destructive, like drinking. But the change was only on the surface. Because I knew so much, or maybe because I was too afraid to let anybody in on who I thought I really was, I did not go after the deeper stuff - the beliefs. When I was young, I didn't even know that I had no self-esteem, or shame-based beliefs, or any of that shit. The way I felt about myself was as natural as my hair color or my eye color. It was me. 

When I began to recognize that maybe, perhaps I don't process life like everybody else, I did not seek to understand what was different - I simply tried to suppress that difference. Because I'm smarter than everybody else, you see.

So I would cycle. About every two years (sometimes longer, if I had a prison sentence - that seemed to help in a strange way) I would crash. I would start drinking again, quit my job, abandon my domicile, quit my marriage or my relationship, and jump head-first into self-destruction. Until somebody stopped me and gave me some hope. It got to the point where I hated getting hopeful again, because I knew I was in for another disappointment down the road.  This used to be my life. Crash and burn, get some hope, do well for a couple of years, crash and burn.

What's different? A little over four years ago, after a crash and burn, I resolved to become authentic. I knew I was a big fake, and I knew I couldn't recover unless I became authentic. So I started down that path. Started. I was in a relatively safe place to be me, whoever the heck that was. But after I left that place, I reverted to Mr. Sobriety and went about making my millions, rather than allowing more healing to take place. So, after nearly two years, I crashed and burned again - the last crash and burn.

I still needed to practice authenticity, but I also needed to keep recovery first. And that I have been doing. But what was the change? I think I've mentioned it before, in different ways - I've basically run out of f^&#$ to give. I no longer care about if someone finds out who I really am. I no longer care if I make a million or if I don't. I don't even really give a good goddamn if anybody likes me or not. And when I dropped those prereqs to recovery, lo and behold, I began to get better. Bit by bit, I began to heal.

So what happened to the belief that I'm basically a pile of shit who occasionally manages not to stink? In addition to letting go of what I thought others might think of me, I began to let go of what I thought of myself. I began to put less stock in my own thinking. I began to see if maybe others weren't right when they said I was a decent human being with a something to offer. And the results of this inquiry - perhaps call it "Maybe Ken doesn't know everything" - have led to some amazing discoveries. 

The biggest discovery is I'm not the person I believe I am. I sure don't know who I am, but I'm not the waste of oxygen I once thought I was. Being relieved of that underlying belief has made sobriety a lot easier, and it has made recovery from depression possible.

I saw myself on videotape last night. Twice in the past couple of weeks I've had occasion to speak at some meetings at city hall. I was fishing around the city website, and came across recordings of those meetings. I was surprised at what I saw when I was on tape. Here was a gentleman who wasn't ugly - looked pretty normal to me - and said what he had to say in a nice and interesting manner. I knew that was me, but part of me didn't recognize me. I'm used to public speaking, and I like doing it, probably because I'm often talking about myself, and I seem to be received well. During these two meetings I did not know I was being videotaped, so it wasn't like I was doing anything for the camera - I was just doing what I do. It's like writing for me - it just comes out. Yet I thought it was funny that I really didn't recognize myself. And I'm grateful, because it shows me that my perception is still not on target. I need to know that, because every once in a while I dip back into shitville.

I'll mention one other amazing thing before I close - and this is very important: Because other people took the time to acknowledge and support the good they saw in me, I can now see the good in others who perhaps find it difficult to see themselves. This is one of the greatest gifts I've ever, ever received - to not only see myself differently, but to see others in a different light as well (Cyndi Lauper's 'True Colors' is bouncing through my head now). 

I've heard this for the past 25 years - my perception creates my reality, not the other way around. And I'm just beginning to manifest this truth. When I toss away my first thought about anything and allow something better to take its place, I start to get better and my world gets better.

Namaste,

Ken