Forgetting What I Know -- disaster or becoming teachable

 It is an interesting thing to ponder whether I can choose what I forget.  The reading this morning starts with a quote from Publilius Syrus that says, "We may with advantage at times forget what we know."

There is no advantage to me in forgetting what I know about the 12 Steps and what I have learned about myself in working the Steps.  There is an advantage, however, in forgetting all the old ideas and beliefs that get in the way of a happier, healthier and useful life.  If I forget program, my life is a disaster.  If I forget the old ideas and beliefs?  There's room to live differently, better.  Room for me to live my program beliefs instead.

The reading talks about how coming to OA, the writer knew what she knew:  her compulsive eating stemmed from an emotionally deprived childhood and nothing -- not God even -- can change that.  And then she writes that somehow in OA she forgot all of that.  She went ahead and acted as if everything everyone told her in OA was true.  She prayed even though it was as if her Higher Power was three letters of the alphabet.  She thought abstinence was dumb and did it anyway.  

This is perhaps the penultimate paragraph in the reading:  "I still know what I know but, thank God, I am no longer using it to keep me from getting well."  She says for today, it is just as effective to "act as if" she has forgotten what she knows.  It works anyway.

Sometimes when I am writing or sharing I recognize some "therapy speak" coming through in my voice.  Or I hear it in someone else's share.  It can sound hollow or even trite, not thoughtful, necessarily, like an equally ubiquitous OA slogan usually does.

What do I need to forget?  Myself.   I need to get over all the pain I have from the past I have.  It doesn't help.  It is an important part of who I became, who I am now, but it doesn't help me going forward today.  It is like an anchor, dragging me down.  

I need to forget everything I think I know about God, beyond my innate sense that there is a Divine life force in me and in all living things that propels me toward growth and toward survival when growth seems too hard.  

I need to put aside my doubt and act as if this is going to work.  I see it work for others; I hear them share that it works for them.  I can forget my relapses, my struggles in the past.  They do not serve me any more.  They are part of my story and inform my choice to live differently today.  Just today.  Let's live today.

Blessed be.

Being a Newcomer again

 I am struggling with my faith that God will do what I cannot do for myself.  I see and hear stories of recovery where faith and surrender to a Higher Power leads to healthier, happier lives.  And I feel stuck and unhappy.  I believe God will help you recover but I am not convinced God will help me recover.  That's f*cked up.  The years of therapy I have had suggest this is black or white thinking, future telling, any number of other cognitive dissonances based on a self concept of being unworthy, undeserving, somehow damaged more than anybody else.  And I know that is not true.  However, I still feel it.

This morning in my daily reader, For Today, I looked up all the entries in the index for 'newcomers'.  Date order be damned!  And this is what I found:

No one [in OA] made me feel that my illness rendered me less worthy of respect than other people.  Taking a cue from these loving, caring friends, I stopped being ashamed of myself.  The defences I had set up fell away, and I became open to change.

OA is a refuge from the harsh judgments society passes on compulsive overeaters.  [I need] unconditional acceptance and respect, not judgments. - May 9

This is true - the only person making me feel my compulsive eating, my size, my struggle with depression et cetera renders me less worthy of respect and help is me.  Shame is a big part of this struggle.  Feeling like I am not good enough for God's help.  Feeling like I am too long in OA to be a newcomer again, or a newcomer still.  Defensive that after six years, I still struggle with frequent relapses in my abstinence and my faith is shaky - not for you but for me.  My Higher Power offers unconditional acceptance and respect for my humanity and I don't accept that gift a lot of the time.  Pride.  Self.  This has to go!

As newcomers we look at recovering compulsive overeaters who tell us of the happiness, freedom and joy in their lives and we can hardly comprehend that they were not always this way.  Those miraculous recoveries seem unattainable to us.  ...  members with years of program and lives that are happy, joyous and free are compulsive overeaters who, like the rest of us, began at the bottom.  Where I am today is a fine place to start.  - May 16

Where else to start but here?  And "here" arrives each moment.  There is no arrival and I'm done.  That is a lie I tell myself, along with the belief I should be more recovered than I am after six years in OA.  Members with more years and more recovery still struggle - I hear that in the rooms.  The standard is not perfection spiritually.  I can't achieve that and neither can they.  They don't claim it in their stories.  But they are happier, more joyous and more free than I am.  And I want that.  I need to suspend my beliefs that I can't have that too for whatever bullshit reasons my disease puts in my head.

There is no reason to be discouraged if newcomers [if I] express doubt that the recovery [I] see will happen for [me].  [My] experience of the disease is propelling [me] toward experiencing recovery.  -June 2

Ughhh...  my disease is propelling me toward recovery -- true!!  Or I wouldn't keep coming back.  My disease is also propelling me into the abyss with lies that I can't, I don't deserve this, God will do this for other people but not for me.  This tension is something I have to give over, give up.  It is a tug-of-war I can't win and the doubt it creates only prolongs my misery in my disease.  

We know what a person thinks not when he tells us what he thinks, but by his actions. ... I may fool myself and others by my talk, but my illness cannot be fooled.  - June 12

I feel like a fool, an incompetent.  Six years in OA and 270 something pounds.  I wear my disease.  I wear the lie of my recovery.  That is living in the past, however, and unhelpful.  Today, I can do differently in what I think (maybe?) but definitely in what I do.  The slogan of 'acting myself into right thinking' applies here.  I need to shut off the thinking and focus on doing what I know helps.

Diseases desperate grown by desperate appliances are relieved or not at all [Shakespeare].  ... I want what I see in OA.  I pray for the willingness to follow each step of the program and to believe that the food and the weight will be taken care of in the process.  - August 17

Yep.  I think the experiment of not tracking and not weighing myself for October is incomplete.  I am more aware of what I am doing (I think) and I need to continue to build on the changes in my plan of eating and my action plan I have started to identify.  I feel like I should continue on this path in November and also continue on my week-long (so far) practice of a meeting a day.  I need to hear the message from others and stop listening to the disease in my head.

Balancing - Physical (Purpose), Mental (Meaning), Spiritual (Hope) and Emotional (Belonging)

 I am in the process of relooking at my spirituality and my faith that I too can recover.  I felt stung by another fellow's honest reflection that my thinking / spiritual belief that God could but would God for me? is like a newcomer.  

I have been pondering faith and hope a lot in the last week – since last Sunday’s 100 pound panel at the Region 8 convention.  I feel all in progress and a bit disoriented.  I decided to try more meetings and I have somewhat unofficially decided to try 90 meetings in 90 days.  I am not at all confident that I will keep with this but for today, I am doing another meeting.  So I am at day six and meeting six. 

I just finished a new-to-me meeting this morning and it was a unique format, one I found very helpful.  They focus on recovery as balancing the physical, mental (thinkin), spiritual and emotional health as four quadrants where we try to live in the sparkling centre with our HP.  

The meeting script talked about how physical health gives us purpose, mental health gives meaning, spiritual health yields hope and emotional health creates belonging.  I was at a meeting on Friday night where the speaker shared how his ‘dependency needs’ were not being met so he filled them with compulsive over eating.  I’d never heard that expression before and my initial reaction was “I don’t want to be dependent on anything, that’s unsafe and unreliable!”  And then he shared the exact same belief, before he found more lasting recovery.  LOL.  Yep.  I need (and want) to build more trust that I am and can be dependent on my HP and the sense of hope that creates.  

The writing / meditation prompts were to consider all four quadrants of the circle and consider:

• Take note of your reflections and then develop them as you meditate and think about your reflections from each of the four perspectives.   For instance, in this way of looking at things, our emotional health can be indicated by our feeling of belonging or reflections from our attitude.
• Our physical aspect is related to how we may do things, or our way of being and way of doing and our wholeness as a person.
• Our mental wellness can be measured in our capacity to understand our friends and neighbours, or ideas, such as those presented in books or even in society in general. We have a certain level of intuition or have a chosen rationale for our chosen lifestyle.
• Our spiritual wellness is found in our sense of hope and on what we base our beliefs, our values and on what we chose to identify ourselves with. 
• Mental wellness creates meaning, physical wellness creates purpose, spiritual wellness creates hope, and emotional wellness creates belonging.
• These are just examples to help start the process. They are not marked in stone but merely suggestions. 

It was a bit complex as the instructions were to focus on the Voices of Recovery reading for today, make notes for each of the four quadrants in our life today coming from the reading, and then do a five minute meditation on that!!!   

I felt like this is a useful way to work and yet it was a bit fast for my first time hearing it all for me to take it up in any detail.  I found myself correlating the four quadrants to my past (feeling like I didn’t belong / emotional pain), my present (health concerns / lack of purpose), my future (preoccupation in depression/anxiety worrying things will not get better – that life has little meaning), and lastly spiritual health where I have doubt instead of hope more than is needed / true. 

Blessed.