Prayer is an important part of my recovery, and an important part of recovery for a lot of people. I have learned that prayer doesn't change God's mind, it changes mine. Prayer is really about endeavoring to align my will with God's will for me.
I don't write much about prayer - believe it or not, it's a little too personal for me to write much about publicly. Prayer comes from the deepest part of me, and the way I pray and the content of my prayers is unique to me. I know a lot of prayers from different faith traditions, and I'll usually run with one set of prayers for awhile, and then move on to another set, and so forth. Sometimes I really get into the Psalms from the Hebrew Bible, and then I'll ignore them for awhile. I pray for others' highest good, and it aligns my thinking into looking for their highest good. For instance, say there is someone I know whom I don't hold in very high regard; if I pray for that person's highest good, it causes me to look for it in them, and that can help bring it out. If I don't, then that person just remains a schmuck in my mind, and I can't do anything for them.
One of my favorite prayers, and one I've recently been practicing lately, is the Prayer of St. Francis (of Assisi). It has special meaning for me because he had PTSD (my opinion). St. Francis, before he was a saint, fought in the Crusades. In the Crusades, he had some experiences that deeply affected him. When he returned from the Crusades, he went crazy and nearly killed himself. This is when he had a religious or spiritual experience that caused him to live the life of a monk. The Franciscan Order of the Catholic Church came out of his practices and his band of followers. His story is really interesting. Following is the prayer that is attributed to him:
Lord, make me an instrument of Thy peace -
that where there is hatred, I may sow love;
that where there is injury, I may sow pardon [forgiveness];
that where there is doubt, I may sow faith;
that where there is despair, I may sow hope;
that where there is darkness, I may shine light;
that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.
Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be comforted, as to comfort; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love;
For it is in self-forgetting that one finds, it is in forgiving that one is forgiven, and it is by dying to self that one awakens to eternal life. Amen
This is a wonderful prayer with which to start the day, because it prepares my mind to be a selfless healer, and it tells me what I need to be about today. But for the past couple of days I've prayed it and started crying, because I realized that I could also turn it inward. I can apply this prayer to those things which I still harbor inside that are injurious to me - remnants of shame and self-hatred, despair, doubt about who I Am, darkness, and sadness. I can use this prayer to help heal myself.
I've been in recovery nearly three years, and it has just been the past couple of months that I've started to really enjoy living. In this post, "Why Even Bother?", which was written a little less than a year ago, I wrote about surviving without having an automatic joy for life and living. It's not that I've been unhappy this whole time and just been faking it; it is that I've had to put in a fair amount of conscious, consistent effort to stay at a level where I can function comfortably. So, I've been chugging along comfortably, but lately, I've noticed a feeling deeper inside where I'm really starting to like living for the sake of living. I feel like I could have a day where I accomplished absolutely nothing, was of service to no one, and be perfectly ok with that - to just take some time to just be here now. It's a nice change; it's nice to be just for the sake of being. It's nice to feel like being here, without necessarily having to do something to make living tolerable. Being alive is starting to feel...natural. Wow!
Motivation brings more motivation, and success breeds success. Feeling better, healthier, makes it easier to do the things that make me feel healthy. I feel my world expanding, my consciousness expanding, and I'm getting eager for more. And prayer is a big part of that.
One person once told me, after I had been praying for them, "Your prayers are powerful." I don't think they meant my prayers; I think they meant prayers are powerful. I've known that prayer can be a powerful thing. When I was a young boy, I swallowed 3 pennies. Boy, did that hurt! I couldn't tell anyone, of course, so I prayed and asked God to relieve me of the pain, and it instantly left. I've had other occasions where prayer has been very effective, and I know it's been effective in the lives of others. But something inside - doubt, perhaps? - has caused me from time to time to stop praying, or stop believing in prayer.
Now I'm getting excited because this recent shift is telling me that I can do more and be more than I've ever been and done before. My faith tradition tells me that I already have every quality of my Creator inside of me - it would be impossible for me to not have it (or you or anyone else) - and that my job is to do whatever needs to be done to let everything go that is not me, that is not allowing the Light within to shine brightly. And St. Francis' prayer really seems to fit that purpose, if I turn it inward. It would be a lovely thing if I had all the faith in the Universe to believe without seeing, but I don't - sometimes I need to see. That's ok today - all I need to know today is that I am loved and supported, whether I'm feeling it or not.
So, like a teenage boy with a new car, I'm eager to take this new level of faith out on the road and see what She'll do. I'll keep you posted!
Namasté,
Ken
Wednesday, May 16, 2018
Sunday, May 6, 2018
The Strengths of Recovery
I'm a grateful person, and the more grateful I am, the more I find for which to be grateful.
It's important for me to recognize the blessings I have today, and it's important to me to share them with others. I get to share at support groups, Stories of Hope, working one on one with others, and through this blog. Here are some of the things for which I am grateful:
It's important for me to recognize the blessings I have today, and it's important to me to share them with others. I get to share at support groups, Stories of Hope, working one on one with others, and through this blog. Here are some of the things for which I am grateful:
- Challenges (formerly problems) - I wouldn't have any of the 'problems' I have today if I weren't in recovery. I'd be dead.
- A growing self-respect and self-esteem
- A career and 2 great jobs
- An increased appreciation for life
- Real peace of mind
- Faith
- Hope
- An increased sense of security and safety
- Great people in my life
- The ability to recognize my gifts and share them
- Courage
- An increasing awareness of who I am
- A feeling of belonging
- I'm comfortable in my own skin
- Courage to be me
- Honesty
- Decreased shame
- Zero guilt
- Self-confidence
- Purpose
- Good health
- Confidence and courage to face life without fear
- Resilience
- I'm useful
- I have an appreciation for others and an ability to know people at more than a superficial level
If I were asked to write down my gifts and strengths and the good things in my life 3 years ago, I would not have been able to come up with one thing. I wasn't even grateful to be alive. Even during the times when I was sober it was hard to come up with things that I truly felt good about.
To be very honest, recovery hasn't given me these things - I've had them all along. Alcoholism and depression covered them up. What recovery has given me is the ability to recognize my strengths and to develop them and use them to serve others while at the same time create a great life. This is why I don't walk around with a lot of shame (I'd love to say that I have zero shame, but I'm not there yet) - I am becoming the person I was born to be. There is great joy in that.
My spiritual beliefs support the idea that each and every one of us is a great person. The people with whom I identify best are others who have walked the path of addiction or mental illness, so those are the people who I direct my energies to the most. I support others in becoming the people they were meant to be. I assist others in discovering and developing their strengths. Some people come into recovery thinking their lives are over; I get to be there when they discover that their lives have just begun.
I'm really glad I didn't miss out on this.
Namasté,
Ken
Thursday, May 3, 2018
My Investment in Life
I did something really strange (for me) today - I did something that will benefit me 10 years from now. It has to do with student loan repayment and yadda, yadda, yadda, that's not what this post is about. It's about believing that I have a future and trying to manage that future as best I can from today.
Most of my life I did not envision my future in any kind of realistic way. I certainly had wishes, daydreams, and pipe dreams, but none ever came true because:
Most of my life I did not envision my future in any kind of realistic way. I certainly had wishes, daydreams, and pipe dreams, but none ever came true because:
- I believed I was undeserving of anything good;
- I believed I was incapable of attaining anything that 'normal' people had;
- The symptoms of my disorders did not allow me to live too much past surviving today.
A big part of the problem was that I was unable to recognize these factors at all, and, when I did recognize them, I didn't know how to change them, or even if it were possible. Basically, my life ran on autopilot, and the programming was not good. It took a lot for me to accept that I am responsible for my 'programming', whether I made it up on my own or whether it was given to me by someone else.
Here are some examples of good stuff I was unable to accomplish because deep down I didn't believe I could, or that I was worth it:
- Higher education - To date, I have attended 4 institutions of higher education and have earned something like 170 credits (which is more than enough to graduate with a bachelor's degree from any institution) but no degree.
- Marriage - I've been married and divorced twice. I joke that my cell phone contracts last longer than my marriages. I wasn't invested enough in these relationships to even try to change or grow with the relationship. I accepted defeat way too easily.
- Legal issues - I have 5 felonies on my record. The first felony would have turned into a misdemeanor if I had bothered to find a way to pay back the bad checks I wrote in the time given me to do so. The 3rd felony would have turned into a misdemeanor had I bothered to complete my probation, and I wouldn't have served my last prison term. It appears as though I just didn't care, but it goes deeper than that - I really do care about my freedom, but for the longest time I didn't feel I deserved it. I've punished myself more than anybody or any DOC ever could.
- Vocational issues - see marriage. I've had some fine jobs that never went anywhere because when the going got rough, I got going. I've never seen myself as an asset to any entity until recently.
- Sobriety - each time the symptoms of depression would reappear in force, I would relapse and return to drinking. Here I see that, because I was in denial that my symptoms were actually symptoms, and not the truth of my being, it was impossible for me to stay sober. When I felt suicidal, I really believed I was meant to die - so why stay sober? Today I can observe suicidal ideation and recognize it as a symptom - something going on that's not me.
So that's the short list. And it's not that I haven't experienced success in my life - I certainly have! It's just that I always turned it around into a failure, or quit when it got hard. And each time I failed at something that was supposed to be good, I added another layer of shame, making it even more probable that my next adventure was going to end in failure.
When I started my total recovery (recovery from alcoholism and major depressive disorder) I had people supporting me who believed in me, and I didn't think they were crazy. Bit by bit I began to get better, because I took up little goals and kept them, and saw them through to completion even if there were obstacles. With medication and therapy, I was able to discover the things within me that had previously held me back and learn to view them in the light of reality. I was able to focus on me getting better, rather than on getting a decent job, the right girlfriend, a nice place to live, etc.
Can I say something here? I cringe when working with a young person newly diagnosed and I hear them or their parents say, "I need to get a decent job. Help me find a good job." If your child had just suffered a major heart attack, would you want them to go out and get a good job to recover from it? Does that even come close to making any kind of sense? Yet when someone's brain presents with a disorder, we think a job will cure them. Oh-kay.
Thank you for allowing me to digress. So, I learned in recovery to focus on me getting better, and the rest of the things in my life seemed to fall into place. At the very beginning, I did what was suggested of me to get better out of a sense of surrender - I didn't have or know of anything better to do. Remember, I started recovery thinking that I would have to get on disability, that I'd have to live in a group home, and that I'd never work or be useful again. So I did these things with not a great deal of hope that anything would turn out differently than it ever has before. Early on in recovery I couldn't even look too far to the future (maybe 2 weeks?) without getting depressed. So I focused on today, and what can I do today.
I began to realize I could stay in recovery today, but I didn't have any real hope for tomorrow. After a couple years in recovery, I began to believe that I might have some kind of life ahead of me, and it was different than my pipe dreams and wishes of yore - this was real.
There are two kinds of living a day at a time. In active alcoholism and addiction, we survive - or, more accurately, our disease survives - a day at a time. Each day's concern is centered around our addiction, and getting through each day means avoiding anything that might interfere with the continuation of that addiction while doing whatever we need to do to feed that addiction. It's a pointless life, and eventually every addict realizes that it's pointless. Because it's pointless, there's very little joy or accomplishment, and the future is eclipsed by the very real needs our addiction presents to us today. Not a fun way to do 'one day at a time.'
In recovery, we learn about a different one day at a time. We learn that all we have to do is today is abstain from using our addictive substance. Then we learn that there are other things we can do and learn (our 'program') to make living without our substance easier. After practicing these things for a while, the practice gets easier, and we can begin looking, a day at a time, a little past abstinence and our recovery program at the things that make life life. We begin to be relieved of some of the problems we experienced, and can move on to developing things in our life that please us - things we can look forward to. In active addiction, or in depression, there's not a lot to look forward to.
For me, and, I think, for a lot of people, this is a long process. Recovery doesn't take place in days, weeks, or even months. I am quite sure for me that, if I live long enough, I have enough stuff to work on for years. The sad news is that some folks don't seem to have patience for the work this entails. The good news, for me, is that if I can keep recovery the central part of my life (thanks A.J.), I will enjoy my recovery along with the benefits it brings. And through it all, continue to understand that today is the most important day of my life.
In a little less than 3 weeks I will have been in continuous recovery for 3 years. This is the longest amount of recovery without relapse that I have experienced in my entire life. And here are some things that have developed that I never seem to have had previously. It's looking like I might actually value my life:
- I care enough about myself to present my best self to others.
- I care enough about myself to work consistently on my spirituality, which is a huge part of my recovery.
- I understand today that I could possibly live another 40 years (that's still a little tough to see), so I do things that aren't necessarily fun to do today, like abstaining from a certain food, or engaging in exercise, or putting off a purchase, because it'll help me in the long run.
- I understand that connections and relationships are extremely important to living happily both today and in the future, so I seek to foster the relationships I have, and, when conflict arises, I seek to work through the conflict. (I never said it was all fun and games).
- I look for ways to improve my brain health, knowing that I'm at an age where, in some people, brain health starts to decline.
- I look for ways to enjoy and appreciate life.
- I look for ways to develop, express, and share my talents and gifts.
- I look for ways to express my gratitude for all I've been given.
Two things to note: One, the above list is a short list, and two, the above list has nothing whatsoever to do with finding the right job, the right place to live, the right romantic partner, or the right car; however, I have all of those things right now too!
I'm learning to live like today could be the last day of my life and I could live forever.
Namasté,
Ken
Tuesday, May 1, 2018
Mental Health Awareness
I met someone today who was seeking some help for their young adult child who is going through the challenges of a mental health condition. I asked how long their child had been experiencing this, and the answer was a few years. I gave the parent some hope, (along with a lot of supportive information) because the earlier a mental health condition is recognized and treated in someone's life, the better the chances are for solid recovery and a life not devastated by mental illness.
I don't even know if back in 1962, when I was born, post-partum depression was even recognized as an actual mental disorder. Probably not. Even if it was, I'm sure that it wasn't proper for nice ladies from the South to get post-partum depression. So my mother had something else - an undefined neurological disorder - that wasn't treated well. And as I was growing up, I wasn't aware that feeling useless and having no energy and thinking of death often and wishing I could go to sleep and not wake up were actually symptoms of a disorder. I thought it was just me. I was just a defect that shouldn't have been born.
Today I know differently, and I know how important it is for a person experiencing mental health challenges to know that it's ok to have something. I am not my illness. You are not your illness. Parents are not the primary cause of mental illness. Having a mental illness does not make a person any less of a human being. It is a brain disorder. I have a friend who had a congenital heart defect, which caused a heart murmur, which, over time, damaged his aorta to the point where he needed open heart surgery to repair the aorta and replace the faulty valve. He has always been one of the kindest, most decent human beings I know, and having a heart defect does not diminish his worth as a person at all. Yet the general view of people with brain disorders is that they are less than.
May is Mental Health Awareness month. Mental health awareness is important in order to counteract the myths and stigma surrounding mental illness. Understanding of what mental illness is (and is not) is necessary in order to properly treat it and diminish the devastation caused by mental illness - devastation that not only touches the life of the sufferer, but also the sufferer's families, and society as a whole. When mental health conditions are properly diagnosed and treated, good outcomes, like with my friend with the new heart valve, can happen.
Here are some mental health facts:
The more we know about mental health conditions, the more we'll be able to treat them properly; when treated properly, mental health conditions do not have to end in suicide, death, jail time, homelessness, unemployment, loneliness, misery, and despair. When treated with medicine, therapy, love, respect, understanding, compassion, and support, mental health conditions result in stronger people who, through their recovery, can live happy and productive lives.
I know. I am living it, and I know others living it as well.
I invite you to take some time to educate yourself or your family about mental health conditions so that more people have the opportunity to live healthy lives. If you have any questions regarding mental health issues, please visit NAMI, or, if you're in the Waukesha, WI, USA area, NAMI Waukesha.
Namasté
Ken
I don't even know if back in 1962, when I was born, post-partum depression was even recognized as an actual mental disorder. Probably not. Even if it was, I'm sure that it wasn't proper for nice ladies from the South to get post-partum depression. So my mother had something else - an undefined neurological disorder - that wasn't treated well. And as I was growing up, I wasn't aware that feeling useless and having no energy and thinking of death often and wishing I could go to sleep and not wake up were actually symptoms of a disorder. I thought it was just me. I was just a defect that shouldn't have been born.
Today I know differently, and I know how important it is for a person experiencing mental health challenges to know that it's ok to have something. I am not my illness. You are not your illness. Parents are not the primary cause of mental illness. Having a mental illness does not make a person any less of a human being. It is a brain disorder. I have a friend who had a congenital heart defect, which caused a heart murmur, which, over time, damaged his aorta to the point where he needed open heart surgery to repair the aorta and replace the faulty valve. He has always been one of the kindest, most decent human beings I know, and having a heart defect does not diminish his worth as a person at all. Yet the general view of people with brain disorders is that they are less than.
May is Mental Health Awareness month. Mental health awareness is important in order to counteract the myths and stigma surrounding mental illness. Understanding of what mental illness is (and is not) is necessary in order to properly treat it and diminish the devastation caused by mental illness - devastation that not only touches the life of the sufferer, but also the sufferer's families, and society as a whole. When mental health conditions are properly diagnosed and treated, good outcomes, like with my friend with the new heart valve, can happen.
Here are some mental health facts:
The more we know about mental health conditions, the more we'll be able to treat them properly; when treated properly, mental health conditions do not have to end in suicide, death, jail time, homelessness, unemployment, loneliness, misery, and despair. When treated with medicine, therapy, love, respect, understanding, compassion, and support, mental health conditions result in stronger people who, through their recovery, can live happy and productive lives.
I know. I am living it, and I know others living it as well.
I invite you to take some time to educate yourself or your family about mental health conditions so that more people have the opportunity to live healthy lives. If you have any questions regarding mental health issues, please visit NAMI, or, if you're in the Waukesha, WI, USA area, NAMI Waukesha.
Namasté
Ken
Sunday, April 29, 2018
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
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
Saturday, April 28, 2018
I Am 'Legitimate'
In 1996 I ran across a piece by the author Marianne Williamson that said something along the lines of "I deserve to be here simply because I am." I was in prison in Ellsworth, Kansas, at the time, and this idea was news to me. I didn't believe it then, but that was a seed planted in my head that would begin to germinate nearly 20 years later. My belief at the time was I had to prove myself every minute of every day to be deserving of anything, including life. Obviously, I failed daily.
Having been homeless, and having been in prison, I know from experience what it's like to be 'invisible'. I may write about the homeless experience more in-depth at some point, because it's very difficult to describe what it's like and what it feels like in one paragraph. Suffice it to say it's like being a non-person - I'm there, I know I exist, but I really can't participate in anything. I can hang out in parks - hanging out in parks is great when one has a full-time job and goes to the park after work or on the weekends to chill and relax. When one is homeless, hanging out in the parks is not fun - it's a necessity, because hanging out anywhere else (besides the library) will earn you a loitering ticket, unless you're in a big city, in which case it's ok to hang out in the crappy parts of the city that nobody cares about anymore.
The last time I was released from prison was April of 2002 - yay! At that time, all I had on me were the clothes on my back, a prison ID, and an expired ID from Kansas (where I resided before being escorted to Wisconsin to serve time for an auto theft I committed in 1994 and had never fulfilled my obligation to the state of Wisconsin). Phew! Life is so much simpler now that I'm a lot better at taking care of my responsibilities. Anyway, I get out of prison, and, fortunately, I had a couple things going for me - I had a temporary place to live, courtesy of WI DOC, and I was starting university in September. But the point here is that between April and September I needed to get legitimate - I needed a state ID , a temporary job, and my own place to live. I was able to acquire all of that, but I distinctly remember acquiring my Wisconsin Identification - or, I should say, I distinctly remember the feeling I felt when I could pull a valid ID out of my pocket and say, "This is me! I belong!"
I have always placed conditions on my legitimacy - my deservedness of being here if you will. It's gotten a lot better, but I know that a lot of my present ok-ness still comes from being employed, being housed, and having an identity. If, in one day, I lost my jobs, my home, all my FB and fleshy friends, my girlfriend, my car, my bicycle - if I lost everything in one day, would I still feel legitimate? Deserving of life? My guess is, unfortunately, probably not. My being is still conditional.
My girlfriend and have plans to go to Japan later this year. I've never been off of the North American continent. In order to go to Japan, I need a passport. More importantly, possibly, is I need a passport to regain legal entry into the United States when I'm done in Japan. A passport says I am who I say I am and I am a citizen of the United States. I applied for my passport yesterday, and I found it both anxiety producing and exhilarating. In order to submit my application for a passport, I had to gather information and documents that 'prove' who I am and that I am a citizen of the United States. I found the process to be rather silly, because my fingerprints and my DNA are on record. If my dead, naked body were found today, say, in Albuquerque, it wouldn't take that long for authorities to figure out who I used to be. So, gathering up all this documentation (which can be manufactured, by the way) seemed a bit silly to me since there's a much easier way to say, "This guy is Ken." But oh well.
The important part here is that one of the feelings I got from applying for my passport was a greater feeling of legitimacy. Now, I'm not only legitimate in the state of Wisconsin (provable by my valid Wisconsin Driver's License), but I'm going to be legitimate in the entire world! I really am somebody now!
Now, this is a perfectly reasonable human response, and I'm certainly not going to get down on myself for it; however, I aspire to something better.
I realized 5 years ago that there's not enough on Earth to satisfy this human - there's not enough booze, certainly, but there's also not enough approval, acclaim, or achievement to satisfy this guy. When I get my passport, I probably won't be finally ok. Having a passport doesn't guarantee that I won't ever feel like a useless, non-deserving-of-life piece of shit again.
Additionally, I work with people who are often at a low point in their lives - I work with people suffering from addictions, mental health conditions, and homelessness. I endeavor to view everybody with whom I work deserving of the very best I have, simply because they are. If I start making exceptions, it'll create a domino effect. This is perhaps one of the few absolutes that I have - you are, therefore your life if worthy, your existence is important. It doesn't matter where you've been, what you've done, what you haven't done, who your parents were or weren't, what country, religion, or body you were born into. Your existence, your life, is important - period.
To honor that in others I need to honor that in myself, and vice versa.
It goes back to the really trite saying of the 70's that I really hate - "God made me, and God don't make no junk!" Same concept, it's just that that line really bugs me. But I am. You are. We're here. We deserve each other's respect, love, compassion, and empathy - title or no title, record or no record. The Universe doesn't issue passports - countries do. The Universe doesn't confer degrees upon people - universities do. And I'm not discounting achievement - I'm only putting it in it's proper place.
I no longer want to bring into my experience the shame of being, because that shame isn't given to me by God or the Universe - it's given to me by a limited mind, and I can transcend that limited mind. The possibilities for existence are endless and infinite, if I continue to learn what is man-made and what comes purely from Source.
Namasté
Ken
Having been homeless, and having been in prison, I know from experience what it's like to be 'invisible'. I may write about the homeless experience more in-depth at some point, because it's very difficult to describe what it's like and what it feels like in one paragraph. Suffice it to say it's like being a non-person - I'm there, I know I exist, but I really can't participate in anything. I can hang out in parks - hanging out in parks is great when one has a full-time job and goes to the park after work or on the weekends to chill and relax. When one is homeless, hanging out in the parks is not fun - it's a necessity, because hanging out anywhere else (besides the library) will earn you a loitering ticket, unless you're in a big city, in which case it's ok to hang out in the crappy parts of the city that nobody cares about anymore.
The last time I was released from prison was April of 2002 - yay! At that time, all I had on me were the clothes on my back, a prison ID, and an expired ID from Kansas (where I resided before being escorted to Wisconsin to serve time for an auto theft I committed in 1994 and had never fulfilled my obligation to the state of Wisconsin). Phew! Life is so much simpler now that I'm a lot better at taking care of my responsibilities. Anyway, I get out of prison, and, fortunately, I had a couple things going for me - I had a temporary place to live, courtesy of WI DOC, and I was starting university in September. But the point here is that between April and September I needed to get legitimate - I needed a state ID , a temporary job, and my own place to live. I was able to acquire all of that, but I distinctly remember acquiring my Wisconsin Identification - or, I should say, I distinctly remember the feeling I felt when I could pull a valid ID out of my pocket and say, "This is me! I belong!"
I have always placed conditions on my legitimacy - my deservedness of being here if you will. It's gotten a lot better, but I know that a lot of my present ok-ness still comes from being employed, being housed, and having an identity. If, in one day, I lost my jobs, my home, all my FB and fleshy friends, my girlfriend, my car, my bicycle - if I lost everything in one day, would I still feel legitimate? Deserving of life? My guess is, unfortunately, probably not. My being is still conditional.
My girlfriend and have plans to go to Japan later this year. I've never been off of the North American continent. In order to go to Japan, I need a passport. More importantly, possibly, is I need a passport to regain legal entry into the United States when I'm done in Japan. A passport says I am who I say I am and I am a citizen of the United States. I applied for my passport yesterday, and I found it both anxiety producing and exhilarating. In order to submit my application for a passport, I had to gather information and documents that 'prove' who I am and that I am a citizen of the United States. I found the process to be rather silly, because my fingerprints and my DNA are on record. If my dead, naked body were found today, say, in Albuquerque, it wouldn't take that long for authorities to figure out who I used to be. So, gathering up all this documentation (which can be manufactured, by the way) seemed a bit silly to me since there's a much easier way to say, "This guy is Ken." But oh well.
The important part here is that one of the feelings I got from applying for my passport was a greater feeling of legitimacy. Now, I'm not only legitimate in the state of Wisconsin (provable by my valid Wisconsin Driver's License), but I'm going to be legitimate in the entire world! I really am somebody now!
Now, this is a perfectly reasonable human response, and I'm certainly not going to get down on myself for it; however, I aspire to something better.
I realized 5 years ago that there's not enough on Earth to satisfy this human - there's not enough booze, certainly, but there's also not enough approval, acclaim, or achievement to satisfy this guy. When I get my passport, I probably won't be finally ok. Having a passport doesn't guarantee that I won't ever feel like a useless, non-deserving-of-life piece of shit again.
Additionally, I work with people who are often at a low point in their lives - I work with people suffering from addictions, mental health conditions, and homelessness. I endeavor to view everybody with whom I work deserving of the very best I have, simply because they are. If I start making exceptions, it'll create a domino effect. This is perhaps one of the few absolutes that I have - you are, therefore your life if worthy, your existence is important. It doesn't matter where you've been, what you've done, what you haven't done, who your parents were or weren't, what country, religion, or body you were born into. Your existence, your life, is important - period.
To honor that in others I need to honor that in myself, and vice versa.
It goes back to the really trite saying of the 70's that I really hate - "God made me, and God don't make no junk!" Same concept, it's just that that line really bugs me. But I am. You are. We're here. We deserve each other's respect, love, compassion, and empathy - title or no title, record or no record. The Universe doesn't issue passports - countries do. The Universe doesn't confer degrees upon people - universities do. And I'm not discounting achievement - I'm only putting it in it's proper place.
I no longer want to bring into my experience the shame of being, because that shame isn't given to me by God or the Universe - it's given to me by a limited mind, and I can transcend that limited mind. The possibilities for existence are endless and infinite, if I continue to learn what is man-made and what comes purely from Source.
Namasté
Ken
Thursday, April 5, 2018
Trauma Informed (compassionate) Listening
I am a listener. I suppose it is part of my purpose, or maybe my whole purpose. It's not something I've worn proudly; I just know that all my life people have felt compelled to relate things to me. I've often wondered why - it's not like I want to hear the juicy tidbits of your latest drama. I really don't.
But what I've learned over the past couple of years is to listen in a way that is helpful to the person relating. I used to think mostly with the male mind - that is, the problem fixer. Somewhere along the line, I learned that when women are talking about their experience, they don't want a solution, they want to be heard. So I began shutting off the problem fixer, but was still left wondering, "Why am I listening to this?" (besides that this woman is actually talking to me and I'd like to keep it going).
I wasn't understanding that the woman wanted to express how certain events or situations made her feel. I didn't have feelings, so I wasn't relating on any level deeper than the surface. (I had feelings; I had just tamped them down, like a well-worn path in the woods). Eventually, I came to understand that by me not expressing my own feelings, I was making myself sick. I remember being in a recovery meeting many years ago shortly after my mother passed away, and talking about it. Somebody pulled me aside later and said, "You talked about your mother dying the same way you'd talk about your car breaking down." I really did not understand. I didn't understand how talking about what was going on in my life was helpful, unless talking about it gave me a solution. I didn't realize that I didn't need to share the event of my mother passing; I needed to share the sadness and guilt and shame I was feeling surrounding it. When I would lose a job or a relationship, I didn't need to talk about the event, I needed to share my feelings of low self-worth. And shame.
About 5 years ago, I came to understand that if I didn't open up and let the real Ken out, I was not going to recover. I was going to die. Well, one doesn't one morning decide to drop all the facades and people pleasing and approval seeking and Boom! and Voila! Here's the new Ken! It takes practice, it takes courage, it takes the willingness to fall down and get up, and it takes time. But through time, I began to feel again (that part of me is still waking up). I began to see my life as more than just a series of events - I began to see that how I defined myself and felt about myself surrounding those events was shaping my future. Enter CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and I began to question the way I was reacting to life and to myself, and I began to find more productive and constructive ways of thinking.
But what was most important was I began expressing how I felt - about events, about myself, about life - with people whom I trusted. I talked about how I felt. It became ok to feel again. I wasn't wrong or bad anymore for being sad or angry. It was just the way I felt. I began to feel ok with how I felt, because the people who were listening to me were listening without judging, sometimes with the added bonus of listening with understanding.
As I might have mentioned in the previous post (I rarely go back to re-read) the things we have in common with every other human being is that we've all loved, we've all lost, and we've all hurt. No matter how hard we might try, those experiences are inescapable.
I used to be kind of a hard guy, I think. If you told me something that I didn't understand, or hadn't experienced, I didn't feel too much for you. I wouldn't necessarily show outside that I wasn't getting it, but inside, I knew. Everything was cerebral or intellectual. If it didn't match with my experience, point-to-point, I really couldn't relate. However, when I started becoming open to acknowledging and experiencing my own feelings, I began to understand a lot more when people related there experiences to me. I began to listen differently.
I began to listen for the feelings. For example: I work with a lot of people in early recovery. Now, the casual observer might see someone who drinks too much or uses heroin stop drinking and using, and say, good - they're getting their life back together. That's what it looks like, anyway. What's actually going on is a traumatic event - the person who is addicted to alcohol or drugs is experiencing a major upheaval in their lives. They're giving up something that has become their best friend. It hurts! physically and emotionally. It's scary! It's confusing! There is a lot of guilt and shame involved, and fear for the future. I listen to people as they tell me the losses they've suffered from going into recovery. Recovery is supposed to be a good thing! But folks lose friends, maybe family, sometimes their livelihoods, sometimes their freedom. It is a big experience. So I listen, and because I've been there, I relate very well. By the way, I've also learned that men have a desire to have their feelings heard as well.
And most of all today, I understand the importance of connection. Entering into recovery means losing part or sometimes all of our identity. Our self-identity. Who am I now? What do I do now? Where do I go from here? Having someone who relates to the experience makes the experience a little more ok.
I can hear something today, and, while I might not relate to the specific experience, I can hear the feelings underneath the experience. I understand that loss is loss is loss, whether it's one's driver's license or one's home or one's job or a loved one, and I can listen to the pain and all the other stuff that goes along with that loss, and I don't have to judge whether that pain is justified or not. If someone's feeling it, they're feeling it! I no longer judge whether or not someone's suffering is worthy or not; I recognize the suffering and support the person going through it. By the way, I've also learned that men have a desire to have their feelings heard as well.
It is sometimes painful for me, but then I recognize it's more painful for the person experiencing the feelings. I offer support, encouragement, and hope, and none of it is false. I'm a miracle, and I know lots of other miracles, and today I believe anything is possible. I offer to others the hope of recovery, and the understanding that we're in this together. To me, that's gold. I know what it's like to feel alone and hopeless, to feel used up and worthless. I also know what it's like to turn what once looked like a mountain of crap into something not only worthwhile but beautiful. I have the ability to listen to someone to help them feel not so alone and hopeless, and to maybe help them discover or re-discover who they really are. For someone like me, this is the greatest blessing of my life - to be a positive agent in someone's life. I've learned to listen not only with my ears, but with my heart.
Namasté,
Ken
But what I've learned over the past couple of years is to listen in a way that is helpful to the person relating. I used to think mostly with the male mind - that is, the problem fixer. Somewhere along the line, I learned that when women are talking about their experience, they don't want a solution, they want to be heard. So I began shutting off the problem fixer, but was still left wondering, "Why am I listening to this?" (besides that this woman is actually talking to me and I'd like to keep it going).
I wasn't understanding that the woman wanted to express how certain events or situations made her feel. I didn't have feelings, so I wasn't relating on any level deeper than the surface. (I had feelings; I had just tamped them down, like a well-worn path in the woods). Eventually, I came to understand that by me not expressing my own feelings, I was making myself sick. I remember being in a recovery meeting many years ago shortly after my mother passed away, and talking about it. Somebody pulled me aside later and said, "You talked about your mother dying the same way you'd talk about your car breaking down." I really did not understand. I didn't understand how talking about what was going on in my life was helpful, unless talking about it gave me a solution. I didn't realize that I didn't need to share the event of my mother passing; I needed to share the sadness and guilt and shame I was feeling surrounding it. When I would lose a job or a relationship, I didn't need to talk about the event, I needed to share my feelings of low self-worth. And shame.
About 5 years ago, I came to understand that if I didn't open up and let the real Ken out, I was not going to recover. I was going to die. Well, one doesn't one morning decide to drop all the facades and people pleasing and approval seeking and Boom! and Voila! Here's the new Ken! It takes practice, it takes courage, it takes the willingness to fall down and get up, and it takes time. But through time, I began to feel again (that part of me is still waking up). I began to see my life as more than just a series of events - I began to see that how I defined myself and felt about myself surrounding those events was shaping my future. Enter CBT, Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, and I began to question the way I was reacting to life and to myself, and I began to find more productive and constructive ways of thinking.
But what was most important was I began expressing how I felt - about events, about myself, about life - with people whom I trusted. I talked about how I felt. It became ok to feel again. I wasn't wrong or bad anymore for being sad or angry. It was just the way I felt. I began to feel ok with how I felt, because the people who were listening to me were listening without judging, sometimes with the added bonus of listening with understanding.
As I might have mentioned in the previous post (I rarely go back to re-read) the things we have in common with every other human being is that we've all loved, we've all lost, and we've all hurt. No matter how hard we might try, those experiences are inescapable.
I used to be kind of a hard guy, I think. If you told me something that I didn't understand, or hadn't experienced, I didn't feel too much for you. I wouldn't necessarily show outside that I wasn't getting it, but inside, I knew. Everything was cerebral or intellectual. If it didn't match with my experience, point-to-point, I really couldn't relate. However, when I started becoming open to acknowledging and experiencing my own feelings, I began to understand a lot more when people related there experiences to me. I began to listen differently.
I began to listen for the feelings. For example: I work with a lot of people in early recovery. Now, the casual observer might see someone who drinks too much or uses heroin stop drinking and using, and say, good - they're getting their life back together. That's what it looks like, anyway. What's actually going on is a traumatic event - the person who is addicted to alcohol or drugs is experiencing a major upheaval in their lives. They're giving up something that has become their best friend. It hurts! physically and emotionally. It's scary! It's confusing! There is a lot of guilt and shame involved, and fear for the future. I listen to people as they tell me the losses they've suffered from going into recovery. Recovery is supposed to be a good thing! But folks lose friends, maybe family, sometimes their livelihoods, sometimes their freedom. It is a big experience. So I listen, and because I've been there, I relate very well. By the way, I've also learned that men have a desire to have their feelings heard as well.
And most of all today, I understand the importance of connection. Entering into recovery means losing part or sometimes all of our identity. Our self-identity. Who am I now? What do I do now? Where do I go from here? Having someone who relates to the experience makes the experience a little more ok.
I can hear something today, and, while I might not relate to the specific experience, I can hear the feelings underneath the experience. I understand that loss is loss is loss, whether it's one's driver's license or one's home or one's job or a loved one, and I can listen to the pain and all the other stuff that goes along with that loss, and I don't have to judge whether that pain is justified or not. If someone's feeling it, they're feeling it! I no longer judge whether or not someone's suffering is worthy or not; I recognize the suffering and support the person going through it. By the way, I've also learned that men have a desire to have their feelings heard as well.
It is sometimes painful for me, but then I recognize it's more painful for the person experiencing the feelings. I offer support, encouragement, and hope, and none of it is false. I'm a miracle, and I know lots of other miracles, and today I believe anything is possible. I offer to others the hope of recovery, and the understanding that we're in this together. To me, that's gold. I know what it's like to feel alone and hopeless, to feel used up and worthless. I also know what it's like to turn what once looked like a mountain of crap into something not only worthwhile but beautiful. I have the ability to listen to someone to help them feel not so alone and hopeless, and to maybe help them discover or re-discover who they really are. For someone like me, this is the greatest blessing of my life - to be a positive agent in someone's life. I've learned to listen not only with my ears, but with my heart.
Namasté,
Ken
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