Wednesday, April 11, 2018
Friday, June 26, 2009
Day 18: When Love Came To Town
I am quickly up now, out of the house, and down to the nearby peaceful Lion’s Park where I read my recovery literature, meditating upon what comes to mind from these wise writings. I pray the Serenity Prayer and a few others. I also ask for my Higher Power’s will to be done in my life, certainly not mine these days. Then, its back home for a shit, shower, shave, a breakfast shake, and off to a meeting, the twelve o’clock at a group near the Village of the Duncans. This daily ritual sets the tone for the day, keeps me sober, and helps me not to create resentments against caged birds, Shelties, sick cats, immigrants from Amsterdam, obsessive/compulsive wives, and the rest of you all out there.
I get through most of the day and meet all of my other appointments. In the early evening, I leave to go into Big D, to the Unity Church of Dallas. This Howard something guy from the movie “The Secret”is to give a lecture on HeartMath, a way of living and speaking from one’s heart based upon being an expression of love in the world. Sounds nice to me. I usually manage the audio and video equipment for Unity, but tonight, I will just be an attendee and I look forward to being there relaxing, learning a new spiritual tool, and maybe socializing with others of this peace-centered community. It is my safe sanctuary home away from home.
Well, as John Lennon sang, “Life is what happens to you when your busy making other plans.”As I’m rolling down the highway at high speeds on HWY 67, pieces of tire rubber shrapnel start exploding under and over my little Toyota pickup. I thought I had blown my right front tire. As I slowly exit and come to a stop at the Shell station on the corner of Kiest Blvd and Marvin D Love in the City of the Oaks, I find that my right front tire still inflated, but all of the hard rubber tread had violently removed itself from my wheel.
Crap. What now?
OK, so this is where I usually furiously start smoking as many cigarettes as I can stuff into my face, ears, and any other available orifice in order to get that sweet nicotine buzz. Here is where before any rational thoughts would enter my mind, I would haul ass into the Shell station and immediately investigate as to whether they sold Bud Light or not. Two and a half weeks ago I would have been searching my ash tray, floor board, floor mats, seat cushions, dashboard, glove box, air vents….anywhere to find a forgotten joint, roach, pill or even the slightest residue of any chemical which would temporarily numb me out so I did not feel any of this happening to me. Fuck, who cares about the goddamn tire, I would have just wanted to smoke, drink, or get high somehow, someway, anyhow.
Instead, I called my sponsor. Wow, what a novel concept. Who knew? He gave me the number to the Dallas County Roadside Assistance folks. I called and they showed up in under 30 minutes. Ron and Larry from TXDOT drove me to a nearby 24 hour tire shop, negotiated the best price for a slightly used tire with the Hispanic brethren toiling there, drove me back to my truck, and put the new tire back on the axle. I never had to lift a finger or got my hands greasy. Although I missed my evening appointment with Howard and HeartMath, had to spend $25 that was earmarked for groceries, and got an unexpected tour of points of interest in The Cliff… I did not use. Something had definitely changed.
Relieved, I decided to head home. It occurred to me that it was still early in the evening. At the house, most of the menagerie would still be up and awake scratching, flapping, coughing, yelling and generally going slightly insane at the house. Too soon to go home I thought. What to do? Not much going on in the Village of the Duncans tonight. Geez Louise, I’m nervously driving through a cultural last century wasteland with my brand new used tire. Yeah for me. The idle hands in my own demon’s workshop were raising up and about to start waving me towards bad thoughts and even worse actions of acting out. I could feel it.
As I rolled my truck windows down and turned off the A/C, I drove down Main Street and began to hear music emanating forth from the Village of the Duncans gazebo area near the D-ville Police Station. A Thursday night concert was afoot. I stopped, locked the truck (can’t be too trusting of these Duncan inbreds), and walked over to get a better view. The little band was finishing up an unfamiliar R&B tune as I found a shade tree to stand under in the collapsing last light of the sunset. CC, the female lead vocalist of her own ragged band, dressed in a broad cowboy hat, pink halter top, faded jorts (blue jean shorts), and white snake skin boots, announced the next tune to the audience. Yelling out in a deep whiskey tinged voice, she said “and now we’re gonna do a cover for y’all of one of my all time favorite songs written for B. B. King by a little ol’ band from Ireland who goes by the name of U2…this here is “When Love Comes to Town…”
Had I not been in public, I would have unclenched my asshole and shit all over myself. That there was my all time favorite song too, little darlin’. CC and the boys throttled into the most blue, rocking, overdriven, rushed, distorted, bawdy version of this under appreciated rock-n-roll hymnal, my generations “Amazing Grace.” And how fucking sweet the sound truly was to me. She belted out my favorite lyrics of the song:
I ran into a juke joint when I heard a guitar scream
The notes were turning blue, I was dazing in a dream
As the music played I saw my life turn around
That was the day before love came to town
When love comes to town I’m gonna jump that train
When love comes to town I’m gonna catch that flame
Maybe I was wrong to ever let you down
But I did what I did before love came to town
OMG! It was happening to me like in the song, as the song played. I looked around to make sure no one was watching as my eyes filled up with tears.
And then she sang:
I was there when they crucified my Lord
I held the scabbard when the soldier drew his sword
I threw the dice when they pierced his side
But I’ve seen love conquer the great divide
Now, I’m bawling like a baby. I’m a little sensitive these days, you see. I am feeling everything. I’ve never felt all of this before. In fact, I had just felt a wave of love come down over and around me as I cried along with my beloved U2/BB King tune. Somehow, by the grace of God, I had not had a drink all day. Everything seemed to be just all right. I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I stood there near the gazebo in the middle of my big small world contemplating and feeling what was happening to me, what I could not have done for myself. I quietly under my breath prayed out a grateful “thank you” to Spirit for the roof over my head, the couch, the birds, the dogs, the cats, my rusty old Toyota pickup, the bald tire, the new used tire, TXDOT, CC and the band, the gazebo, U2, BB King, and all of the Flying Dutchmen and their weirdly wonderful wives here in the Village of the Duncans.
For me, Day 18 was the day that Love happened to come by my little town.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
My New Life
About two and a half weeks ago, I found myself in a deep abyss. It was a very dark and bleak looking horizon. I felt as far away from God, Spirit or a Higher Power as I could possibly be. I was kicked out of a business, asked to leave where I lived, and told that I would be killed, as in beaten up or a gun put to my head if I ever returned. With all of my earthly belongings in my small pickup truck, including my freaked out cat, Mary, we left that situation behind and drove away with no destination in site.
Stunned and in a state of shock, I drove to a nearby church where I felt safe. After speed dialing everyone I knew with only a few bars of signal and battery strength left on my phone, I finally was able to find a couch to spend the night on. That night, a thought came to me as to what I could do to help myself if I could become courageous enough to take the first step. Actually, there was not much courage involved. This was my last resort.
The next day, on Monday June 8 2009, I went to a twelve step Alcoholics Antonymous noon meeting and decided to pick up my Desire Chip. I decided to try again. Although my story also involves drugs and smoking cigarettes, and this was my third time to come into “The Program,” I figured that I really had nothing to lose and no where else to go. The only ones who would take me in and accept me for what I am were a bunch of recovering and recovered drunks. What the hell.
Its been two and a half weeks, and I am so much better now. On that day I stopped drinking, drugging, and even smoking cigarettes. Maybe it is not the wisest thing to stop all three at once, but lately I have not really been the wisest on guys…just an insignificant wise guy at best. So far, so good I am able to report in all categories.
I totally understand the spiritual concept of anonymity, and I will always leave what I hear and see in those rooms in those rooms. For me, It is time for me to connect with others and to share my experiences. Probably no one will read this anyway, so there will probably be no one I will possibly be able to offend with my thoughts and words here in this blog. Its an ego thing, you know. I just now need to get some of these things down in writing and see if anyone else might get me, have experienced similar things, likes it, hates it, and can maybe even connect with others who join me on my path. We shall see.
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Beyond Counting Blessings - Being Truly Thankful
Wednesday, November 21, 2007
Manifesting Your Dreams: Making the Best of Mars Retrograde
At this time of year as we march through the holiday season and into the 2008, I always become a little introspective and start to think about my goals for the next year. For me, this process began a few years ago with a class I took called "Conscious Seeding." It's a great time to plant seeds of ideas, hopes, dreams and desires so that they are ready to germinate and burst forth in the springtime. I narrow them down to the highest conscious specific goals that i can. "You might find today that your idealism makes you feel hopeful about your future aspirations. The world could seem to be there for the taking, and you could notice a sense of promise for the future. Today you may want to use your optimism to help you picture the person you would most like to become. As you think about your dreams, you can allow yourself to visualize your life as you ideally want it to be in five years. You might first want to imagine your occupation, remembering to be open to all possibilities and allow innovative ideas to flow. Then think about your home life, picturing where you would most like to live and whom you would like to be with. Let the images dance in your mind, and you may find that your hopes can help you create the life you truly want."
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Moving Through Darkness
Moving Through Darkness
The Places We Go
In life, most of us want things to go to the places we have envisioned ourselves going. We have plans and visions, some of them divinely inspired, that we want to see through to completion. We want to be happy, successful, and healthy, all of which are perfectly natural and perfectly human. So when life takes us to places we didn’t consciously want to go, we often feel as if something has gone wrong, or we must have made a mistake somewhere along the line, or any number of other disheartening possibilities. This is just life’s way of taking us to a place we need to go for reasons that go deeper than our own ability to reason. These hard knocks and trials are designed to shed light on our unconscious workings and deepen our experience of reality.
Often it takes something major to wake us up, to shake us loose from our ego’s grip as it struggles to maintain an illusion of control. It is loss of control more than anything else that humbles us and enables us to see the big picture. It reminds us that the key to the universe lies in what we do not know, and what we do know is a small fraction of the great mystery in which we live. This awareness softens and lightens us, as we release our resistance to what is. Another gift gleaned from going to these seemingly undesirable places is that, in our response to difficulty, we can see all the patterns and unresolved emotional baggage that stand in the way of our unconditional joyfulness. Joy exists within us independently of whether things go our way or not. And when we don’t feel it, we can trust that we will find it if we are willing to surrender to the situation, moving through it as we move through our difficult feelings.
We can take our inspiration from any fairy tale that finds its central character lost in a dark wood, frightened and alone. We know that the journey through the wood provides its own kind of beauty and richness. On the other side, we will emerge transformed, lighter and brighter, braver and more confident for having moved through that darkness.
Friday, September 28, 2007
"The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life" by Deepak Chopra
From "The Book of Secrets: Unlocking the Hidden Dimensions of Your Life" by Deepak Chopra
Posted by: DailyOM
Introduction: Opening the Book of Secrets
The greatest hunger in life is not for food, money, success, status, security, sex, or even love from the opposite sex. Time and again people have achieved all of these things and wound up still feeling dissatisfied—indeed, often more dissatisfied than when they began. The deepest hunger in life is a secret that is revealed only when a person is willing to unlock a hidden part of the self. In the ancient traditions of wisdom, this quest has been likened to diving for the most precious pearl in existence, a poetic way of saying that you have to swim far out beyond shallow waters, plunge deep into yourself, and search patiently until the pearl beyond price is found.
The pearl is also called essence, the breath of God, the water of life, holy nectar—labels for what we, in our more prosaic scientific age, would simply call transformation. Transformation means radical change of form, the way a caterpillar transforms into a butterfly. In human terms, it means turning fear, aggression, doubt, insecurity, hatred, and emptiness into their opposites. Can this really be achieved? One thing we know for certain: The secret hunger that gnaws at people’s souls has nothing to do with externals like money, status, and security. It’s the inner person who craves meaning in life, the end of suffering, and answers to the riddles of love, death, God, the soul, good and evil. A life spent on the surface will never answer these questions or satisfy the needs that drive us to ask them.
Finding the hidden dimensions in yourself is the only way to fulfill your deepest hunger.
After the rise of science, this craving for knowledge should have faded, but it has only grown stronger. There are no new “facts” to discover about life’s hidden dimensions. Nobody needs to peer at more CAT scans of patients undergoing a near-death experience or take more MRIs of yogis sitting deep in meditation. That phase of experimentation has done its work: We can be assured that wherever consciousness wants to go, the human brain will follow. Our neurons are capable of registering the highest spiritual experiences. In some ways, however, you and I know less about the mystery of life than our ancestors.
We live in the Age of the Higher Brain, the cerebral cortex that has grown enormously over the last few millennia, overshadowing the ancient, instinctive lower brain. The cortex is often called the new brain, yet the old brain held sway in humans for millions of years, as it does today in most living things. The old brain can’t conjure up ideas or read. But it does possess the power to feel and, above all, to be. It was the old brain that caused our forebears to sense the closeness of a mysterious presence everywhere in Nature.
That presence, which is found in every particle of creation, suffuses your life, too. You are a book of secrets waiting to be opened, although you probably see yourself in totally different terms. On a given day, you are a worker, a father or mother, husband or wife, a consumer combing the mall stores for something new, an audience member waiting impatiently for the next entertainment.
When you are living the truth of one reality, every secret reveals itself without effort or struggle.
It comes down to the age-old choice of separation or unity. Do you want to be fragmented, conflicted, torn between the eternal forces of darkness and light? Or do you want to step out of separation into wholeness? You are a creature who acts, thinks, and feels. Spirituality fuses these three into a single reality. Thinking doesn’t lord it over feeling; feeling doesn’t stubbornly resist the higher brain; doing occurs when both thought and feeling say, “This is right.” The one reality can be recognized because once you are there, you experience the flow of life without obstacles or resistance. In this flow, you encounter inspiration, love, truth, beauty, and wisdom as natural aspects of existence. The one reality is spirit, and the surface of life is only a disguise with a thousand masks that keeps us from discovering what is real. A thousand years ago, such a statement would have met with no argument. Spirit was accepted everywhere as the true source of life. Today, we have to look with new eyes at the mystery of existence, for as proud children of science and reason, we have made ourselves the orphans of wisdom.
Therefore, this book must work on two fronts. First, it must persuade you that there really is a mystery lying in the hidden dimensions of life. Second, it must inspire you to feel the passion and dedication required to get there. This isn’t a project to postpone until you are ready. You have been ready since the day you forgot to keep asking who you are and why you are here. Sadly, most of us keep shutting out thousands of experiences that could make transformation a reality. If it weren’t for the enormous effort we put into denial, repression, and doubt, each life would be a constant revelation.
Ultimately you have to believe that your life is worth investigating with total passion and commitment. It took thousands of tiny decisions to keep the book of secrets closed, but it takes only a single moment to open it again.
I take it literally when the New Testament says, “Ask and you will receive, knock and the door will be opened.” It’s that simple. You will know every secret about life when you can truly say I must know. I can’t wait a moment longer. Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree and Jesus wrestling with demons in the desert are symbolic of the same drama of the soul that you were born to repeat. Never doubt this: You are the most significant being in the world, because at the level of the soul you are the world. You don’t have to earn the right to know. Your very next thought, feeling, or action can begin to uncover the deepest spiritual wisdom, which flows as pure and free as mountain waters in spring. It isn’t possible for the self to keep secrets from itself forever, no matter how thoroughly we’ve been trained to believe otherwise.
Secret #1: The Mystery of Life Is Real
The life you know is a thin layer of events covering a deeper reality. In the deeper reality, you are part of every event that is happening now, has ever happened, or ever will happen. In the deeper reality, you know absolutely who you are and what your purpose is. There is no confusion or conflict with any other person on earth. Your purpose in life is to help creation to expand and grow. When you look at yourself, you see only love.
The mystery of life isn’t any of these things, however. It’s how to bring them to the surface. If someone asked me how to prove that there really is a mystery of life, the simplest proof would be just this enormous separation between deep reality and everyday existence. Ever since you and I were born, we’ve had a constant stream of clues hinting at another world inside ourselves. Haven’t you ever fallen into a moment of wonder? Such moments may come in the presence of beautiful music, or in the sight of natural beauty that sends a shiver up your spine. Or you may have looked out of the corner of your eye at something familiar—morning sunlight, a tree swaying in the wind, the face of someone you love as he or she sleeps—knowing in that moment that life was more than it appears to be.
Countless clues have come your way, only to be overlooked because they didn’t form a clear message. I have met an astonishing number of people whose spiritual beginnings were nothing short of amazing: As children, they may have seen a grandmother’s soul leave at the moment of her death, witnessed beings of light surrounding on a birthday, traveled beyond their physical bodies, or come home from school to see a beloved family member standing in the hallway, even though the person had just died in a terrible auto accident. (One man told me he was a “bubble boy” for the first ten years of his life, journeying in his bubble high over the city and away to unknown lands.) Millions of people—this is no exaggeration but testimony from public polls—have seen themselves bathed in a pearlescent white light at times. Or they heard a voice they knew came from God. Or they had invisible guardians in childhood, secret friends who protected them while they slept.
Eventually, it became clear to me that more people have had such experiences—truly secret voyages into a reality separated from this one by a flimsy veil of disbelief—than not. Parting the veil means changing your own perception. This is a personal, totally subjective, yet very real shift.
Where would you begin to solve a mystery that is everywhere, yet somehow never forms a whole message? A great sleuth like Sherlock Holmes would start his search from one elementary deduction: Something unknown wants to be known. A mystery that doesn’t want to be known will just keep retreating the closer you come to it. The mystery of life doesn’t behave that way: Its secrets are revealed immediately if you know where to look. But where is that?
The body’s wisdom is a good entry point into the hidden dimensions of life, because although completely invisible, the body’s wisdom is undeniably real—a fact that medical researchers began to accept in the mid-1980s. The former view was that the brain’s capacity for intelligence was unique. But then signs of intelligence began to be discovered in the immune system, and then in the digestive system. In both these systems, special messenger molecules could be observed circulating through every organ, bringing information to and from the brain, but also functioning on their own. A white cell that can distinguish between invading enemy bacteria and harmless pollen is making an intelligent decision, even though it floats in the bloodstream apart from the brain.
Ten years ago, it would have seemed absurd to speak of intestines being intelligent. The lining of the digestive tract was known to possess thousands of nerve endings, but these were just remote outposts of the nervous system—a way for it to keep in touch with the lowly business of extracting nutrition from food. Now it turns out that the intestines are not so lowly after all. Their scattered nerve cells form a finely tuned system for reacting to outside events—an upsetting remark at work, the threat of danger, a death in the family. The stomach’s reactions are just as reliable as the brain’s thoughts, and just as intricate. Your colon, your liver, and your stomach cells also think, only not in the brain’s verbal language. What people had been calling a “gut reaction” turned out to be a mere hint of the complex intelligence at work in a hundred thousand billion cells.
In a sweeping medical revolution, scientists have stepped into a hidden dimension that no one had ever suspected. Cells have been outthinking us for millions of years. In fact, their wisdom, more ancient than cortical wisdom, could be the best model for the only thing more ancient than they, which is the cosmos. Perhaps the universe has been outthinking us, too. No matter where I look, I sense what cosmic wisdom is trying to accomplish. It is much the same as what I myself want to accomplish—to grow, expand, and create—the main difference being that my body is cooperating with the universe better than I manage to.
Cells have no problem fully participating in the mystery of life. Theirs is a wisdom of total passion and commitment. So let’s see if we can link the qualities of bodily wisdom with the hidden dimensions we want to uncover: the wisdom you are already living.