For Today: Look Up

This is part of the meditation from AA this morning and I really like it.  I'm not slipping but I don't feel firm on my feet.  And I don't expect to.  I just want to keep going in recovery for the next 24 hours.

When climbing a steep hill, people are often more conscious of the weakness of their stumbling feet than of the view, the grandeur, or even of the upward progress.

Prayer for the Day

I pray that I may persevere in all good things. I pray that I may advance each day in spite of my stumbling feet.

For Today - Concentrate on Taking Action, Not Results

On action, alone be thy interest, never on its fruits. - Bhagavad Gita

In other words, today -- for the next 24 hours -- my focus is on working the 12 steps and refraining from eating compulsively.  The rest of my long-term problems will sort themselves out with God's help.

Yesterday at the Northshore Round Up, the AA speaker, Tina A from Torrence, California, talked about how she had felt nothing would ease her pain, make her feel better, make her feel nothing, than alcohol.  And she had searched and searched for an adequate substitute and nothing worked.  And she fell further and further, using more and more, not just alcohol but also drugs.  She traded sex for alcohol.  She did things that shamed her because she needed a drink so badly.  And she started going to AA because it was warm, they let her live in her car behind the club.  The caretaker would open early for her and give her soap and towels so she could wash up.  They let her have as much coffee and as many jelly doughnuts as she wanted.  And eventually she started to listen.  And she didn't believe it would work.  She didn't care if it would work.  It was enough that she had a place to be where people were kind to her.  And eventually it started to work.

She was six weeks sober when she wanted to share.  She stood up and said, "I'm Tina, I'm an alcoholic" and her sponsor then told her to sit down:  "That's all you know."  Amazing.  And yet she found comfort in having someone tell her the path, tell her what to do next.  She didn't believe but she did it anyway.  Now, at 31 years sober, she says she doesn't always believe now, but she still works the program.  It is an adequate substitute for drinking.  And the life she has now bears no resemblance to the life she had before AA.

The Bhagavad Gita is not a person but rather an ancient (2 or 3 century BCE) Hindhu manuscript.  In one of the chapters, the seeker asks if it is better to act or refrain from acting.  And this made me think is it better to put all my energy into the 12 Steps (action) or better to put all my energy into not bingeing (refrain from compulsive action)?  Both are important.  In the Bhagavad Gita, Krisha (God) answers the question saying both are ways to the same goal, but acting is superior.  I think this must be right.

For today, I will focus my energy on living my steps and trust God to handle my compulsions. 

 

The Promises... And the Promises (in reverse) when I binge

If we are NOT painstaking about this phase of our development, we will binge before we leave the parking lot.  We are going to know a new pain and a new misery.  We will regret our deeds and repeat them over and over.  We will comprehend the word chaos and we will know calamity.  No matter how far down the road we waddle, we will still wonder where we are going.  That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will intensify.  We will lose interesting things and gain relations with strange fellows.  Self-seeking will be constant.  Our whole attitude will be on the lookout for food.  Fear of people and economic insecurity will leave us - holed up at home with junk food for comfort.  We will intuitively know how to stay fat with little or no money.  We will suddenly begin to think that God does not exist.

Are these extravagant promises?  Probably not.  They are being practiced daily, sometimes insanely, sometimes deadly.  They will continue to happen if we keep bingeing.

(Adapted from and with thanks to AA's Robby R)

The Promises
If we are painstaking about this phase of our development, we will be amazed before we are half way through. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. We will comprehend the word serenity and we will know peace. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others. That feeling of uselessness and self-pity will disappear. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain interest in our fellows. Self-seeking will slip away. Our whole attitude and outlook upon life will change. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves. 

Are these extravagant promises? We think not. They are being fulfilled among us — sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them.

The Promises; Alcoholic Anonymous (‘The Big Book’) pages 83 – 84

The Hidden Promises
And we have ceased fighting anything or anyone-even alcohol. For by this time sanity will have returned. We will seldom be interested in liquor. If tempted, we recoil from it as from a hot flame. We react sanely and normally, and we will find that this has happened automatically. We will see that our new attitude toward liquor has been given us without any thought or effort on our part. It just comes! That is the miracle of it. We are not fighting it, neither are we avoiding temptation. We feel as though we had been placed in a position of neutrality—safe and protected. We have not even sworn off. Instead, the problem has been removed. It does not exist for us. We are neither cocky nor are we afraid. That is how we react so long as we keep in fit spiritual condition. 

The Hidden Promises; Alcoholic Anonymous (‘The Big Book’) pages 84 – 85

For Today - Failure is Impossible

Failure is impossible.  - Susan B. Anthony

It is always a little bit odd to have the culture of a neighbouring nation outweigh your own.  Susan B. Anthony is an American human rights and feminist icon.  Enough of an icon that many Canadians will recognize her name and some will know who she is.  She advocated for women's equality and especially the right to vote tirelessly in the United States.  In November of 1872 she registered to vote and voted in the Presidential election. She was arrested for voting illegally and sentenced to pay a fine of $100 and the cost of prosecution.

In 1906, her 86th year, Susan B. Anthony spoke at the National Woman Suffrage Association and the title of her speech was "Failure is Impossible."  At the time, only four American states allowed women to vote.  It would be 1918 before Canadian women had the vote and 1920 for all American women.

I have tried to find the text of Susan B. Anthony's "Failure is Impossible" speech on-line and failed.  Ironic! It seems from reading Ida Husted Harper, The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony, volume III, that Miss Anthony may have said these remarks to friends, too ill and too elderly to do much speech making.  She is credited with saying this at the Baltimore Convention by the New York papers:

A report in the New York Evening Post said, "The entire house rose and the applause and cheers seemed to continue for ten minutes." It thus continued :

Miss Anthony looked at the splendid audience of men and women, many of them distinguished in their generation, with calm and dignified sadness. "This is a magnificent sight before me," she said slowly, "and these have been wonderful addresses and speeches I have listened to during the past week. Yet I have looked on many such audiences, and in my lifetime I have listened to many such speakers, all testifying to the righteousness, the justice and the worthiness of the cause of woman suffrage. I never saw that great woman, Mary Wollstoncraft, but I have read her eloquent and unanswerable
arguments in behalf of the liberty of womankind. I have met and known most of the progressive women who came after her — Lucretia Mott, the Grimke sisters, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone— a long galaxy of great women. I have heard them speak, saying in only slightly different phrases exactly what I have heard these newer advocates of the cause say at these meetings. Those older women have gone on, and most of those who worked with me in the early years have gone. I am here for a little time only and then my place will be filled as theirs was filled. The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop."

The For Today reader sets out "Failure is impossible" and then states whatever one believes is possible, is possible. What is clear from Susan B. Anthony's life and work, one may have to hold belief for a very long time.  And the timing of when the possible is realized is not our own.  But it is possible.

Today it is possible to be abstinent.  To live wholly, without abusing my mind, my soul or my body.

Blessed Be.

For Today - Living

It is frightful not to live. -- Victor Hugo

Interestingly, this is not the full quote in the For Today reader.  The full quote is "It is nothing to die.  It is frightful not to live" from Hugo's Les Miserables. 

There are some wonderful quotes from Victor Hugo.  Some of my favourites are:

• To put everything in balance is good, to put everything in harmony is better.
• Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.
• What Is Love? I have met in the streets a very poor young man who was in love. His hat was old, his coat worn, the water passed through his shoes and the stars through his soul.
• To love another person is to see the face of God.
• Have courage for the great sorrows of life and patience for the small ones; and when you have laboriously accomplished your daily task, go to sleep in peace. God is awake.
• Those who do not weep, do not see.
• Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.

The stasis which is the hell of being stuck in the food, the compulsions.  I can think of nothing more awful for my soul than abusing my mind and body over and over as if it will help.

For today, I am living.

Blessed be.

For Today - Gratitude and Faith

To stand on one leg and prove the existence of God is a very different thing from going down on one's knees and thanking Him.  - Soren Kierkegaard

True, even if the first proposition is impossible. 

Kierkegaard also wrote, "What I really need is to get clear about what I must do, not what I must know, except insofar as knowledge must precede every act. What matters is to find a purpose, to see what it really is that God wills that I shall do; the crucial thing is to find a truth which is truth for me, to find the idea for which I am willing to live and die."

And yet he also wrote this:  "I have needed God every day to defend myself against the abundance of thoughts."

In his later writings, Kierkegaard broke from the Church of Denmark (and of the state at that time given there was no separation of church and state then).  His own nephew disrupted his funeral to protest the involvement of the state Church and was fined for maintaining his uncle's convictions on his behalf.  To the end, Kierkegaard stressed the importance of taking responsibility for our own relationship with God.

In this way, Kierkegaard fits well with the OA concept of a defining a God that works for me, a Higher Power that connects me with my life force, loves me, protects me, and cares for my well-being and development.  He also suffered greatly from what he called melancholy which, when I read some of his work, sounds like major depression to me.

We read Step 3 last night at our meeting -- "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him."  My decision was made and is continually made.  My ability to turn to God is less reliable.  I reached for my Higher Power yesterday when it came to my resentment around a certain friendship.  And I saw the power of recovery in some of the sharing at the meeting.  But I started on my way home and felt so empty.  I forgot to reach for God and I binged.  So this morning, I am reflecting on my inconsistency and trying to learn from it.

The reading today continues with this passage:

Though my understanding of God may change, it would make little difference to my practice of the twelve steps.  Whatever my concept, I would still give everything to God:  my worries, my fears, my shortcomings, my family, my friends, the state of the nation and the world.  Does this mean I can now lie back and do nothing?  Far from it.  Turning over my anxiety about the things that concern me allows me to take effective action where I can.  I do what it is possible for me to do and let God handle the rest.

So for now, I will make breakfast and eat it.  Do my affirmations.  Attend my appointments.  Do what I can to improve my living conditions.  And leave the rest to God.

Blessed be.

For Today - A Tiger Doesn't Change Her Stripes

Abstinence is as easy for me as temperance is difficult.  - Samuel Johnson

What does that mean?  Temperance is consuming moderately, I think.  Ironically, the first definition is "abstinence from alcoholic drink" and the synonyms are "teetotalism, abstinence, abstention, sobriety, self-restraint, prohibition".  But I know from my own experience that abstinence is saying no to compulsive food behaviours, including certain foods that I can't just stop eating at a normal portion.  Temperance, I think, suggests, limiting the amounts of certain foods or drink, even though the synonyms seem to confuse the two concepts considerably.

And the point for me is I can't do temperance for some foods.  I just can't.  I eat them until they are all gone.  The only way I have any "temperance" around them is if I don't have them in the house and I have to go out and get them.  Then, my "temperance" is limited only by how much of the food I purchase.  Once I have it, I eat it all. 

Today's reading concludes:  "As a compulsive overeater, it is far easier for me to abstain from overindulgence in food than to try to become a 'normal' binger."

I'm getting better, maybe, at bingeing one day and then getting back on track the next.  A binge used to trigger weeks of more bingeing.  So I am starting to recover.  But I know in my heart and in my body that these trips from abstinence into temporary bingeing (I really don't think I can call it temperance), are harmful.  I feel slow, sticky, foggy.  And this bingeing is not the normal eater's overindulgence.  It is the compulsive overeater's flight from feelings.  Just as a tiger doesn't change her stripes, my recovery is not to normal eating, it is to a new way of dealing with life on life's terms.

So the challenge is to find new ways of living with my emotions that manage the lows without excess sugar, fat and simple carbohydrates.  I think until I have a reliable way of riding through my emotions, I will continue to binge.  So this is my focus -- to cultivate new skills for old problems.

Blessed be.

For Today - Peace

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

This morning's reading reminds me:

I cannot will myself to have peace of mind, but I can re-examine my priorities.  Am I putting enough time and effort into activities that nurture my spirit?

Um, no.  So it's time to re-examine my priorities.  What I am doing is not bringing me peace.  So for today, I am going to consider how I use my time and to what use I put my efforts.

Blessings.